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  Caravaggio’s Angel

  CARAVAGGIO’S ANGEL

  Ruth Brandon

  Constable • London

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Constable,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2008

  First US edition published by SohoConstable,

  an imprint of Soho Press, 2008

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  www.sohopress.com

  Copyright © Ruth Brandon, 2008

  The right of Ruth Brandon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

  Data is available from the British Library

  UK ISBN: 978-1-84529-•••-•

  US ISBN: 978-1-56947-•••-•

  US Library of Congress number: 20070•••••

  Printed and bound in the EU

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  For Lily and Tom

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  1 To part is to die a little: Gloucestershire, September

  2 London, March

  3 Paris, June

  4 Rue d’Assas, June

  5 Meyrignac, July

  6 La Jaubertie, July

  7 La Jaubertie, July

  8 Olivier: Paris, July

  9 St Front, August

  10 A Walk in the Woods: St Front, August

  11 La Jaubertie, August

  12 La Jaubertie, August

  13 Freddie Angelo: London, August

  14 Olivier: London, August

  15 Bombshell: London, August

  16 Antoine Rigaut: London, August–September

  17 London, September

  18 Grounded: London, September

  19 London, October

  20 Paris, October

  21 Proof: London, October

  22 Jean-Jacques: Paris, October

  23 Exhibits: London, June

  Acknowledgements

  I should like to thank Libby Sheldon and Sally Woodruff for their kind help regarding art-historical detail. Any mistakes are of course my own.

  R.B.

  1

  To part is to die a little: Gloucestershire, September

  It wasn’t even my school fête. If I had children, which I don’t, they wouldn’t be at this school.

  An obese little girl of about ten looked up at me through round spectacles. Behind her, in a pen of hurdles, an exceptionally dirty sheep met my eye. Its greyish back glistened with moisture. ‘Guess the weight of the sheep, miss?’

  ‘What if I get it right?’

  ‘You get a leg.’

  ‘What of? That one?’

  ‘Nah, it’s in the freezer.’

  I plucked a figure out of the air and handed over my fifty pence, wrote my name and phone number on one half of a raffle ticket and gave it to the child. Across the field, my friend Caroline and a comprehensively mackintoshed woman stood chatting outside the fancy dress tent, where Caroline’s daughters were competing. I threaded my way through the stalls towards them. When I’d told her about Joe, she hadn’t known what to say – the first time that had happened in twenty years of friendship. Condolences? Congratulations? Who whom? ‘When was this?’ she’d eventually asked, cautiously.

  ‘Today. He left this morning.’ It sounded completely unreal. Maybe it wasn’t true after all.

  ‘Where’s he gone?’

  I found this query, harmless enough in itself, oddly annoying – probably because I didn’t know the answer. He’d just said, ‘I’ll be OK’ – something I didn’t doubt and hadn’t asked. He was having his mail redirected. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone else,’ I said, in answer to the question she tactfully had not put. I didn’t believe it, either. I asked if I could come and stay. Just for a little while, till my head got sorted.

  ‘Long as you like. I could do with some adult company. David’s away as usual.’

  I floated numbly through endless meetings followed by a Hogarthian private view at which all the familiar faces seemed suddenly to transmute into gargoyles. A psycho-chemical bomb took me through the night, its effects last-ing handily until well into Friday morning. Then there were some catalogue proofs to be checked before being rushed off to the printer. And finally I was off, into the Friday evening traffic, inching my way through a solid river of cars. Only when I turned off towards Cinderford and its shabby rows of coalminers’ cottages did the flow finally thin. I slowed down behind a meandering sheep and opened the window, trying to take deep, calming breaths. Then I shut it again. The air here, though pure, was noticeably chillier than London. All those exhaust fumes really keep you warm.

  The green hills of the Marches rose all around, and a blue-black western sky promised another spectacular bout of precipitation. The field buzzed with excitement as people bought each other’s pots of jam.

  ‘Did you genuinely not have any idea?’ Caroline asked when I arrived. ‘Surely you can’t really have thought it would last. He’s such a bastard.’

  ‘A charming bastard, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘Honestly, Reggie, you are so hopeless about men. I’m always amazed, someone as bright as you.’

  It’s true. Who else could have fallen for Joe’s opening gambit? I’m on my second wife, he said the day we met, but I’m looking for a third. What could be more disarmingly frank? And what normally sane person would not have drawn the obvious conclusion – that no sooner would he have found his third than he’d be looking for a fourth, and then, doubtless, a fifth? Yet three months later he moved in. And now I was actually surprised, not to say distraught, that he’d moved out. And, doubtless, on.

  ‘I knew things weren’t that good, obviously. But it didn’t seem particularly serious. No more than usual. I suppose I’ve been a bit distracted, trying to get the feel of things at the Gallery.’

  ‘Of course, the new job. How’s it working out?’

  ‘Great – I’m really enjoying it. Or I will, once I get back to enjoying anything.’

  ‘You will,’ Caroline said firmly. ‘That’s the unnerving thing about you, Reg. The way you get on top of stuff. Look at you now.’

