A Masterpiece of Revenge Read online

  The photograph showed Jean-Louis on a dock in San Francisco. He was leaning against the railing, looking pensively out into the bay. Behind him were the masts of sailboats. The water looked calm. The light came from the right, an autumnal light, giving everything a reddish glow. The mist on the horizon gave the photo a feeling of depth. The air seemed light.

  What I had understood only unconsciously before now struck me full force.

  The wooded landscape, the port. They were classic Lorrain subjects. This view of San Francisco had been photographed in such a way as to resemble his famous work The Port of Ostia. The parallel lay in the scale.

  That was it. It was because of Claude Lorrain that my life was being terrorized. The port of San Francisco. The Port of Ostia. The port scene listed in the Libro di Veritá. The call from this mysterious Van Nieuwpoort. They were all linked. Behind this … thing, this monstrous thing that had brought me to my knees and bled me dry and nearly ripped my heart out, was a painting. A painting!

  I nearly roared in anger. No revenge would suffice for what I had been put through. It would stay with me as long as I lived, and when I died I would take this hate with me.

  I had never felt such raw hate, born of blood and love. It had a terrible power.

  Thus did I await the arrival of this Belgian. At two o’clock that afternoon my doorbell rang. Van Nieuwpoort introduced himself and entered, accompanied by two Sotheby’s employees carrying a wooden crate.

  Van Nieuwpoort was a surprise to me. He had a great smile and an enormous red nose. I immediately found him endearing, even charming. He was a jowly, squirely man. His oval head and enormous mustache gave him the air of a country gentleman come to sell some cattle at a local fair. This was not a man capable of evil — not someone with a nose that had obviously been dipped so deeply into his country’s malts and barleys. His handshake was firm and warm.

  “I am indebted to you. Indebted to you! Seeing me on such short notice. You can guess I’m pretty impatient to show you my beauty! Not to doubt your opinion, of course, sir, but, well — ahem — the painting has been authenticated by two great institutes, and you know —”

  I stopped him there, first in order to remind him of certain hard truths in these matters, and second so that I could contain my own mounting excitement at the idea of seeing this painting. I needed to stay sharp. Van Nieuwpoort seemed innocent enough, but somewhere someone was setting a trap.

  “I must warn you, that doesn’t mean very much,” I said. “The world’s museums are packed with forgeries authenticated by the best laboratories and the most highly qualified experts. You might remember the Van Meegeren Vermeers. Holland’s most famous expert at the time, Abraham Bredius, was completely taken in by these forgeries. He even went so far as to pronounce Pilgrims of Emmaus Vermeer's finest work. Then there was Wolfgang Rohrich’s fake Cranach, Otto Wacker’s phony van Goghs —”

  “Of course, Professor Vermeille, of course. But come, come. It’s got to mean something that the painting is listed in that libro thing. Sketch number six, Fm told. Painted by the artist in 1636. He was staying in Naples.”

  My guess had been correct. The port scene. It was more than possible that this work was authentic. I struggled to conceal my excitement.

  “That’s still no guarantee,” I cautioned. “Despite all the precautions taken to control the flood of forgeries that arose even during his own lifetime, Lorrain nonetheless remains among the most copied painters in the history of art. I’m sorry, I’m really not trying to sound so discouraging. Come, let’s have a look at your painting.”

  While the Sotheby’s employees were unpacking the painting, Van Nieuwpoort showed me the copies of the authenticating reports. He told me that the painting had been discovered in the attic of his great-uncle’s manor, which he had inherited, along with all its paintings and furnishings.

  Given the layers of dust that covered everything, and the date of the storage records, it seemed to have sat in that attic since the end of the last century. Van Nieuwpoort explained that his great-uncle had been a passionate hunter. Possibly he had bought the work in Scotland, where he went each year to shoot grouse. Unfortunately, however, no one had been able to find either the bill of sale or any papers verifying provenance among his great-uncle’s effects.

