The Lost Painting

by Jonathan Harr

  “What is this?” asked Benedetti.

  Protective glass, bulletproof, said a British worker.

  Benedetti was astonished.

  Kennedy felt like laughing. “Incredible!” he said. “Does everybody in London think there are bombs going off up here?”

  The chief of the Working Party went off to get brackets strong enough to support the painting on the wall. Lifting and mounting the picture in its thick glass case once again required a team of people. Benedetti and Kennedy looked on, along with Keaveney, who had come to join them.

  “It’s insulting,” said Benedetti. “They don’t show it under glass in London.”

  Benedetti wouldn’t be able to examine the painting as he had expected to do. He couldn’t move it upstairs to the studio, where he could study it closely, under the same conditions and lighting as the Taking. He couldn’t look at the tacking edges and see if the canvas matched the one used for the Taking. The British, without intending it, had thwarted him.

  ON AN AVERAGE WEEKDAY, THE GALLERY RARELY HAD MORE THAN fifty visitors, and often fewer than that. You could wander the spacious rooms in silence and near solitude.

  The Caravaggisti exhibition, assembled in a few short months, with little funding and almost no money for advertising, opened on February 19, 1992. From the beginning, it drew two thousand people a day. The guards, the cloakroom attendants, the clerks in the small bookstore were all overwhelmed. Keaveney came down to the entrance and stood nervously by, watching the throngs march in, holding his breath as the gallery teetered on the edge of chaos. “It was really scary,” he said of that time.

  The show ran for one month, and its success provided Keaveney with a vivid testament to the power of Caravaggio’s name. He could only imagine what might have happened if the painting in the studio upstairs, under the baize blanket—a long-lost Caravaggio—had also been on display.

  The most important visitor arrived the day after the exhibition closed. Sir Denis was escorted up to Keaveney’s office, where Benedetti had set up The Taking of Christ on a sturdy easel.

  Sir Denis stood before the painting, leaning on his cane, eyes moving quickly. After a minute or so, he shuffled forward and examined first one area and then another with his nose only a few inches from the canvas. Benedetti moved up with him. He directed Sir Denis’s attention to the pentimenti at the ear of Judas and the belt buckle. Sir Denis nodded but said nothing.

  A moment later, he turned to Benedetti. He extended his hand and said, “Congratulations, Sergio.”

  13

  SIR DENIS RETURNED HOME TO LONDON AND CALLED NEIL MacGregor at the British National Gallery. He told MacGregor that he had just seen with his own eyes the lost Taking of Christ. “It looks like the real McCoy,” Mahon said.

  MacGregor was delighted. He congratulated Sir Denis, and added that he hoped London would have a chance to display it soon.

  Sir Denis told MacGregor that he would have the opportunity to see the painting for himself in the near future, provided he would grant a favor. Sir Denis wanted the British gallery’s scientific department to examine The Taking of Christ—high-quality photos, X rays, infrared, and pigment analysis. “The sort of thing you would do for one of your own paintings,” said Sir Denis.

  London had one of the most advanced scientific departments in the art world, but London rarely worked on paintings that were not part of its own collection. In this instance, however, MacGregor agreed without hesitation.

  AT DAWN ONE MORNING IN MAY, SIX WEEKS AFTER THE Caravaggisti show, Benedetti loaded the Taking into a large rental truck with air-cushion suspension and set out with a driver for London. Keaveney had to persuade the Irish government to indemnify the gallery against damage or loss of the painting with a thirty-million-pound insurance policy. He and Kennedy and Benedetti had planned the voyage with the utmost secrecy. Apart from the three of them, no one in Ireland knew the precise date of Benedetti’s departure.

  The driver had recommended going up to Belfast and taking the ferry from there across the Irish Sea. Benedetti didn’t like the idea of carrying the painting through Belfast, but the driver convinced him they would save time because of better roads.

  The painting remained in London for only four days, and Benedetti stayed by its side most of that time. The science and restoration departments employed fifteen people full-time and occupied a spacious suite of rooms, along with a huge skylit studio, at the back of the gallery. In the science labs, Benedetti saw a vast array of gleaming machinery and electronic equipment, microscopes, spectroscopes, computer monitors, and beakers of chemicals. He watched as a young woman detached a dozen minuscule fragments from the borders of lacunae in the painting and carried the fragments to a machine that embedded each one in a small block of resin. On a television monitor attached to a microscope, the fragments appeared like landscapes of an alien terrain, jumbled strata of brightly colored boulders and crystals of green, yellow, vermilion, and ocher.

