The Raphael Affair

by Iain Pears

  ‘I don’t mind taking some risks,’ he added, sitting down again and staring at her firmly. ‘But I am damned if I am going to commit suicide for a hunch concocted by a walking disaster like that man Argyll. They would eat him for breakfast – that is if they took any notice of him at all – disappointed and impoverished scholar, nursing a grudge, tries to get his revenge by starting a slanderous rumour. They’d wipe him out. They might even be right.’

  6

  ‘Dear me, what a day,’ sighed Bottando, reaching out and tapping the waiter on the arm as he passed. ‘Another?’

  Spello shook his head. ‘No, thank you. I find alcohol a very poor consolation for an afternoon like this. A coffee, however, would be welcome.’

  The policeman ordered the drinks, and the two men, both in their fifties, sat in companionable discontent as they waited. It had been a hard afternoon. A meeting of Tommaso’s infernal committee. A bit of nifty footwork on Bottando’s part had cut sessions down, but they had to meet sometimes. And Tommaso had worked himself into a frenzy of anxiety over his picture, demanding ever tighter security. This afternoon had been typical: a suggestion had come from Antonio Ferraro – demand was a more accurate way of describing it – that the entire building be rewired. It needed it, certainly, but, as Spello pointed out while vetoing the scheme, there wasn’t enough money.

  At least the machinations of museum politics had produced one pleasant change. Bottando had suggested that Ferraro might be too busy to head the museum’s representation on the committee. Ferraro had agreed, evidently not liking the job, and Bottando had suggested Spello instead. The policeman felt a bit mean about this, but he was coming to sympathise with Tommaso’s distaste for the sculpture expert. A very prickly character, he was unable to control a meeting without being gratuitously offensive, and had absolutely no sense that the opinions of others might have any merit at all.

  The only thing to be said for Ferraro was that he exited from the committee with good grace, leaving behind only the megalomaniac, outrageously expensive, and utterly impracticable schemes he had already dreamt up; Spello was much more in tune with Bottando’s disdain for committee work, and rushed through the business of killing them all off as fast as was seemly.

  ‘So you told Tommaso he’d done it again, did you? I wish I’d been there. Preferably with a tape recorder for the amusement of my colleagues afterwards,’ Spello said gleefully.

  ‘I did not tell him he’d done it again,’ Bottando replied testily. ‘I merely mentioned, in passing and during a routine check over security precautions, that someone might begin casting doubt over the authenticity of his picture.’

  ‘Was this entirely wise?’ the Etruscan specialist enquired, unable to keep a broad grin off his face, despite Bottando’s evident discomfort.

  ‘No, it wasn’t. In fact I told my assistant to keep it to herself. On the other hand, I don’t know who Argyll knows, or who else he might talk to. I thought it best for the department – and for the museum – if Tommaso knew it might be coming, that’s all.’

  ‘And like all messengers bearing bad news, you got precious little thanks for the information?’

  ‘Mount Vesuvius in full form was nothing in comparison,’ Bottando said, shaking his head as he remembered the director’s face turning puce and the accompanying bellow of rage. ‘I thought for a moment he was going to hit me. Extraordinary performance. Such a little man, as well. Who would have thought he could have made such a noise? The only time I have ever felt the slightest liking for that man Ferraro was when he intervened and tried to change the subject. Quite courageous of him, especially as I’m sure he would rather not have been there at all.’

  ‘So our Tommaso was not receptive to the idea?’ prompted Spello, who would clearly have loved to hear the entire story again, for the simple pleasure of it all.

  ‘No. Although, to give him his due, he calmed down pretty quickly, and even apologised. And told me why he was so sensitive about the matter. Although his version of the dispute over the Correggio is different from yours. In his account, he was a scapegoat slaughtered by the machinations of the dealer and the weakness of his director.’

  Spello sniffed. ‘You expected him to take full responsibility for his mistakes?’

