The Monster of Florence (41 page)
FULL CONFESSION!
“But I’ll never go to prison.”
“Oh, Lord …” There was no mistaking the man’s face with its manic expression, nor the enlarged detail of the picture behind him, the long white neck and the lock of dark hair curling over the shoulder. The Marshal searched the colour supplement for the article. Had he committed suicide? Was that what he meant by saying he’d never go to prison? There it was … He scanned it rapidly but there was no mention of any suicide. More photographs … paintings, drawings … and then the studio with a corner of one of the great safes just visible. Next to that, Benozzetti himself dressed in a shiny smock. On the easel beside him the portrait of Anna Caterina Luisa dei Gherardini.
I am not a forger. I am not a criminal. I am a painter. I have dedicated my entire life to the art of painting and never been appreciated. I have never put a false signature on a painting or suggested any false attribution or false
provenance. The dealers and gallery owners paid what I asked, which was never more than I would have asked for a painting recognizably mine. They made no comment, asked no questions. They sold my pictures for vast sums, sometimes a thousand percent of what they gave me. Not one of them ever accepted a picture signed by me. Almost every expert in Europe and America has attributed at least one of my paintings, or drawings, to Corot, to Rembrandt, to Dürer, to Augustus John. I have played them off one against the other. I have put in deliberate mistakes of style which they failed to notice. I have sat in the greatest auction rooms in the world and watched pompous, ignorant men make fools of themselves for my amusement. I have seen clients pay over enormous cheques for works they don’t understand and which they would never have bought had the true artist’s signature, mine, been on them
.
I have the original receipts for all the paintings and drawings shown or listed in this article, beginning with a tiny Corot drawing of forty years ago and ending with the Antonio Franchi portrait sold this week at auction in Florence. I received nothing for that painting. I gave it to an expert, Landini, who got rich in his lifetime through my talents, like many others. He died without understanding the truth, but had he been alive to read this he would have denied it as all the others will deny it. I was set to copy the Antonio Franchi portrait by Landini in nineteen seventy-four. Unknown to him I made two copies. I then amused myself by letting him distinguish between “the copy and the original” whilst the third picture was concealed in my safe where it remains to this day. I watched his perplexity as he struggled to understand. I made no comment and in the end he removed the two pictures without declaring himself. An intelligent enough line to take, after all, pretending it was so obvious which was the copy that there was no need to say it
.
He sold what he must have decided was the copy to an American museum for a vast sum and kept the other. He stole from that museum just as he stole the original painting which, in truth, belonged to his wife
.
Am I, then, a criminal? I have suffered the indignity of being despised or ignored by the so-called art world but I have had my revenge on the fraudulent, the ignorant, the arrogant, the thieves and speculators who govern that world. I chose my victims carefully: the genuine, studious lover of art was never among them
.
I shall paint no more pictures because no true artist can survive in that world and I am a true artist, not a forger
.
“There is no such thing as a forgery, there are only false attributions.”
“He’s right, isn’t he?” Marco said as soon as he sat down in front of the Marshal and saw the article on his desk. “What he says is true.”
“No,” the Marshal said, “he’s lying.”
“But my father—”
“I’m not excusing your father, I’m talking about Benozzetti.”
Wasn’t this what he had been battling against for so long in the case against the Suspect, though without managing to put the problem into words? “Every fact he states is true but he’s lying. He’s always lying, even to himself. I don’t know whether your father stole that painting from your mother. But if that’s the original in Benozzetti’s safe, which it could well be, then
he
stole it, from her and from you.”
“I suppose he did—if it is the original—”
“And he says your father never realized the truth. I’d say he suspected it. I’m sorry to say it, but if he’d been sure of the value of that picture I think it would have gone to his second wife like everything else.”
“He was amusing himself by leaving the problem to me?”
“I don’t know. You knew him better than I did. Now, would you like to tell me what it is you’ve been hiding all this time? I take it you knew about the sale to America?”
