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“Not to toil through all the details, the picture is now in the protection of the Dutch Ministry of Fine Art, and all sorts of people have been visiting it, trying to decide whether it is genuine or not. Medland and Horsburgh from the British Museum and National Gallery laboratories in London have seen it, and can’t give an opinion unless they are permitted to use X-rays and chemical tests—which the Dutch so far won’t allow. Lemaire and Bastogne and Baudoin from Paris and Brussels have hemmed and hawed. Two Dutch experts, Dr. Schlichte-Martin and Dr. Hausche-Kuypers, are at each other’s throats. Addison Thresher is now almost ready to break off all negotiations on grounds that the thing is a fake, and the German experts Frisch and Belma
“They are ru
“Why not?”
“Because of the delicacy of the situation in which our group finds itself. It must never for one moment be thought that we want to destroy Letztpfe
“To do what?”
“To decide whether The Harrowing of Hell is by Hubertus van Eyck, or not. To show, if you can, that Letztpfe
“But what is being tested? You are sending me with instructions to declare the picture a fake and to discredit a rival. It doesn’t sound like art criticism to me.”
“It is a part of art criticism, Corniche. Your North American i
“But the morality of that—which I understand—won’t square with what we have been doing here.”
“The morality of the art world is not square, my dear pupil and colleague; it is a polyhedron. But it is a morality, none the less. So—go and win your spurs!”
“And what if I don’t?”
“Then I shall come and do what you have failed to do, by one means or another, including even the Evil Eye—if anyone is so foolish as to believe in it, which I don’t, as I have made clear—and if you and I have any further association, it will be simply as master and perpetual apprentice. You will have failed and I shall have to find another successor to myself. In this affair you are being tested as well as Letztpfe
The Dutch Ministry of Fine Art treated its guests well—indeed, in princely style—and when Francis arrived in The Hague he was put up at the Hotel Des Indes, and ate a splendid meal into which he admitted no scrap of veal. The next morning he presented himself to Judge Huygens, who looked precisely as a judge should, and who took him after an exchange of civilities to a handsome room, where the disputed painting was displayed on an easel. Francis settled to his work, and it was soon clear that the Judge meant to stay in the room all the time he was there. A large, watchful, uniformed attendant was also on guard at the door.
The Harrowing of Hell was a most impressive picture, larger than Francis had expected, and obviously meant for a church. The colours glowed with the extraordinary light and appearance of transparency that the brothers van Eyck were reputed to have perfected and brought to the world of painting in oils; colour had been used at its greatest strength above a light ground, which created the magical glow of even the darkest pigment. In the middle of the picture was the figure of Christ, triumphantly bearing the ba
Francis studied the picture for perhaps half an hour. If it were a fake it was a magnificent fake, done by a painter of enviable talent. But there have been magnificent fakes in the history of art. Well, that’s enough aesthetic judgement, thought Francis; now we get down to the really inquisitorial inspection. He had brought, in a brief-case, what he thought of as his Little Jiffy Bernard Berenson Art Expert’s Set, consisting of a pair of binoculars, a large magnifying glass, and a brush of medium size. He looked at the picture through the binoculars, from the greatest distance the room allowed; then looked at it through the wrong end of the binoculars. Neither magnification nor diminution suggested anything peculiar about the composition. He looked at the picture through his magnifying glass, inch by inch, and then at his request the large attendant stood the picture on its head, and he examined it again from that aspect. With a reassuring nod to the Judge he dabbed at it here and there with his soft brush. He examined the back, tapped the canvas, inspected the workmanship of the stretchers. To the astonishment of Huygens and the guard he crumpled his handkerchief, warmed it with a cigarette-lighter, and held it to the canvas for perhaps ninety seconds. He sniffed the heated area loudly. No: not a whiff of formaldehyde. Then he sat down again and looked at the picture for another hour, occasionally turning away and suddenly rounding on it, as though it might have relaxed some of its pervasive van Eyck-ishness while his back was turned. He spent a good deal of time peering at the monogram, small but easily enough seen when you knew where to look, hidden in the folds of Isaiah’s robe. It might have been many things: Hubert of Ghent? Signatures didn’t matter, anyhow; the real signature was the quality of the painting, and try as he might he couldn’t find anything wrong with it.
Fakes, as he well knew, tend to declare themselves a generation or two after they have appeared and been accepted as originals. Truth, the daughter of Time, reveals indications of another age, another temper and taste, in a picture which is painted long after the period to which it has been attributed. Paint ages in the wrong way. Fashions in faces change, and the change may be seen when the fashion for a certain conformation of features has passed. But he did not have fifty years to wait. His job was to declare the picture a fake, and to do so as soon as possible.