  ‘No. Anyway, that was a long time ago and not especially important. More significant is the fact that he’s convinced that he hasn’t made a mistake this time. Even gave me a huge pile of scientific tests done on the Raphael after the sale to prove it was genuine.’

  ‘You read them?’

  ‘Not me. I’ll give them to Flavia. It’ll be her punishment for bringing the matter up in the first place. But Tommaso seems very confident, and he should know what he’s talking about. After all, the thing has got a better pedigree than most paintings. If it came through all the tests as well, there can’t be much wrong with it.’

  ‘Oh, what a pity,’ Spello said sadly. ‘You quite got my hopes up for a moment there. Still,’ he said, visibly brightening at the thought, ‘it makes a good story. Or will do,’ he added with a touch of malice.

  ‘It will not. If I ever hear a word, a single breath, of this from anyone else and trace it back to you I will personally ram your finest Etruscan figurine up your nostril and glue it in place. I’m telling you for information purposes only, not so you can have a good laugh with your colleagues.’

  Spello looked mournful. ‘Oh. All right then,’ he said with evident reluctance. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to hope it will turn out to be a fake. Which it will, if it is.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Forgeries always reveal themselves eventually, that’s the one great consolation about aesthetics. Or at least it’s what connoisseurs convince themselves to justify the outrageously high prices of originals. What people find beautiful changes over time; you only have to look at the pale, flabby women painted by Rubens to realise that. They were reckoned to be the peak of sensuality in the seventeenth century, now they’re overweight matrons; the modern age prefers the skinny Botticelli types. Even if someone paints a mock Raphael that is perfect in every detail, there will be some trace in it of the twentieth-century mind of its creator. That’s the theory, anyway. As preferences change, a genuine Raphael will still look genuine, even if people see different things in it, but a modern copy will begin to show its modern origins more and more. Someone will notice. Have you ever seen those banks of Victorian fakes that most museums put on display?’

  Bottando nodded.

  ‘And what do most of the nineteenth-century hoaxes look like? Like nineteenth-century paintings, that’s what. They’re obviously copies to us. But to people in the nineteenth century they were beautiful examples of early Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque art, or whatever. Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘You seem to know a great deal about this,’ Bottando said.

  ‘I’m a museum curator. Surrounded by fakes all the time. You remember those pieces in my office?’ He was referring to a glass display-cabinet that Bottando had often admired. It was full of delicate, filigreed bronze figures, all Etruscan work of simple beauty and power. ‘Beautiful, no?’ the old curator continued. Bottando nodded in agreement. ‘Every one a bum. Probably made in the 1930s for sale to the US. Some ended up in the museum, which wanted to melt them down when they discovered what they’d bought. I recovered them and kept them.

  ‘I think they’re wonderful. I’m an expert, so-called, and I can’t tell. Only laboratory analysis proved they weren’t genuine.’

  Bottando sniffed. ‘Laboratory analysis proved the Raphael was genuine,’ he noted.

  ‘So, there’s nothing to it. Tests are highly sophisticated these days. I must say, if I were you, I’d forget about it. Then everyone will go on enjoying the painting. Sow the tiniest seed of doubt and its popularity will wane, even if it is original. Why stir up trouble? Who has lost out anyway? As long as the museum thinks it’s real, and the visitors agree, everyone’s happy. And it’ll take a great deal to convince our
friend Tommaso, considering all the very good reasons he has to think otherwise.’

  Bottando laughed, turned the conversation, and put the idea from his mind. But he was uncomfortable, and his thoughts kept on returning to the subject as he walked slowly home.

  The next time Bottando saw Flavia he handed Tommaso’s report to her. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’ll teach you. Some bedside reading for you. Photocopy it and send a copy to your mad friend in London as well, if you like. It might rein in his imagination a little.’

  ‘I’ll do better. I’ll give it to him this evening. He arrived in Rome yesterday, I think,’ she replied.