  The head of the science department, an organic chemist named Ashok Roy, interpreted the findings. He had taken pigment samples from The Supper at Emmaus to compare with The Taking of Christ. The chemical composition of the paints in both pictures was similar. Caravaggio had bought his pigments—lead-tin yellow, malachite, red lake, bone black, green earth—at the store of a druggist, perhaps the one near the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. They came either in rough form, in blocks and large granules, or already ground to powder by mortar and pestle. He had mixed the pigments with walnut oil, the most common binding agent of the day. Nothing in the composition of the paints suggested that The Taking of Christ had been painted by anyone other than Caravaggio. But that did not prove he had.

  One aspect about the Taking did strike Ashok Roy as unusual. The priming layer, the ground, had been applied irregularly, thickly in some parts, thinly in others, and it had a gritty texture. That was typical of Caravaggio, but Roy found the composition of this particular ground strange—“bizarre” was the word he used. It contained reds and yellows and large grains of green earth, a pigment composed of iron and magnesium. Grounds usually contained lead-based pigments and calcium, which dry quickly. Green earth dries slowly. This primer looked to Roy like a “palette-scraping” ground—the painter had simply recycled leftover paints from his palette board to make the priming layer.

  IN THE ROME OF CARAVAGGIO’S DAY, NEWS TRAVELED LARGELY BY word of mouth, although both printed and handwritten notices, called avvisi, were also posted from time to time in various piazzas. One such avviso appeared on October 24, 1609. It read: “From Naples there is news that Caravaggio, the celebrated painter, has been killed, while others say badly disfigured.”

  Two weeks later, Giulio Mancini, the doctor who had once treated Caravaggio, wrote to his brother in Siena with more information. “It is said that Michelangelo da Caravaggio has been assaulted by four men in Naples, and they fear that he has been slashed. If true, it would be a shame and disturbing to all. God grant that it is not true.”

  Caravaggio was a regular customer at the Osteria del Cerriglio, a large tavern in the Carità district of Naples. The osteria, three stories tall and built around a courtyard with a fountain, was renowned for its food and wine, and also for the allure of the prostitutes in the upstairs rooms overlooking the courtyard.

  He was assaulted on the night of October 20, in the steep and narrow street leading to the osteria’s door. The men who attacked him apparently did not intend to kill him, but to cut his face and disfigure him. Baglione, the biographer who knew Caravaggio best, wrote that “he was so severely slashed in the face that he was almost unrecognizable.” The identities of his attackers remain unknown, although art historians have speculated at length on the reason for the assault. Caravaggio did not lack for enemies.

  It had been more than three years since he fled Rome after the death of Ranuccio Tomassoni. In those years he had wandered southern Italy, from Naples to Malta, then to Syracuse, Messina, and Palermo in Sicily, before again retur
ning to Naples. His reputation as an artist had preceded him. He had been welcomed wherever he went. He painted prodigiously and swiftly, large public commissions for churches and smaller works for wealthy patrons who knew of his fame and clamored for his works. In Naples, for the church of Pio Monte della Misericordia, he painted a huge canvas depicting the Seven Acts of Mercy, for which he was paid four hundred ducats. In Malta, The Beheading of John the Baptist, measuring seventeen by twelve feet. In Syracuse, for the church of Santa Lucia, The Burial of St. Lucy. In Messina, two more large works: The Raising of Lazarus and, for the Capuchin church, The Adoration of the Shepherds, for which he was paid a thousand scudi, the highest fee he’d ever received.

  His paintings had changed in mood and tenor, and he had changed his methods, too. He painted sparely and quickly, without the finish of the Roman days, but with greater drama and a stark intensity. He often depicted scenes of violent death in settings that were dark, shadowed, and cavernous. He occasionally used himself as a model, as he had in Rome. One of his last paintings, David with the Head of Goliath, shows the boy David gazing in melancholy at the decapitated head of Goliath, which he holds aloft by a fistful of black unruly hair. In death, the opened eyes of Goliath—Caravaggio’s self-portrait—seem fixed inwardly in horror, mouth agape, blood dripping from the severed neck. It was as if Caravaggio knew his fate.

