Madonna of the Apes

by Nicholas Kilmer

  “This involved labor, complex, often excruciating labor, paid at a service rate. Even so, the work required, and it developed, true genius.

  “I shall quote for you the very words of the greatest of these craftsmen, Icilio Joni, speaking of just one of the processes involved in the sort of repair I speak of.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Suzette grumbled.

  “We had now an established method of producing a patina on frames and tabernacles. The patina used to give an antique effect to the gold was composed of well-ground soot, turmeric, very light chrome yellow and a little gilding gesso, all mixed with a little Arabic gum. A good glaze for the gold was also produced by keeping the stumps of Tuscan cigars in water for several days. To fix the patina, we added a coating of spirit varnish, glazed on with turmeric, pyric acid and a little Prussian blue. Then we took some ashes, put them in water to get rid of the potash, and gave them a tone with raw umber; this substance was thinly mixed with Canada balsam, and laid on with a brush; and the surface was wiped with a damp sponge, so that the stuff remained chiefly in the hollows. The effect was modified with a cloth, so that the surface parts had a certain polish and brightness, and then the parts that had been most worked upon were touched up with a piece of pure wax, to modify the effect once more. By this time the illusion was almost perfect.*

  “Illusion was the aim, in a worthy cause, and at the cost of considerable labor.”

  “Not forgery. Illusion,” Fred said. “Got it.”

  “Now it is true,” Mitchell pressed on, “that at the same time as the owners of old things were valuing them suddenly, and causing them to be restored, other people, who did not have such things—many of them from England or America—cultivated a taste for them. A market developed for paintings and other decorative items that either were, or resembled, these old things. The same craftsmen who were doing the restorations of their country’s heritage also restored or created reproductions and imitations. How else would they learn? Because they were craftsmen, they were despised by the same marketplace that came to profit, often illegally, from their efforts. Their imitations sold for a song to dealers who then made great profits, selling to credulous collectors, simply by adding fictitious provenance, and the reassurance that might attach to their own reputations.”

  “That’s all beside the point. Please, for the love of God, get on with it,” Suzette complained.

  “I respect God’s name,” Mitchell said. “You have twice taken His name in vain. You are offensive.”

  *J.F. Joni, Affairs of a Painter, London: Faber and Faber, c. 1936. On this subject see also Gianni Mazzoni, Quadri antichi den Novocento, Vicnza: Neri Pozza Editore, 2001 and the liberally illustated catalog Falso d’autore: Icilio Federico Joni e la cultura del falso tra Otto e Novecento, Siena: Protagon Editore, 2004. See also the review of the exhibition for which this catalog was prepared, by Roderick Conway Morris, International Herald Tribune, Saturday, July 31-Sunday, August 1, 2004, p. 8.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  “Okay. Let’s get to what we’re here for,” Suzette demanded. “I apologize. Okay? To you and God, Dr. Mitchell. Okay?”

  “A specialist makes a mistake, believing his specialty has importance in the world. I know, Ms. Shaughnessy, I am a bore, in love with a bore. Give me a glass of water,” Mitchell demanded. Fred went to the sink and complied, as Mitchell went on. “To be brief. A lawyer approached me. I give no names. My service was obtained in confidence. Confidence is part of the service I provided. If it was not deserved, still I am obligated to the terms of my agreement. I was asked to catalogue and appraise a collection of paintings overseas. The owner planned to ship them out of the country and offer them for sale. He was utterly dependent on me to describe them. They were to be sent—a harmless subterfuge—along with, and as a part of, the returning household effects of an American diplomat who was being posted home. The collection…”

  “Spare me. Fred’s seen the collection,” Suzette said.

  “A container that holds the effects of a returning diplomat traditionally is not subjected to more than a cursory examination by customs officers, whether in the country of origin or the destination. This collection was such…”

  “Fred saw the collection,” Suzette repeated.

  Mitchell pressed on, “…that unless it was examined by a true expert in fine art, such as myself, even though it had significant value, it might well pass as simple household goods. The diplomat, I may say, had already a fine collection of things. But we could not take the risk, that is my client could not, of close examination. And one piece stood out.”