  It lay on her desk for several hours as she piled her way through a host of boring chores which she always liked to get out of the way in the morning, quickly and before she was wide enough awake to resent them. When they were all done and resting contentedly in the ‘out’ tray, she settled back into her chair, opened the report, and tried to concentrate on the harsh, technical data that was presented. A good deal of it was in the form of tables, surrounded by chemical signs which meant nothing to her. Evidently they detailed a series of tests that had been carried out.

  Fortunately, there was a written introduction and conclusion, couched in the cautious language that marks both the scientist, not wanting to go beyond the limits that the evidence permits, and the bureaucrat, not wishing to stick his neck out. But the summary was clear enough.

  The report began by formally detailing the project. The team, the permanent employees of the Museo Nazionale, had been sent to London to examine a painting, ‘supposed to be by Raphael’, and determine its authenticity. They had been given free use of the apparatus at the National Gallery in London, as well as assistance from employees at the Tate. The tests had lasted a week which, they said, was more than enough time to make all the experiments they thought necessary. They noted, cautiously, that their work was of limited utility. They did not intend to comment on the aesthetic merits or otherwise of the painting.

  ‘Just as well,’ thought Flavia, remembering the dry technocrat who had ruled supreme for years at the museum. ‘Without a spectrometer they couldn’t tell a Botticelli from a Chagall.’

  She flipped through the pages of experiments and began on the conclusion, on the safe assumption that whatever the main body of the text contained would be duplicated in simpler language at the end.

  The examiners had begun by looking at the canvas. This, they said, consisted of threads of varying width with irregular weaving, consistent with the canvases used in the late fifteenth century. The stretch-marks indicated that the canvas had not been cut down or stretched on to a new frame, and the wooden frame itself, made of poplar, also appeared to be of an appropriate age. A carbon-fibre dating of the canvas and the paint – done by snipping a minuscule fragment off the side, grinding it down and dosing it with radioactivity – indicated that it was not less than three hundred and fifty years old.

  ‘Before 1600, more or less. Pre-Mantini, in other words,’ she noted. So far the picture was holding up well.

  The experts had then moved on to the paintwork itself, noting that as the picture had been covered over for more than two hundred years and had been cleaned and restored before examination, there were particular difficulties. They also noted that they had been instructed to keep any paint removed for analysis to the absolute minimum, and come from as near to the edges as possible. However, the report continued that, despite these strictures, they were able to complete a fairly full examination of the different colours used and of the techniques employed in painting.

  Again, the portrait came through. The craquelure, the hairline cracks that appear in old oil paintings as they age and grow brittle, were irregular; artificially induced cracks generally ran parallel as a forger rolled the picture up to give a false impression of age. The remains of dirt in the cracks – most had been cleaned out – were composed of different substances while forgeries generally contained some homogeneous material, such as ink, used to give the impression of dirt.

  All the paints were of raw materials used in the sixteenth century and X-ray examination, conducted at different electricity levels to build up a three-dimensional picture down through the paint, suggested that it had been painted according to techniques used in other Raphael works.

  The final summary was as definite as any scientist was likely to be. Under examination and bearing in mind the limitations mentioned, the painting was consistent with a work produced at the start of the sixteenth century by a painter using techniques also employed in several of Raphael’s works. The lengthy footnote, with citations, detailed the virtual impossibility of reproducing such characteristics in a modern picture. Of course, judgement was reserved on whether it actually was by Raphael, but there was not a shred of evidence to suggest that it was not. The report was dated and signed by all five members of the investigating team.

  Flavia put the folder down, rubbed her eyes and stretched herself. That, certainly, seemed to nobble Argyll’s suspicions. She turned her attention to the mound of mail that had built up on her desk while she was reading, and started methodically but absent-mindedly to transfer most of the envelopes to the desk of the temporarily absent Paolo. Her work was, perhaps, thirty per cent enjoyable and seventy per cent dull and routine. Running around interviewing people, tracing pictures, keeping up contacts among dealers, auctioneers and collectors was the fun part. Reading reports, checking journals and filling out the innumerable forms that the polizia considered a vital aspect of good security work was very much less so. A nice, juicy scandal would have tipped the balance more towards the entertaining end. Pity.