  He had stayed for a full year in Malta, and had been accepted into the Order of the Knights of Malta, a high tribute that normally required a substantial payment. Caravaggio paid in paintings. For a few short months he enjoyed the rich life of a nobleman and the respect accorded a member of the order. And then he fought with a fellow cavaliere, a grievous crime in that strict and hierarchical society. He was imprisoned briefly, but managed to escape and flee to Sicily. The documents of the order record that he was expelled “like a foul and diseased limb.” And now the Knights of Malta and the cavaliere with whom he’d fought were also seeking justice from him.

  He had plenty of money and was famous, but he still lived under the bando capitale, the sentence of death. He was a hunted man with a bounty on his head. He had powerful allies in Rome, among them Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew to the Pope, and Cardinal Ferdinand Gonzaga, who were working to get him a pardon. But his mental state was growing more and more unbalanced.

  In Sicily he was described by those who met him as “deranged” and “mad.” He lived in constant fear, sleeping fully dressed with a dagger always by his side.

  He left Sicily for reasons unknown and returned to Naples, perhaps because he’d heard that a papal pardon was in the offing, or maybe because he was just trying to keep ahead of his pursuers. To return to Rome, he needed not just the pardon but also a formal pact of peace with the Tomassoni family. Ranuccio’s two cousins and his older brother, Giovan Francesco, had all been allowed to return after a three-year exile. Some art historians speculate that they were the men who had attacked Caravaggio at the Osteria del Cerriglio, exacting their price for the peace by disfiguring the painter’s face. Others think it likely that the Knights of Malta and the offended cavaliere had caught up with Caravaggio in Naples. And it was always possible that Caravaggio, in his deranged and paranoid state, had simply offended someone else altogether, someone heretofore uninvolved in his past.

  It took him months to recover from the attack. His face was by now badly scarred from three separate woundings. But he did not stop painting. In Naples, in a period of eight months, he produced half a dozen works, some destined as gifts for those in Rome who were pressing for his clemency. Others were commissioned works for churches, such as The Resurrection of Christ and St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, both paintings now lost.

  Around the beginning of July 1610, Caravaggio boarded a small two-masted transport ship, a felucca, and sailed up the coast. He had heard from his protectors in Rome that Pope Paul V would soon sign a pardon. He carried with him a bundle of belongings and two rolled-up paintings. The felucca’s northernmost destination was Porto Ercole, a fortress city on a spit of land sixty miles north of Rome, but it made several stops along the way. Caravaggio intended to debark at a small customs port near the mouth of the Tiber and make his way upriver to Rome.

  Two days after leaving Naples, the felucca put in at a coastal fortress in the small village of Palo, just north of the Tiber. The captain of the garrison summoned Caravaggio, who was forced to leave the ship without his belongings. According to one account, the captain had mistaken Caravaggio for someone else, for another cavaliere whom he had been told to detain. It is likely that Caravaggio reacted to the captain as he usually did to those in uniform, with rudeness and insults. Whatever the reason, the captain put Caravaggio in the garrison jail for two days and released him only after he had paid a substantial penalty, a hundred scudi according to one account.

  The felucca, with a schedule to keep, had gone on to Porto Ercole, where its cargo had been unloaded. Out of jail, the painter, in a fury, decided to make for Porto Ercole and his possessions, among which was a painting of St. John promised to Scipione Borghese for his intervention with the Pope. It was a long journey by foot under the summer sun, nearly sixty miles of dunes and coastal marshes, with only a few fishing villages along the way and the ever-present risk of bandits. Rome was closer, but Caravaggio apparently decided he couldn’t return to the city without his possessions and without bearing tributes for his benefactors.

  Baglione, his rival, wrote: “In desperation, he started out along the beach under the fierce heat of the July sun trying to catch sight of the vessel that carried his belongings. Finally he came to a place where he was put to bed with a raging fever; and so, without the aid of God or man, in a few days he died, just as miserably as he had lived.”

