Quattrocento Read online

  “Specialists, I would say. Expertise is a different matter entirely. But that’s looking at it from the wrong end. It doesn’t really matter how much they know. It comes down to time. Everybody buying art wants a name. A Rembrandt is ten million, a ‘follower’ or ‘school of’ is under a hundred grand. But that’s the last step a true expert will ever take, putting a name to a work. He might have suspicions, be ninety-nine percent sure, but a definite attribution? No. Only after an exhaustive amount of study and research, and that takes time. With the volume that an auction house handles, they simply can’t afford to do that.”

  “So how do you know this is from the fourteen hundreds? And northern Italy?”

  “Let’s not go overboard. I don’t ‘know,’ in the sense that you know this wall is plaster. There is no ‘Envelope, please.’ The only way you’d really know is if you had a photograph of the artist holding the picture. That’s why paintings of the artist in his studio are so important—all the stuff on the easels and the walls. But in this case the evidence is pretty conclusive.”

  “Such as?” Klein asked. “I’m sorry,” he added. “I don’t mean to monopolize your time.”

  “Not at all,” Matt replied. “I’d be more than glad to show you.” He took the first painting in the series off the wall. “First of all, this is Lombardy poplar,” he said, turning it over and handing it to Klein. “It’s like a weed, you find it all over the Piedmont. It grows fast, it’s easy to work; best of all, it’s cheap as dirt. Like artists. They use the cheapest thing that works, either because they’re poor or they’re frugal or because even when they’re successful they remember what it was like to be poor. It’s soft, so you have to leave it thick, and it warps easily and cracks, and worms love it, but still it works well enough. If you see Lombardy poplar in a panel, it came from northern Italy. Nobody else would bother using it. May I?”

  Matt took the panel and, still holding it reversed, angled it so the light raked across the surface. Rough and unfinished, it was covered with the marks of a gouge. “You see this?” he asked. “Only in Italy. North of the Alps the backs were as beautifully finished as the frames. Planed, varnished, sometimes even branded with the cabinetmaker’s seal. The edges tapered for the frame. Nice work, a real pleasure to see. But this is more often than not what you find in Italy. I guess they just weren’t interested. I mean, why bother if no one was going to see it? Of course, that looseness translates into the painting itself, but that’s another story,” he added, putting the picture back on the wall. He minutely adjusted one corner so that it hung straight.

  “And the date?” Klein asked.

  “Sometime between 1478 and 1483. I’m almost positive it was 1478, but in this kind of thing, discretion is the better part of valor.”

  Klein glanced at him with a slight raise of his eyebrows.

  “It’s the dendro,” Matt said. “No big secret. That’s how I know. Dendrochronology. Dating wood through growth rings. Some trees grow fast, some hardly at all, but what scientists have found is that year by year they all grow at the same relative rate. Time lines have been assembled that go back to the Bronze Age. You measure the growth rings of any particular piece of wood and move it along the time line until you get a match. The last growth ring for this piece of poplar was 1478.”

  Klein thought, eyes slightly narrowed. “But it could have been used any year after that, right?”

  “True,” Matt allowed. “Strictly speaking, all it really tells you is that the painting could not have been done before then. The tree was still in the ground.”

  “So how do you know it was painted in 1478?”

  “As I said, I have no proof positive. It’s the weight of the evidence. You have to put the pictures in context. Poplar wasn’t a valuable wood, the kind that was carefully stored and dried. It was used for everything and what wasn’t used went in the fireplace. So if the last tree ring is 1478, as it is with this picture, the chances are excellent it was used within a year or so. Artists tend to be very consistent in the way they work. This one is 1478. The next one? 1479,” he said, pointing as he moved along the wall. Also this one—it’s the same piece of wood, actually—and then there’s a jump. These last two date from 1483 and 1484. But they’re different, as you can see here.” He took one of them down and handed it to Klein.

  Klein hefted it, glanced at the back. “It isn’t panel,” he said. “It’s canvas.”

  “That’s right,” Matt replied.