  “Here it comes,” Suzette said. “What has it been, a quarter of an hour?”

  “Among the objects was a cassapanca nuziale, what in this country used to be called a hope chest. A wooden wedding chest. I recognized it as Italian of the late fifteenth century. My heart stopped when I saw it, I can tell you.” He drank from his glass of water and blew the collected droplets from his moustache. “The chest was carved and gilded as these things are, not as elaborately as is often the case. What struck one first was the painted top, which I recognized immediately.”

  “A wedding chest,” Fred said.

  “About which I say no more,” Mitchell said, closing his mouth tight on the words.

  “See, if you can’t lie, the only thing left is, be silent,” Suzette explained.

  “I want the chest,” Mitchell said. “I have come for it.”

  “We want it,” Suzette corrected him. “We are partners, Mitchell and I. Just in this project.”

  “Ms. Shaughnessy told me you have the chest,” Mitchell pressed on. He sounded like a man who has spent many years on Death Row in Texas, anticipating the inevitable response to his plea for clemency.

  “As per your instructions, Fred,” Suzette continued, with brisk dispatch, sounding like that prisoner’s attorney who expects to be paid only, if at all, ever, by the hour.

  “I have a question,” Fred said, changing direction so as to come back from another angle. “Some of the things I saw. You identified the Cézanne, to take one example.”

  Mitchell shook his head angrily. “Nothing to do with me. If Franklin gave my imprimatur…”

  “So, the Cézanne comes from another source,” Fred said smoothly. “Nothing you worked on. The Mantegna?”

  “That is an attribution only,” Mitchell said. “I don’t accept the attribution. They know that.”

  “Ah,” Fred said. “Smoke, if you want, Dr. Mitchell.”

  “The Mantegna is a gray area,” Suzette chimed in while Mitchell took a limp pack of Camels from a side pocket of his suit jacket. Suzette reached for one and the conversation lagged until two plumes of smoke flavored the room.

  “Franklin Tilley was expecting an important painting,” Fred said.

  “We’re done here,” Mitchell said, jerking to his feet. He stalked from the room, clattering down the stairs.

  “Asshole,” Suzette said. She stubbed her cigarette out in that morning’s coffee cup. “What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy? Look what you’ve done now. We’re back to square one.”

  She clattered out herself.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  “New ballgame,” Fred told Clay, before starting to fill him in.

  They had enough to talk about. He’d gone back to Mountjoy Street, and they were sitting in Clay’s parlor, facing a Madonna who was not quite facing either one of them. She had her own concerns.

  “Not that we care. But do we care?” Fred said, picking up. “Mitchell was hard to play, and I screwed up. He pranced out in a snit. He described what you bought as a wedding chest, Italian, fifteenth century. Said he recognized it immediately, from its top.”

  “That’s ominous,” Clay said. He toyed with his snifter of brandy.

  “Then he high tailed it out of there so unexpectedly, and with Suzette in tow, that it didn’t occur to me to follow him, even if I’d wanted to. Eventually, though, I can find him again, I reckon, if there’s an
y reason to.” He was contenting himself with beer, and he swallowed some.

  Fred said, “He’s an exhausting man. Rancid with piety, unless that’s a fraud. But I don’t make him out as a fraud, though his dear love is this specialty of his, the craftsman forger Icilio Joni. While I run around finding dead bodies in the rain, and talking to half-naked women and old men made of cigarette butts, you spend your days where it’s dry indulging your taste for research. From your notes, you’re making progress.

  “Of the paintings he did, the ones everyone agrees were his, and that we can find now, and counting yours, how many paintings did Leonardo actually finish?”

  “Something like twelve,” Clay said. “And of those twelve, the Last Supper is a wreck. The Mona Lisa was cut down. Aside from the spurious signature, there is argument whether another hand appears in the Lady with an Ermine. The cleanest, clearest, most finished, most perfect Leonardos number five in my opinion: Washington’s Ginevra de’ Benci, the Louvre’s Virgin of the Rocks, their portrait called La Belle Ferronnière, the Mona Lisa, and mine. And mine was intact until some monster cut it down. But to your report. Your conversation with Mitchell was not in vain, Fred. Though he withholds the name, he obliquely confirms the source of the chest; therefore, presumably, of the Madonna. Presumably is not enough, you say? Far more important, my research has exposed the possible, nay, the probable source of the Madonna.”

