The Lost Painting

by Jonathan Harr

  Francesca went back to the library index and made a list of other catalogues. She collected the books from the stacks and brought them back to her reading table. One was called Pictures for Scotland: The National Gallery of Scotland and Its Collection. This was not an exhibition catalogue, but rather a history of the National Gallery of Scotland’s collection. She turned to the index and looked under Honthorst. Nothing. Nor anything by Caravaggio. Then the name Serodine caught her attention, the painting called Tribute Money. Hamilton Nisbet had bought just such a painting from the Matteis, although, like the one by Caravaggio, it had also been misattributed, in this case to Rubens. Francesca flipped to the indicated page and saw the Serodine painting reproduced, the size of a postcard, in black and white. The legend above it read: “Bought as by Rubens from the Palazzo Mattei by William Hamilton Nisbet in 1802.”

  In the accompanying text, Francesca read that the painting had come to the National Gallery of Scotland in 1921 as part of a bequest of twenty-eight paintings from Mary Georgina Constance Nisbet Hamilton Ogilvy, the last of William Hamilton Nisbet’s direct heirs. The gallery also had another picture from the Mattei family, a small painting from Francesco Bassano’s studio called The Adoration of the Shepherds. But the National Gallery had rejected, for whatever reason, the other three Mattei paintings—including The Taking of Christ—that Hamilton Nisbet had bought in Rome. They had gone up for auction at a place called Dowell’s, in Edinburgh, in 1921. One of them, Christ Disputing with the Doctors, by Antiveduto Grammatica, had been found in 1956, hanging in a Scottish presbytery in Cowdenheath.

  The only Mattei painting still unaccounted for was The Taking of Christ. The National Gallery had let what would become the single most valuable painting of the group slip through its hands. Francesca thought that the writer of the essay—his name was Hugh Brigstocke, and he was the assistant keeper of the gallery—had done his homework well. He had read Longhi’s 1969 article in Paragone and he knew that the Taking, sold as a Honthorst, was most likely the missing Caravaggio. In footnotes, Brigstocke had listed his sources and included the portfolio numbers of the Hamilton Nisbet papers in the Scottish Record Office.

  So what had happened at the auction at Dowell’s on April 16, 1921? Surely an auction house kept records of its sales, thought Francesca. Who had bought The Taking of Christ?

  Francesca presumed that Brigstocke had checked the records at the auction house, although he made no mention of them. Most likely he’d arrived at a dead end. She looked up the publication date of the book—1972, eighteen years earlier. She wondered whether Brigstocke still worked at the National Gallery of Scotland. Was he even alive? She wanted to speak to him. She also wanted to go to Edinburgh, to Dowell’s auction house, and follow the document trail herself. Perhaps, she thought, she could entice Luciano into coming with her.

  LUCIANO SHOWED FRANCESCA AROUND OXFORD AND TRIED TO convince her that she should move to England. The Italian educational system, he told her, was a type of Mafia, a national scandal. He knew at first hand. He had applied to doctoral programs in philosophy in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Venice, Milan, and Turin. Each admitted only three students a year. He’d taken the oral and written exams, traveling by train and staying in cheap hotel rooms with other applicants, people in their thirties and forties who had applied time and again and never gotten a place. Admission depended on knowing someone, on having a rich father who could pull strings, or on being the protégé—or the sycophant—of an important professor. Luciano had no connections. Time and again he’d been rejected.

  It was a different story in England, where he applied to Oxford, Cambridge, St. Andrews, and the University of Warwick. All accepted him. “You shouldn’t be wasting your time in Italy,” he told Francesca. “You should come to England.”

  She knew he was right about Italy. But she had a talent for making connections. She actually liked going to the openings of new exhibits and academic conferences, where she was learning to make her presence gently known, to use charm and flattery on important art historians and powerful professors, nodding seriously at their observations and laughing at their witticisms, often putting a hand softly on their arms. Luciano called it “fare marchette”—using feminine wiles instead of her native intelligence to get ahead.