  7

  Any lingering regret on the subject of Elisabetta in Flavia’s mind had only until 10.37 the following Thursday to germinate before being consigned to the distant past.

  She knew that it was exactly 10.37, because that was the time stamp that the ancient telex machine in the office placed at the end of the message from the French police saying that the case of the icon-stealing tourist had reached a conclusion, albeit not a very satisfactory one. The message from Paris read that Jean-Luc Morneau, connoisseur, aesthete, painter, dealer and suspected criminal, had been found. Unfortunately, he was dead, and so was likely to be of little use in helping the police with their enquiries.

  The French were quite proud of their discovery although, as Bottando observed, they appeared to have no idea where all the icons had gone. The fact that Morneau had clearly died of a heart attack, brought on, so the Parisians said discreetly, by excess exertion, lessened Bottando’s interest. Especially as there was a witness to both the exertions and the demise, and the graphic details provided by the young woman involved were convincing enough to rule out foul play. Bottando was not greatly concerned in the matter, as he had long since given up hope that any of the missing Italian icons would ever be discovered. But, for the sake of thoroughness, he asked the French to keep his department informed about any new developments.

  In due course, the French ran the dealer’s old mistress to earth. In return for their agreeing to ignore the state of her income-tax payments, she told them that Morneau had rented a safe deposit box in a Swiss bank. A bit of gentle arm-twisting of opposite numbers in Zurich produced a grudging permission to look inside it, and Bottando was invited to come along to the grand opening.

  Six weeks to the day after Morneau’s body was discovered, therefore, Bottando and Flavia flew into Zurich airport, where they were met by an official police car and driven swiftly into the financial heart of the city. As usual, Bottando had wanted to stay in Rome and grumbled incessantly during the flight. If he disliked travelling, he disliked travelling to Switzerland even more. The cleanliness, order and efficiency of the place profoundly upset him and he also found the Swiss insufferable, not least because of his utter failure to persuade them to do anything to stop the steady flow of smuggled art works over the Italian/Swiss border.

  The only thing that persuaded him to get on the plane,
in fact, was the realisation that it was an ideal excuse for not going to yet another of Tommaso’s parties in the museum. Its purpose was uncertain, but the man had said something about fund raising and was insisting that all members of the Security Committee, as it was now grandly termed, were present. Bottando took considerable pleasure in ringing up, presenting his apologies, and pleading pressing police business.

  Tommaso had not been happy. He was angling for a large donation, he said, and really needed Bottando there to impress the potential benefactors. It was only when Bottando explained, with some exaggeration, that he needed to go to Switzerland and had high hopes of recovering some invaluable icons, that the man gave way.

  He did it, at least, with some grace. If Bottando could recover any part of the Italian heritage, then that must take precedence, he said somewhat pompously. The General should not even consider coming to the party. They would manage without him, and Spello would be there to answer any questions about museum security.

  So he’d gone, and had slowly begun to wonder whether the museum folk were worse than the Swiss police, or the other way around. Attempts at international conversation as the large black Mercedes whistled down the autobahn were accordingly muted, and the atmosphere did not thaw until Bottando spotted his long-time French equivalent in the bank lobby.

  Jean Janet was universally liked. One of the rare French protestants, he hailed from the Alsace region in the east of the country, and had headed his department before Bottando’s position had even been a twinkle in a bureaucrat’s eye. In the early years he had been unfailingly helpful in getting the Roman sezione into working order, illicitly handing over vast files of material, introducing Bottando to influential and knowledgeable gossip-mongers in the art world, passing on advice on some of the more subtle aspects of police work in the art field. Bottando had, in turn, gone out of his way to be helpful whenever possible. Any request from Janet was treated as a high-priority matter, and the direct and easy-going exchange of material had proved beneficial to both sides.