Quattrocento Read online

  “Yeah,” Alton replied, shaking his head. “Seems like the Stone Age. I used a TV set and electrodes to pick up changes in body temperature and brain wave patterns. Now you can do it all by infrared. And the walls, that’s the best. Plasma flat screen. Wall-to-wall, totally.”

  “The virtual studiolo,” Karen said. “What do you think?” she asked Charles.

  “I think I could use a martini,” Charles replied, and reached up into the cabinet behind him for a glass.

  “Didn’t I tell you he would hate it?” Kent asked.

  “Are you in on this too?” Charles inquired.

  “Well, whose idea do you think it was?”

  “I should have known.” Charles pulled the vodka bottle out of the freezer and poured a solid two inches into the glass. “No, it’s a great idea,” he said, and laughed, adding a splash of vermouth and an olive. “What are you going to call it?” he asked, stirring the drink with a silver rod he had taken from the drawer behind Kent.

  “The Rumor,” Karen replied. “The Room, Or—”

  “That’s good. I like that,” Charles said. “The Rumor. What do you think, Matt?”

  “I think I’ll have mine with a twist,” he said.

  Matt leaned back against the old leather armchair in the calm oasis of Charles’s own study, glad to be out of the storm of the party. The initial boost of the martinis had passed like a team of speedboats, leaving him bobbing uneasily in their wake, unsteady on his feet, like a water-skier who has let go of the rope. He was glad to lose himself in one of his favorite paintings, a woodland scene nestled in a faded gilt frame. It was typical of Charles to hang his prize possession in an out-of-the-way corner where it could easily escape notice. He had found it in a gallery in Florence, one that he had happened upon during an afternoon’s stroll through the quiet side streets of the Oltrarno, near the Boboli Gardens. He had brought the painting back to the department and cleaned it up, which hadn’t required much, for it had been in surprisingly good condition. All the tests indicated it was genuinely old, but as to authorship, that was anybody’s guess. “Circle of Paolo Uccello” was the consensus, and in its muted colors and dramatic foreshortening it did show the heavy influence of that Quattrocento artist. Although not a copy, the scene was clearly based on Uccello’s Hunt at Night, now at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the painting that had been the subject of Matt’s master’s thesis. “The Perspective of Dreams,” he had titled it.

  But this was a hunt by day, deep in the woods, and Matt loved the confusion of the horsemen and the dogs scrambling through the underbrush under the thick green canopy that arched overhead like the roof of a cathedral, supported by the fluted columns of the tree trunks. The prey—a boar, or a wolf—was out of sight, but he had spent hours searching out the figures concealed in the tangle of bushes, always finding some new detail that had previously escaped his eye. Like the flash of color almost out of sight, hidden behind the tree trunks on the gentle rise in the back. What was it? He leaned in for a closer look. Odd, he thought; it looks like an animal. Feathers, bright blue and green, tipped with yellow. A wing, but too large to be a bird. There was more, but it was hard to make out in the gloom and the patterns made by the sun coming through the leaves. Rear haunches like a lion, the muscles bunching as the animal twisted through the underbrush, trying to escape, but covered in scales, not fur. He blinked—had it moved? His eyes must be adjusting to the light. He could see more of it now. The wing was joined to the body, and the tip of another was barely visible just behind.

  The noise of the party vanished as Matt concentrated. There was no wind in the forest, the trees were still, and so the yelping of the dogs and the neighing of the horses hung in the air. He listened closely. Yes; the dry scrabble of claws on stone, that’s what he had heard. And labored breathing, the beat of wings—it was trying to escape. The tail whipped around, balancing as the animal reared back. Scales coruscated in the dim light, it was a lizard’s tail, ending in a broad flattened point. A harsh cry like an eagle cut through the gloom. Matt stared, fascinated and disbelieving—the proud head, lifted on a scaled neck, nostrils flared, black eyes wide, the dragon of his dreams. God, he thought. A manticore.

  The dogs, frenzied with excitement, snarled in pursuit, closely followed by the men spurring their horses on. Excited shouts and the sharp repeated calls of trumpets were answered by the shriek of the manticore.