  ‘What d’you mean, look at me now? I’m a wreck.’

  ‘Of course you are. But imagine what I’d be like if David walked out. At my wits’ end.’

  If I were married to David I’d be at my wits’ end, counting the minutes until he left the house in the morning so that I could awake from my stupor of boredom. Perhaps that was why Caroline chose to live in the country – it meant he’d be away more often than not. On the other hand, he was a good man. Unlike Joe. ‘Luckily he never will.’

  ‘I sincerely hope not,’ she agreed gravely.

  At least there weren’t any children. When we’d first got together Joe had talked about our possible children. Don’t you sometimes wonder what they’d be like. For a while I almost felt broody. It would still have been possible, just. But in the cut-throat world I then inhabited – I worked for an auction house, it was before I moved to the Gallery – children seemed unimaginable. In any case, even I, in my then state of besottal, could see Joe was
not ideal father material. He already had three offspring. He was fond of them, naturally, but it seemed fairly clear even then that the main impetus to procreation as far as he was concerned was the primitive pleasure of peopling the world with Joe-lets. Later, as the years went on and we remained together, I began to think again. But by then he’d lost interest in that particular idea.

  To breed or not to breed? As we climbed the career ladder, Caroline in her law firm, me in the auction house, our discussions led so invariably in that direction that it became almost a joke. Then she met David and had Rosie and Lina: pop pop. And David’s lawyerly earnings (by then he was a full partner) meant she didn’t need to work, so she declined the juggling act. Law may be lucrative, but it’s a slog. So, of course, are babies, but at least they’re your own slog. She decided she’d rather look after them herself than hand them over to some alien teenager. My job, on the other hand, was not a slog. It was demanding, but that’s a different thing. By the time Caroline had Lina, I was authenticating and valuing and travelling all over the world. The day I realized the decision was out of my hands was a relief in a way. It was like losing your virginity (in the good old days when that mattered), or getting married. You can stop worrying about that and get on with other things.

  Other things, other things, where were they now I needed them?

  Next time I looked at the fancy dress tent, Caroline had vanished. There was a burst of applause from within: someone had evidently won something. Beside me, a second-hand book stall was piled with what looked to be the results of a house clearance – a tottering mound of sheet music, some battered cookbooks, a 1972 manual of antiques with price guidelines, a collection of postcards. Someone’s grandparents must have died. There was also a heap of old magazines – Life and Picture Post. I glanced through them, caught as always by the photographs, and suddenly there it was: a pamphlet whose black-and-white cover showed an unframed picture leaning against a white wall, overprinted with a legend in bright red mock-handwriting: Partir, c’est mourir un peu, Martyr, c’est pourrir un peu. Inside, each page contained a photo of the same picture, in a variety of different locations.

  Impossible. But when I looked again, the pamphlet was still there. I felt that all-over prickling, that sensation of total focus, that occurs when you find it – the real thing, lurking unsuspected. Still disbelieving, I picked the pam-phlet up and turned it over. Surely it couldn’t be?

  It was. Slightly discoloured, but otherwise perfect: not a mark, not a tear, not a missing page. As incongruous as some brilliant Brazilian swallowtail suddenly caught in a flock of cabbage whites. I flicked through its pages. Lodged in the centre fold was a yellowing press cutting, the paper crumbling at the edges. It was in French, a paragraph clipped from the faits divers:

  Yesterday, at 72 rue d’Assas, a body was found hanging, later identified as that of Robert de Beaupré, 22. Nearby was a copy of a pamphlet containing photographs of Caravaggio’s ‘St Cecilia and the Angel’, which it may be remembered was recently stolen from the Louvre, together with a short note. M. de Beaupré was a member of one of France’s most respected families. Why such a young man, with his life before him and everything to live for, should have met such an end, is something we shall probably never know. But perhaps his death is a measure of the degenerate influence of some of the so-called ‘artistic’ groups currently at work in our country, whose freedom of action may appear to some altogether excessive.

  I slipped the cutting back into the pamphlet and looked for a price, but there didn’t seem to be one. Holding it out to the stallholder, a lugubrious man in a fawn cable-knit sweater that might have doubled as a pregnancy smock, I said, ever so casually, ‘How much is this?’

  He reached for it, turned it over unenthusiastically, flipped through it, considered: some weird collection of photos of the same picture. Was it possible you could be in the business and not recognize a nugget like this when you saw it? But perhaps he wasn’t a professional, just a parent dutifully manning his allotted stall. ‘One fifty?’

  I wondered whether he meant one hundred and fifty, but didn’t ask. No point putting ideas into his head. Instead, I fumbled in my purse and held out the coins. I could prob-ably have got it for less, if I’d tried. He handed over the pamphlet without even bothering to meet my eyes, reflecting, perhaps, on the amazing things people will pay good money for.

  Caroline came up. ‘Something interesting?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Rosie won second prize.’

  ‘So shall we go before that sky gets here?’

