Rare Traits (The Rare Traits Trilogy Book I) Read online

Chapter 11 : June 2009

  “Hi, Claw, it’s Ced.”

  “Ced, I thought you’d never call. It’s been ten days since you hijacked my painting. How are the tests going?”

  “Been busy, Claw. But I’ve just finished working on it and the results are really interesting. This guy’s got more than just talent, he’s bloody incredible.”

  Claudia chewed her bottom lip in delight, her eyes sparkling.

  “Wow, that’s praise indeed coming from you. How’s my painting? Not suffered too much from the slings and arrows of outrageous x-rays?”

  “I’m not using x-rays, Claw! Just a few scalpels and a wire brush. But, yeah, it’s stood up pretty well, really. No major damage. Nothing a good restorer can’t fix anyway.”

  “What! Ced, you promised nothing would happen to it!”

  “Come on, Claw, don’t be daft. I’ve treated it like a baby. Now listen, I think the easiest way to show you all this stuff is for you to come here. Friday’s a holiday, so why don’t you come up Thursday evening and stay for the weekend? I can explain it all to you, and we’d have the added bonus of seeing you again. How does that sound?”

  “Brilliant, I can’t wait! I’d come now if I could. But, Ced, as much as I’d like to, I can’t stay the whole weekend; I’ve promised Mum and Dad that I’d visit them. They’re off on a Caribbean cruise soon and they want to see me before they go. Gosh, Ced, I’m desperate to hear what you’ve found.”

  The following Thursday evening, after a frustratingly slow journey up a rush-hour-congested M6 motorway in pouring rain, Claudia turned into the driveway of Sally and Ced’s house. Five minutes earlier, the sun had pushed a few teasing rays through the clouds, offering the prospect of a dry summer’s evening. Claudia didn’t care if it snowed.

  She pushed open the front door, which Ced had left on the latch, and called him.

  “Hi Claw,” he yelled back from his study. “Just setting up the link to the lab. Almost done. Pour yourself a drink and come up.”

  Claudia dropped her overnight bag on the living room floor and went into the kitchen. She took a glass from a rack over the breakfast bar and poured herself some wine from a bottle sitting in an ice bucket on the counter top.

  “Can I get you one?” she called.

  “I’ve already got one, thanks. Can you bring that large book that’s sitting on the coffee table?”

  Claudia looked into the living room and saw a substantial art book resting among some others on the glass surface of the chrome-framed table: ‘The Works of Piero della Francesca’. She picked it up, nearly dropping her wine glass in the process, and headed upstairs.

  Ced was tapping on his keyboard as she entered the room. He hit the return key with a flourish and sat back to look at the screen of the large monitor. “Bingo!”

  He stood up, waited for Claudia to put down the book and her wine, and gave her a hug. “Hiya. Good trip?”

  “If you enjoy pelting rain, nose-to-tail traffic and huge lorries slinging oceans of water at you, then yes; it was great!”

  Claudia’s eyes were riveted on a high-resolution image of her portrait on the screen. After a few moments, she shifted her gaze to Ced’s eyes.

  “Well! What are you waiting for? Explain, please.”

  He grinned at her mischievously, “Actually, Claw, I’m a bit tired really. Had a knackering run this morning. Could we wait until tomorrow?”

  She punched him on the upper arm. “Get moving, buster!”

  “OK,” he said, running his hands over the keyboard. “This is a super-hi-res image of your painting.”

  He clicked on it a few times with the mouse to enlarge a tiny section below the left eye.

  “First thing that’s really interesting, as I mentioned before, is that this guy has quite a mixture of styles. Here, on the cheeks and around the eyes, there’s an amazing delicacy. He has built up the layers very slowly which give a translucency that most artists these days simply don’t have the patience for. With oils, he would have to wait at least a day, often several, between each application of the paint to let it dry, sometimes applying a very small amount on a given day. The early masters like Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, etc., were brilliant at this. Andrews has got it down to a T. Look, I’ve got some details of a few well-known works from that time to compare.”

  He clicked a few times on the keyboard and some smaller images showing close-up of face detail appeared. He pointed at them to emphasise the similarities.

  “But for other parts of the painting, it’s more like he’s moved into the seventeenth century to give depth to areas that the Renaissance lot didn’t bother with. Parts of the hair and the background are very Rembrandt-like. Not so much in the use of colour, but the brushwork. You’d think it would end up looking like a patchwork but he’s so competent that it really works.”

