Leonardo's Lost Princess (2 page)

Leaning toward Kathy so I wouldn’t be heard, I said quietly, “I missed it the first time—not again.”

I glanced over to where Kate Ganz was chatting with a customer. I knew I must not appear to be too excited or she’d guess I was onto something. Finally, I murmured, “Here goes,” to Kathy and beckoned the dealer over.

Ganz is an attractive woman in her early sixties, with a dynamic personality and a sharp edge that could sometimes make her seem insensitive and caustic. She is one of half a dozen highly respected dealers of works on paper. She also has an impressive professional pedigree. Her parents, Victor and Sally Ganz, were acclaimed collectors of twentieth-century art, and her father was a vice president and trustee of the Whitney Museum.

I guessed that she must have shown the drawing to some of her contacts, which included top curators and others in the museum world. It’s what I would have done. It’s what any collector or dealer would have done. Apparently, none of them gave it a second glance. I thought about it and found it not so surprising. I had often seen a similar dynamic in evaluating art. The eye of the beholder could be clouded by the conventional wisdom about an artist’s modus operandi, the norms of an era, and the collective opinions of experts. In this case I suspected their eyes had betrayed them.

Kate came over to where we were standing. “Peter, Kathy,” she greeted us coolly, kissing our cheeks. We chatted politely for a few minutes about our lives—Kate had recently remarried and now lived primarily in Los Angeles—and finally I asked, “Kate, how much for this portrait?”

Kate consulted a price list and named a figure nearly identical to what she’d paid at Christie’s in 1998.

I frowned deliberately, still contemplating the work. I rocked back and forth on my heels, mimicking indecision. “I don’t know,” I said carefully. I felt a moment of trepidation, fearing that accepting Kate’s price without haggling would make her suspicious. “Can you give me a discount?” I asked, worrying that I was already showing too much interest. Kate might see through me. After all, we’d known each other for nearly thirty years. But she wanted to sell the portrait, and after a bit of discussion, she finally agreed to 10 percent off the listed price, for a total of $19,000.

It was customary to let collectors with long-standing reputations walk away with their purchases before paying, and I fully expected Kate to say, “Take it now and send me the money.”

But in spite of having known me for so long, she suddenly became brusquely businesslike. “You know, I can’t let you have it until you pay me,” she said, surprising me. Maybe that was her way, or maybe she was already hedging, deliberately placing obstacles in my path because something was telling her not to sell.

I felt a small clutch of panic. This was a crucial moment, and so much could go wrong. “Fine,” I said to Kate. “I am making the purchase on behalf of a wealthy collector, and I’m sure the arrangements will be no problem.” Kate walked away, and I pulled Kathy aside. “We have to have the money wired immediately,” I said urgently. “If I don’t seal the deal today, anything could happen. Another collector might express interest. Kate might get suspicious and call off the sale. I can’t walk out of here without the portrait.”

It was agreed that Kathy would leave to make arrangements for the payment while I hung around the gallery, nibbling on bits of cheese, sipping wine, and trying not to look too obvious. I spent a terrifying hour that way, never straying far from the table that held my prize. Every time a visitor paused to look at the portrait, my stomach lurched.

Finally, Kathy returned, having successfully managed the transaction.

By the time we left the gallery with the wrapped portrait, we were feeling giddy from the adventure. “That drawing had your name on it, Peter!” Kathy exclaimed. We laughed excitedly, hardly noticing the cold.

I held the painting to my chest and quickened my pace, searching for a taxi. We were staying with a friend—a former model I’d met during my early years at the Hotel Stella in Paris—only a few blocks away, but I did not want to spend a single unnecessary minute on the street. I felt very nervous and very vulnerable, as though I were holding a treasure.

On the flight back to Europe the following evening, I calculated my next moves. I was a bit agitated, but I kept reminding myself that it was a work of art, not the crown jewels. Mostly I was anticipating the revelations that lay ahead, whatever they might be. I enjoyed this kind of research, for there was always a one-in-a-million chance that something magnificent would be revealed.

I have always thought that there is more than a little madness in the soul of a collector. Collecting is about passion, money, ego, and being the best. It does not take place solely in the hallowed corridors of galleries and auction houses but also, literally, on the street, and it involves trolling the back alleys—street markets, private dealers, small galleries—as well as the front lines, seeing not only with the eye but also with the heart and the soul. I have tried to understand each work of art from within, without allowing greed to undermine my judgment. This instinct was developed over many years in the field.

