The Lost Painting (20 page)

“You won’t believe it,” replied Benedetti. “In a religious house in Dublin.”

He explained how he had come across the picture in the Jesuit residence, the attribution to Honthorst, and his efforts to trace the provenance.

“I’ll send you photos as soon as I get back to Dublin,” Benedetti said. “I’m hoping you’ll come up to see it when you have the chance.”

“Oh, yes, I must, I must!” exclaimed Mahon. “You ought to speak to Francesca Cappelletti,” he added. “She has been working in the Mattei archive. I’ll give you her number.”

Yes, said Benedetti, he knew her name from the
St. John
publication and the article in
Storia dell
’
Arte
. He would like to speak to her, and he also hoped to go to Recanati himself.

Sir Denis seemed rejuvenated by Benedetti’s news. He raised himself from the bench and said, “Let’s look at some pictures.”

As they walked around the gallery, Benedetti told Sir Denis about Raymond Keaveney’s efforts to persuade the British National Gallery to ship
The Supper at Emmaus
to Dublin. “We want to put the pictures side by side to compare them. We’re having some problems with London.”

Sir Denis looked thoughtful. He sat on the board of trustees of the National Gallery, and every loan request had to be approved by the board. He said to Benedetti, “Send me the photos and let me take a look at them. I’ll see what I can do about London.”

11

A
YEAR AND A HALF HAD PASSED SINCE THE SUMMER WHEN
Francesca had gone to Edinburgh with Luciano. In that time, both she and Laura had been awarded their master’s degrees, with high honors. Calvesi had asked them to teach a seminar to second-year students at the university on the collections of Mattei, Del Monte, and Giustiniani. They both took the exams, oral and written, for admission to the doctoral program at the University of Rome. Of the several hundred applicants each year, only three were admitted. Francesca, on her first try, was among those; Laura was not. She resigned herself to trying again next year.

Every now and then Francesca heard from Denis Mahon, who called for long chats. Occasionally he asked her to look up documents for him in the Archivio di Stato or the Vatican library. She did so willingly.

The Bibliotheca Hertziana granted her a long-term admittance pass. She spent most afternoons there, studying at her favorite spot, the long wooden table on the third floor with the view over the rooftops of Rome.

When friends asked her what she had found on the trip to Edinburgh, Francesca told them she had run into a dead end. She’d say that she believed the painting was there, somewhere in Scotland. She did not want to believe it had been destroyed.

It seemed that everyone she encountered, even the most casual acquaintances at the university, knew about her search for the lost Caravaggio. At first, she answered seriously, but then she grew bored explaining the details. Still looking for the Caravaggio? someone she barely knew would ask in a jesting way, and she would roll her eyes. She grew weary of it all. She kept saying she hadn’t really expected to find it, and this was, in its way, true. Looking back on that time, she realized that finding the picture would have been a miracle. Perhaps she had been a little naïve, she thought. But she didn’t regret making the effort. It would have bothered her, a pebble in her shoe, if she had not at least tried.

Then one evening, Francesca got a telephone call from a man who asked in English, “May I speak with Francesca Cappelletti?”

Francesca replied in English. “This is Francesca.”

The man seemed hesitant. “I hope I am not disturbing you, but are you the young woman who was looking for the painting by Caravaggio?”

“Yes,” said Francesca. “Why do you ask?”

“The painting that was owned by the Scotsman Hamilton Nisbet?”

Again Francesca said yes, her curiosity growing. The caller had a refined, upper-class English accent, slightly pompous; he sounded as if he was in his thirties or early forties, and his voice sounded vaguely familiar. “Have we met before?” she asked.

“No, no, we haven’t,” said the man, “but I’ve heard about your search for the painting.”

“Ah, yes?” said Francesca.

Again the man hesitated. “Well,” he said, “I was having tea at the Warburg Institute, you see. And I happened to hear a conversation concerning this painting. It seems, well . . . it seems that there is a good possibility it might turn up shortly.”

“Do you mean someone has found it?” said Francesca, voice rising.

“Well,” said the man, “I am not at liberty to say much. There are other people involved. It is all very confidential, you see.”

