The Lost Painting (25 page)

F
RANCESCA AND
L
UCIANO GOT MARRIED THE FOLLOWING YEAR.
The ceremony took place in the fifth-century basilica in the Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina, the same piazza where the Tomassoni clan had once lived, and only a short distance from the Via dei Condotti, where Francesca had spent her earliest years.

Francesca wore a white dress and veil. The wedding, ceremonial and formal, was, Francesca later said, “the mistake of the mistake.” Luciano returned to Oxford, Francesca stayed in Rome. They commuted back and forth and talked daily on the telephone. But Francesca did not want to move to England, and Luciano did not want to return to Italy. “I have more bacon and eggs in my blood now than cappuccino and cornetti,” he said. After three years of marriage, they separated. In time, Luciano remarried, and so did Francesca, to a lawyer. She has a three-year-old son named Tommaso. Luciano teaches philosophy and logic at Oxford; Francesca teaches art history at the University of Ferrara.

D
ENIS
M
AHON IS NINETY-FIVE YEARS OLD.
H
E TRAVELS REGULARLY
and is often asked to render his opinions on paintings. He still appears at conferences on Caravaggio, although, as Francesca points out, his stories have begun to repeat themselves. The seventy-three paintings that once filled his house in Cadogan Square have taken up residence at the British National Gallery.

F
OR A TIME, THE
N
ATIONAL
G
ALLERY OF
I
RELAND WAS BESIEGED
with people carrying in old works of art, hoping they had found a lost masterpiece. Many of the hopeful were priests from small parish churches and religious houses around the country.

The Taking of Christ
became the gallery’s biggest draw, attracting thousands of visitors a year. One of those visitors, gazing at the painting on a warm day in April 1997, happened to notice a tiny dark brown speck on the inner edge of the gilt frame. It would not have caught the visitor’s attention had the speck not started to move in erratic circles, and then suddenly take wing.

The visitor debated whether this was an event worth reporting to the gallery attendant. It seemed trivial. But in the end, she did mention it, offhandedly, to the attendant, who gravely said that he would have the matter looked into.

That evening, after the gallery had closed, Andrew O’Connor came down to look at the painting. He saw nothing amiss, but he asked the Working Party to bring it up to the restoration studio so that he might take a closer look.

O’Connor removed the metal clips that held the painting in the frame. As he lifted the stretcher, dozens of small dead insects, reddish brown in color, with beetle-like carapaces, dropped onto the table. Along the tacking edges at the top and bottom of the picture, O’Connor saw a dense network of silky white filaments, the cocoons in which the larvae had grown. And the larvae themselves, hundreds of small white grubs, were writhing among the warp and weft of the canvas. They had eaten away patches of the relining along the tacking edges. O’Connor measured one section of the relining, four centimeters by eleven, that had been devoured in its entirety by the bugs. He had never before encountered anything like it.

An entomologist from the Natural History Museum, one block away, came over and examined the dead specimens. He quickly identified it as
Stegobium paniceum,
more commonly known as the biscuit beetle. The entomologist presented his findings, along with an animated disquisition on the beetle’s life cycle, in a meeting with Raymond Keaveney and O’Connor. The entomologist seemed quite delighted to have his expertise engaged in a case of such significance. Keaveney, looking grim, didn’t share his enthusiasm.

The biscuit beetle, according to the entomologist, thrived on starch—flour, bread, rice, pasta—hence its name. Its life span ranged between three and seven months. The adult beetles, which measured an eighth of an inch long and could fly, lived only three to four weeks. They did not eat, but they were prodigious breeders, generating four broods during warm months. It was the larvae, which fed for many months, that did the damage.

The source of the insects’ food was immediately evident to O’Connor. It was the glue—the colla pasta, with its large quantity of flour—that Benedetti had used in relining.

As senior restorer, O’Connor assumed the task of tackling the problem. He had all the paintings in the Italian room of the gallery taken down. He inspected each in turn for sign of infestation, but found none.
The Taking of Christ
was the sole painting afflicted by the biscuit beetle.

O’Connor examined the entire painting carefully. He found, to his great relief, that the seventeenth-century Italian canvas, Caravaggio’s original canvas, had not been damaged. The beetles had gotten only as far as the tacking edges of the new canvas.

