Among the hundred or more people at the conference, only two, apart from Denis Mahon and Benedetti himself, knew about the painting. One was Mina Gregori, the organizer of the conference, and the other was Claudio Strinati, whom Benedetti had known since the days of Mario’s trattoria.
At the end of the conference, as people stood and gathered their belongings, Strinati came up to Benedetti. He handed the restorer the card that Fabio Isman had given him. “He’s a reporter for Il Messaggero,” Strinati explained. “Apparently Denis let something slip. But he doesn’t know anything beyond the rumor that a painting has been found.”
Benedetti took the card and put it in his jacket pocket. He had never met Fabio Isman, and he certainly had no intention of calling a journalist.
WHILE HE WAS IN ROME, BENEDETTI GOT IN TOUCH WITH Francesca again. They arranged to meet late one afternoon at the Bibliotheca Hertziana. This time Benedetti had no objection to having Laura present. He had a variety of questions, some concerning the export license for the Mattei paintings that she had found in the Archivio di Stato.
They met in a small, well-lit room on the third floor of the library. The Germans who ran the Hertziana were strict about maintaining silence, a rule that Francesca was often reprimanded for violating. This third-floor room, with two scuffed brown leather couches and several tattered upholstered chairs, was the only place in the library where conversation was tolerated. But it had the disadvantage of serving as a corridor for people going to the periodical room.
Benedetti greeted Laura in a manner that she found brusque: a perfunctory handshake and no hint of a smile. She thought he carried himself with an air of self-importance that verged on conceit. He spoke in a low voice and would fall silent when someone happened to pass through the room. Laura found it annoying at first, and then amusing. She exchanged a glance with Francesca, who merely lifted her shoulders and smiled.
Benedetti asked Laura for details about the export license. She told him that the license had listed the prices that Hamilton Nisbet had paid for the six paintings—a total of five hundred twenty-five scudi—prices that she had doubted. Benedetti nodded. She’d been right to doubt them. He’d found a document in the Scottish Record Office, a receipt signed by Duke Giuseppe Mattei, with a price of two thousand three hundred scudi. Hamilton Nisbet’s agent, Patrick Moir, had grossly understated the cost of the paintings to avoid paying customs duties. Perhaps Moir had been acting on behalf of his employer, or perhaps in his own interests, and had simply pocketed part of the export fee.
From his briefcase, Benedetti took out several photos and color transparencies of The Taking of Christ. He showed Francesca and Laura close-ups of parts of the painting, including the ghostly second ear of Judas, visible through the thin layer of overpainting. As they studied the photos, Benedetti glanced around constantly, making sure that no one else was looking on or could overhear them.
The photos convinced Francesca that Benedetti really did have the original Taking of Christ by Caravaggio. Laura was more skeptical. She asked Benedetti where he’d found the painting, and he replied vaguely, mentioning only a “religious house” in Dublin. She asked if he’d discovered what had happened at Dowell’s auction house in Edinburgh. Benedetti said, “I can’t give you any details now.”
Later, after Benedetti put the photos back into his briefcase and departed, Francesca said to Laura, “So, what do you think?”
Laura had been put off by Benedetti’s haughty manner. “He didn’t tell us much. What’s the point in being so mysterious about it all? He acts like he’s Roberto Longhi.”
“But about the painting?” said Francesca.
“I think it could be the real one,” said Laura with a shrug. “Not that it necessarily is.”
15
FOR WEEKS AFTER THE CONFERENCE, FABIO ISMAN WAITED IN HIS office at Il Messaggero for news of the latest Caravaggio discovery. None arrived. He wrote other articles about other exhibitions and other artists, but in his spare time he always returned to the mysterious new Caravaggio.
Finally, he decided to call Denis Mahon in London and try to ferret out additional details. Sir Denis confirmed that a painting existed, but he would divulge nothing more.
Isman called one Caravaggio scholar after another. They all denied knowing about the painting, but Isman wasn’t sure they were telling him the truth. He began trying a new tactic. “Congratulations!” he’d exclaim on his next call. “I hear you’re the one who’s found the new Caravaggio.”