  Number six on the Libra had crossed the Channel and, sometime around the middle of the nineteenth century, ended up in the collection of the Glasgow City Art Gallery.

  All traces of the work vanished in 1882, though two large engravings and two copies of the painting survived. The best copy resides in the museum in Grenoble, bearing the inscription “1636, Naples.” I had studied Lorrain’s Naples period in minute detail.

  The painting was unpacked. I helped place it on an easel I had prepared, then stood back to have a look.

  I instantly recognized the master’s technique, style, and hand. Everything about this work, at least at first glance, bespoke Lorrain — particularly the amplitude of the subject. The brush strokes were hard to see beneath the surface lacquer, but the overall impression was … stunning. As in the Disembarkation of the Queen of Sheha and other port scenes, a rising sun irradiated everything.

  It was classic Lorrain. His use of light had been his greatest gift to painting. Radiating from the middle of the painting was the sun — not simply a decorative element but the work’s heart and unifying force. All the colors and shades in the painting stood in relation to its centrality.

  As was his custom, the artist had used both a brush and his hand to blend colors. I frequently found Lorrain’s palm-prints and fingerprints embedded in the texture of the sky, though the impressions were not clean enough to be used as a test for forgery.

  The rising sun’s rays gave the curved surface of a ruined Roman temple’s long Corinthian columns a golden hue, while the old fort of Naples and the vessels anchored at the harbor’s mouth were bathed in the clarity of morning light. Lorrain’s technique was to combine realism — as in the depiction of the port’s fortifications and the vessels at anchor — with mythical constructions. It was his way of underscoring the play of symbols. Reality is atemporal. The viewer’s gaze is compelled to seek a more glorious horizon, and there to find the source of light that is the beginning and end of all spiritual quests.

  “Well, professor?”

  Concealing my enthusiasm was pointless.

  “The painting is magnificent. The space and depth. The gradations of the sky. Magnificent. Nothing is missing that I can see. I… but I… need to look at it longer.”

  Despite my rapture, I realized it was critical to stop enthusing, and to get Van Nieuwpoort to tell me everything he knew about the painting. I felt instinctively that he was not involved in the business of the photographs. Someone else was pulling the strings.

  I continued examining the painting while Van Nieuwpoort happily and ingenuously chatted on about his great-uncle’s manor in the Ardennes, which he’d inherited, and about what a good fellow his great-uncle had been. What an enormous surprise it had been when one of his friends, Jane Caldwell — had I heard of her? he asked — had discovered the painting sitting in a corner of the attic when she came for a visit.

  Jane Caldwell. I now understood the reason he had asked Caldwell to restore the work. The coincidence was more than intriguing.

  “She’s said to be quite … remarkable, this Jane Caldwell,” I offered.

  “Oh, yes, an exceptional woman,” he replied.

  His sad smile and the sidelong look were enough to inform me that poor Van Nieuwpoort was the victim of unrequited love. He himself told me as much.

  “I’m just a college chum to her, nothing more. She goes for looks. You know, beauty and that sort of business. Only thing that can touch her. Practically lives for it.”

  “She’s not married, then?”

  “Oh, no, no. Her standards are too high,” replied Van Nieuwpoort. “Have to be someone out of a fairy tale for her. And look like her father.”

  W
e returned to the subject of Claude Lorrain, whom Van Nieuwpoort had become aware of only after Jane Caldwell told him the painting was authentic. Before then, Van Nieuwpoort might have seen Lorrain’s works in the museum but not stopped to look closely at them.

  And the Libro di Veritá? A few weeks earlier it would have meant nothing to him. Finding out everything Van Nieuwpoort knew about his Lorrain was a simple task. Where art was concerned, he was artless.

  The man’s story was plausible; his sincerity was obvious. He was being manipulated, as I was. Somewhere there was an eminence grise, a shadow lurking behind the painting.