O’Connor considered relining the entire painting, but decided against it in the end. He opted not to subject the picture to the additional stress of relining. But he had to replace the tacking edges. With a scalpel he cut away the infested parts of the relining and glued on new tacking edges, a process called strip lining. He did not use the old colla pasta method. He used a modern adhesive, a synthetic resin called Beva 371.

As Denis Mahon might have said,
“Habent sua fata picturae.”
Pictures have their vicissitudes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe a debt of gratitude to many people in Italy who helped me in ways large and small. Among them are Teresa Notegen, owner of the Bar Notegen on Via del Babuino; Gianni Amodeo, my first teacher in Italian; Jessica Young, the kindest landlady I’ve ever met; the poet and raconteur Vito Riviello and his talented daughter Lidia Riviello; the painter Ettore de Conciliis, for his friendship and introduction to Maurizio Marini; the art historian Stephen Pepper, whose sudden death two years ago affected many people; the painter Tiziana Monti, who helped to arrange an interview with Mario Masè, former owner of Mario’s trattoria; my friend Arnulf Herbst; the beautiful Esther Baird; at
Il Messaggero,
the journalist Riccardo De Palo, who arranged for me to meet Fabio Isman; Emanuela Noci, a friend and journalist who read an early draft of the book, and her husband, the artist Steven Meek; the restorer Maurizio Cruciani; my friend Mayo Purnell; Francesca’s husband, Gottardo Pallastrelli di Celleri; and Katya Leonovich, who read this in many versions and endured me at my worst. My thanks also to those at the American Academy, particularly the former director Lester Little, and to the Bibliotheca Hertziana.

I could not have written this book without the consent of those people whose names appear in the narrative. I am deeply appreciative for the time they sacrificed in repeated interviews. This is especially true in the case of Francesca Cappelletti, who tolerated with wonderful good humor my endless requests for details. It applies as well to Denis Mahon, Laura Testa, Giampaolo Correale, Luciano Floridi, Paola Sannucci, Maurizio Calvesi, Stefano Aluffi, Fabio Isman, Caterina Volpi, and Roberto Pesenti. In Dublin, my thanks to Raymond Keaveney, Brian Kennedy, Sergio Benedetti, Andrew O’Connor, Father Noel Barber, and Michael Olohan. In London, thanks to Hugh Brigstocke, Ashok Roy, and Larry Keith.

My friend Tracy Kidder read many versions of the manuscript and took pen in hand occasionally when I got too tangled up. I turned to several other trusted friends for advice, among them Richard Todd, Craig Nova, and Bill Newman, and I’m grateful for their comments. Andrew Wylie was always encouraging when I felt dispirited. At Random House, I was saved countless embarrassments by marvelous copy editors Jolanta Benal and Vincent La Scala.

To Bob Loomis, my editor and friend, the wisest person I know—I don’t know how to thank you properly, except to say that I am proud of your confidence and friendship.

And of course, to Diane, who sustained me sweetly throughout, as always.

A NOTE ON SOURCES

This book grew out of a visit of several months to the American Academy in Rome in early 2000. Six years earlier, I had written an article for
The
New York Times Magazine
about the discovery of
The Taking of Christ
. I’d thought back then that I might expand the article into a book, but I let the idea lie fallow while I pursued other projects. When Lester Little, then the director of the American Academy, extended an invitation to come to Rome, I was required (if only for the sake of formality) to have a project in mind. I decided to resurrect the idea of the lost painting and see if I could turn it into a book.

The project has taken longer than I anticipated. My first task was to learn to speak Italian with some degree of fluency, since many of the people I wanted to interview in Rome spoke little or no English, and I did not want to use interpreters. Francesca Cappelletti was the notable exception; her English is good, although she much prefers to speak in Italian, and I tried to oblige her.

I have not changed any of the names of the people I’ve written about. This account is based on interviews with the participants that I conducted in Rome, Dublin, and London. My focus in writing this book was deliberately narrow. Readers who are interested in knowing more about Caravaggio’s life and works, and the history of the early Baroque, can avail themselves of several biographies of the artist. Three were published in 1998. I found
Caravaggio: A Life,
by Helen Langdon (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), to be particularly helpful. The other two,
M,
by Peter Robb (Henry Holt and Company), and
Caravaggio,
by Catherine Puglisi (Phaidon Press in London), are each meritorious in their own very different ways.

