Continua così, avanti così, I said to myself. Stay the course, go back to your reading.
I started up the library stairs, then turned and looked through the alley to the low stone stairs and the old door to the dormitory, still cordoned off with police tape, and wondered if there had been a break-in. Was I the only one to put the two things together? A broken door. A dead monk.
38
Weeks passed. The night finally came.
I took the painting from the trunk. Wrapped it tightly in Simone’s scarf. Hid it under my jacket. And set off.
It was late and had been raining for days. The sewers had overflowed. There were rats in the streets. Everywhere. Underfoot and foraging for food. Fat and disgusting. The Seine was a frightening sight. Yellow torrents flush with the banks. Threatening to spill. Already there was talk of flooded cellars. Building foundations weakened. Even those of the Eiffel Tower! I imagined the lower-level carpentry shop of the Louvre. Pictured artworks floating in dirty river water.
The meeting was on the far side of Père-Lachaise Cemetery. I tramped through the mud past graves and monuments. Everything covered in mist and fog. Pulled my jacket tighter to protect the painting.
I finally reached the other side and ducked under the remains of an old wall. Emerged on the other side of the cemetery. I was cold and shivering but relieved to be among the living.
It did not take long to find the art forger’s building. The foyer reeked of damp and mold. The stairwell of turpentine. I trudged to the top floor. Knocked on the door four times. Paused. Knocked twice. Our prearranged signal.
Yves Chaudron opened the door. It was the first time I had met him. A man of middle age and middle height though his features were fine. Blue eyes enlarged by spectacles and rimmed red from strain.
The front room of the apartment was in total disarray. Books and clothes on chairs or dropped on the floor. Crumpled newspapers. The turpentine odor was stronger here but mixed with something rotten. Chaudron’s shirt was dirty. His smock slick with paint. I glanced into his kitchen. Dishes stacked and encrusted with food. Roaches everywhere.
Chaudron was anxious to get his hands on the painting but I made him wait. We both waited. For Valfiero. Who was late.
Soon the art forger grew impatient. He said he could wait no longer. He was bursting to see the painting.
And I gave in.
He swept papers off a table. Propped the painting up. Stood gazing at it for a long time. Said it would be his greatest challenge and greatest achievement. Then he scooped the painting up and led the way into his studio.
On the walls were several paintings in progress. A small Corot landscape of a country scene with blue sky and gray clouds. I asked Chaudron how he had done it. He explained that like any good student he had simply set up his easel in the museum and made a copy!
There were two more paintings side by side. One was finished. The other in a half state of completion. I recognized the artist was Jean-Dominique Ingres. I looked from the original to the half-finished copy. It was remarkable. Chaudron said the collector intended to donate the original to a museum and wanted a copy for himself. Then he laughed. Said perhaps it was the other way around. But he did not care.
He boasted of his talent. I could feel his pride slip over me like unctuous slime. Knew he was waiting for a compliment. But I said nothing.
I listened to him talk of his artistic training and how he had dropped out of the art academy because his instructors could teach him nothing.
He said he had always been told he had a great hand. The greatest of any artist. And yet I detected some disappointment when he said it. Perhaps he felt that was all he possessed. He said he had once dreamed of becoming the greatest artist in Europe and I almost felt sorry for him. But then he claimed he was indeed the greatest artist in Europe!
I might have challenged him. But it was then that Valfiero arrived. Breathless from climbing the stairs and leaning on his cane. He stopped and stared at the Mona Lisa for a great while. His eyes hungry with greed. He rubbed his spidery fingers together and talked of his plan. Chaudron would makes copies. He would sell them. It was that simple. The paintings would fetch a fortune. And each one would be sold as the original! He said we would all become rich.
But all I wanted was enough money to get my son back.
I observed the greedy faces of these two men and knew I could not trust them. But I had done their bidding and was now part of their scheme. I had no choice but to go along. I had made a pact with the devil. And for that I would pay the devil’s price.
39
New York City
The room felt warmer than usual, and for a moment, the collector worried. Changes in temperature could be dangerous to canvas and wood, which expanded and contracted, causing paint to crack. He checked the thermostat: sixty-eight degrees, as it should be. Maybe it was him; his body temperature seemed to be running high these days.
He had been drinking a rare Louis Latour Château Corton Grancey Grand Cru red while admiring his recent acquisition, a Matisse drawing removed from a small private museum on the French Riviera, a remarkable theft and a coup, for which he’d paid extra. His cell phone vibrated and he answered, irritated by interruption.
“What is it?”
“The American was tracked to the Italian’s home.”
“You have already told me that.”
“Did you want me to follow up?”
“In what way?”
“Any way you would like.”
The collector considered this. No, he did not want the American apprehended, not until he got the information he needed. Then he would be expendable. Right now, it was better to do nothing. See what the American discovered and let him lead them to the answer the collector was looking for.
“Continue to watch him,” he said. “Anyone he meets. Anywhere he goes.”
“Yes, of course. Don’t worry.”
This struck the collector as funny. He never worried. And he’d made up his mind: once this job was completed, he would have the American terminated.
