Vanished Smile (27 page)
Authors: R.A. Scotti
Once a year, Mona Lisa has a full checkup. In 1956 she was attacked twice—first with acid and then with a rock that was hurled through her protective glass, chipping her elbow. Like all old panel paintings, there are insect holes on her backside, but given her age, her adventures, and her popularity, she is in remarkably good shape. Her checkup is always scheduled in the spring, when the museum heating system is turned off and the outside temperature approximates her ideal levels of heat and humidity. A dozen curators, restoration and lab technicians, and some fifteen maintenance staff take part in the annual examination. Mona Lisa is removed from her display case and measured to see if her wood has expanded or contracted. While she is undressed, her display case is cleaned, and the silica gel is changed. She requires about twenty-six pounds of gel, which fill two oblong trays in the bottom of her case to regulate the moisture level.
The lady who sat stuffed in the false bottom of a valise in a tenement apartment for two years is coddled and cosseted more than any queen. She has undergone virtually every test that technology has devised—radiography, emissiography, and many types of imaging: multispectral, microtopographical, high-resolution three-dimensional, and infrared.
With all the tools of our high-tech age, Mona Lisa cannot be fathomed easily. She retains her unique power to drive otherwise rational men to unalloyed adoration, bitter denunciation, absurd conjecture, and audacious crime. Half a millennium
after Leonardo painted her, Mona Lisa remains as she was to Baudelaire, a “mirror deep and dark.” Revered and reviled in equal measure, subjected to adulation and insult, she performs a remarkable feat, bridging the divide between high and low culture. She has been derided as a femme fatale, an art fetish, and the queen of kitsch, and she goes on smiling, a picture of contained serenity, her mysteries intact, her secrets secure.
While she is art history's most enduring enigma, celebrity and mass communication have made her a tragic figure. After her theft, Mona Lisa was recovered physically but never spiritually. She was found and lost. Today Mona Lisa is seen by millions, yet unseen. For her own protection, “the most subtle homage that genius can pay to a human face” can never be contemplated again in a true light, free of the barricades.
Away from the hordes of tourists and digital cameras, out of the display case and “in the flesh,” seen not in virtual reality but in the true reality of the painted panel, Mona Lisa enters the soul. This is the genius of Leonardo, lost since the theft created the icon.
Behind her impenetrable bulletproof glass, in her multimillion-dollar digs in a hall once called the Salle des Etats, she hangs in splendid isolation, alone except for Frangois I, across the room in the
Wedding Feast at Cana
. It is bemusing and comforting to know that when the last camera has flashed and the last ogler has turned away, when the Louvre alarms are blinking and night falls over the mansard roofs of Paris, Frangois is still keeping a possessive eye on his Mona Lisa.
IN PURSUING
Mona's Lisa's mysterious theft, I have been aided and abetted in many ways by many people. My valiant daughter, Francesca Chigounis, read, and reread, and reread the manuscript as if each time were a pleasure, not a penance, and with each reading, raised key questions and offered keen advice. My dauntless agent, F. Joseph Spieler, was a miracle worker at the outset, an unfailing source of encouragement and faith through the long slog, and a painstaking editor in the stretch. My astute and patient editor, Dan Frank, pushed me, kicking and screaming, to coherence. My thanks, also, to Doug Steel for his photographic wizardry, design skill, and abiding friendship; to Fran Bigman for steering the book through each step of the editorial process; to Maria Scotti Chapin, born on August 21, for leaving no word unchecked; to Evans Chigounis for tea and choice words; and to Wayne Furman and the Frederick Lewis Allen Room of the New York Public Library, my second home.
Much of the information here is drawn from newspaper and magazine articles related to the theft and to the reports of the police investigation. I am also indebted to the fine authors who have gone before me, particularly. Jerome Coignard, Milton Esterow, Fernande Olivier, Charles Nicholl, Roy McMullen, and John Richardson.