The books that I made most use of, however, are landmarks in their own rights. The first of those is Walter Friedlander’s seminal work
Caravaggio Studies,
published in 1955 by the Princeton University Press. It is now unfortunately out of print, but the clarity of Friedlander’s writing, the depth of his observations on the artist’s work, and the large appendix of documents concerning Caravaggio’s life and work, in both original language and translation, make the book invaluable. Howard Hibbard’s biography,
Caravaggio
(Harper & Row, 1983), has many of the same merits.

But the most remarkable, exhaustively detailed, and fully thumbed volumes in my possession are the second and third editions of Maurizio Marini’s
Caravaggio: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, “pictor praestantissimus,”
published in Rome in 1989 and 2001, respectively. I thank Maurizio also for his friendship, hospitality, and discussions about Caravaggio.

The following books, articles, and monographs were all useful to me. This list does not represent a complete bibliography of works on Caravaggio, nor all the works that I consulted. For a complete bibliography, one should turn to Marini’s third edition.

Askew, Pamela.
Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Benedetti, Sergio.
Caravaggio and His Followers at the National Gallery of Ireland.
Exhibition catalogue. Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1992.

———. “Caravaggio’s ‘Taking of Christ’: A Masterpiece Rediscovered,” in
The Burlington Magazine,
CXXV, November 1993.

———.
Caravaggio:
The Master Revealed
. Exhibition catalogue. Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1993.

———. “Gli Acquisiti Romani di William Hamilton Nisbet,” in
Paragone,
September 1995.

Bernardini, Marie, Silvia Danesi Squazina, and Claudio Strinati, eds.
Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Denis Mahon
. Milan: Electa, 2000.

Black, Jeremy.
The Grand Tour in the 18th Century
. London: Sandpiper Books, 1992.

Blunt, Anthony.
Artistic Theory in Italy 1450–1600
. London: Oxford University Press, 1973 edition.

Brigstocke, Hugh.
William Buchanan and the 19th Century Art Trade
. Privately published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 1982.

Calvesi, Maurizio.
Le Realtà del Caravaggio
. Turin: Einaudi, 1990.

Cappelletti, Francesca. “The Documentary Evidence of the Early History of Caravaggio’s ‘Taking of Christ,’” in
The Burlington Magazine,
CXXV, November 1993.

Cappelletti, Francesca, and Laura Testa. “Caravaggio: Nuovi dati per i dipinti Mattei,” in
Art e Dossier,
February 1990.

———.
Il Trattenimento di Virtuosi: Le collezione secentsche di quadri nei Palazzi Mattei di Roma
. Rome: Argos Edizioni, 1994.

———. “I quadri di Caravaggio nella collezione Mattei. I nouvi documenti e i riscontri con le fonti,” in
Storia dell’Arte,
May–August 1990.

Cinotti, Mia.
Michelangelo Merisi detto il Caravaggio:
Tutte le Opere.
Bergamo: Poligrafiche Bolis, 1983.

Cohen, Elizabeth S. “Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome,” in
Journal of Interdisciplinary History,
XXII, Spring 1992.

Correale, Giampaolo, ed.
Identificazione di un Caravaggio
. Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1990.

Corridini, Sandro.
Caravaggio: Materiali per un processo.
Rome: Monografie Romane, 1993.

Corridini, Sandro, and Maurizio Marini. “The Earliest Account of Caravaggio in Rome,” in
The Burlington Magazine,
vol. 140, 1998.

De Courcy, Catherine.
The Foundation of the National Gallery of Ireland
. Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1985.

Finaldi, Gabriele, and Michael Kitson.
Discovering the Italian Baroque: The Denis Mahon Collection.
London: National Gallery Publications, 1997.

Floridi, Luciano. In
Cervelli in Fuga
. Rome: Avverbi, 2001.

Frommel, Christoph L. “Caravaggios Fruwerk und der Kardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte,” in
Storia dell’Arte,
vol. 9–10, 1971.

Gash, John.
Caravaggio
. London: Bloomsbury Books, 1988.

Gilbert, Creighton E.
Caravaggio and His Two Cardinals
. University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

Gregori, Mina, ed.
Come dipingeva il Caravaggio
. Milan: Electa, 1996.

Judson, J. Richard, and Rudolph E. O. Ekkart.
Honthorst
. Doornspijk, Netherlands: Davaco Publishers, 1999.