He gazed at the small portrait, a Blue Period Picasso, a minor variation of the artist’s more famous work, The Old Guitarist, something he should have given up long ago but had held on to for sentimental reasons. He pictured the painting in the Madison Avenue gallery where he had first seen it and how much he’d admired it. The timing was perfect, having just established his own fund and everyone telling him that a man of his stature should own serious art, about which he knew nothing, his taste adolescent, not yet honed.
It was a surprise though, his immediate love of art. The tug he had felt, this sudden need to own expensive things, the Picasso his first serious buy, just under a million, a lot of money at the time, but he wrote the check without hesitation.
It wasn’t until later that he’d realized there were other, more interesting ways to acquire art.
“Are you there?” The man’s voice a static whine through the cell phone. “Is something wrong?”
“Wrong?” the collector asked, thinking this man knew more than he should, that he too would have to go. “No,” he said again, making his tone as breezy as possible. “Nothing at all.”
40
When I finally saw Chaudron’s Mona Lisa forgeries I had to admit that they were brilliant.
The man had a perverse genius for mimicry that was without equal. He had studied and replicated all the formulas. The ratio of sun-thickened linseed oil to Venice turpentine that Leonardo would have used back in 1503. He had purchased the same kind of wood Leonardo had used. Had cut each panel to size. Sanded and aged them with poppyseed oil. Cooked up rabbit-skin glue and coated the wood to protect it from rot. Then a layer of pure lead white. Then he covered them with damar varnish made from crystals he had purchased at auction from the workshop of a minor sixteenth-century artist. It was the technique used by al
l artists of the time.
Chaudron had gone so far as to purchase newly invented X-ray images from a dubious Louvre conservation worker. A man I knew and would never have suspected! These showed exactly what Leonardo had painted under the finished portrait. All the false starts. The ghosts. The pentimenti. Chaudron knew his forgeries would be examined under a microscope and the latest infrared X-ray. This hidden imagery would make it appear that each forgery was indeed authentic. He made certain his paintings would pass every scientific investigation.
He allowed these ghosts and false starts to dry. Then he painted in the thinnest possible layers. Used a feathering brush of the finest sable to smooth the paint. Layered glaze upon delicate glaze made up of just a hint of pure ground pigment diluted with oil and varnish to produce the soft misty atmosphere that infused the master Leonardo’s painting with the look of a dream.
Chaudron proudly showed me the backs of the panels where he had duplicated every mark and every smudge. And for the pièce de résistance he had replicated the stamp of the Louvre Museum itself!
But that was not all. He had set the finished paintings in front of whirring fans and laid them near fires. He drew wicks of candles across their surfaces to age them. Added extra coats of varnish he knew would intentionally crack. All this had taken several months of his labor.
But I had been waiting nearly two years.
Now the six forgeries were ready.
It was Valfiero’s turn to offer them for sale. He would do this on the black market. A network as convoluted and filthy as the sewers of Paris. A network Valfiero knew well as he was familiar with every unscrupulous art dealer and art collector in the city and beyond. He went about selling the paintings one by one. And each collector believed he was buying the actual Mona Lisa!
When Valfiero finished selling the forgeries he returned the original to me.
He told me it was my payment. Worth millions.
And I believed him.
41
For years, I had read about this elusive pair, but they were real now, exactly as some had theorized—Chaudron making copies, Valfiero selling them—but never proved. Vincent’s words had brought them to life. But I needed to know if what he had written was true. Were there a half-dozen forged Mona Lisa paintings out there somewhere?
A year ago, I had discovered Yves Chaudron’s only living relative, a nephew, Étienne Chaudron, who lived in Paris. I had done some digging, emailed him, and had gotten a terse reply: I cannot tell you anything about my great-uncle because I never met him.
Now I called.
“Étienne Chaudron?”
“Qui est-ce?”
“Luke Perrone,” I said and reminded him of our previous exchange. “Nous avons eu un échange de courier au sujet de votre grand-oncle, Yves.”
“I speak English,” he said, brusque, curt.
“I’m in Florence, but I have business in Paris,” I lied. “I hoped we could meet.”
“I told you before that I did not know my great-uncle.”
“I understand, but there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”
“There is nothing to discuss.”
I was about to tell him how the forgeries made by his great-uncle Yves were chronicled in Vincent’s journal, but he had already hung up.
“Are there other cartons of Professor Guggliermo’s papers?” I asked Chiara when I arrived at the library later that day.
I had awakened with the thought that if Guggliermo had been planning to write something about the journal there could be notes about it.
“Di che tipo?” she asked.
“What kind? Oh, notes, papers, that’s all.” I strained for nonchalance.
“There is one box of…how you say…note varie, not yet put in category. I will find for you, after I finish this.” She indicated a stack of index cards.
I wanted to shout Do it now! but smiled and said, “Grazie,” then went into the courtyard to walk off my impatience.
One of the monks was burning leaves, gray smoke coiling into low clouds as if creating them. I circled the courtyard, wondering if Brother Francesco had seen something or someone he shouldn’t have. I peered through the dark alleyway. The police tape in front of the dormitory door was no longer there—and nobody was waiting by the stone stairs.