“I’m sorry …” Marco’s face was dark red. He pushed at the hair falling into his eyes and then felt around in his pockets, only to think better of it. “Sorry—”
“Smoke if it helps.” After all this time with Ferrini what was one more cigarette?
“Thanks. My father did steal it from my mother in a way, though he’d have said she gave it to him. It used to hang in my mother’s bedroom. My father persuaded her to sell it. I must have been about thirteen, I suppose. I didn’t understand what was at stake but I remember a lot of quarrelling. That’s probably a muddled memory since they were on the verge of separation anyway, but I connected the fighting with the picture. My father already had a Chair at the University and he was becoming known as a critic but there wasn’t much money. I suppose he persuaded her to sell. I didn’t see the painting go but I remember her shut in the bedroom, crying. Again I connected that with the picture but there could have been any number of other reasons. I suppose the painting was sold after it had been illegally exported. I don’t know much about it, but I do know that my father used the money to set up house with another woman and that after the divorce he married her. My mother did tell me, years later, that she never saw a penny of that money.”
“And she did nothing about it?”
“It had been illegally exported.”
“Not by her.”
“She couldn’t prove that, though, could she? It was hers. She has a horror of scandal, whereas my father … Well, you know something of what he was like. The risks he must have taken if what Benozzetti claims is true … If I didn’t tell you all of this before it was because of her, I promise you …”
“Don’t worry about it. It wouldn’t have changed anything anyway if you had told me.”
“Do you really think so? In any case, after this”—he looked at the offending magazine—“she won’t go out of the house.”
“She’ll get over it. After all, Benozzetti says quite clearly here your father stole it from her so no one can suspect her of anything.”
“I know that.” Marco was shocked at the idea. “But he was still her husband. She’s still ashamed and embarrassed at everyone knowing he robbed her to set up with the other woman.”
“And you?”
Marco stubbed out his cigarette and looked down at his hands, thinking. “In a funny way … I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel better. He always overshadowed me, always made me feel—I suppose a bit of a wet, incapable. I mean, he was so brilliant. Now, well, if he was just cheating to get where he was going I suppose I don’t mind so much. I feel surer of myself. Does that make any sense?”
“I think so. Now”—the Marshal leaned forward a little and fixed Marco with his huge eyes—“before you do anything, or say anything in response to this article, remember he’s a liar. If I’ve understood his character, I don’t think he’d have been able to resist showing your father a copy next to the original. That’s where all his satisfaction lay. Whether he did or didn’t take the money for the job doesn’t matter, though I’d be willing to bet he was lying there, too. He has to eat, the same as the rest of us. You can be sure, then, that your father took the original and one of the copies away with him and he wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble if his only intention had been to sell the original. He didn’t give the copy to your mother, or offer it to her at any time?”
“No. I talked to her about it last night. She heard nothing about the picture from the time he removed it from the house to the time when she read in the paper that it had been bought by an American museum—that was almost a year later.”
“In that case, you have every reason to believe that yours was the original.”
“That’s what I told her. It brought nearly fifty million and I wanted her to take half. She said no. She said she’d gladly have taken the painting back and kept it in the family where it belongs. I suppose she resents my not telling her. It was hers, after all.”
“You were trying to protect her from a scandal. The scandal’s broken and she is protected. Marco, just take the money and get on with your life.”
Marco looked at him gratefully. “I suppose that’s why I came to see you in the first place. I needed you to say that. You’re the only person I believe.”
He stood up. “Thanks for everything.”
The Marshal walked with him to the outer door and watched him start down the stairs. Then he went back to his office and put on his greatcoat. Hat in hand, he called, “Lorenzini! I’m going out. Di Nuccio can drive me.”
He wasn’t kept waiting this time and he was almost sure that Benozzetti was more than eager to see him. Just as well, too. It had been so muggy that first November evening, but now the mountain wind was fierce and, despite the bright sunshine which made his eyes water even behind dark glasses, he was very glad of his thick black greatcoat and warm leather gloves. The door clicked open and the Marshal pushed it. Benozzetti was waiting behind the inner door and the brief glimpse of his face he obtained before he withdrew was enough for the Marshal to see how agitated he was.