Keith, Larry. “Three Paintings by Caravaggio,” in
National Gallery Technical Bulletin,
vol. 19. London: National Gallery Publications, 1998.

Kirwin, W. Chandler. “Addendum to Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte’s Inventory,” in
Storia dell’Arte,
vol. 9–10, 1971.

Kitson, Michael.
The Complete Paintings of Caravaggio
. London: Wiedenfeld & Nicholson, 1969.

Longhi, Roberto. “Appunti: ‘Giovanni della Voltolina’ a Palazzo Mattei,” in
Paragone,
1969.

———. “Ultimi studi sul Caravaggio e la sua cerchia,” in
Propozione I,
1943.

———. “Un originale del Caravaggio a Rouen e il problema delle copie Caravaggesche,” in
Paragone,
1961.

Macioce, Stefania, ed.
Caravaggio: La Vita e le Opere Attraverso i Documenti
. Rome: Logart Press, 1995.

Macrae, Desmond. “Observations of the Sword in Caravaggio,” in
The Burlington Magazine,
CVI, 1964.

Magnuson, Torgil.
Rome in the Age of Bernini, Vol. I
. Uppsala, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1992.

Mahon, Denis. “A Late Caravaggio Rediscovered,” in
The Burlington
Magazine,
XCVIII, 1956.

———. “Addenda to Caravaggio,” in
The Burlington Magazine,
XCIV, 1952.

———. “Caravaggio’s Chronology Again,” in
The Burlington Magazine,
XCIII, 1951b.

———. “Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi: ‘Nude Youth with a Ram,’ ” in
Artists in 1
7
th Century Rome
. Exhibition catalogue. London: Wildenstein & Co., 1955.

———. “Contrasts in Art-historical Method: Two Recent Approaches,” in
The Burlington Magazine,
XCV, 1953a.

———. “Egregius in Urbe Pictor: Caravaggio Revised,” in
The Burlington Magazine,
XCIII, 1951a.

———. “Fresh Light on Caravaggio’s Earliest Period: His ‘Cardsharps’ Recovered,” in
The Burlington Magazine,
CXXXII, 1990.

———.
Studies in Seicento Art
. London: Warburg Institute, 1947.

Martin, John Rupert.
Baroque
. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

Moir, Alfred.
Caravaggio and His Copyists
. New York: New York University Press for the College Art Association of America, 1976.

———. “Did Caravaggio Draw?” in
The Art Quarterly,
XXXII, 1969.

———.
The Italian Followers of Caravaggio.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Mormando, Franco, ed.
Saints and Sinners: Caravaggio and the Baroque Image
. Exhibition catalogue. Boston: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2000.

Nicolaus, Knut.
The Restoration of Paintings.
Cologne: Koneman, 1999.

O’Neil, Maryvelma Smith.
Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Rome
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Pacelli, Vincenzo. “New Documents Concerning Caravaggio in Naples,” in
The Burlington Magazine,
vol. 119, 1977.

Panofsky, Erwin.
Idea: A Concept in Art Theory,
1968 edition. New York: Harper & Row.

———.
Meaning in the Visual Arts
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.

Panofsky-Soergel, Gerda. “Zur Geschichte Des Palazzo Mattei Di Giove,” in
Romisches Jahrbuch fur Kunstgeschichte
. Vienna-Munich: Anton Schroll & Co., 1967–68.

Podro, Michael.
The Critical Historians of Art.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

Roskill, Mark.
What Is Art History?
2nd edition. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989.

Sherman, John.
Mannerism
. London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1967.

Spear, Richard E.
Caravaggio and His Followers
. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

Strinati, Claudio, and Rossella Vodret, eds.
Caravaggio e il Genio di Roma
. Exhibition catalogue. Milan: RCS Libri, 2001.

Thompson, Colin, Hugh Brigstocke, and Duncan Thomson.
Pictures for Scotland: The National Gallery of Scotland and Its Collection
. Edinburgh: Trustees of the National Gallery of Scotland, 1972.

Various authors.
Caravaggio e la collezione Mattei.
Milan: Electa, 1995.

Wittkower, Rudolf.
Art & Architecture in Italy, 1600–1750,
1982 edition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Wolfflin, Heinrich.
Principles of Art History,
1950 edition. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.