  “Come on,” Matt whispered, “come on, go.”

  The manticore found a purchase and leapt up the steep escarpment, its powerful wings at last free of the encumbering underbrush. The dogs, unable to follow, bayed in unison, circling like an earthbound tornado. Matt, aware of a sudden danger, tensed, but not soon enough. A gloved hand slammed his head back into the rough bark of a tree, lifting him as it tightened around his throat. A black helmet, the closed visor with a narrow black slit across it like a sword cut, leaned in as the bronze eagle roosting on its crest, wings raised, nodded down at him. A laugh grew, louder and louder until it hurt Matt’s ears, sliding down the scale into the rough growl of the wolf, a tone resonating deep within, chilling him—

  He jumped sideways as he felt a hand on his neck.

  “Matt!”

  It was Sally. Slumping against the chair, Matt closed his eyes and rubbed his face, the skin hot and clammy under his hand. He felt his throat, but it was fine. Nothing.

  “You’re soaked,” Sally said. Her hand, light on his back, moved to his forehead. Cool, like stepping into a patch of shade on a blistering hot day. “You’ve got a fever.”

  He opened his eyes. The painting. He stood up, looked. There they were, the men on horseback, the dark trees, the dogs, but in the distance on the hill—nothing. No manticore. He leaned in, closer and closer, hands braced on the wall on each side until his face was only inches from the panel. The trees loomed, fading from sight on each side. The underbrush dissolved into splashes of green and dark brown, but nowhere could he find even a trace of gold. Or yellow or blue, no feathers, no scales shimmering in the refracted light.

  “Matt, please.”

  He felt Sally’s hand on his arm, pulling him back. He pushed himself away from the wall. Finding her looking at him, eyes wide with concern, he drew her to him and kissed her as hard as he could.

  “Wow,” she murmured in his ear, after they broke apart. “Martinis and art, a heady mix. Let’s get out of here. You need some fresh air.”

  “Wait,” he said, and looked back at the painting.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A manticore doesn’t have wings.”

  “So?”

  “Nothing,” he replied. A manticore had a man’s head on a lion’s body. What he had seen had the body and legs of a lion, but wings and scales, like a griffin, and a dragon’s head and tail. But there had not been the slightest hesitation in his mind that what he saw was a manticore. Why?

  The party was still well under way, even though midnight had come and gone. Charles gave Matt a pat on the back and then broke the story he was telling for a quick kiss on Sally’s cheek. Karen squeezed his arm on the way by.

  “Let’s be in touch,” she said, raising her glass in Sally’s direction as though to include her.

  “How brazen can you get?” Sally asked, as she and Matt edged their way through the crowd.

  “What are you talking about?” Matt asked.

  “That bimbo in the too-short skirt, bombed on champagne. I can’t believe she made such a pass at you. ‘Let’s be in touch.’ Right. And she had the audacity to act as though she knew me.”

  “You mean Karen?” Matt asked.

  “If that’s her name, then yes.”

  “Sally,” Matt said. “We were talking to her earlier. The studiolo, remember? She has a gallery downtown.”

  “I’ve never seen that woman before. Look, Matt, a word of advice, just between you and me?” she said, shrugging on her coat. “If you’re going to carry on like this, that’s your business. But avoid the martinis.
You’re not good enough at it, and I don’t want to know.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Let’s just get out of here, shall we?” With a swirl of black she was gone, out the door. The embarrassed looks on the faces of the small group who had overheard the entire exchange lent her accusations credibility, making Matt’s confusion complete. Not knowing what to believe, he hurried after her.