However, I also knew that a serious collector must not be afraid to stray from consensus and be independent, original, and hungry for finds. Miracles do happen! One must follow one’s own instincts. For me, the hunt was the thing, and I enjoyed taking it off the beaten path. I often rose before dawn on Fridays to attend “dealer’s day” at Porte de Clignancourt, the largest and most famous flea market in Paris. Its origins date back two centuries to when poverty-stricken men and women would search Paris refuse at night and sell their small discoveries at market the next day.

In modern times, Porte de Clignancourt had become a huge venue for art sales. On Fridays, hundreds of dealers who had combed country auctions, Paris consignment shops, and private collections brought their findings. For small dealers, turnover is the name of the game, and at Porte de Clignancourt they hoped to quickly buy, sell, and buy again, with a quick and decent profit in between, if possible. There were pitfalls, of course: the fakes, the stolen items, and the works that looked good at first glance but turned out to be third-rate imitations.

The flea market opened at 6 a.m., and it was often still dark when I arrived. I carried a flashlight and tried to concentrate and focus through sleepy eyes. The early hour, the coldness of my feet, or any other discomfort did not deter me. I was immersed in the hunt, intoxicated by the sheer possibility of it. In the back of every collector’s mind is always the hope of stumbling upon a great discovery. Whispered stories filled the early morning air and became elevated to folklore among the collectors digging for buried treasure in the dawn’s early light.

There was the tale of the filthy picture, found in rubble, black with soot and years of grime, purchased on a whim for $10,000, which when cleaned was revealed to be a Brueghel worth $1 million; or the equestrian bronze, purchased for $5,000 and thought to be nineteenth century, which was actually by Antico, one of the masters of the Renaissance, and was later sold to an American museum in excess of $5 million. There was the little sketchbook of one hundred drawings brought to a dealer who didn’t know what they were; he paid a few thousand dollars, sold them for triple the price, and thought he’d made a great bargain. Then the dealer who subsequently bought the drawings recognized the hand of the great fifteenth-century Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio, and the sketches were ultimately valued at nearly $10 million. The lesson: never be complacent, never assume, always be on your toes. I lived and breathed hope.

After spending four hours at the flea market, I usually headed off to the Paris auction rooms to view the upcoming sales. Almost every day there were at least a dozen different salesrooms filled with new works, often from private homes where the owners had died, had moved away, or needed quick cash. I understood that searching for treasures in these secondary venues was a long-shot venture.

However, the formal auctions did not normally yield too much, either. Most of the catalog works had been studied and pawed over by countless experts before they ever made it to a show. And even though the experts seldom made mistakes, there was always that one-in-a-million miss—like the discovery of a Frans Hals portrait, originally estimated at $30,000, purchased by a smart French dealer for more than $500,000 and resold less than two years later at a major London auction house for close to £10 million; or the very large painting of a biblical battle scene, miscatalogued as a relatively minor Roman painter by a London auction house, that was later proved to be a major early work of the great seventeenth-century French Master Nicolas Poussin and was subsequently sold to the Jerusalem Museum for more than £7 million. There was, I knew, always that chance.

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Who Is She?

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

—Leonardo da Vinci

Soon after Kathy and I returned to Paris with our prize, we were fortunate to have a houseguest who could shed some light on the portrait. At eighty-two, Mina Gregori was considered the doyenne of art history, the unrivaled expert on Caravaggio as well as on the Florentine. She had been a professor of medieval and modern art history at the University of Florence for more than fifty years, had written several books, and counted among her students many of the leading art historians.

We had become close friends with Mina over the years, and she frequently stayed with us when she visited Paris. Mina was a sharp-witted, keen-eyed bundle of energy, and we often laughed about how she ran circles around us at expos and fairs, never seeming to tire.

In early March, Mina visited us while she was in Paris, accompanied by Catherine Goguel, a mutual friend and a Louvre drawing specialist. The occasion was a birthday fete in Mina’s honor. With trepidation, I showed them the portrait and watched closely as they studied it, murmuring softly, their faces showing keen interest but no emotion.

“It’s of extraordinary quality,” Mina said finally, and Catherine nodded in agreement, adding, “I believe it is fifteenth century.”

“You can clear that up by having it carbon-dated, and also by having a good restorer look at it,” Mina proposed. “If you like, there are clues to authorship.”

“Please go on,” I said eagerly.