  I told Van Nieuwpoort I needed a full week to examine the work in detail before giving a certificate of such historic importance. This seemed to pose no problem, and, after talking to Sotheby’s officials by phone, he agreed to my request. Insurance matters would be arranged. I assured him my apartment had quite adequate security. Many of my own art works were very valuable, I explained, and they were carefully protected by alarm systems.

  Someone from the auction house would come and pick the work up in precisely one week and take it to London, where any announcement of its “discovery” would await my confirmation.

  As regards art experts, the general public is burdened with false impressions, due mostly to the tabloid press. Some feel these experts authenticate anything and everything so long as the thing has a signature — and so long as they can collect their fee. Others believe that art evaluators are bigoted and meanspirited souls who systematically refuse to authenticate any work that comes from some source other than their own gallery or museum.

  There is some truth to both viewpoints. But when serious experts and auction houses are involved in a case, that is not how things happen. In France, whoever issues a certificate of authenticity is responsible for that certificate for a period of thirty years.

  In the event that the work of art in question is the subject of debate or controversy, the expert needs to prove that the only way his expertise might be proved wrong is if some technique not available when he gave his certificate offers evidence for an alternate verdict.

  There are plenty of exceptions to the rule that says it is nearly impossible and very rare that a painting — say, a work that has been discovered at a flea market — receives certification. The van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, normally very strict about such matters, had recently accepted the approval of a Swiss art expert regarding a still life signed by van Gogh and found at an antique fair. It was a fake. I had written a long, detailed article explaining why it was a fake, and how the expert in question had seriously compromised the whole business of art criticism by saying otherwise. The article, reprinted worldwide, received a good deal of attention, more than for any other article Pd ever written.

  I would have loved then and there to have given my blessing to this painting. But its very perfection made me uneasy Moreover, because of what had happened over the previous weeks, I could not look at this splendid piece of work with impartiality.

  I walked around the painting, which sat in my living room on its easel, looking for flaws, seeking some tiny imperfection overlooked by everyone else. There had to be something wrong with this masterpiece. Why else would I have been put through such hell?

  Could it be that by some strange irony all the engravings and lists Lorrain had so diligently assembled because of his fear of imitators might have aided and abetted the creation of a fake?

  If it were a copy, it was a copy of genius. The painting breathed with life — it had a soul. I did not feel any sense of detachment. It was real. Yet someone had robbed me of the pure pleasure I should have felt. Joy had been poisoned.

  Real or not, this painting was a trap. Whose? Was Van Nieuwpoort the work’s sole proprietor?

  I called my old friend Peter Mansfield at Sotheby’s in New York. After much hesitation, and in strictest confidence, he informed me that the tide holder of the Lorrain was an anonymous company headquartered in the Channel Islands. He gave me its name. Those islands (Dependencies of the British Crown, but governed by their own constitutions) are of course home to many offshore businesses whose owners wish to conceal their identities — and the source of their money. Getting access to their accounts was nearly impossible.

  Peter told me he knew someone who had worked at the Treasury Department before starting his own information-gathering company His services would cost me money, however. I told Peter I was willing to pay

  Two days later Peter called me back. Inquiries had been made. There were two principals in that company. Quentin Van Nieuwpoort was one. Jane Caldwell was the second.

  Again Jane Caldwell. She had found the painting in the first place. She had restored it. She had authenticated it. Now she was joint owner. Caldwell was an expert on the restoration of seventeenth-century painting. She would know perfectly well that Charles Vermeille could not be taken in and was not for sale. She would also know that I would know if her painting were a forgery.

  My nightmare had stemmed from flattery, flattery of my abilities and my integrity. What relief I felt was tempered by what I had been through.

  Sometimes, in life, there come miraculous moments when you open your eyes to the morning light and the terrors of the night are banished. What do you do when nightmare and reality are locked as one? When there is no way of throwing off the cold hand of terror that grips you in sleep and in your waking hours? I thought of people driven mad trying to flee their terrors and who end up taking their lives.

  I had been driven to the brink of madness, I knew that now. The only way to regain my sanity was to act.