  chapter 4

  In the still room, anchored by the steady tick of the clock, Matt leaned back in his chair, panel in hand. He studied the face he had come to know better than his own, as over the past two months she had emerged from the shadows that had veiled her for centuries. Carefully and painstakingly, a square centimeter at a time, he had loosened and removed layer after layer of overvarnishing and retouching, working slowly inward from the edges like a treasure seeker in suspect terrain. His map had been a tiny chip from the painting that when mounted and photographed from the side revealed every layer, each as distinct and identifiable as the striations in an exposed cliff were to a geologist. Beneath the successive layers of varnish that had been added over time, separated by razor-thin lines of dirt and soot, was the original varnish, the oil now yellow-gold with oxidation. Below that was the painting itself—the wide band of the glazes, glowing with transparent colors, a rainbow frozen in place. The microphotograph was so detailed that he could see the particles of pigment, crushed by hand with a muller on a glass plate. Underneath the colors lay the dull umber of the monochrome painting, and then, last of all, the narrow black stripe of the original drawing, laid down in charcoal on the freshly sized surface of the panel. After patiently traversing the wide empty ocean of the greenery against which she was poised he had at last made landfall: the curl of an earlobe, as delicate as a seashell. Like a castaway wandering a beach, he had traced the line of her jaw, the brushwork so fine that from up close there was nothing but the subtle play of light and shadow. It was only when he held the portrait at arm’s length that it coalesced into a lovely curve. He spent more time than necessary on her mouth, gently brushing away the grime to reveal lips drawn as softly as a breeze, and stopped again when he reached her eyes. Deep-set under the stronger shadow of her brow, they appeared almost black, but working closely with a jeweler’s loupe he gradually discovered the world inside them, colors as vibrant as a galaxy seen through the most powerful telescope, a deep green glowing with streaks of brilliant red and gold. Pressing on, he found a fine temple, and then finally her hair, fawn-colored, which she had gathered up and pinned in back, a touch both casual and intimate.

  Was it chance, he wondered, that had stopped his hand that day in the storage bins, deep under the museum? Like catacombs of art, miles of shelves reached from the floor to the ceiling of the labyrinthine basements of the museum. Crouched on one knee as he flicked through the paintings in one forgotten corner, searching for a panel cataloged as school of Pollaiuolo, he had seen the edge of a small panel way in the back, hidden in the shadows. It was not the right size, and he was running late, but something had stopped him. Like a kitten hiding behind a couch, the square was just beyond the reach of his fingertips, and he had had to stretch out on the cold concrete floor to coax it out.

  Serendipity. What else could it be? In that first second of seeing, as the panel emerged into the harsh fluorescent light, he had felt a flash of recognition as certain as looking in the mirror. He saw himself back at the Louvre, five years before, waiting as the curator opened the box and then as reverently as a priest handling a relic of the true cross passed Matt the drawing. Not paper, but vellum, and heavy—it felt like skin, and there in his hands, Matt beheld the face of beauty. He felt as though he had arrived, as though everything he had learned and done had led him to this moment. Leonardo had drawn her in the most difficult of media, silverpoint, as a study for a Madonna. Or so they said, and Matt could see why, for looking at her he understood as he never thought he could what it meant to be a mother. Gazing at her unseen child, the joy and the sadness—all of it was there in her eyes, in the angle of her head, bent in love and acceptance.

  Standing in the basement at the Metropolitan Museum, Matt hadn’t been able to see anything, just a thickly discolored varnish smeared on a panel. But the vague shadow underneath he knew right away was a head, and the balance of it, the inclination—it was enough. Like seeing someone you thought had gone out of your life, across a crowded street waiting for the light to change; the leap of recognition and hope passed through his hands and the portrait and he knew, without question, that he had found her again.

  Who was she? Matt wondered for the thousandth time. A young mother. How young? No more than twenty, he decided. But young in those days was sixteen. Middle-aged was twenty-one, and most were dead by forty. Lorenzo il Magnifico, the greatest of the Medici, died at forty-two, and it was said at the time that he had lived a full term. He gazed at this woman, at the smooth curve of her cheek, the pensive set of her lips, the strong line of her nose, and imagined her smiling; and then what might amuse her, what her voice might sound like, what she would say. A loose wisp of hair fell by her cheek. He thought, looking at the painting now, in the late-afternoon light, that he could reach out and push it back. It would break her concentration, and she would look up, startled, and then smile. Would she? What would be in her eyes then?