9
AN ELEGANT LATIN AMERICAN “MARQUéS”:
Information on the Marques Eduard de Valfierno comes from Karl Decker, “How and Why the
Mona Lisa
Was Stolen,”
Saturday Evening Post
, June 25, 1932.
25 PARIS
WAS THE HUB FOR NEWS:
Robert Desmond's
Information Process
and
Windows on the World
.
34
THE FIRST TO FACE JUDGE DRIOUX:
Jerome Coignard's
On a Volé La Joconde
.
48
THE BOND STREET SHOWROOM OF DUVEEN BROTHERS:
James H. Duveen,
Art Treasures and Intrigue
.
49 A
THIRD CLANDESTINE PARTNER:
Joseph Duveen wrote of Bernard Berenson: “I advise caution as all are agreed that he will never play the second fiddle but must lead the band, if not conduct it. It could be dangerous to be out of step with him.”
51
CHERCHEZ L'AMéRICAIN:
Frederick Lewis Allen,
The Great Pierpont Morgan
.
65
THE RISE OF A POPULAR PRESS:
Robert Desmond's
Information Process
and
Windows on the World
.
70
THE FACES OF THE CROWDS WERE CHANGING:
Henry T. Peck,
The New Baedeker 1856-1914, Being Casual Notes of an Irresponsible Traveler
.
70
THE GRAND TOUR:
Elizabeth I originated the idea of sending the young English lords who would inherit the realm on a “grand tour” of the Continent to acquire culture. Dr. Johnson was generally opposed to the practice, with one pragmatic exception: “Indeed, if a young man is wild and must run after women and bad company, it is better this should be done abroad, as, on his return, he can break off such connections and begin at home a new man.”
72
A THIEF BRINGS US A STATUE:
On the articles from the
Paris-Journal
and
Le Matin
in this section and the next, I have relied for the most part on the translations of Milton Esterow in
The Art Stealers
.
85
“WE HAVE INFECTED THE PICTURES”:
Pablo Picasso,
Picasso on Art
.
87
BORN AMéLIE LANG:
Fernande Olivier,
Loving Picasso
.
89
“YOU COULD OWE MONEY FOR YEARS”:
Picasso,
Picasso on Art
.
89
LEO AND GERTRUDE STEIN:
James R. Mellow's
Charmed Circle
, and Roger Shattuck's
The Banquet Years
.
90
APOLLINAIRE GREW INCREASINGLY ALARMED:
Fernande Olivier,
Picasso and His Friends
.
93
WHILE AWAITING MONA LISA:
Milton Esterow,
The Art Stealers
.
94
APOLLINAIRE WAS UNDER ARREST:
Francis Steegmuller,
Guillaume Apollinaire, Poet Among the Painters
.
98
THE LOUVRE THIEF:
Since Honoré Joseph Géry Pieret was called variously Géry and Pieret, I refer to him as Géry for consistency.
100
THE POET IN HANDCUFFS:
Esterow,
The Art Stealers
.
102
THE STUDIO PRESENTED
A
SCENE:
Olivier,
Picasso and His Friends
.
106
APOLLINAIRE WOULD RECALL SOMETIME LATER:
Apollinaire,
Apollinaire par luiMême
.
106
FERNANDE GAVE
A
DIFFERENT VERSION:
Olivier,
Picasso and
His Friends
.
112
YEARS LATER, WHEN IT WAS SAFE:
Picasso,
Picasso on Art
.
112
FERNANDE PINPOINTED THE FATAL FLAW:
Olivier,
Picasso and
His Friends
.
114
ON THE
31ST
DAY OF AUGUST:
Guillaume Apollinaire,
Selected Poems
.
115
ANDRé BILLY, A WRITER:
André Billy,
Avec Apollinaire, Souvenirs Inédits
.
126
BY
1503,
ARTISTS WERE FLOCKING TO ROME:
During Julius IPs papacy (1503-1513), he commissioned Michelangelo to sculpt a papal tomb (1505) and to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508), Bramante to build St. Peter's (1505), and Raphael to fresco the
Stanze
(1508).