“Ah, I wish I had,” said Maurizio Marini.
To a person, all denied any knowledge. Isman refined his technique. When he called Mina Gregori, with whom he’d already spoken once and gotten nowhere, he said to her, “I hear this new painting is an early ‘profano,’ like The Lute Player or the Bacchus.”
“Oh no,” said Mina Gregori, “it’s a religious one. A painting we’ve been waiting for a long time.”
She would tell him no more, but he had learned a few important details. A religious painting, one that was apparently well-known. There were only half a dozen Caravaggios that fit such a description.
He put in a call to Keith Christiansen at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Christiansen and Sir Denis were quite close. The Lute Player that Mahon had authenticated in Paris had been acquired by the Metropolitan. Perhaps, thought Isman, the Metropolitan was involved in acquiring this new Caravaggio.
Christiansen confirmed that he had heard about the painting, but the Metropolitan had no stake in it. It had been found, Christiansen said, by someone unknown in the world of Caravaggio studies. “It’s nobody you’d expect,” he told Isman.
And so Isman made a list of lesser-known Caravaggio experts and began calling them. All to no avail.
He pondered the few facts he had managed to gather. A well-known religious painting, missing for a long time. If it was well-known, there were probably copies of it.
His mind kept circling the problem. He stayed abreast of developments in the art world and subscribed to all the most important journals. He recalled having seen the article in Storia dell’Arte about the Caravaggio paintings in the Mattei collection.
And with that recollection, Isman had a sudden inspiration. Could it be that the painting was The Taking of Christ? He could not be certain, of course, but it seemed to fit with the few particulars he had learned.
He quickly located that issue of Storia dell’Arte. He saw that the article had been written by two women, Francesca Cappelletti and Laura Testa, whose names he did not recognize. Might they have found the painting? He decided that was improbable. According to their article, The Taking of Christ had left Italy for Scotland in 1802, and had gone missing after the auction in Edinburgh in 1921. Most likely it was still somewhere in the British Isles.
He concentrated his efforts on Great Britain, looking through journals and catalogues for some clue. He came across the catalogue of a small and curious exhibition—“Caravaggio and His Followers”—that had taken place in Dublin. Very odd, Isman thought, a Caravaggio show with no Caravaggios except for The Supper at Emmaus, which Dublin had somehow managed to get on loan from London. He leafed through the catalogue. The curator, he noticed, had been one Sergio Benedetti, obviously an Italian. Isman looked in the index of Maurizio Marini’s compendious volume on Caravaggio. Marini had listed the author of every article written on Caravaggio. Benedetti’s name was not among them. Benedetti was unknown in the world of Caravaggio scholarship. That fit with what Keith Christiansen had told him: “It’s nobody you would expect.”
On the Friday before Easter Sunday—Good Friday—Isman picked up the telephone and called the National Gallery of Ireland. Ten months had passed since he’d first heard from Denis Mahon that a lost Caravaggio had been found. He asked to speak to Sergio Benedetti. When Benedetti picked up the line, Isman said, as he had said to so many others, “Congratulations! I hear that you’ve found the lost Caravaggio.”
“Cazzo!” exclaimed Benedetti in surprise. “H
ow did you find that out?”
Isman was equally astonished to discover that he had guessed right. “So it’s true?” he said to Benedetti. “You’ve got The Taking of Christ?”
“Who told you about it?” asked Benedetti.
Isman could hardly believe his luck. He’d also guessed right about the painting. “No one told me,” he said to Benedetti. “It was an educated guess. So where did you find it?”
“I can’t tell you that now,” said Benedetti. “This is still top secret.”
“Not anymore, it isn’t,” said Isman with a laugh.
Benedetti said, “I’m writing an article for publication in The Burlington Magazine in September. We’ll have a press conference before the exhibition and I’ll tell you everything then. But you can’t publish until then.”
“Oh, no,” said Isman. “I’m publishing this tomorrow. It’ll be on the front page. Can you send me a photograph of the painting?”
“Absolutely not!” said Benedetti.