  “How can you date it by dendrochronology, then? Canvas doesn’t have tree rings.”

  Matt smiled.

  “Of course,” Klein said, and turned the painting around again. “The stretcher.”

  “Bingo,” Matt said. “I almost didn’t bother to check. I thought it couldn’t possibly be the original. But the wood looked right, and the nails were hand-forged, and there were no other holes in the canvas where it might have been fastened before. It’s Alpine spruce, perfectly split on the quarter for maximum strength. Fourteen eighty-four, right on the money. There are other things, too. It’s the right kind of canvas—linen, not cotton, since cotton was from the New World, and there wasn’t a New World yet. Hand-loomed, too, with a thread count you’d expect to find.”

  “An airtight case,” Klein said.

  “But you see it’s very important,” Matt said. “Because that’s the real reason why these paintings are unique.”

  “How so?” Klein asked.

  Matt pointed at the first three paintings, including Klein’s. “Panel, painted in egg tempera. The other two,” he said, gesturing to his right, “are canvas and oil. Before and after. In one series, the single greatest transition in the history of painting since man first took charcoal to a cave wall.”

  “New technology, you’re saying. Like the internal combustion engine.”

  “Sort of. Tempera is like poster paints—really user-friendly. Easy to make and work with, but limited in its expressivity. The surface remains flat. Brunelleschi’s rediscovery of perspective allowed the Renaissance artists to break the picture plane, but not entirely. It still doesn’t look natural. The colors, the shadows—it’s just not malleable enough as a medium. Oil, though, is completely different. It has a very high index of refraction, which means that pigments become transparent.”

  “The same way that glass disappears in water,” Klein said.

  “Yes, that’s it exactly. You can use glazes, build layers, and the light refracts through the paint to create a truly three-dimensional world. The old way was to draw an outline and fill it in. Botticelli. Leonardo, though, used sfumato—shadow and light—to create his figures. They aren’t imposed on the background like cutouts. They emerge, they’re an organic part.” That was it, Matt thought; that was why he had immediately thought of Titian when he had first seen Klein. There was something of the sfumato about him, the sense of a presence emerging, rather than superimposed. “Leonardo understood how to break through the picture plane. He added another dimension to the world. It was transformational. After seeing his paintings, people saw the world differently. It’s only happened a couple of times in the course of history. You’re a physicist, right?”

  “Essentially, yes. My specialty is acoustics.”

  “There must have been someone in your field who had the same effect. Newton, or Einstein.”

  “If I have you right, you mean a discovery that completely altered our perception of the world.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” Matt replied, pleased that his question had given the scientist pause.

  “Michael Faraday,” Klein said after some consideration. “Interesting, I never would have thought of it that way, but, yes, no doubt, I would have to say it was Michael Faraday.”

  “Sounds vaguely familiar,” Matt said. “Who was he?”

  Klein laughed. “Sic transit gloria mundi,” he said. “The greatest scientist who ever lived, and most people have never even heard his name. He discovered that magnetism, electricity, light, even sound, are all d
ifferent aspects of the same force: vibration. Which, in a way, is only fitting.”

  “How so?”

  “The birth of science was the discovery by Pythagoras that pitch is related to string length. Vibration. The natural world was ruled by order, and it could be expressed mathematically. They constructed an entire cosmology based on it.”

  “The music of the spheres.”

  “Precisely. And once again things come full circle. The latest attempt at a unified theory to explain the way matter operates is string theory. Matter is energy, yes: but the best way to model subatomic particle wave behavior is a vibrating string. From the monochord to string theory. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

  They were interrupted by a knock on the door.

  “Matt, I need to get the file—” Charles, walking in, paused as he saw Klein. “Hello, Johannes,” he said warmly, extending his hand. “What brings you here? The painting. Of course.”

  “I stopped by your office, but you were out, so I took the liberty of introducing myself.”

  “Very nice,” Charles said, looking at the wall. “You were right, Matt, it fits right in. We should have bid higher. Well, there’s still one to go.”

  “There’s another?” Klein asked.