  He devoted himself to her while she was in London, always ready to help, always caring and attentive. There were moments when she thought that maybe this was love after all, even if she didn’t feel the sort of passion she’d experienced in other romances. It is a rare thing, she thought, to have a friendship like this, so maybe it is love. And then she’d catch herself and think, No, I think it’s a mistake. It’s because I am in London, far from my family and other friends. It’s like being in vitro.

  Perhaps the trouble was just the dreary skies of London, but the crispness and precision of the Warburg also began to weigh on her. She was one of only a few fellows, and the staff was cheerful and helpful. Too helpful, it sometimes felt to her. “I couldn’t go look at a picture without someone asking—always very nicely—why I wanted to see it. And I might not even know why I wanted to see it, just an idea that I had that I was too shy to express.”

  Luciano didn’t seem to miss Rome at all. Francesca told him that he must have been switched at birth, that he really was an Englishman who by accident had grown up in Italy.

  She, on the other hand, found herself hungering for Rome, for the colors of the old buildings and the narrow, crowded streets, the small noisy cafés where Romans would stand shoulder to shoulder at the bar drinking espresso and talking, a tight nest of bodies, the warmth and humidity of humanity. Coming down a narrow, winding street in the Campo Marzio, Via dei Portoghesi, in the dark shadows and dampness from the buildings on either side, she would round a corner and suddenly see a burst of sunlight illuminating the façade of a building, the ocher walls turned to gold by the sun. She realized that she could not imagine living anywhere else in the world.

  15

  IN ROME, MEANWHILE, LAURA BEGAN INVESTIGATING WHAT HAD happened to the six Mattei paintings after Hamilton Nisbet had bought them. The Scotsman would have needed authorization from the papal authorities to take the paintings out of Rome. The export license, usually granted as a matter of course, should contain a list of the paintings and their attributions along with the sum Hamilton Nisbet had paid for each.

  Laura went one morning to the Archivio di Stato on Corso del Rinascimento. In the catalogue she found the section called Esportazioni, Exportations, of art and antiquities. The records were contained in filing case number 14. The individual export licenses were not listed. Laura expected that the file would be vast, containing hundreds, perhaps thousands of export requests made by rich travelers on the Grand Tour.

  At the desk, she submitted a request for the case and then began a long wait for the clerk to retrieve it. When it finally arrived, late in the afternoon, Laura saw that it was indeed immense, almost too thick for her to put her arms around. But inside the case were individual files with dates. She thumbed through them, a century of export licenses, until she found file number 300, with individual pieces of paper dated between 1801 and 1802. She took that file to a table in the reading room and began leafing through the pages. There was no standard form for requesting an export license, so each request was unique.

  She went through dozens of pages, quickly scanning each for the name Mattei or Hamilton Nisbet. Near the end, with only a few documents remaining, she began to think that perhaps the license didn’t exist. It was possible that Hamilton Nisbet had smuggled the paintings out of Rome, perhaps because he had anticipated problems, or perhaps simply to avoid taxes.

  She went back to the beginning of 1802 and studied each document more carefully. Her eye stopped on one that began with the name of Patrizio Moir—Patrick Moir, certainly an Englishman. It was a single page, dated February 8, 1802, and it contained a short list of paintings that Moir said he wanted to send to England. The third in that list was described as “Jesus
betrayed by Judas, in the Flemish style,” with a size of seven palmi by five and a price of one hundred fifty scudi. It corresponded in subject and size to The Taking of Christ. The descriptions of the other paintings—among them Christ Disputing with the Doctors and Christ with the Samaritan—matched the five additional paintings that Hamilton Nisbet had purchased from Giuseppe Mattei.

  Laura knew that she had found the correct export license, even though the document mentioned neither Hamilton Nisbet nor Mattei. But who was Patrizio Moir? Most likely an agent for Hamilton Nisbet, Laura surmised, one of many Englishmen who lived in Rome and offered their services as cicerones to their wealthy countrymen on the Grand Tour.