Chiara had Guggliermo’s carton of note varie waiting, everything as neat and orderly as it had been in the other carton, each folder carefully labeled: Essays and Notes for Essays, School Assignments, Receipts and Sales for Books. In each folder were others, subdivided into more specific binders.
I started with Essays and Notes for Essays, all pertaining to art historical subjects and nothing about the journal. Nothing in School Assignments either. I doubted there would be anything in Receipts and Sales for Books, but it was here I had another idea that had me going through bills and receipts for over an hour, compiling a list of about forty rare-book dealers that Antonio Guggliermo had dealt with on a regular basis. I then cross-checked the receipts to see who might have sold any kind of notebook, diary, or journal. There were nine possibilities.
Sitting at a nearby café, laptop open, an espresso for energy, I found the nine book dealers’ websites and sent a general email to all of them. Within minutes, I received three responses from dealers who said they had never sold any kind of journal or diary that matched my description—though each offered to look for the kind of journal I’d described if I wanted to buy it. I politely declined and crossed them off the list. Two more responses, neither of which had sold the kind of journal I had described.
I ordered another espresso, and by the time I’d finished it, a book dealer in Berlin emailed to say he had sold Guggliermo an old journal. I called. Though the dealer confirmed the cover had been blue and the paper buff, it turned out to be a nineteenth-century notepad, never used and with no writing in it at all.
I was starting to lose faith, my brilliant idea not so brilliant. Only three of the nine booksellers had not yet replied. I couldn’t wait for more emails, and called the first, Pelletier Editions, in Paris. There was no answer, no voicemail. The second, Scriptorium, in Mantua, sounded like something out of a horror movie and had a number no longer in service. The last, Libreria Antiquaria di Firenze, didn’t answer, but I noted the Florence address, put it into my Google Maps, and saw that it was just on the other side of the Arno River.
It was heading into riposo, the midday break, and the store might be closed, but revved up on caffeine, I decided to take a chance. What did I have to lose?
42
The Ponte Vecchio, the aptly named old bridge, was not covered, though it felt like it with so many awnings from the stalls and shops, all selling jewelry, blocking out the light and river views. There were lots of tourists, the most I’d seen so far, people perusing necklaces and bracelets, couples staring into stall windows or haggling with owners, young women with their arms outstretched, trying on diamond rings. Everywhere I looked were couples. For the first time, I missed my friends back home, and not for the first time, I missed Alex. I still had no idea how she felt about me, about us, or where we were going—if anywhere. A young couple passed, locked in a kiss, and I had to stop myself from scowling.
The center of the bridge was open with beautiful views of the Arno, the river lined with houses in perfectly muted earth tones, but the sky had darkened, and by the time I headed off the bridge, it had started to rain. Oltrarno, as it was called, literally “other side of the Arno,” was Florence’s south bank and more bohemian, or so I’d been told. It was raining harder now, and I huddled under a store awning to check the bookseller’s address in my GPS, then found a store selling cheap umbrellas. The streets felt different from the ones on the other side of the river, grittier and more working class, some wide, others narrow and medieval looking, and right now, mostly deserted. I moved fast, trying and failing to outrun the rain, and cam
e to an open area just across from a huge, sprawling three-story stone building, red banners hanging from the second-floor announcing exhibitions: the Palazzo Pitti, better known as the Pitti Palace, famous for its eclectic art collection. Any other time, I’d have gone in, but I was on a mission.
The streets got smaller and narrower, and there did not appear to be any gentrification here, several buildings a mess of cracked stone and badly peeling paint, and no sidewalks at all, water rising from the steady rain and sloshing onto my ankle-high boots. The uneven cobblestones made the streets hard to navigate and slippery. I was relieved when the end of the street opened into a large though empty square.
The rain was coming down even harder now, my cheap umbrella not doing much. I ducked inside the nearest building, one with a nondescript stone facade, and shook myself off like a dog. It took a moment to see it was a church, Santa Maria del Carmine. The name rang a bell, but I wasn’t sure why until I saw the sign for the Brancacci Chapel—a place that housed one of the most famous Renaissance painting cycles, one I had taught for years and loved. It had been high on the list of art I wanted to see in Florence, just one more place I had forgotten about.
I paid my ten-euro entrance fee, headed up a short flight of stairs, and emerged in what I would only describe as heaven. The fresco cycle filled the small chapel, dazzling even from a distance. A few steps up and through an open sculpted gate of gray-white marble and the cycle wrapped around me like old-time CinemaScope: two levels of paintings illustrating the life of Saint Peter, fully human figures with faces so expressively painted they appeared to be speaking, color that reflected the hues of Florence, shades of sienna and ochre, pale rose and lush Indian reds against emerald greens and soft blues, everything about the fresco cycle more beautiful and moving than I had imagined.
The artist was Masaccio, a Renaissance rock star dead at twenty-seven, that dangerous age for any great rock star. I knew he had only painted a few of the fresco scenes in the cycle, but the most famous ones, and they stood out from the others.
The Last Mona Lisa Page 13
