The Last Mona Lisa

by Jonathan Santlofer

  I moved closer. The shadowy face of a bearded man slid across the glass, and I shivered. It took me a minute to realize the reflection was my own. A deep breath and I stepped back.

  “It’s a shame to cover the painting with glass,” I said as if Simone’s words to Vincent had been whispered in my ear.

  “But we must!” the curator said. “A deranged man once tossed acid in her face! Another threw a rock! Imagine, to do such vile things.”

  I nodded and inched closer. The woman before me seemed more than a painting, beautiful, pensive, practically breathing. If it was one of Chaudron’s forgeries, it was a brilliant one.

  I asked if he could turn on the lights, but Gingembre told me to wait until my eyes adjusted, that the natural light would be better, and he was right, even if his tone was condescending. After a minute, I began to see the subtleties in the painted flesh and the soft folds of the drapery more clearly.

  Then we started bantering, or rather competing over who knew more facts about the painting—the sitter’s name, the fact that the picture had likely been cut down, how the colors darkened and oxidized, that Mona Lisa once had eyebrows, which had faded over time, that Leonardo had worked on it for years and kept it with him until his death.

  “Her smile is a kind of reference to her name, Giocondo, which means ‘happy’ in Italian,” Gingembre said, his tight lips ticking a split-second smile. “And you know it was not such a famous painting until the mid-nineteenth century when the symbolist painters began to extol its virtue.”

  I could not resist adding, “And the 1911 theft helped to raise its status too. Let’s not forget that.”

  The curator sniffed. “Perhaps, but to have the painting stolen, and have it gone for two years!”

  “I’m sure the painting was greatly missed.”

  “No one is more aware of the painting’s power to attract crowds than myself! The Louvre has the highest attendance of any museum in the world. Last year, we had over ten million visitors, and every one of them came to this very spot to gaze upon Leonardo’s wondrous painting.”

  I said I was impressed, and I was.

  He told me they’d just cleaned and painted the gallery for the five-hundred-year anniversary celebration of Leonardo’s death. It gave me an opening, and I asked when the painting itself had last been cleaned.

  “The painting is checked for signs of deterioration often,” he said, “but when cleaning an old painting, there is always danger one may strip away the good with the bad, so it is kept to a minimum.”

  “Was there any repainting after the acid attack?” I asked.

  He flinched. “Yes, but nothing one can detect with the naked eye.”

  “Where, exactly?”

  “I have no idea. That would have been done long before my time at the Louvre.”

  I did not believe him. Surely, the curator of Renaissance painting would know exactly which parts of the museum’s most famous painting had been retouched and where. I pushed further, asking whether there had been any repainting after the 1911 theft.

  “Some scratches were filled in with watercolor,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “But that too was a long time ago, so I could not tell you where.”

  Maybe not, but he had just told me something important: that the painting had been retouched with watercolor, which could be easily removed without any damage to the oil painting’s surface. Plus, it could hide anything, including whatever Chaudron might have added to identify his forgeries.

  “Is this what you are writing about, the condition of the painting?” he asked. “Every year, someone comes to the Louvre to try and disparage the condition, even the validity of the Mona Lisa. Absurd.”

  I told him no, that I just wanted to see it for teaching purposes, and he gave me a look, head tilted, and lips pursed, clearly trying to assess whether or not I was telling the truth. He was about to say something when a young woman entered the gallery.

  “Il y a un appel pour vous, Monsieur Gingembre?”

  He told her he would be there in a minute, then turned to me. “I must take this call. You have seen enough, yes?”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t even looked at the other paintings in the room.”

  Gingembre heaved a sigh and turned toward the young woman. “Marie, see if Gustave is awake and bring him here, and ask Bertrand as well.”

  A few minutes later, two guards appeared, one young and burly, the other old and gray.

  “Méfiez-vous de lui!” Gingembre said to them.

  “I’m sure they will watch me,” I said.

  The curator looked surprised and annoyed that I had understood.

  “I can only spare the guards for a half hour,” he said, lingering at the edge of the gallery, obviously torn about leaving me with the museum’s greatest work of art, then finally turned to go.

  The guards assumed places on either side of the painting, and I took a step closer, my reflection in the glass so like my great-grandfather’s it was startling. I leaned to the side to avoid the glare and study the misty mountains and lakes—the product of Leonardo’s famous sfumato, literally “turned to vapor,” which the artist had produced with thin glazes of linseed oil and pigment painted over and over until edges blurred and the picture took on its otherworldly haze.

  What else was veiled? Could Chaudron’s markings have turned to vapor over the years? I slid the magnifying glass from my pocket, and both guards practically pounced.

  “Monsieur!”

  “I’m not going to touch it,” I said. “I just want to study the brushwork.”

  The guards moved in close as I brought the magnifier within a few inches of the painting’s glass and slowly moved it across the surface—every crack and fissure enlarged, strands of Lisa del Giocondo’s hair like rivers and gullies.

  “Que cherchez-vous?” the older guard asked.