  He looked as smug as Casanova must have after a good evening.

  “I hope you don’t mind, since your notes were on my desk,” Fred said. “For my edification, I figured. You’ve covered a lot of ground in a short time. Who is Salai?”

  “Here we must glance into Leonardo’s life story,” Clay started. “Although normally I would wish to protect even the dead from prurient prying, in this instance it is inevitable. I will do what I can to be discreet. After he had settled in Milan, in 1490, beginning when the boy was ten, a youngster, Giacomo, called Salai, or Little Devil, lived with, worked for, plagued, stole from, apprenticed to and, presumably, shared the bed of the master—almost until Leonardo’s death in 1519.

  “Salai was a constant in Leonardo’s later life, although Leonardo was some thirty-five years his senior. At the time of Salai’s own sudden death five years later, he was described in the inevitable legal papers as a painter. Salai’s death was ruled accidental. He was killed by the bolt from a crossbow.”

  “So,” Fred interrupted. “What Suzette Shaughnessy calls ‘a gay thing.’”

  “Gay?” Clay asked. “Ah. Gay as in an intimate relationship between two persons of the same sex. In this instance, two males. That’s a distraction.”

  “Except that Salai inherited property from Leonardo,” Fred said, “according to your notes. A vineyard, a house, paintings? Leonardo was into everything, wasn’t he? Didn’t he work on improving the crossbow’s firing mechanism?”

  Clay waved the question away. “What kept me,” he said. “Why I am later than I intended. I was able to find a copy of Salai’s last will and testament.”

  “Jeekers!” Fred said. “From 1524?”

  “The Italians throw nothing away,” Clay announced sententiously. “At least, no document. Salai left paintings indeed.* To his legatees, his sisters Angelina and Laurentiola. But because Salai was a painter himself, an indifferent painter, the inventory preserved with the will, of his worldly effects, is murky. Is your beer holding up?”

  “I know where to find more,” Fred said. “Don’t interrupt a good thing.” Clay’s extended hospitality was little more than an occasion to prolong the pleasures of anticipation. “The inventory included paintings. Go on.”

  “Listen to this,” Clay almost chortled. “When Salai died, he even owned the Mona Lisa. This monkey whom Leonardo had brought in off the street! Also in his studio was Salai’s own copy of the Mona Lisa. In 1525, one of the sisters sold Leonardo’s Saint John as Bacchus, now in the Louvre. You’ll have seen it. It’s the traditional depiction of Saint John in the wilderness; young man dressed only in a loin cloth. But now Saint John wears a wreath of vine leaves. The easy guess is that Salai, the widowed Ganymede, perhaps bored, perhaps drunk, perhaps prompted by indifferent malice, desecrated this part of his inheritance by painting the vine leaves onto Saint John himself.”

  “Which makes the work as we now have it a joint effort,” Fred pointed out. “Unless—I doubt it—did Salai goad his aging lover into painting the wreath himself, one rainy night? Keep on. What other treasures did the old boy leave Salai?”

  “A hoard simply breathtaking to contemplate. Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, never finished, now in the Louvre; the Saint Jerome in the Vatican, about which we spoke earlier—an unholy mess, but the saint’s head has been restored to the painting; and other works now lost. A Leda and the Swan was described by the appraiser as the most valuable of the works left to Salai by Leonardo. There was a so-called Portrait of a half nude, said to be a nude Mona Lisa,” Clay said.

  “It keeps on coming,” Fred said.

  “But listen to this,” Clay continued. “One of the entries, which I have simply not seen accounted for, was this: a Madonna cum uno filiolo in brazo?”

  “If I make sense of the dog Latin,” Fred said, “that translates ‘Madonna with her son in her arms.’”