“My God!” exclaimed Francesca. “How wonderful! How exciting! Can you at least tell me where it was found?”

“I’m afraid I really am not free to say—”

Francesca heard a strange noise at the other end of the line, like someone muffling a sneeze. She listened, perplexed. And in an instant she understood that it was someone stifling laughter. “Who is this?” she demanded angrily.

The laughter erupted in gales, and she then knew that her caller was Roberto Pesenti, the friend who had put her up in the Sloane Square house in London. “Roberto? Is that you?” she said in Italian.

More laughter. The sort of laughter that causes tears to flow.

“Roberto, sei tu!” Francesca screamed into the telephone. “Bastardo, cretino, idiota!”

Through his laughter, Roberto said, “Francesca, I’m sorry, but it’s just so funny! I had you absolutely convinced!”

“It’s not funny!” said Francesca, but her anger began to wane, and Roberto’s laughter infected her. She kept calling him a bastardo, but by then she was laughing, too.

It wasn’t quite so funny when she learned that Roberto had told the story of his call, with embellishments, to some of their mutual friends. She tried to be good-humored about it, but she began to grow exasperated the third or fourth time it came up.

I
N THE FALL OF 1991,
F
RANCESCA RETURNED TO
L
ONDON,
AGAIN
to the Warburg, but this time for only a two-week visit. She and Luciano kept constant company. He told her he wanted to marry her. She’d heard this before, but she’d always dismissed it with a laugh and teased Luciano about being too involved in his work to find someone better suited to him. But this time he would not be put off. This time he was serious.

Francesca couldn’t bring herself to tell him no. She said she was undecided.

“That’s okay,” said Luciano, “but I won’t give up.”

While in London, Francesca saw Denis Mahon, who brought up the subject of Caravaggio. “Who knows when the next one will be found?” he remarked with a twinkle in his eye. Francesca looked at him expectantly, but he just smiled. “I have a feeling something will turn up soon,” he said.

When Francesca returned to Rome, she reported this conversation to Laura. “It was very strange,” Francesca said. “I think he knows something.”

“Knows what?” asked Laura.

“He wouldn’t say, and it didn’t feel proper for me to ask. But I had a feeling he was talking about
The Taking of Christ
.”

Laura shrugged. “We’ll see.”

O
NE EVENING THAT AUTUMN,
F
RANCESCA ARRIVED HOME FROM
the Bibliotheca Hertziana and her mother said she’d had a phone call. Some man—her mother couldn’t recall his name—who wanted to speak to Francesca. He hadn’t left a telephone number, and her mother remembered only that he said he was from the Scottish Academy. Strangely, though, remarked her mother, he spoke Italian very well, with a slight Florentine accent.

The Scottish Academy? mused Francesca. It had been a year and a half since she’d been to Scotland. And the man spoke Italian well? The thought crossed her mind that it might be another prank by Roberto.

The man called again later that week. This time Francesca was at home. Her mother passed her the telephone.

The first words the man uttered were “I am looking for you because I think you are interested in
The Taking of Christ
by Caravaggio. I am interested in it, too.”

Francesca said, “Who am I speaking to, please?”

The man said his name was Sergio Benedetti. He worked as a restorer of paintings at the National Gallery of Ireland, in Dublin.

Francesca was dubious. “You are not from the Scottish Academy?” she asked.

“No,” said the man, in a voice that sounded puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

“Never mind,” said Francesca, realizing that her mother was perfectly capable of confusing Ireland with Scotland, and a gallery with an academy. “How can I help you?”

“Excuse me,” said the man, “but may I ask how old you are? Are you married?”

“What kind of question is that?” asked Francesca, voice rising.

“You sound rather young,” said the man. “I thought you would be older. Who was the woman who answered the telephone?”

“Who are you?” demanded Francesca. She was close to hanging up. “What do you want from me? Did Roberto put you up to this?”

“Roberto?” said the man. “No, no, I got your telephone number from Denis Mahon. He suggested that I call you.”

“From Denis Mahon?” said Francesca, still wary.

