by Peter Millar
Nazreem shot Marcus a puzzled glance as they followed the man through a panelled door into an institutionally painted side corridor.
‘Although personally speaking that doesn’t detract from its worth, and in any case as you know these attributions are for ever changing,’ Vischer was saying.
‘You’re telling us that the St Luke painting is a fake, a forgery?’ Marcus could not conceal a note of incredulity in his voice.
‘Oh no, good heavens, nothing of the kind. Just that it might not have been wholly painted by the master himself. Anyway, there you are.’
He opened a door on their left and ushered them into a small functionally furnished office which was completely dominated by the painting that hung opposite the desk.
‘A fine thing,’ said Vischer. ‘I find it inspirational.’
Marcus was taken aback. The painting was bigger than he had imagined from pictures in books – over a metre across and maybe a third as much again in height. Also, it was painted not on canvas but on wood.
‘Oak. Quite common at the time, especially for religious paintings,’ said the curator, positioning himself alongside the painting as if admiring his own handiwork.
Marcus stood back to examine the work as a whole. The composition was exquisite, divided into three by the device of a window in the background with the graceful upright pillars. In the centre frame, beyond the window looking out over battlements at a winding river and a townscape that was wholly mediaeval down to the Dutch gables, stood a couple seemingly unrelated to the main subjects, yet giving perspective and a sense of unity.
In the foreground, inside the window on one side of the central aperture a man in russet robes with a skullcap half knelt with a quill pen hovering over a sketch pad in his hand. Opposite seated on the step of a wooden throne draped in cloth of gold was a woman offering her breast to a baby.
The appearance of the child itself was strangely stilted, with the fingers of the left hand arranged in a sign of blessing. The face had a strange, otherworldly smile and he seemed unnaturally disinterested in the proffered breast. The woman herself, however, could have been an archetypal Dutch beauty of the day, her eyes cast down towards the baby in her arms, demure, brunette and immaculately white of skin. Only the full heavy robe which draped her form was a rich velvet black.
‘The real beauty lies in the balance of the composition, the subtle semi-symmetry and the sharply contrasting use of light and shade,’ said Vischer.
Marcus nodded. ‘It’s quite remarkable,’ he said. ‘I’d come across illustrations before, in books, but never paid quite this much attention.’ By his side Nazreem too appeared wholly riveted by the artwork in front of them.
‘But what were you saying about it not being the original?’ Marcus asked.
Vischer sighed. ‘That is why it no longer hangs in the main gallery, despite the fact that for decades it hung there and was much admired.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘It is a question of authentication: our modern concern with brush strokes and pigments. The painting is not unique, you see. Few of this style, of this period are.’
Vischer was addressing himself to Marcus, but Nazreem had turned towards him with a strange gleam in her eye.
‘There are others, also in fine collections you understand, one very like this indeed in the Groeninge Museum in Bruges, which for a long time was claimed to be the original because it is near where the artist lived, and another in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, on a continent he did not even know existed. And another, this time on canvas, in the Hermitage in St Petersburg.
‘People who know more about such technical things than I do say they reckon that the only one of the series that was wholly painted by van der Weyden himself is probably the one in America. I’m not convinced that detracts from the intrinsic value of ours … or mine, as I sometime dare to think of it.’
‘Why so many versions of the same painting?’
‘Nowadays we regard works of art – old ones anyhow – as unique, masterpieces which must be allowed to stand alone and which must never be copied. But at the time these paintings were produced, they weren’t seen like that. It was the image that mattered, not the artist – of course, people wanted things to be as well painted as possible, but it simply wasn’t viable for one man to churn out endless copies.
‘That’s what they had assistants for – “schools” they called them then, but they weren’t all to do with learning. “Workshops” might have been a better equivalent in modern terms. Just like the scribes producing all those illuminated manuscripts before the invention of printing. Just a primitive form of mass production really.’
‘I hadn’t looked at it like that before,’ said Marcus.
‘No,’ said Vischer. ‘Not many people do. But I believe that even from today’s point of view it’s the beauty of the object that counts, not the attribution.’
‘It’s a very different Madonna.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Hmm?’ Marcus had been thinking aloud, rather than addressing the curator standing next to him. ‘We’ve just been out to Altötting,’ he added, suddenly aware that Nazreem beside him was throwing dagger looks in his direction. If Vischer noticed them he gave no indication. Instead, he appeared mildly puzzled by the comparison.
‘Ah, Bavaria’s famous black Madonna. No indeed, quite another thing. That’s an older piece of work too, of course, although not as old as a lot of the pilgrims would like to believe. But you can’t really compare a sculpture to a painting, can you, not unless you’re trying to get some idea of what the actual person looked like. And that’s hardly the case here, is it?’ he laughed.
‘No, indeed,’ said Marcus dryly.
‘So what did you think of our Altötting? You aren’t pilgrims, in the religious sense?’ Vischer asked with just a slightly nervous edge to his laugh. ‘I thought all Englishmen were Protestants,’ this with just the hint of a sideways glance at Nazreem.
‘No. Not pilgrims,’ answered Marcus, seeing no point in explaining. ‘It’s a fine place. Some remarkable architecture.’