  The sales document from the Recanati archive had not listed the prices that Hamilton Nisbet had paid for the six paintings. But Moir, in order to obtain the export license, had to give a monetary value for each painting. He described each painting as being “in the style of,” or “in the school of,” making it seem as if they were copies, or works by unknown, unimportant painters. The total price for all six came to only five hundred twenty-five scudi. Laura suspected that Moir had understated what Hamilton Nisbet had actually paid. Moir was probably experienced at this sort of transaction. The less consequential the paintings, the easier it was to get them out of the country, and the lower the export duties. Moir had probably saved his client a substantial sum in taxes.

  The bottom of the export license had a seal of authorization stamped into red wax, just above the signature of the assessor of fine arts and antiquities. Interesting, thought Laura, how expeditiously this license had been granted. It had taken Moir only a week from the time of Hamilton Nisbet’s purchase to secure the license. Perhaps the bureaucracy had worked with greater efficiency back then. More likely, she thought, Moir had bribed the officials in the export office.

  16

  FRANCESCA RETURNED TO ROME IN DECEMBER FOR THE CHRISTmas holidays. Within a few days, she and Laura completed the article for Art e Dossier that Professor Calvesi had urged them to write. It was scheduled for publication in February. They would have to tell Correale soon.

  As it happened, the timing of the publication could not have been worse. The article would come out just as Correale planned to present the results of the St. John project at a symposium of experts at the Capitoline Gallery.

  Now that the moment was near, Francesca wasn’t so confident that Correale would take the news well.

  “Do you think he’ll be angry?” she asked Laura again.

  “You know what he’s like,” replied Laura. “But we have to tell him. If we don’t, he’ll find out anyway.”

  They kept putting off the chore. They had plenty to do. They had to finish the essay for Correale and check all the footnotes, which numbered more than a hundred. Francesca had the additional burden of writing the brief biography of Caravaggio that Correale had requested. She had started it but had not gotten very far. She knew that it would not take her long to write, a few evenings of hard work, and for that reason she never seemed to get around to it.

  Meanwhile, Correale was busy organizing the details for the St. John symposium. He oversaw the editing of all the essays for the catalogue and occupied himself with writing invitations to the most highly regarded Caravaggio experts. He planned the event meticulously, down to the order in which the scholars would speak and the seating arrangements for the lunch that would follow. These were delicate matters. Several of the scholars were touchy and easily offended, and others had ongoing feuds. Correale hoped to avoid any unpleasantness.

  In mid-January Francesca and Laura finally concluded that they could wait no longer, they had to tell Correale about Professor Calvesi and the Art e Dossier article. Correale had scheduled a meeting at his apartment. Francesca and Laura decided that they should wait until the end of the meeting, when the others had gone and they were alone with Correale.

  That evening several people crowded into Correale’s apartment. He was in fine form, orchestrating the discussion, delighting in the plans for the symposium. Francesca and Laura sat silent most of the time, listening to the others talk. As usual, Correale’s interest lay with the technical people. The meeting dragged on. Francesca kept looking at her watch. One or two people had already left. Just after eight o’clock she whispered to Laura that she also had to leave, she had a dinner engagement, she hadn’t thought the meeting would go on so long.

  Laura looked at her with astonishment. “What about telling Correale?” she whispered back to Francesca.

  “We can tell him another time,” Francesca said. She clasped Laura’s hand. “Sorry, but I really must go.”

  With that, Francesca stood up, made her apologies, and said she had another appointment. Going out the door, she cast a last glance at Laura, a look of regret.

  Laura knew that Correale’s temper frightened Francesca. They’d both seen him grow red in the face, throw papers and swear vilely. His angry moments were unpredictable and usually short-lived, but Francesca had always looked terrorized afterward. Laura understood that she had left tonight because her courage had deserted her.

  Laura decided to tell Correale herself. If she waited for Francesca, they would never get around to telling him. When everyone else had finally gone, Laura rose from the sofa as if to depart, but paused and said to Correale, as if it were an afterthought, “Listen, Giampaolo, there’s something you should know about.”

  “Tell me, Lauretta cara,” said Correale.