  He died on July 18, 1610, at the age of thirty-nine, in an infirmary in Porto Ercole. Most scholars assume that he died of malaria contracted in the mosquito-infested marshes. But the incubation period for malaria is at least eight days, and more commonly a month or longer. He more likely died of dysentery and dehydration, his constitution still weak from his wounds.

  Word of his death reached Rome ten days after he died, on July 28. By then the Pope had already granted his pardon.

  14

  DENIS MAHON, AGAIN IN BOLOGNA, BOARDED THE TRAIN FOR Rome, en route to yet another Caravaggio conference. It was May 1992. An Italian colleague had mounted an exhibition at the Palazzo Ruspoli, on the Via del Corso, of twenty paintings by Caravaggio, each with detailed technical analyses, X rays, and infrared photographs. The exhibition was entitled “How Masterpieces Are Born.”

  At Termini, Rome’s train station, Sir Denis was met by an acquaintance, a journalist named Fabio Isman from the Roman daily Il Messaggero. Isman had known Mahon for ten years, since he had started covering arts and culture for the newspaper. He carried Sir Denis’s bags to his car.

  On the way to the conference, Sir Denis and Isman discussed one of the paintings in the exhibition, The Lute Player, which Mahon had recently played a role in authenticating. Isman said to Mahon, “So, when is the next Caravaggio going to turn up?”

  Sir Denis laughed. “Oh, I just saw one a few weeks ago.”

  Isman was startled. He had just been making conversation. “Seriously?” he said to Mahon. “Where?”

  “I really can’t say any more,” replied Mahon. “It’s not my painting.”

  Isman pressed for more information, but Sir Denis only smiled enigmatically and remained resolutely silent on the matter.

  The conference, a one-day affair, bustled with many famous Caravaggio scholars. There was Mina Gregori, who had put together the exhibition, and Maurizio Marini, Luigi Spezzaferro, and Maurizio Calvesi. From America had come Keith Christiansen; from Germany, Christoph Frommel and Erich Schleier.

  Fabio Isman circulated among the crowd, going from one expert to the next as they chatted in small groups. “Have you heard about the new Caravaggio?” he would ask. He was rewarded with surprised looks and puzzled queries. �
�What new Caravaggio?” he heard time and again.

  Isman did not doubt that Mahon had told him the truth, that a lost Caravaggio had recently turned up. Mahon was not the type to make such a remark in jest. But no one else seemed to know anything about it. Very strange, thought Isman.

  And then, in making his rounds, he encountered Claudio Strinati, the minister of arts and culture for Rome. Isman had known Strinati for many years and considered him a friend. They chatted for a moment. Isman said: “I heard from Denis Mahon that a new Caravaggio has turned up. Do you know anything about it?”

  Strinati laughed. “There’s always a new Caravaggio turning up,” he said. “Except that most of them aren’t actually Caravaggios.”

  “Yes,” said Isman, “but in this case Denis said he’d seen it himself.”

  “Well, then,” said Strinati with a shrug, “I guess there really must be a new Caravaggio.”

  Isman saw in Strinati’s eyes a look of amusement. His demeanor told Isman that the minister must, in fact, know something about this new painting; otherwise he wouldn’t have responded so casually to such news. “You do know about it, don’t you?” said Isman.

  Strinati smiled, and said: “I really can’t tell you anything.”

  Isman took out one of his calling cards. “Just do me a favor,” he said, pressing the card into Strinati’s hand. “Give this to the person who has the painting. Tell him I want to speak to him. Tell him to call me anytime.”

  Strinati took the card. “Okay. But no promises, you understand.”

  AS IT HAPPENED, SERGIO BENEDETTI WAS ALSO AT THE CONFERence. He knew most of the celebrated Caravaggio scholars, and many of them knew him, but only as a restorer and enthusiastic amateur scholar. He had not been invited to speak. He sat in the audience, listening to the presentations. It would never have occurred to anyone that he might have been invited to speak. But the day would soon come when he would enter the ranks of the experts, and his opinions would be sought after, just as theirs were now. He had in his briefcase, by his side, a series of photographs of The Taking of Christ. He comported himself with the serene assurance of a man who possessed a superior knowledge.