‘Oh yes, quite a collection of curios, Altötting, in every sense of the word. You know Pope Benedict was a local boy.’
‘Hard to miss the fact.’
Vischer grinned. Somehow Marcus thought this was one Bavarian who was not a particular fan of His Apostolic Majesty. ‘Did you see the Death?’ he asked.
It was Marcus’s turn to look puzzled.
‘The Death of Eding? Oh I do hope you didn’t miss it. It’s sublime.’
‘I think you’ve lost me again.’
‘Oh what a pity. Perhaps you should go back. It really is – how does Michelin put it “worth a detour” – it’s in the main church. A little statue, a figurine really on top of a very tall, quite fine, grandfather clock. It’s a bit macabre really: a skeleton swinging a scythe. It swings back and forth every couple of seconds and superstitious people believe that every swing brings someone’s death.’
‘Charming.’
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it. Some people call it a memento mori, a reminder that this life is but transient, a pilgrimage to heaven. Others see the same thing and take the message carpe diem: enjoy yourself because this is all you’ve got.’
‘I assume the Catholic Church prefers the former.’
‘Oh absolutely, but then the Catholic Church is a relative newcomer in Altötting.’
Marcus looked at him askance: ‘How do you mean? I rather got the impression that the whole place revolved around the Church, and the black Madonna in particular.’
‘Yes, you would, and it’s true nowadays and has been for centuries, but Altötting’s history as a religious centre goes way back beyond any of that.’
Marcus nodded. ‘Yes, one of the nuns at the institute hinted at something like that.’
Vischer smiled a knowing smile. ‘Ah, you talked to them, did you? The englische Fräulein, the little English Virgi
ns – there have to be some somewhere – you know they used to call them the “female Jesuits”?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Very self-assured, they are. Not without reason perhaps. They do a good job, teaching and so forth. By their own lights.’
‘But you’re suggesting there’s more that they didn’t tell us.’
‘Oh, not at all, not at all. Not necessarily, but the Church rather prefers to play down the old pagan side of Altötting.’
‘I didn’t realise there was a pagan side.’
‘It was considered sacred a long time before the arrival of Christianity? It has been the centre of religious cults for millennia probably. You noticed the trees?’
‘The little grove, planted around the shrine.’
‘Yes, except that there were trees there long before the shrine. Lime trees you sometimes call them in English, though I think you also use the German word – linden. They were sacred in old Teutonic cults from the dawn of time. Berlin’s Unter den Linden ring a bell?’
‘Yes, but surely that’s not …’
‘I’m only joking, sort of – about Berlin – but I’m quite serious about the lindens in Altötting. Over the centuries they have been rearranged, replanted and made to look like a formal garden around the shrine. Originally they would have been a grove on their own, visible for miles around on that plateau, a place for worship. And for sacrifice.’
‘You’re saying …’
‘I’m not saying anything, other than telling you as one scholar to another that it’s just another example of an ancient site the Church has appropriated to its own interpretations. They never dared cut down the lindens completely, you know. These things linger, in people’s imagination – call it superstition or what you will – but there was an almighty fuss back in the seventeenth century when they cut down one of the trees that even then they knew to be at least 250 years old. They replaced it with an extra little shrine, a little metal chapel for candles, as if it was an exorcism.’
Marcus remembered noticing the little structure out in front of the old chapel, mimicking it obliquely in its metal shape. There had indeed been candles inside, and flowers. He had thought nothing more of it at the time. There had been candles everywhere.
‘And then there’s the Madonna herself, of course. You noticed what she was made of, the dark figure underneath all the gold and silver getup?’
‘I took it for granted she was carved of wood.’
‘Indeed, but not just any wood. Linden. The holy wood of the ancients.’
28
The sight of students in cut-off jeans and T-shirts lying on the grass in the warm summer sunshine or playing Frisbee on the lawns outside the gallery was a welcome reminder of the modern world at its everyday level. Marcus’s head was spinning. He considered himself a master at reconciling conflicting versions of reality, but that was when he set his own agenda. Altötting had seemed a familiar if faintly absurd shrine to Christian tradition. Now all of a sudden he found himself forced to look at it as an alien, slightly sinister hangover from ancient Paganism. Which was true? Either, or neither?
Nazreem on the other hand had not seemed even mildly surprised. Her eyes shone as she studied the painting in minute detail, without taking part in the conversation between Marcus and Dr Vischer, yet she had clearly taken in every word. There was a disquieting quality to her silence as if she were in some state of hyper-awareness where everything assumed an added significance unnoticed by the uninitiated. Or maybe she was just daydreaming. Certainty was becoming a mirage.
‘Does any of this alter anything?’ asked Marcus as they walked between the university buildings in the rough direction of the city centre. ‘I mean your idea that the first Altötting figure might have been a copy of the original life-portrait of Mary?’
To his surprise she almost laughed. ‘Alter anything? No, not in the slightest. Unless of course you think these people were actually trying to depict the Virgin Mary?’
Marcus stopped abruptly, suddenly not sure what he was hearing. ‘But I thought that was the whole point. That was why you wanted to see this painting. To see if it looked like her.’