“I was expecting you. I knew you’d come.” He almost pushed the Marshal inside so as to shut the door quickly. “If you hadn’t come today I would have telephoned you.”
“Or written to me,” the Marshal said without a trace of irony.
“Perhaps.”
What did he want? An audience? After that splash in the colour supplement he must have had all the audience he required.
“You want to see the painting, of course.”
The Marshal had no interest in seeing the painting at all but what he did want was going to be tricky to obtain and the last thing he needed was to put the man on his guard.
“I’d be glad to see it. Thank you.”
“This way.”
The Marshal was carrying his hat, and the cold in the studio made his head ring. No windows, no ray of winter sun cheered its great length. The picture was on the easel where the veiled Titian had stood last time, which was a pity. That was one of the things he
intended to find out the truth about and he’d have liked to see it again.
“There! Fault that if you can.”
“I … no, it’s faultless.” He’d been about to say automatically that he didn’t know enough about the matter to comment, but he swallowed his words. It was quite by accident that this man who despised everybody in the art world had decided that the Marshal was fit to judge his pictures. He might as well see what could be gained by such an unexpected turn of events. At any rate, it made a nice change from being thought to be asleep on his feet by almost everyone he met. Benozzetti was mad, of course, but you have to find consolation where you can in this life and if it turned out to be a useful misunderstanding, all the better.
“I can’t fault it,” he repeated.
“Ha!” Benozzetti was breathing down his neck and the Marshal turned his head to one side, trying to escape from his perfume. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to! A perfect Antonio Franchi.”
“Oh, no,” the Marshal corrected him quietly. “It’s perfect because you painted it.”
He waited for the reaction but it didn’t come. His remark had been ambiguous enough to make Benozzetti hesitate. He didn’t know how to react to the idea of a perfect painting done by himself. The Marshal turned and faced him. The snake’s eyes slid away from him uncertainly. He pursued the same line. “It’s not Antonio Franchi I’m interested in, you see. It’s you.” Wasn’t that what he’d always wanted and never had the self-esteem to demand after his first negative experiences? “You have all this talent, you don’t need to hide behind an Antonio Franchi.”
“Hide?
Hide?
I can paint like Franchi and better than Franchi. I can paint as well as Corot, as Rembrandt, as—”
“You can paint,” the Marshal said. “That’s all, though, of course, you don’t have to believe me.”
Benozzetti met his gaze now, though the manic glitter in his eyes had blanked out on impact with reality.
“On the contrary, Marshal, you are a man whom one has to
believe. Though where you obtained your knowledge of art is beyond me.”
“Well, well, being at Palazzo Pitti, you know …”
It wouldn’t do to have him think too long on that. It hadn’t crossed his mind that what the Marshal had was a knowledge of people, because that was one thing he had no experience of himself.
“Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating business and I don’t understand in the least, in spite of your great talent, how you can make a painting look old. After all, these days, there must be so many possibilities of checking, scientific tests and so on …”
“Scientific tests! God help us all! What do you think these people know that I don’t know—quite apart from the fact that your so-called scientific tests are long and expensive and nobody asks for them when all they really need, all they really
want
is the expert. The expert and his attribution which will enable them to sell. To
sell
, Marshal, that’s what it’s all about, not art. And what sort of figure does your expert cut if he can’t judge with his own eyes. I’ve always been able to count on the arrogance of my experts.”
“I can imagine … Even so, I mean, just making a picture look old. The years of dust they must pick up—”
“Dust? Not dust, Marshal, but fifteenth-century dust, sixteenth-century dust, seventeenth-century dust! Why do you think I learned to restore? I don’t restore great paintings because I don’t want to be known or seen. That’s where Landini was useful. He brought me worthless or relatively worthless paintings from his acquaintances to be restored at low cost. The paintings were worthless but the dirt I washed from them was worth its weight in gold. The dirty water they left would give one, when it evaporated, dirt from the right century which I then applied to my pictures.”