FABIO ISMAN DID NOT, IN FACT, PUBLISH THE NEXT DAY. HE LACKED a significant piece of information—where Benedetti had found the painting. That, and a photograph.
But Isman was not about to hold back a story of this importance on such details. His article appeared on Tuesday morning, four days after he’d contacted Benedetti. It was indeed on the front page of Il Messaggero, under the headline “A Lost Caravaggio Returns.” The newspaper used a photo of the Odessa painting, duly noted as such, in place of the Dublin original.
16
IMMEDIATELY AFTER HIS CONVERSATION WITH ISMAN, BENEDETTI notified Brian Kennedy that word of the painting had gotten out. The problem was urgent. The Jesuits did not yet know the full truth about the painting, and Kennedy did not want them to learn from the newspapers.
Kennedy tried to get in touch with Father Barber. He discovered that the priest was away for the Easter weekend, on a silent retreat at a monastery, and not expected back until Tuesday. Kennedy left word that he had called, and then he considered driving to the monastery and slipping a note under Father Barber’s door. “If he thinks it’s important enough, maybe he’ll come out,” Kennedy said. But in the end, he decided not to interrupt the priest’s meditations. “At least we know he’s not reading any newspapers,” reasoned Kennedy.
On Tuesday morning, Kennedy told Father Barber that he needed to talk to him right away. Ten minutes later, after a fast walk from the gallery, Kennedy appeared at the Jesuits’ door. He said to Father Barber, “You better sit down, Noel. I’ve got some news that you can’t take standing up.”
They sat in the front parlor on the old, worn couches. On the wall above them was the large empty space where The Taking of Christ had once hung. Kennedy got straight to the point. The painting was almost certainly by Caravaggio. There could be little doubt of it. They had the proof, not just in the painting’s quality, but in the documents.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Noel Barber, clapping his hands together. “That’s wonderful news!”
Kennedy explained the implications, starting with the value of the painting—perhaps as much as thirty-five million pounds—and the clamor its announcement would cause in the art world. He warned the priest that there would be a media onslaught beginning within the next few days. And of course, the Jesuits would have to decide what to do with the painting. They would have plenty of offers from museums and wealthy collectors. But first the gallery would like to display it for a time, in exchange for the restoration work that Benedetti had performed. After that, the decision was up to Father Barber and the Jesuit community.
At first Father Barber looked a little shocked by this news. And then, once he had absorbed it, he made no effort to conceal his enthusiasm. He expressed his delight freely. “He couldn’t contain himself,” Kennedy later reported to Raymond Keaveney. “He was nearly floating.”
One other matter, Kennedy said to Father Barber. In order to have a full history, a complete provenance of the painting, they would have to know how the Jesuits had happened to acquire it.
Father Barber reflected on this for a moment. He told Kennedy it had been given to Father Tom Finlay, one of the priests who had lived in the house, by a woman whom Father Finlay had counseled many years ago. At least, that was what Father Barber had heard from an elderly resident of the house. The woman’s name was Dr. Marie Lea-Wilson. She had been a pediatrician of some distinction in Dublin. She had died more than twenty years earlier.
Do you know if she has any heirs? asked Kennedy.
Father Barber didn’t know.
IT FELL TO BENEDETTI TO TIE UP THE LOOSE ENDS OF THE PROVEnance. He came by the Jesuit residence to interview Father Barber and examine whatever records the Jesuits had concerning the painting. By now, Father Barber had made inquiries of his own. He confirmed that the painting had been a gift by Marie Lea-Wilson to Father Finlay, who had been a professor of political economy at University College Dublin. As far as anyone could determine, she had given him the painting sometime in the early 1930s.
That, at least, was the institutional memory as handed down by the elderly Jesuit priests at the residence. Father Barber had searched the files for some declaration of the gift and its precise date, but had come up empty.
Benedetti was amazed. The Society of Jesus, known for its intellectual rigor, didn’t keep careful records? “A shameful situation,” the restorer later remarked, with some petulance. “Religious archives in Italy, they record everything. Not here in Ireland. They are a peculiar people.”