  “Right here,” Matt replied, placing his hand on the wall next to Klein’s panel. The arc of the swallow’s rise took an abrupt jump between the third and fourth painting.

  “I won’t keep you,” Charles said. “I just need that file on the Duccio Diptych.”

  “It’s over there,” Matt replied, nodding toward his desk. “Right on top.” A manila folder lay on a stack of books in the middle of the desk. “Here, let me,” Matt added hastily. The portrait—

  “No bother,” Charles said. “I see it.” He was already at the desk, reaching for the folder. The portrait was right there, her face only inches from the back of his hand. All he had to do was glance over. How could he not see it?

  “Quantum birds,” Klein said.

  “Sorry?” Matt replied, stealing another covert look at Charles. He stood in front of the desk, intently examining something in his hand. Had he picked up the portrait? Was he looking at her right now? The Duccio file was still on the pile of books, untouched.

  With a gesture as graceful as a conductor Klein followed the arc of the bird as it ascended from panel to panel. “A bird in flight is motion, a continuous wave against the sky. There are an infinite number of places you might find it at any given time. But then the painter sees and paints and look what happens: the wave disappears, and what we find instead are these. Separate packets of energy. Five little birds. Like a stone skipped across water. What you are left with is not the stone, but the circles where it landed. The stone is gone, so is the bird. We have five birds and none at all.”

  Matt stared at the swallow, which seemed almost to dart upward in front of his eyes. He saw movement, real movement, out of the corner of his eye. Charles was leaving. Seeing Matt turn his head, he waved the file and was gone.

  “Excuse me,” Matt mumbled to Klein, aware of how rude he was being but unable to stop himself. He hurried over to his desk. Had the portrait been moved? He couldn’t remember. He had set it down when Klein had come in. He thought back, tried to visualize his hand as he had put down the painting, but he had done it so many times he couldn’t remember. She didn’t look disturbed. A slight movement on the top of the desk caught his attention—a sparkling of light, like dust drifting through a sunbeam. The snow globe. Under a glass dome stood a clown, his arms spread wide to acknowledge the thunderous applause of his unseen audience. A violin in one outstretched hand, the bow in the other, bright red stars on his cheeks to match the green ones on his yellow suit, his face was split in a wide grin. Matt relaxed and smiled. Charles always shook the globe when he stopped by. It was his favorite thing in the museum, he had said once. All around the clown a rainbow of colors swirled gently downward.

  Matt picked up the globe, heavy in his hand, the motion stirring the cloud of glitter anew. Surprised, he noticed for the first time that the tiny specks were musical notes. Thousands of notes, sparkling in the light, forming and unforming clouds of music, unplayed, waiting to be heard. Matt set the globe back down on the desk. She hadn’t been disturbed. Charles hadn’t seen her. Matt leaned forward, picked up the portrait. Every time he saw her he was amazed again at how much of her there was to know, revealed in her eyes, the way she looked at her child, the set of her mouth, just the very tilt of her head. Sometimes it made him smile, other times it almost broke his heart: but each and every time he looked he saw her anew, found something about her he hadn’t known.

  Klein. Matt had completely forgotten he was there. He spun around, an apology on his lips, but the room was empty. Klein was gone. Matt went to the door, but there was no sight of him. Hell, he thought, and jamming his hands in his pockets went back inside. He sank down into his chair. Oh, well. Klein had left his swallow, at least. Matt picked up the portrait again. Above him the clown grinned, arms outstretched, knee-deep in drifts of gilded notes.

  chapter 5

  “Oregano. I know it’s here.” Matt shifted the bottles on the shelf back and forth. “Basil, cinnamon, saffron, vanilla bean? Thyme—why do I have two bottles of thyme?”

  “Had we but world enough …” Sally said, looking up from the book she was reading, the table before her spread with maps and travel guides to northern Italy. “Do you want that to be that way?” she asked.

  Matt grabbed the lid of the pot as bubbles cascaded down the side. “Perfect,” he announced, peering in the pot after the cloud of steam, redolent of clams, had subsided.