  “Precisely,” Clayton exclaimed. Madonna cum uno filiolo in brazo. Why is this painting never mentioned? It is listed in Salai’s estate. The appraisal gives no authorship, no clue. But consider the relative values assigned by the appraiser. Leda, supposed to be the best of the paintings, was assigned 200 scudi, and the Mona Lisa 100 scudi. These figures indicate a certain value, which unfortunately I cannot interpret without further study. The Madonna cum uno filiolo is fobbed off at 20 scudi, one fifth the value of the Mona Lisa. My conclusion is that first the appraiser, and then all scholars since, assumed this entry must be by Salai.

  “Suppose the appraiser looked at my Leonardo, considered the apes, and decided, That will never sell.”

  Clay went to the sideboard and refreshed his brandy. Fred took the opportunity to find another beer.

  “Cast your mind back to 1525,” Clay demanded, when they were settled again. “The painting I have acquired, this painting, Madonna of the Apes, may have been so heretical in its implications as to compel not disregard, but the dangerous attention of armed religious authority. Not only are the Madonna and her divine offspring shown without haloes; their only attendants are, not angels, but the animals that most closely mimic man. Heretics were burning in those days. So, often, were known or accused homosexuals. A gay heretic wouldn’t have a prayer unless he had truly powerful friends.”

  “Your theory is,” Fred suggested, “that if Leonardo’s friend Salai was willing to paint a wreath of vine leaves on Saint John, turning an ascetic into a roué, did the apes come from his brush too? After Leonardo died? No.” Fred’s gorge rose at the thought. “They are too brilliantly painted, and too much part of the painting’s original conception.”

  “You say brilliant now,” Clay interjected. “But how would this painting have been seen in 1525? If Salai’s sister had wanted to sell the Madonna of the Apes, whom could she have sold it to? Who would dare be seen with it?”

  “So if the painting belonged to Salai, it was a joke,” Fred said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Does it feel like a joke to you?” Clay asked. His eyes traveled across the room to the painting and he shook his head firmly. “All I suggest is this. It must be kept out of sight and enjoyed only in secret, in the company of persons not in the mainstream, who could appreciate the outrageous.”

  A “gay thing,” was Clayton suggesting? The work passed down from hand to hand for centuries, but underground? The “gay thing” made for its own web of clandestine allegiances that, since it factored into Leonardo’s life, might well factor into the painting’s history. A line of descent through a secret society like the Masons, but whose constituents were gay? That would be interesting
.

  Fred said, “If this is the painting you found recorded as A Madonna with her son in her arms, we have a long way to go to prove it.”

  “I find the possibility intriguing, and encouraging,” Clay said. “And I look forward to the search.”

  *Salai’s Last Will and Testament, including the inventory of paintings mentioned in my text, is frequently quoted in the literature.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  “Salai would have known her,” Fred said.

  “Who?”

  “Sorry. I was thinking, but not out loud,” Fred said. “It’s all so long ago and out of sight. Yet so real in the presence of this painting. The woman who sat for your Madonna. Cecilia Gallerani, if it was she. Salai would have known her. According to you he would have been underfoot, in and out of the studio, grinding colors, stealing fruit, washing the dishes and breaking them, pissing out the windows on passers by. He was ten when he came to live with Leonardo, you said, and that’s about the time, 1490, when Leonardo painted the Lady with an Ermine. We agree, don’t we, that that is the portrait your Madonna should sit beside?”

  “There comes a time when thinking threatens to replace looking,” Clay said. “When that time comes, I stop thinking.”

  The observation fell into the room and went nowhere for a minute or two. They sat like men who find themselves, strangers, seated next to each other in a bar, on a day when nothing is happening, not even on TV. Except that here the Madonna occupied the room, and filled it with more event than a World Series.

  “Sorry to be so slow,” Fred said. “There’s too much going on. You say there’s a nude Mona Lisa?”

  “Was. Yes, apparently Leonardo also painted her nude, whoever she was, and if she was anybody. The Mona Lisa’s much later than the Madonna, of course,” Clay said. “Maybe as late as 1503. It’s been turned into such a myth by so many observers that it is as hard to think about that painting, as it is to get near it at the Louvre. The tourists flock around her like apes. Too many people have thought about her, and have then published what they think. She’s practically invisible.