“It concerns your research in the Mattei archive in Recanati,” continued the man who called himself Benedetti. He had read Francesca’s article about the Mattei Caravaggios in
Storia dell
’
Arte,
he said, and wanted to speak with her about it, especially the information concerning
The Taking of Christ
. He mentioned several details from the inventories, particularly those documents where the attribution had changed from Caravaggio to Honthorst. “I’m coming to Rome soon,” he said. “I hope to go to Recanati to see the archive with my own eyes.”

“That won’t be possible,” Francesca said. “The palazzo in Recanati is closed during the winter.”

“Are you certain?” he said. “A pity. In any case, I would like to meet with you and discuss your article at greater length. I assure you it’s something you’ll find interesting. But I must ask you not to tell anyone about this. It’s at a very delicate stage.”

Francesca was still not wholly convinced, but her curiosity was growing. She apologized for her angry reaction. “I’ve gotten other phone calls,” she explained.

Benedetti said he would get in touch with her when he got to Rome, in a week or so, and they would arrange a place to meet. He asked her again not to mention his call to anyone.

Francesca’s first impulse on hanging up the phone was to dial Denis Mahon’s number in London and find out whether Benedetti was indeed who he claimed to be. He had been very secretive and had actually told her nothing at all. And asking her how old she was and if she were married—those were not the sort of questions one would expect from another art historian.

She called Sir Denis, who picked up, as usual, after the first ring. They exchanged pleasantries, and then Francesca said she’d just gotten a strange call from someone named Sergio Benedetti. Did Sir Denis know him?

Oh, yes, said Mahon. He had known Sergio for many years. And yes, he had given Benedetti her telephone number. He didn’t think Francesca would mind. “It’s possibly quite interesting,” he said.

Mahon was obviously being discreet. Francesca understood that he was not telling her all he knew, and Francesca knew not to press further. But by now she was very curious.

At the Hertziana the next afternoon, idling away her time, she looked up Benedetti’s name to see if he had published anything about Caravaggio or the seicento. She searched the index, but came up empty-handed. If Benedetti had any expertise beyond restoration, he had kept it to himself.

S
EVERAL
WEEKS
LATER,
F
RANCESCA
HEARD
FROM
B
ENEDETTI AGAIN.
He called one morning to say that he was in Rome, staying at the apartment of friends near the Piazza del Popolo. He hoped Francesca could stop by that afternoon.

Francesca asked if she should also bring Laura Testa.

“No,” said Benedetti. “The fewer people, the better.”

Okay, Francesca thought to herself, let’s see what happens.

The woman who answered the door greeted Francesca with a warm smile. She was in her thirties and seemed vaguely familiar. “Finally we meet,” said the woman. “I always see you in the hallways at the university.” Now Francesca placed her: an instructor of Byzantine art at the university. She brought Francesca into the living room, a spacious apartment with a view over the trees of Lungotevere, and introduced her to her husband, an archaeologist at the Vatican, and to Benedetti.

Benedetti rose to shake her hand. He wore a neatly pressed shirt and gray slacks. Francesca estimated that he was in his late forties, stout and heavy in the face, a little taller than she, with thick brown hair that was turning gray at the temples. In his youth he might have been handsome, thought Francesca, but his eyes had a dark, preoccupied look. With a smile that didn’t seem quite genuine, he said, “You are younger than I expected.”

Francesca smiled back. She was still just a student, she explained.

On the table before him, Benedetti had photocopies of the
Storia dell’Arte
article and the essay that she and Laura had written for the
St. John
symposium. Francesca could see that both were extensively underlined and had notes scribbled in the margins.

Benedetti, taking the articles in hand, wanted to know if she had more information about the Mattei archive, specifically information concerning
The Taking of Christ
that she and Laura had not yet published.

“Plenty of information about the Mattei collection,” replied Francesca, “but nothing more about
The Taking of Christ
.” She mentioned that she had gone to Edinburgh in an effort to trace the painting, but she’d run into a dead end with the sale at Dowell’s auction house.

Benedetti nodded. He had gone to Dowell’s, too, he said.

“So,” said Francesca, “have you found the painting?”