“It appears to be by a left-handed artist,” Catherine said significantly. Mina then pointed out a detail that only a person with her flawless eye and expertise would have noted. “This drawing shows dual influences: Florentine in its delicate beauty and Lombard in the costume and braid, or
coazzone
, which were typical of a court lady of the late fifteenth century,” she said. “Of course, the most obvious artist to come to mind is Leonardo, one of the few artists who made the transition from Florentine to Milanese. I would start with his circle.”

Inspired by Mina’s enthusiasm, I began a lengthy investigation. Always in the back of my mind was the faint hope that I had achieved the dream of every collector: to bring to the world a previously undiscovered Master work. I also had the portrait reviewed by Caroline Corrigan, a highly respected restorer for museums and dealers. After examining the work under a microscope, she concluded it was fifteenth century, noting that it had been very well restored, including recently. “I wouldn’t touch it further,” she advised.
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For a year, I carefully conducted my study, taking little definitive action. The portrait sat in a place of honor in our living room and gave Kathy and me much pleasure, which of course is what art is supposed to do.

I showed photo transparencies to a number of people I respected, operating on my belief that the portrait was from the fifteenth century, not the nineteenth. The Leonardo influence was unmistakable, and I considered that it might be the work of a student. I began to do serious research on artists, including Leonardo’s disciples in Florence and Milan during the late fifteenth century. I also considered that it might be Florentine, perhaps by Domenico Ghirlandaio, who had been in the same workshop as Leonardo.

The great artists of the Renaissance were noted for their workshops of talented apprentices and pupils. Art history is full of speculation about the role of student hands in the signature works of the Masters. Leonardo himself began at the age of fourteen as an apprentice to Verrocchio.

Master or pupil? That is often the question when studying Renaissance works. For example, a centuries-long controversy has raged among art scholars regarding a collection of drawings from a Rembrandt workshop. The question: Are the drawings Rembrandt’s own, or are they those of his pupils? To this day, there is no definitive answer, although an impressive show at the J. Paul Getty Museum in February 2010, titled “Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference,” drew convincing conclusions about a small collection by detailing the distinctive elements that might or might not be attributed to Rembrandt himself.

Similarly, there is some debate about whether some of Leonardo’s Milanese students authored or contributed to Leonardo-attributed works. However, for the most part, it is clear: the Master has a hand, and very seldom can a student match it—unless, of course, the student has a rare hand of his own, as was the case with Leonardo.

Kathy and I talked about it endlessly. As the months passed, I immersed myself in study. I was in no hurry. It was a reward in itself to study and speculate.

In January 2008, while we were in New York for the auctions, we ran into Kate Ganz at an art opening. “Did you ever find out who did that drawing?” she asked.

“Obviously, Leonardo,” I replied, flashing a big smile. We shared a laugh at the absurdity of the notion.

“Dream on,” Kate said, waving a dismissive hand. As she walked away, I squeezed Kathy’s arm. “Dream on,” I repeated. “That’s what we’re doing.” But I suddenly had a more sobering thought: I should be careful about throwing around big names, because a great find could so easily be revealed as a dud.

On a cold afternoon in February, shortly after returning from New York, I found myself standing in the Italian picture gallery of the Louvre, studying a portrait by Boltraffio, who was considered to be Leonardo’s most gifted disciple. I was pondering whether this artist, or any other artist in Leonardo’s circle, could have executed the mysterious lady on vellum. As I stood there, a voice behind me spoke my name.

“Peter, is that you?”

I turned to see Nicholas Turner lumbering toward me. Turner, portly, distinguished, and serious, was the former curator of drawings at the British Museum and a world-renowned expert on Italian Old Master drawings. Turner’s encyclopedic knowledge and expert eye gained him wide respect in the incestuous little world of Old Master drawings.

After exchanging greetings and chatting for a bit, we stood companionably, looking at the painting. Boltraffio’s skill was undeniable. Finally, with a bit of hesitation in my voice, I said, “I have something that I believe is more important than Boltraffio.”

Turner looked at me curiously. “Oh?”

I pulled out my digital camera, scrolled to a photo of the portrait, and handed it to Turner. I was astonished when he immediately said, “I saw a transparency of this not long ago, but I didn’t realize that you were now the keeper of the remarkable work.” I hadn’t expected that reaction! He explained that he had missed the 1998 sale in New York but had been contacted in the autumn of 2007 by a London dealer. “He showed me a good color transparency and asked my opinion. He was working on behalf of a colleague who had an interested purchaser.”

“I have been trying to determine if it is the work of one of Leonardo’s disciples,” I said, gesturing to the Boltraffio portrait.