  Laura explained that they had gone to see Calvesi and told him about the Caravaggio payments. She could see Correale start to get angry, eyes narrow, puffing rapidly on one of his small cigars. He seemed about to say something, but Laura continued talking. Calvesi had told them they should publish this information, that they had an obligation as art historians to publish, and of course they had felt obliged to listen to their professor, head of the art history department. And so, Laura concluded, they had written an article for Art e Dossier.

  CORREALE REMEMBERED THE EVENT DIFFERENTLY. IN HIS RECOLlection, Laura told him about discussing the Recanati findings with Calvesi, but not about the article in Art e Dossier. Correale found out about that only after it had been published, from a friend who called to say he had just seen the article in the latest edition at a newsstand. Correale at first did not believe his friend. Impossible, he said. Then he ran out to the newsstand and bought a copy for himself. He stood on the street, staring at it in disbelief. The cover of the magazine had a close-up reproduction of a Caravaggio painting, Martha and Mary Magdalene, and the words “New Dates for the Mattei Paintings.” He flipped through the magazine, came to the photos of two of the Mattei Caravaggios, The Supper at Emmaus and The Taking of Christ, the Odessa version. The article was short, barely two pages long. Scanning it with furious eyes, Correale saw that it did not mention him or his project. “The insult of the insult,” said Correale later. At the very least, he should have gotten credit for initiating the research. The article referred only in passing to the St. John. But it contained the essential facts about the Recanati discoveries, discoveries that Correale had wanted to reveal to the world.

  Whatever the truth of the matter, there is no dispute concerning his call to Francesca. The moment she picked up the receiver, she heard Correale’s voice swearing without pause, an incessant stream of epithets, each more inventive than the last. Francesca held the phone away from her ear, but she couldn’t mistake the words. Once, twice, she tried to explain—they’d had to tell Calvesi, she began—but she never got any further than that. After what felt like a long while to Francesca, Correale’s energy seemed to flag. She made another effort to explain, but he interrupted her. Because they had betrayed him in such a way, he said, he would never again speak to her or Laura. They were beneath contempt. And then he hung up.

  Later, in calmer moments, Correale would say that he understood why they had gone to Calvesi. He was their professor; they looked to him for approval, the way, thought Correale, a child would look to his m
other. He was angry that they had spoken to Calvesi, but if they had asked his permission, he would have given it to them. But he could never forgive the article in Art e Dossier. “A knife in the back,” as he put it.

  17

  CORREALE KEPT HIS WORD. HE DID NOT SPEAK TO EITHER Francesca or Laura again. A few last editing questions about their article in the symposium catalogue were communicated to them by someone else on the project. They received their invitations to the symposium in the mail. It was scheduled for February 27 at the Capitoline Gallery.

  Correale had set up an impressive panel of Caravaggio scholars to make presentations. Francesca recognized all the names, luminaries in the world of art history such as Denis Mahon, Mina Gregori, Keith Christiansen from the Metropolitan in New York, Luigi Spezzaferro, Christoph Frommel, and of course Calvesi. Except for Calvesi, she had not met any of them.

  Neither she nor Laura intended to miss the symposium, despite Correale’s wrath. It was, after all, their discoveries in the Recanati archive that made the event truly noteworthy for other Caravaggio scholars. Francesca wanted to make a good appearance. She tried a different hairdresser and bought herself a new outfit—a lavender skirt and matching jacket, a flowery silk foulard, and a pair of magenta heels.

  She rode her old Piaggio motorino to the Capitoline Gallery, skirt hiked to her thighs, hair blowing in the wind. She arrived half an hour late for the opening of the symposium, but this time her tardiness was deliberate. She felt apprehensive at the prospect of encountering Correale. She had decided to avoid the mingling and casual chatting among acquaintances that always occurred at the beginning of such affairs. And then there would be the formalities, the welcome by the director of the Capitoline and by Correale and the introductory speeches by two executives from Italsiel, the software company that had financed the St. John project. She didn’t mind missing those, either.