Nazreem shook her head, as if in disbelief that he could have misunderstood. ‘No, no. Quite the opposite. I knew that this was nothing like – you told me about the Dutch painters. I just wanted to see an early example, to get a better idea of how they did it?’
‘How who did what? I’m not sure I understand.’
‘Don’t you see? This painting, this image of St Luke creating the Madonna’s likeness, it’s not real …’
‘Well, of course it’s not real. It’s just a painting, a late mediaeval artist’s rendition of a famous scene.’
‘But that’s just it. It’s not a famous scene. It’s not a scene at all – it’s a legend …’
‘That’s what I mean.’ Marcus was getting annoyed with her nitpicking.
‘But you don’t say what you mean, you’re using a shorthand that implies that it really happened. Like a lot of people believe. But it’s a legend okay, only not like in the fairy stories. More like in the spy stories. The legend is a cover story. A piece of propaganda. Black propaganda, if you want.’
‘Now I really don’t understand. What sort of propaganda? And for whom?’
‘For the Christians, of course. To make the Virgin Mary look like one of them.’
‘Hang on a minute, you’re not trying to claim the Virgin Mary for Islam, are you?’
She looked at him with mock horror, and then laughed: ‘Marcus, sometimes I wonder, for a university man, how little you know. The Virgin Mary is part of Islam. Just like Isa, Jesus, her son, who was one of the messengers from Allah, a prophet, one of the forerunners of Mohammed, as was Musa, the one you call Moses.
‘In the Koran his mother, Maryam, your Virgin Mary is the only woman mentioned by name. Not even the daughters of the prophet himself are so honoured. The third chapter is named after her father, Imran, and his family, the nineteenth chapter after Mary, Maryam, herself, including the story of the visitation of the angel Jibril – whom you call Gabriel – and her virgin conception. Allah guided her to a palm tree with a little river running by it so she would have fresh water and a tree that showered dates upon her when she shook it, for food. And that is where she gave birth to Isa, Jesus.’
‘That’s not exactly the way we learned it in Sunday School.’
‘No, of course not. But who was this Mary, some Dutch woman, or German or English – or African? I think that if she existed, according to the holy books of either religion, she was a woman whose world more closely resembled mine than that of some mediaeval European housewife.’
Marcus found himself nodding. She was giving him an object lesson in his own field of study: looking at the same story from a different perspective, the same supposed events told in a different way in a different culture. The difference between historiography and history, remembering that history is written by humans. It was the key point in all his lectures. Why should it not apply to religion too?
‘It is one of the phrases from the Koran that is learned by heart by all Muslim girls, the words uttered by Jibril to the virgin.’ She dropped her tone into a quiet hush and said something softly in Arabic, a recital learned by rote in childhood, then raised her voice again, as if the magic could not be conveyed in the English: ‘“Maryam, Allah has chosen you and purified you – chosen you above the women of all nations.”’
‘Now that is almost exactly the wording in the Bible.’
She shrugged. ‘Why would it not be? But I do not know. In any case, once you have translated the Koran, it is no longer supposed to be the genuine word of Allah.’
Marcus looked suitably sceptical. ‘I’m sure He’s capable of more than one language.’
She smiled. ‘I would like to think so, but it is a way of keeping the orthodoxy. Remember, for centuries the Christian Bible was only read in Latin, even though it had originally been written in Aramaic
or Greek. These things serve human purposes. Like that painting in there. You have to agree that it is strange that Christianity, this religion which was born in Palestine and first flourished in Egypt and Syria, ended up an almost exclusively European religion.’
‘It’s a global religion today.’
‘Only because it was spread by European colonialism.’
Marcus inclined his head. There was no arguing with that. Even the most ardent Christians admitted that the great European voyages of exploration had been the chief motors of Christian expansion. They tried to explain it as the will of God, even if some of the excesses of gold-hungry conquistadors looked distinctly un-Christian.
‘I suppose,’ he said instead, taking up the issue as seriously as he knew she intended, ‘it goes back to the Emperor Constantine. If he hadn’t made Christianity the state religion of the Roman empire in the early fourth century, it might never have attained more than cult status outside the Middle East.’
Nazreem was nodding now, as if pleased to see that he was open to the discussion and not just defending ‘his’ side against hers, Christians versus Muslims. That would have been an insult to both of their intelligences: ‘And the emperor adopted it because he witnessed a miracle. Because God entered his heart and he saw the folly of his ways?’
Marcus smiled broadly. She was teasing him, goading him on. Well, he would give her what she was asking for. ‘Not exactly. The legend is that he saw a vision before a crucial battle against one of his rivals for the throne – the Greek letters chi and rho, like a capital X and P in English, the first two in the word Christ – and so after he won the battle, he converted. Most of that is certainly legend. Even the early Christian historians admitted Constantine was a pragmatist who prayed to any god going for victory. He did end the persecution of Christians but didn’t adopt the religion himself until his deathbed. Even then it was a close run thing. He was tempted by lots of others including some Persian cult I don’t remember the name of right now, but it was more to do with pragmatism than religious conviction. But that was probably the Yorkshire in him.’