  “Nothing special,” I said, still moving the magnifier inch by inch. In fact, I had no idea what I was looking for—something covered by watercolor or something that had faded away?

  The museum was hot and airless, and I felt flushed, the magnifying glass shaking in my hand. “Did you hear that?” I asked the guards.

  “Quoi?”

  “Nothing,” I said, though I could have sworn I’d heard a baby cry, then the sound of a hammer or pliers wrenching something apart. “Are there carpenters working today?”

  The guards said no.

  I gazed at the painting. A flush of heat rippled my body. A moment later, my vision blurred, and the room began to spin.

  “Monsieur, ça va?” the old guard asked, the younger one moving quickly, a hand at my back.

  I wiped sweat off my brow and tried to find my balance as I began to sway and tip.

  Outside, I gulped in air as if a gag had been pulled from my mouth. The guard had caught me before I fell but I was still feeling off-kilter. I needed a cup of coffee, something to settle my nerves. Though it wasn’t coffee I wanted, I knew that. I fished the bag of Jolly Ranchers out of my pocket, only two left. Popped both of the sweet alcohol substitutes into my mouth. The candy helped my blood sugar but not my frustration.

  Had I really expected to find a clue in the painting?

  I glanced back at the Louvre, the graveyard, quiet and locked up with its great art and all the stories behind them.

  Surely, over the years, dozens of conservators had inspected the famous painting after my great-grandfather had returned it. If there had been something off, wouldn’t they have found it, reported it?

  Or would they?

  I considered the question. If someone had reported an irregularity in the painting, would the museum have divulged it? As the curator had just pointed out, the painting was the Louvre’s star attraction. Could they afford to admit it was a forgery? Would millions of tourists line up to see a copy? It was all about authenticity,
wasn’t it? If the painting was a forgery, people might just as well stay home and check out the image on their computers.

  54

  He sees the red dot move out of the Louvre, but he is not ready to leave the café, moments of comfort and relaxation such a rarity. He takes a bite of croissant, a sip of coffee, and sits back. Why rush? He can watch where the American is going from here. He will catch up to him later, find out what he has learned at the museum, and hopefully get the answers they are both looking for.

  55

  I could not stop thinking about the Mona Lisa, the way it had drawn me in, overwhelmed me. It stayed in my mind as I walked through the Marais, stopped at the Place des Vosges, one of the oldest squares in Paris and considered one of the most beautiful with its large garden, central fountain, and buildings of redbrick inlaid with strips of stone. A place I’d like to live though could never afford. I had a momentary fantasy of me and Alex in one of these gorgeous homes, the idea that this woman who kept me almost as off-balance as I’d just felt in the Louvre would one day share a house with me improbable if not impossible, and yet I enjoyed the daydream.

  Still feeling a bit shaky, I ducked into a tabac, perused the candy, chose something called Arlequin, in a garish multicolored bag. The hard candies were individually wrapped, which led me to believe they’d be more upscale than their artificial tutti-frutti supersweet flavor turned out to be.

  I’d eaten three by the time I found 67 rue de Perche, an old three-story townhouse. I raised a bronze knocker in the shape of a lion’s head and let it fall back.

  The man who opened the door was wearing a blue satin robe, in his late forties, tall and striking. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” he asked, his tone clipped and cool.

  “Étienne Chaudron?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “I’m Luke Perrone. We spoke on the phone—”

  He took a minute to figure out who I was, and when he did, he didn’t look happy. “I was perfectly clear that I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Yes, but I was in Paris and…” I quickly spoke the lines I’d rehearsed. “I’ve been reading Vincenzo Peruggia’s diary, and your great-uncle, Yves, plays a major part in it. I have something important to discuss with you.”

  “And what could that possibly be?”

  “May I come in? I promise not to take much of your time.”

  He opened the door reluctantly, and I followed him through a foyer with a decorative relief of unfurling ribbons just below the ceiling, obviously old, some of the plasterwork cracking, but still lovely. Several suitcases were lined up, and I asked if he was going away.

  “A short vacation—the south of France,” he said, leading me past a winding wooden staircase with a beautifully curved banister into a small sitting room with a marble fireplace, a crystal chandelier, built-in bookcases, and two comfy leather sofas. He indicated I should sit, though he remained standing, so I stood too.

  “What is it you have to say that is so important?”

  “I believe Yves Chaudron was in league with my great-grandfather, Vincenzo Peruggia, to steal the Mona Lisa.”

  “And?”

  “That doesn’t surprise you?”

  “I have heard it before, many times.”

  “Peruggia’s diary clearly states that your great-uncle painted several versions of the Mona Lisa during its two-year absence from the Louvre.”

  He sighed. “Every year, I hear another story about my infamous great-uncle and the forgeries he supposedly made, but there is never any proof they were made by my great-uncle’s hand.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m looking for—proof. A way to distinguish your great-uncle’s forgeries.”

  Étienne Chaudron raked a hand through his hair and took a breath. “Even if the forgeries did exist, there would be no way to prove it.”