128
SHE IS A STRANGE PAINTING:
Mona Lisa is variously interpreted as a reflection on man and nature, the one immortal, the other transitory, or a cosmic meditation. Leonardo saw the individual as a micro-cosmos and the elements of one as a metaphor for the other. The human skeleton corresponds to the earth and the pumping blood to moving water. The passions are fire, and the soul is the wind.
129
FINANCIAL RECORDS SUGGEST:
Charles Nicholl,
Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind
.
131
IN HIS NOTES ON PAINTING:
Leonardo on Painting
.
132
BY PURE COINCIDENCE:
A Frenchman, probably the historian Jules Michelet, was the first to suggest the love affair. Michelet wrote that Mona Lisa was so seductive, even Leonardo—“the complete man, balanced, all-powerful in all things, who summarized all the past, anticipated the future … was taken in by the snare. …” Jules Verne, as a young man and something of a na'if, composed a play about the illusory romance, and the Italian Romantic poet Enrico Panzacchi celebrated it in verse. He imagined Lisa's husband refusing to accept the portrait when he saw the smile on his wife's lips. Suspecting the worst, he returned the painting to the artist. We don't know what he did with his wife.
Messer Francesco suo sposo e signore
Tomato vide Vopra e il mutamento
Fece col capo un segno di scontento
E il ritatto rimase as suo pittore
.
Signore Francesco her husband and lord
Came back to view the work and seeing the change in his wife
Shook his head in disgust
And returned the painting to the painter
.
132
TODAY WE KNOW:
Mohen et al., Mona Lisa:
Inside the Painting
.
135
ACCORDING TO CELLINI:
Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography.
139
IN A VALIANT EFFORT AT RECONCILIATION:
Nicholl,
Leonardo da Vinci
.
139
LISA DEL GIOCONDO:
Giuseppe Pallanti, Mona Lisa
Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo's Model
.
140
IN LEONARDO'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT:
Janice Shell and Grazioso Sironi, “Salai and Leonardo's Legacy,”
The Burlington Magazine
133, no. 1055 (February 1991).
145
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY:
André Felibien,
Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres anciens et modemes
. Paris: Societe d'edition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1987.
146
TO FLAUNT THE SUPERIORITY:
The structural condition of the Louvre was so bad that it closed again in 1796. It reopened fully on July 14, 1801.
151 A
BRITISH GALAHAD:
Walter Pater,
Renaissance: Studies in Art
and Poetry
.
153
INVESTIGATORS HAD CHASED TIPS:
Rene Casselari,
Dramas of
French Crime
.
166
ALPHONSE BERTILLON WAS DYING:
When he died, Bertillon was working on a plan to make future art fraud impossible. A few days before his death, he said: “Every artist will, in the future, place his thumb or any finger he may desire on the moist pigment together with his signature. He will make a duplicate of the impression on the usually prepared paper, which will be deposited with the École des Beaux-Arts. This paper will be photographed and the copies made kept on hand for distribution among collectors and dealers as the occasion may demand.” Quoted in
The New York Times
, Feb. 13, 1914.
183
HENRY DUVEEN HAD TOLD A VERY DIFFERENT STORY:
Duveen,
Art Treasures and Intrigue
.
191
NEW YEAR'S
1914: Karl Decker, “How and Why the
Mona Lisa
Was Stolen,”
Saturday Evening Post
, June 25, 1932.
199
FORGING IS ITSELF A FINE ART:
Frank Arnau,
The Art of the Faker
.
217
THE NOVELIST JAMES M. CAIN:
The papers of James M. Cain are in the Library of Congress.
221
SINCE THEN MANY ARTISTS:
Roy McMullen, Mona Lisa:
Picture
and Myth;
see also the Web site,
www.monalisamania.com
.
225
SHE HAS MOVED FROM HER OLD SPOT:
McMullen, Mona Lisa.
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