Benedetti began an investigation into the life of Marie Lea-Wilson. He stopped first at the probate court to look at her will. Dr. Lea-Wilson had died in 1971, at the age of eighty-three. She’d never had children. She had lived for fifty years in a large old Georgian house on Upper Fitzwilliam Street, a short walk from the Jesuit residence. In her first will, she had left much of her estate to a longtime housekeeper named Bridget. While hospitalized, however, she’d apparently had a change of heart. She had another will drawn up that cut Bridget out entirely. That will stipulated that her estate be divided among a number of charities, principally the Children’s Hospital in Dublin, where she had practiced medicine for more than forty years.
Benedetti tried to track down the housekeeper Bridget. All he found was a death certificate. It was clear to him that Dr. Lea-Wilson had no heirs who could lay claim to the painting. It belonged to the Jesuits.
But how had Marie Lea-Wilson gotten the painting in the first place? It had gone up for auction at Dowell’s in Edinburgh in 1921, and the Jesuits had acquired it from her at some point in the early 1930s. That left a gap of ten or more years in the painting’s life.
Benedetti set out to learn everything he could about Marie Lea-Wilson. She had been born Marie Monica Eugene Ryan in 1888 to a well-to-do Catholic family in Charleville, County Cork. Her father had been a solicitor, and she too had studied law. At the age of twenty-five, she married an Englishman, a Protestant, named Captain Percival Lea-Wilson, then twenty-seven and a district inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary in Gorey. At the outbreak of the Easter Rebellion, two years after their wedding, Captain Lea-Wilson was given charge of a group of Irish Republican prisoners. He humiliated them, forcing some to strip naked in the rain and lie facedown in the mud. The IRA vowed vengeance. Captain Lea-Wilson knew that he was a marked man. He took to drink. Four years later, on the morning of June 16, 1920, he was shot and killed on the road in front of his home as he went to get the newspaper.
Marie Lea-Wilson descended into a prolonged period of mourning. Some years after her husband’s death, she met Father Thomas Finlay, who offered her spiritual guidance, solace, and practical advice. She began studying medicine at Trinity College and was awarded her degree in 1928. She was then forty years old, and one of the few female doctors in Dublin.
At the National Children’s Hospital on Harcourt Street, Benedetti got a fuller picture of Dr. Lea-Wilson from nurses and staff people who had worked with her. She was, according to one nurse who ha
d known her since the 1950s, “a small, shrunken woman,” with white hair that had a yellow streak running up the middle. She smoked cigarettes continuously—“Continuously!” the elderly nurse emphasized. She dressed in dark Victorian-like clothes, in skirts that descended to her ankles. On the front of her long black coat she had pinned row upon row of religious medals, and more medals adorned the front of her blouse. She made annual pilgrimages to the shrine of Fatima in Portugal and had gone several times to the Vatican. In those days, she was the only female doctor in the hospital, devoutly Catholic in a profession dominated by Protestant men. She would arrive at the hospital in a car driven by Bridget the housekeeper who, it seemed, had a compulsion to drive in reverse. “We would all roar laughing at the way Bridget drove,” recalled another nurse. Marie Lea-Wilson held clinics three mornings a week and would see children without a referral letter. Her manner was severe and autocratic. She would sit on a chair, smoking and dispensing advice, always with one of her little dogs, of which she had many, in her lap. “She did have a great feeling for the poor,” said another woman who had known her. “In a bit of a strange way,” she added.
Benedetti scrutinized Dr. Lea-Wilson’s university records, hoping he could find some link to Edinburgh, which was a world-renowned center for medical study. But he could find no evidence that she had ever studied there.
He came away knowing a great deal about the life of Marie Lea-Wilson, but he could find no clue in that odd and eccentric life about the thing that mattered to him most. How had she gotten the painting? Had she bought it for eight guineas at Dowell’s? Or had she chanced upon it in the shop of some antiques dealer in Edinburgh? Or perhaps even a dealer in Ireland? There was no way to trace its passage across the Irish Sea. In those days, Ireland had been part of the British empire, and no export license had been required to move goods out of Scotland.
The Lost Painting Page 18