  “According to the journal, your great-uncle switched paintings on Peruggia, so it was one of his forgeries that was returned to the Louvre.”

  “Monsieur Perrone…” Chaudron shook his head and sighed again. “If that were true, it would be a marvelous hoax, but I have no idea about such a thing.”

  “Why would Peruggia make it up?”

  “You seriously ask such a question about the man who stole the world’s most famous painting? Have you not considered qu’il était fou?”

  “That he was crazy? Yes, I have considered it, but I’ve found nothing in his journal to suggest that he was.” I handed him the page I had torn out of the journal.

  “A page from Peruggia’s diary,” he said. “You offer this as proof?”

  A moment to realize I had not said where the page was from, and yet he had identified it.

  “My Italian is quite poor,” he said, though he skimmed the page before handing it back to me. “And?”

  “And I was hoping you might know what the rest of it said, what it was your great-uncle put in his paintings to distinguish them from the original.”

  “I have no idea,” he said, lips tightly compressed as if he were trying to hold words in. “Now, you will excuse me, but I have things I must attend to.”

  I folded the page back into my breast pocket. I felt he knew more than he let on and tried to think of what to say, to ask, something that would get him to cooperate. “I’m thinking of writing about this.”

  “About what?”

  “The theft—and your great-uncle’s involvement in making the forgeries.”

  “I would advise against that,” he said, more cautionary than threat, then led me back to the foyer.

  I stopped a moment to look through an archway into the living room, most of the furniture covered with sheets, not the sort of thing one did for a short vacation. Then I spotted a painting. “Is that a Vermeer?” I asked and moved in for a closer look before he could stop me. The painting depicted a woman playing piano, another woman holding a letter, a black-and-white-checkered floor like a series of diamonds, all suffused with the famous Vermeer light. “Is this your great-uncle’s work?”

  “I must ask you to leave,” Chaudron said, his hand on my back.

  Then it clicked. I knew the painting. It had once hung in Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. A painting—along with twelve others—that had been stolen in 1990, an unsolved crime that still baffled the authorities. Was this an Yves Chaudron forgery, or could it possibly be the original?

  “It’s remarkable,” I said.

  “Yes, yes,” Chaudron said impatiently. “It is my great-uncle’s. You can see he had a meticulous hand.”

  I did. If it was a copy, I no longer had any doubt that Yves Chaudron was capable of producing a perfect forgery of just about anything. Then I realized Yves Chaudron had died long before the Gardner Museum theft, so when had he seen the painting to copy it so perfectly? I made a note to find out where the painting had been before it had made its way to the Gardner.

  “How did you get it?” I asked.

  A pause, another sigh. “It was among his things when he died. He had no children, so everything went to my older sister. Now I must ask you—”

  “And your sister—”

  “Is dead.”

  “I’m sorry. So your great-uncle’s effects came to you?”

  “Yes. This painting, some papers—” He stopped talking, sucking in his lower lip like a child who had accidentally said the wrong thing.

  “Papers?” I asked.

  Chaudron said nothing, again steering me toward the front door. His hand was at my back when someone called out, “Bonjour!” A pretty young woman at the top of the staircase, tugging the sash of her silky robe tighter. “Je ne savais pas que nous avons de la compagnie.”

  “He was just leaving,” Chaudron said.

  “Vous êtes américain?” she asked.

  “Guilty,” I said.

  “You are not here about that, are y
ou?” She tilted her chin toward the Vermeer. “C’est un faux, a fake, you know. Étienne’s great-grandfather—”

  “Great-uncle—” said Chaudron.

  “Cela n’a pas d’importance,” she said, then slid easily into the American idiom: “Whatever.”

  “Monsieur Perrone was just leaving,” he said again, opening the door.

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Chaudron.”

  “Mrs. Chaudron?” The young woman giggled. “Pas de tout!”

  “Have a nice trip to the south of France,” I said.

  “Quoi?” the young woman looked perplexed. “No. Mexique.” She did a pirouette and disappeared down the upstairs hall. A moment later, there was music blasting.

  “I thought you said the south of France.”

  “You were mistaken,” Étienne Chaudron said and ushered me through the front door. It closed behind me with a thud.

  56

  A dark-haired young woman with a mournful face out of a Modigliani painting sat at a desk at Pelletier Editions. I introduced myself and asked if she knew my friend and fellow rare-book collector Antonio Guggliermo.

  “I have not been here long,” she said.

  I showed her the receipt I had found for a journal Guggliermo had purchased at her store.

  She studied it a moment, seemed to be fighting tears as she perused a drawer of folders. She plucked one out labeled Guggliermo and handed it to me. “You may look through it yourself.”

  I skimmed through about a dozen receipts, all for books sold to Guggliermo, but nothing for a journal.

  “There should be copies of everything,” she said.

  I told her I did not see a receipt for what I was looking for, and she said I could take the folder, that the shop would soon be closing, and she would no longer need the receipts.

  “Closing?”

  “Yes. For good. It belonged to my father, and I’m afraid he has…died.”

  I said I was sorry and asked when.

  “About…two months ago.”