“No, it is not a student’s work,” Turner said with conviction.

“Oh,” I said, deflated. “But how do you know?”

“Well,” he said carefully, “apart from the work’s very high quality, what immediately struck me––even from the transparency––was the extensive left-handed parallel hatching. See here.” He pointed, and I strained to see what he meant on the small transparency. “It is most conspicuous in the background, behind the girl’s profile.” He looked up from the photo and smiled at me. “As you know, the most famous left-handed Renaissance artist was Leonardo da Vinci,” he said. “And none of his students were left-handed.”

I suddenly remembered Mina and Catherine’s remarks, which hadn’t fully struck me at the time. However, the left-handed shading was a critical point. Experts agree that whereas it is possible to copy some aspects of a Master’s style, it is not possible to duplicate left-handedness. Although the three greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance—Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael—were all left-handed (a remarkable fact!), extensive research has failed to locate a single left-handed Leonardo follower.

“What are you saying?” I was stunned.

“I am not a Leonardo specialist,” Turner said, “but I think you can’t rule out the possibility of Leonardo’s authorship.” He smiled wryly. “That’s what I told my London colleague when I first saw it, but he did not believe me, and he never pursued it. More the pity.” He suggested that I show it to as many Leonardo specialists as possible and also undertake a thorough technical examination.

That night, I went home to our apartment, which overlooks that most Parisian of monuments, the Eiffel Tower. I poured two glasses of wine, and handing Kathy one, I said, “I ran into Nicholas Turner at the Louvre today. It turns out that someone sent him a transparency of the portrait without our knowing it.”

“What did he think?” Kathy asked.

I paused, relishing the moment. Then, taking the glass from Kathy’s hand—for fear she’d drop it—I said, “He thinks it may be by Leonardo himself.”

Some months after our meeting in the Louvre, I invited Turner to see the portrait for himself. He was enthralled. “It fully lives up to my expectations,” he said enthusiastically, adding that he was struck by its great beauty and refinement. He promised to give me an official report soon.

Mina was visiting Paris at that time. I asked her to look at the portrait again, telling her, “Mina, people are saying it could be a Leonardo. Please sit and study it carefully and give me your honest opinion.”

She sat down at a table and took the portrait in her hands. Her examination followed the traditional approach of the connoisseur. She believed that the best way to approach the study of a new work was to set aside technology in favor of the trained eye. Technology could come later. This was her favorite part of the process, when she could empty her mind and immerse herself fully in a work, which might turn out to be by the hand of a major artist.

Mina would subsequently describe her method in a published article.
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She wrote, “My examination was exclusively visual, and was carried out by carefully scrutinizing the work’s surface, following the traditional approach of the connoisseur—an approach that is today too readily disregarded, especially by universities, or at best not adequately appreciated by them. For centuries connoisseurship has enabled an expert to formulate opinions, sometimes very rapidly. These opinions, which are the consequence of visual and mental associations, are sometimes confused [with] intuition, which they are not, since opinions are based solely on previous experience[,] and this important point should be remembered.”

As Mina studied the portrait, the first question that came to mind concerned its date of execution and the age of the vellum. “The subtle darkening of the support and its natural wear over time led me to believe that it was indeed late fifteenth century,” she explained in her article. “I could therefore go a step further, but in the full knowledge that the authenticity alone of the vellum support was not in itself a guarantee that the portrait drawn on its surface would be genuine, since we all know that the wiliest of fakers have successfully used old supports, or ones that have been cleverly aged by artificial means.”

As Mina gazed at the face of the sitter, she felt a strong sensation of being in the presence of a living person. She took note of many instances of a high level of execution. These were convincing details, but it was the advanced level of artistry that really compelled her:

As always happens, I first devoted my attention to the face: from this I gained the feeling of being in front of a living being whose beauty suggested an Antique profile. This ancient classical portrait type was the source of inspiration for this head, which was a form that was so successfully revived by the painters and sculptors of the Florentine Quattrocento.

A dating of the portrait to the last decade of the fifteenth century is confirmed by the young woman’s ornate costume and her coiffure, with her hair gathered together behind her head in a thick plait, called a “coazzone,” an unusual and locally specific fashion which places the portrait’s production in Lombardy at a time when Leonardo was in the service of Ludovico il Moro. In both date and cultural context, it therefore differs markedly from portraits by Leonardo’s Lombard followers. Indeed, in my view, exact parallels in the brightness and transparency of the girl’s eye are only to be found in other examples in the drawings of Leonardo.