  A week later, the Lorrain painting was returned to Sotheby’s, accompanied by my unequivocal certificate of authentication, declaring the work to be genuine. The Port of Naples would now make a rapid world tour — to Sotheby’s branches in Paris, Geneva, Berlin, Sydney, Tokyo, and Los Angeles — before arriving in New York, where it would go on the auction block.

  This tour posed some risks to the painting’s safety. I suggested to Sotheby’s that this masterpiece be sealed in an airtight glass-and-aluminum container, and immersed in a mixture of inert gases. A container of this sort had been used to preserve the mummy of Ramses II at the Louvre. One could still examine the work, but it would be out of harm’s way. Once The Port of Naples arrived in New York, it could safely be removed from its protective shell.

  I noted to Sotheby’s that the Oxford Institute for Art Research was reputed to build these special boxes. Given that this extraordinarily valuable painting was on its way to London, why not leave the job to them?

  Part II

  Jane

  7

  Papa! I have done it! Oh, it is absolutely incredible. Was there ever such sweetness and light in the world? Not until now! Papa, do forgive me. It’s just that I am alive again. I’ve been resurrected — yes, that is the only word. Look at me. I’ve done this for you. For you! Look! I’m dancing with joy!

  You’ve always hated it when I become emotional. Yet another sign that people with red hair are possessed. My red hair always did mortify you. Richard Caldwell and his scarlet daughter. You enjoyed telling me that in the Middle Ages women with red hair were burned alive. Yes, of course you were just being funny, just teasing. But you couldn’t let it go, could you? All of my life you couldn’t let it go. I think part of you believed I ought to have been burned.

  It started when I was five. A tender age to be told you’re a creature of the devil, wouldn’t you say, Papa? That’s the age when you most need love and reassurance. “My family has no red hair in it. I’ve really no idea where it came from.” That was what you told people.

  Well, Papa, it’s still red. Like Titania, queen of the fairies. Like Elizabeth the First, who shook her red mane and dispatched the ships that defeated the mighty Spanish Armada. And what about Simonetta Caetano, Botticelli’s Venus?

  What you saw as a genetic flaw has become my glory, Papa. Pm in my glory! Watch me twirl! Do you remember when I was sixteen and
you surprised me in my bath? I knew from your look that you were revolted that I had grown breasts. The horror! Your daughter had breasts! It was like Carlyle, or Ruskin, I forget which, discovering that his teenage bride had pubic hair. The idiot had thought she would be as smooth as a Greek statue. That was the only female nakedness he had ever seen.

  I’m not afraid of death now. Really, I’m not. I have achieved what I most wanted. The masterpiece of my life is finished. And did you know that I’m in that masterpiece? Hiding in the corner, on bended knee, like a wealthy patroness.

  Oh, how wonderfully bloody wonderful it feels to dance! Bare feet on moist grass. The grass here at the clinic is so green and lush. They really keep the grounds in wonderful condition. Something seems to be flowering at all times. Nature doesn’t grieve. It blossoms, even in winter. Breathe in, Papa! The air is so pure.

  How I would love to capture this landscape in paint — right here, right now. Hold its beauty. I could paint you, Papa, just the way I saw you a little earlier on the porch, sitting in your chair, your forearms posed on the armrests, your head inclined slightly forward. You looked like … like the Lincoln memorial. No less rigid, alas.

  But I still hope for the miracle — that some glimmer of recognition will come to your eyes. A smile. Even a sigh. But there is nothing.

  My God, what a nightmare your paralysis was in the beginning. I didn’t think I could bear it. Now months and years have passed. I've accepted it. I will always keep hope, Papa, always. Sometimes when I hold your hand, I could swear you’re squeezing mine, that something from the other side of the mirror is responding, some message from that world of silence in which your spirit has taken refuge.

  I suppose I have always been waiting for recognition from something or someone. Something to justify my existence. I've always wished I had genius, to know that sudden, splendid understanding of immensity. To know inspiration bursting skyward like a geyser.