  “Am I intruding?”

  Matt, startled, looked up from the painting. “Not at all,” he replied, sitting up straight in his chair. “Can I help you?”

  “Johannes Klein,” the man said, extending his hand.

  “Dr. Klein,” Matt replied, surprised. This was not the man whom he had seen Petrocelli escorting into the reception at the opening of the studiolo; he had been young, and fastidious to a fault. Just as well-dressed, Klein had an air of being in motion, as though his edges were not as perfectly defined. Strong features and deep lines like ravines etched in desert hills offset his deep-set eyes, so brown as to be almost black, and he wore his silver hair long, brushed back from his high forehead to descend almost to his shoulders.

  “I’m glad to meet you,” Matt said, leaning the portrait at the side of his desk, her face angled away. “The studiolo has become one of my favorite places.” It was no exaggeration; Matt visited the small room almost every day. As he entered it the world he left behind became muted and quickly vanished, leaving the quiet to wash over him as he drifted along from one panel to the next, his solitude almost never disturbed. He loved the stillness as much as anything else about the room. Karen had hit upon an essential truth in what she had said at Charles’s party, he thought. Quiet was what man had lost. Now that nature had been safely vanquished, reduced to an occasional hurricane and the farther reaches of the few wilderness areas left on a shrinking globe, and death confined to hospitals and nursing homes, silence was man’s only remaining enemy. Or so it seemed from the relentless and concerted assault made on it. Sometimes, lost in thought in front of one of the panels, Matt would come to and realize that an hour had disappeared, and as hard as he tried, he would not be able to remember what had been passing through his head or where he had been.

  “I brought this,” Klein said, handing Matt a flat box of stiff paperboard secured by a tape. “Charles said that it might be of some interest to you. You fence,” he added with interest, seeing the long white scabbard leaning against the wall.

  “Yes,” Matt responded.

  “You must join us. We meet once a week at the gym at Columbia.”

  “I’m not very good.”

  “And why do you assume that we are any better?” Klein looked around the office as Matt untied the ribbon that secured the lid like a courier’s dispatch box. Hands clasped behind his back Klein went up to the back wall and looked at the paintings Matt had hung there. “I see what Charles had in mind,” he said.

  “So you were the one we were bidding against,” Matt said, holding the panel he had drawn out of the box. It was a painting of a swallow. Slender wings arched t
o ride the wind, tail pointed, the small bird soared against a clear blue sky.

  “I’m afraid so,” Klein replied. “I hope that I didn’t upset any plans.”

  “How could you have known? The whole idea was to keep our interest a secret. That was the only way we could possibly afford it.” Matt got up and joined Klein by the wall. “It goes right here,” he said, and held the panel up between two of the paintings, covering the enlargement he had taped up of a page from an auction catalog. The swallows rose one by one into a painted sky that changed from the cool blue of morning to the golden haze of afternoon.

  “These are beautiful,” Klein said.

  “Aren’t they? They’re also unique.”

  “How so?”

  “The fact that they’re birds, for one. You don’t find paintings of animals until the late fifteen hundreds. As a portrait, I mean, not cut from a larger picture. These were done a century before. Quattrocento, northern Italian.”

  “That’s interesting,” Klein said. “It was cataloged as late fifteen hundreds, Flemish school.”

  “Auction catalogs are a great resource for tracing provenance,” Matt said, searching for a polite way to put it, “but I don’t know that I would ever turn to them for expertise.”

  “No?”

  “Quite the opposite,” Matt said, abandoning circumspection. So what if he had just met the man? Aside from funding the studiolo, and bringing him this painting, Klein was a scientist. And, anyway, he had asked. “Auction houses have a vested interest in limiting their expertise,” Matt said. “They handle some very good stuff, but the bulk of their trade is in the gray area. And in the art world, the only place you find black and white is in etchings. The rest is each man for himself and God against all. ‘Auction’ is a modern English translation of ‘caveat emptor.’ I don’t think they’re lying, but I do think perhaps they don’t want to know.”

  “Their experts seem to know what they’re talking about.”