  At Caroline’s I had my assigned roles: godmother, gossip, cook. She turned on the news while I cut up apples. Every year she had this problem with excess apples, and every year, if I visited during apple time, I made her favourite dish – pheasant à la normande, with apples and cream. In the Middle East people were killing each other; in France, black and brown youths were rioting because liberté, égalité and fraternité only extended to those with pink skins. In Britain the government had problems with teenagers, and was considering locking up everyone between the ages of fourteen and twenty.

  I was browning the pheasant when my mobile rang. My heart gave an almost clinical leap. He hadn’t really meant it, it had all been a terrible misunderstanding.

  An unknown voice said, ‘Mrs Lee?’

  Actually it’s Doctor, or Ms, but I didn’t quibble.

  ‘You guessed the weight of the lamb,’ the voice offered.

  It seemed highly unlikely. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. Your leg’s waiting for you.’

  I thought about the sad sheep and felt glad it was still, for the moment, intact. I also realized that this was the first time I’d thought about Joe since finding the pamphlet. Caravaggio’s Angel to the rescue. Again.

  My hero.

  2

  London, March

  ‘How clever of you to have spotted it,’ said the Director. ‘I’m not at all sure I’d have realized, myself.’

  ‘Oh, well, that picture’s always been one of my favourites.’

  ‘Really?’ He raised his eyebrows. He didn’t quite say Extraordinary, but I could sense it hovering there. The St Cecilia was popular with customers at the time: commissioned in 1605 as an altarpiece, it caught the eye of other potential buyers, and the artist made two copies, one for the private collection of his patron Cardinal Francesco Del Monte, one for Marcantonio Doria. But there’s no denying it’s one of his more run-of-the-mill productions. Perhaps he got bored, wanted to move on to something else.

  That was one of the many mysteries surrounding Partir, c’est mourir un peu. Why, out of all the pictures in the Louvre, pick that one? It wasn’t famous or symbolic like the Mona Lisa, which had been so resoundingly stolen from the same gallery twenty-eight years earlier. Far from it. At that time, no one thought much of Caravaggio – not even at his his best. Nowadays, of course, the art world can’t get enough of him. So modern, darling – that astounding naturalism and originality, that sense of theatre. And of course that undisguised sexuality – all those pouting boys. But in 1937 the St Cecilia was a second-rank work by a little-regarded painter.

  ‘I used to look at it when I went to stay with my grand-mother. My mother’s mother. She lived in Paris.’

  My grandmother lived on avenue Foch, and she’s the one I have to blame for my monstrous first name. I think my parents hoped that calling me after her would encourage her to leave me something in her will. And so she did: five hundred pounds, or its equivalent in francs, like all the other grandchildren. I was fourteen at the time – I couldn’t understand my parents’ disappointment. Five hundred pounds seemed like a lot of money to me. But none of us ever saw any actual dosh. She very sensibly spent everything before she died. And more. The apartment only just covered the debts. So I was Regina in vain.

  ‘Why don’t we go to the Louvre?’ said my mother one rainy afternoon. ‘I haven’t been there for years.’ And there it was – love at first sigh
t: my first experience of the trans-forming power of art. At that time I had a sort of ongoing romantic serial story that ran inside my head at night before I went to sleep, and from that moment the Angel was one of its chief protagonists (the other, I need hardly add, not being St Cecilia). Of course I knew nothing then about Caravaggio – least of all his supposed sexual orientation. I probably didn’t know such a thing as sexual orientation existed. But whichever way that Angel swung he was a sexy creature. He appears in several of Caravaggio’s pictures, doubtless one of his fancy boys. In this one he is naked to the waist, with pouting lips, gleaming muscular shoulders and macho black-feathered wings. He hangs in mid-flight in the picture’s top left-hand corner, while from the lower right St Cecilia gazes over her shoulder into his eyes. She is dressed as a Roman aristocrat in a rich red silk dress, low-cut and trimmed at the shoulders with white fur, and surrounded by the instruments that denote her identity: in her hands a lute, at her feet a violin and an open music book, behind her a harp. A mysterious ray, possibly the light of holiness, emanates from the picture’s top left-hand corner, suffusing the Angel and bathing St Cecilia in its glow. I remember thinking what a ninny she looked. He was wasted on her. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  Later, when I did art history, I naturally gravitated towards Caravaggio. That’s when I first came across Partir, c’est mourir un peu.

  Everyone assumed the Surrealists had done it – every-thing about the affair carried their stamp. But they never claimed it, and no one ever knew for sure. In fact it was a while before anyone even noticed it had gone. The thief or thieves left an On Loan sign in the space where it had previously hung, and people thought no more about it. Then three days later two photographs were posted to Le Figaro. One showed the picture, still in its frame, leaning against the wall beneath the On Loan sign; in the second it was unframed but still on its stretcher, propped against the fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Above it a board read: Partir, c’est mourir un peu, Martyr, c’est pourrir un peu, which might be translated as ‘To part is to die a little, Martyrs get high a little’.