Deceptions by Anna Porter (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📗

shone, but when the additional lights came on, the severed head actually seemed to bleed. The young woman’s face expressed a strange combination of emotions. Rage, revulsion, triumph. Her hand holding Holofernes’s head was streaked with blood, strong agile fingers, not like Dumonstier le Neveu’s delicate lady’s fingers, but the hand of a woman used to hard work. The knuckles were thickened, and a couple of the fingers were slightly bent. The arm itself was slender but muscular, veins throbbing under the pale skin. The maidservant was still leaning on Holofernes’s chest, holding him down with all her strength.

Artemisia had boasted that she used a mixture of amber resin and walnut oil mixed in her paints to add shine and translucence. It was a technique she said she had learned from lutemakers; it made the colours glide on. She had studied Caravaggio’s startlingly lifelike painting style, his use of ordinary people as models, painting them with all their physical blemishes, their dirty feet, their lack of refinement. The chiaroscuro effect, also learned from Caravaggio, was masterly, yet not as overwhelming as in some of Caravaggio’s early work. If the young Artemisia had been taking lessons from her father’s infamous friend, she had somehow advanced his style by softening the theatrics.

But Judith’s face was a great deal more emotional than anything Caravaggio would have painted during the time he had been a guest at Gentileschi’s house. In his early paintings, the women’s faces showed no imperfections.

The signature remained a puzzle. It was applied over a dark red surface, a wrinkle in Holofernes’s bedsheet, a drop of blood visible to its side and another above, but not under the “Artemesia.” She looked closer with her loupe. Nothing to indicate that another name had appeared under this one, but it was possible, as long as it had been done before the paint completely dried.

Helena accepted Gizella’s offer of a drink. She noted that the glass that had been there when she arrived was left on the tray.

“Such a relief,” Gizella said, raising her glass to Helena. “We have worried that you would agree with my husband that the painting is just a copy. I never believed that. . . .”

“You are jumping to conclusions, Mrs. Vaszary,” Helena said. “All I am telling you is that the painting was not made in the nineteenth or the twentieth century, and that if it is a copy, it’s most likely by a contemporary of Artemisia Gentileschi’s.”

“We would like to believe that it’s an original,” Gizella said. She gestured to someone in the next room. “Your opinion is good enough for us, we think.”

“Us?”

“Please be good enough to join us,” Gizella said, as she patted the white sofa next to her.

Wearing a black dinner jacket, white dress shirt with long French cuffs, bow tie, and shiny, grey-and-black striped pants, Piotr Denisovich Grigoriev emerged from the shadows of the foyer. “Rad chova vac videt,” he said, meaning lovely to see you again, though his tight smile belied his delight. They had not seen each other since that unpleasant meeting in Budapest when Grigoriev thought he could force Helena to let him buy a painting that belonged to another man. He seemed to have lost more hair in the intervening months. Only little tufts left over the ears; the top was bald.

“I invited Mr. Grigoriev for a viewing,” Gizella explained. “You came at the best time, Ms. Marsh. Mr. Grigoriev has expressed some doubt about the painting’s — how you say — source. He had met with Iván.” As if that explained everything, Helena thought. Iván Vaszary would stick with the story of a late copy because that was good for his divorce settlement.

“Proiskhozhdeniye,” Grigoriev said pronouncing each syllable slowly with extra emphasis. “Ms. Marsh can explain.” He didn’t accept Gizella’s invitation to join her on the sofa. He stayed leaning lightly against the doorframe. In contrast to the very black hair on his balding head, his gaping shirt front revealed a few fine grey hairs.

“Provenance,” Helena said.

Reverting to Russian, Grigoriev said he had been suspicious that this was another little hoax cooked up by someone looking for a get-rich-quick scheme. Art was perfect for money laundering and those less than scrupulous people in the former satellites had managed to hide any number of pieces when the glorious Soviet army approached their borders. Vengerski, meaning Hungarians — stretching his mouth wide, he made the word longer and nastier than it needed to be — had been particularly eager to bury their treasures. Moreover, he said, he was concerned about the killing of the lawyer acting for this pretty little Hungarian lady. What, he asked, could he have known that warranted killing him?

“What is that?” Gizella asked. “What is provenance?”

“The biography of a painting from as early as possible to as recently as how it landed in your house,” Helena explained, though it was fairly obvious that Gizella was not interested “Sometimes,” she continued, “there are mentions of an artist working on a particular painting, letters, records of commissions, payments. All that adds up to provide some basis for assessing a painting’s authenticity.”

“Authenticity?” Gizella poured herself another glass of Scotch and offered Grigoriev another shot of vodka. “It’s not Russian,” she said, “but Finland makes an excellent substitute, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t,” Grigoriev said. “Finland makes smoked salmon, and that’s about it.” He screwed up his face again but accepted his glass from the hovering Hilda. Lucy gave a growl of warning but sat down when Gizella raised her hand.

“She did one of these paintings already,” Grigoriev said in Russian, “so why would she do another?”

Helena shrugged. One was at the Capodimonte in Naples, the other at the Uffizi. Like other artists of her time, Artemisia painted the same scenes several times. If a painting was praised and sold, another wealthy collector would want one for himself and commission it. She had painted several versions of Susanna for the Borghese court. Same model. Same scene. But Helena did not