Page 56 of An Inside Job
“Imagine for a moment that he had come to the Vatican for a different reason. You might well be investigating the assassination of a pope.”
“Not for the first time,” replied Gabriel. “But back to the matter at hand.”
“The Leonardo?”
Gabriel nodded.
“What do you suppose they intend to do with it?”
“Sell it to the highest bidder.”
“If that happens, it will disappear forever.”
“Which is why we need to recover it as quickly as possible.”
Ferrari held up the sketch. “I’d like to show this to some of my informants in Naples.”
“Why would you want to do a thing like that?”
“Find the thief, find the painting.”
“None of your informants will betray the Camorra, Cesare. Not unless they have a death wish.”
“What would you suggest?”
“We forget about the thief and patiently bide our time until the painting resurfaces.”
“And then what?”
Gabriel smiled. “We steal it back.”
Part Two
Contrapposto
21
Dorsoduro
At some point—perhaps in 1496, though the exact date is not known—the prior from Santa Maria delle Grazie lost all patience with the Florentine artist who had been commissioned to paint a mural of the Last Supper on the wall of the convent’s refectory. The project was running hopelessly behind schedule, and the Florentine, as usual, was solely to blame. Some days he would apply a single brushstroke to the work and then abruptly depart. Other days he would appear not at all. The prior, having nowhere else to turn, appealed to the ruler of Milan, Duke Ludovico Sforza, who summoned the Florentine for a meeting. What followed was a lengthy lecture, painter to patron, on the nature of creativity. “Men of lofty genius,” the artist declared, “sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.”
There were days, too, when the Florentine mounted his scaffolding at dawn and remained there, brush in hand, forsaking food and drink, until sunset. Gabriel, after his return to Venice, adhered to a similar schedule, though unlike the Florentine, who allowed spectators to watch him at work, he remained hidden from view behindhis tarpaulin shroud. It was not a brush he wielded but hand-fashioned swabs dipped in foul-smelling solvent. Chiara, during an inspection visit to the basilica, pleaded with him yet again to wear a protective mask while he worked. Smiling, he dropped a soiled wad of cotton wool onto his platform and suggested she take her complaints to the doge.
“But I shouldn’t expect a favorable ruling, Dottoressa Zolli. You see, His Serenity the Doge agrees with me that masks are uncomfortable and will delay the completion of my commission.”
His smartphone, a contraption even the Florentine never fathomed, was distraction enough, for it shivered each time the name Giorgio Montefiore appeared in print anywhere on the Internet, be it in a reputable publication or in the truthless precincts of social media. In death, the Leonardist was eulogized in Olympian terms. “A monumental intellect,” declared the president of the Louvre. “Irreplaceable,” seconded the director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, a noted scholar of Leonardo himself. Still, there was uncomfortable speculation, some of it whispered, as to the motive behind Montefiore’s execution-style murder. The authorities in Florence suggested it was robbery, though they declined to say whether anything in Montefiore’s villa was missing.
The intense media coverage largely overshadowed a statement from the regional headquarters of the Carabinieri in Venice regarding the identity of the woman whose body had been found floating in the waters near the church of San Giorgio Maggiore. Hours later, police in Britain revealed that she had recently completed an apprenticeship at the conservation lab at the Vatican Museums. The Vatican Press Office expressed the profound sorrow of the Holy See and offered condolences to the family, though it made no mention of a missing walnut panel measuring 78 by 56 centimeters. Some inthe press wondered whether the two art world deaths, one in Venice, the other in Florence, might be related. General Cesare Ferrari, the highly regarded commander of the Art Squad, declared unequivocally that they were not.
In truth, there were numerous connections, including the identity of the man who had discovered both bodies. He mounted his scaffolding at the Salute each morning at dawn and remained there, forsaking food and drink, shunning a protective mask, until the sun had set. Consequently he completed the first phase of the restoration—the removal of the surface grime and previous overpainting—several weeks earlier than anticipated. He photographed the altarpiece in its cleaned and damaged state and then commenced the final stage of the project, the retouching of those portions of the painting that had flaked away or faded with age. His palette was Titian’s palette, as were his brushstrokes, though occasionally, when the mood struck him, he employed the left-handed technique of the procrastinatory Florentine. The one who had painted a lost portrait of a girl from Milan. She had no name, he thought. But she had the face of an angel.
***
Over dinner one evening at Al Covo, a quiet little restaurant in thesestiereof Castello, Chiara suggested that Gabriel paint an approximate copy of the missing Leonardo. He reminded her that he was rather busy at the moment.
“The Titian?” She waved her hand dismissively. “You’re miles ahead of schedule.”
“Apparently the director of the Courtauld Gallery would like his Florigerio back.”