  “Perfetto, signore,” Sally said. “Wait.” She thumbed through the phrase book. “A che oro mangiamo sta sera?”

  “Oro?” Matt asked. “Oro di mare. Gold of the sea,” he translated, seeing her puzzled expression.

  Sally studied the book. “Ora,” she corrected herself. “Che ora.”

  “Ah, bene,” Matt said. “Depende, signora, ha indire voglia di mangiare,” he said in a rapid-fire staccato.

  “Oui,” Sally replied with a blank look. “I mean, sì. Oh, come on!” she complained, and then went back to the notebook, dog-eared and stained, that she had been perusing. “Who’s Ginevra?” she asked.

  “Who?” Matt asked, intent on pulling a clam from its shell. “Ouch! That’s hot.”

  “Ginevra,” she repeated. “In your journal. You don’t remember her? She wrote you a poem.”

  “Ah, Ginevra. A beautiful woman. Married, but not to the man she loved.”

  “She loved you.”

  “Me? Not quite.”

  “She wrote you a poem.”

  “ ‘Chieggio merzede e sono alpestre tygre,’ ” Matt recited. “Lovely, isn’t it? ‘I am a mountain lion, and I beg for mercy.’ Don’t you think, sometimes, that it’s the capriciousness of fate that’s the cruelest thing of all? It’s not living or dying but ending up in Hackensack working for the phone company that’s so hard to understand. Ginevra was a poet, but of everything she wrote, all that survives is that one line.”

  “Maybe it was all that was worth remembering. Don’t give me that look. I don’t mean it in a negative way at all. It’s quite an achievement, isn’t it? One perfect line that lives in your mind—that’s better than most poets can even dream of. Even if they left a shelf of books. Think of how much you have read and forgotten. Things that amazed you, that changed your life. How much do you remember? Go on, tell me a line from Chaucer. Or Wordsworth, or Longfellow. Baudelaire, Pushkin, anyone. Shakespeare.”

  “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …”

  “All right, not Shakespeare. But anyone else. What is poetry but distillation? She reduced a person, an entire story, a relationship, to just one line. ‘I am a mountain lion, and I beg for mercy.’ It’s beautiful. I think she was in love with you.”

  “I was out of her league, I’m afraid. She had bigger fish to fry.”

  “
What could be better than a young American art student with a trust fund?”

  “Lorenzo de’ Medici, for one.”

  “Lorenzo—” Sally began. “Very funny.”

  “They were reputed to be lovers.”

  “Do you need any help?”

  “I wouldn’t want to put you in harm’s way,” Matt replied, brandishing the knife that had been keeping up a steady drumbeat against the cutting board as he diced the mounded clams. “Here,” he said, finding one that had escaped, and leaned over the counter, just reaching Sally’s outstretched fingers with his own.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “The Sistine Chapel,” he replied. “You know, God and Adam, hands almost touching. How postmodern can you get? A clam instead of the spark of life.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’d rather have you and a clam any day.”

  “Mmmm, this is good.”

  “Do you remember the Leonardo we saw down in D.C.? The only painting of his outside Europe?”

  “Yes, I remember. What about it?”

  “Ginevra de’ Benci. That was her.”

  “Of course!” Sally exclaimed. “I knew I’d heard the name before Ginevra.”

  “And I thought you weren’t paying attention.”

  “I was distracted by your ass.”

  “Yeah, right. I think it was the phone call you were on.”

  “Look, we covered that ground, Matt,” Sally said. “All right? You agreed. Without the phone I never would have been able to be there in the first place. Right?”

  “Hey. It was a joke, okay? It’s modern life.”

  “There was something catlike about her,” Sally commented, her attention back on the notebook. “But not a lion, more like an Abyssinian. ‘The light, as the sun colors the western sky above the roofs across the Arno. I am seduced, overcome by the ineffable,’ ” she read aloud. “Overcome by the een-effa-balle,” she repeated, puzzled. “What’s that Italian for? Car exhaust?”

  “I was young,” Matt said. “Give me a break. I’d like to see your journal from those carefree college days.”