  Claudia moved in closer to look at the screen. “Is it similar overall to any works from those early periods?”

  Ced paused. “Yes and no. I mean, there are thousands of paintings that use this pose. It’s fairly standard because it works. The trick is bringing it to life which he does incredibly well. Those eyes are captivating; there’s a superb sparkle to them without using any cheap tricks. It’s really got a dynamism about it.”

  “So what are you saying about Andrews?”

  Ced scratched his head absently. “Well, you know that a major part of my work is checking out paintings to see if they are genuine. There are loads of painters out there who can knock up a quick Constable or Rembrandt or whatever and many are very good at it. Almost all of these guys are totally above board and don’t try to hide the fact that they are copying an old master. People pay good money for a known copy because having a proper painting hanging on your wall is more satisfying than having a print. While they can switch styles and easily fool the untrained eye, it’s not that difficult to differentiate them from the real thing. Whatever, it’s a legitimate market and everybody’s happy. What interests me, and the people who send me work, is when an artist’s making copies for fraudulent purposes. Perhaps it might be to fool a collector into thinking he’s bought something rare and valuable. There are rich people out there with a passion to own a masterpiece that they can guard jealously, possibly never showing it to anyone. It’s the power, if you like, of being able to own, say, a Picasso, or preferably something much older. These are the guys who the crooks will try to prey on. They will appeal to their greed, run a long, slow con to build up trust and then sell them a fake for a huge sum. Obviously these crooks need access to accomplished artists who can deliver.”

  Claudia looked horrified. “You’re not saying that John Andrews is doing this sort of thing, are you?”

  “No, of course not. But part of what I’m doing is looking at paintings that are known to be modern forgeries and trying to cut through the style mimicry to get to the real, innate style of the artist. Some of these guys are so good that it’s incredibly hard. There have been many so-called experts over the years who have been fooled by good forgers. And most of the buyers themselves aren’t dummies; they know their stuff. So to fool them and the rest of the art world, a forger has to be very good. What I’m doing is accumulating data on the styles used in known forgeries, focusing on the occasional slip-up by the forger that gives him away, and developing programs that will do the analyses automatically. It’s very subtle stuff. Looking at this portrait by John Andrews, what I’m saying is that if he wanted to be in the business of art forgery, he would be very good at it. I think he could mimic almost any style. So he’s an interesting find.”

  Claudia continued her defence. “But just because he’s a brilliant artist doesn’t mean he’s a crook!”

  “Of course it doesn’t. I’m merely saying that if he wanted to be, he could be. It’s certainly good to know about him and, assuming he is legit, he could turn out to be a very valuable source of advice. I really want to meet him.”

  “I hope you have more success than I did.”

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nbsp; Claudia stood back and her eye fell on the large book she’d brought upstairs. She pointed at it. “How does that fit in with your analysis?”

  “Well, as you know, Piero is a particular favourite of mine. His forte was fresco painting which interestingly didn’t really suit his style because he was a slow worker. You see, for frescos you get one shot at applying the paint to the section of the plaster you’re working on before it dries. He was, apparently, often experimenting with ways of slowing down the drying process.”

  Claudia had started to leaf through the large book on Piero as Ced was talking. “I’d never really heard of him before you mentioned his name. Some of these paintings are very powerful, don’t you think?”

  “I agree; they’re amazing. It’s interesting: for centuries after his death he was largely ignored and only really came back into prominence about a hundred years ago. These days, if you go to Tuscany, you’ll see his name everywhere. They’re really cashing in on it.

  “Anyway, I was talking about his style. Even though his works are in a very different medium from this portrait by John Andrews, who’s using modern, manufactured oils, the influence on Andrews is there. It’s almost as if Andrews is applying the oil in a tempera-like way. Your painting is of an elderly woman and we don’t have direct examples from Piero of the same subject matter. But you can see similarities in the expressions in some of the female figures in Piero’s work. Andrews must have studied him in great depth and tried to emulate his style.”

  Claudia had paused to look at a large print in the book of the painting: ‘The Resurrection.’

  “The eyes in this figure of Christ – I assume that’s who it is – are mesmerising. They seem to be staring straight through you.”

  “Absolutely. The central figure is Christ who has just emerged from the tomb. It’s quite a political painting when you look at all the symbolism but what it’s also famous for is that one of the figures at the bottom, the one to Christ’s right with his back to the tomb, is thought to be a self-portrait of Piero.”

  Claudia looked at the face. “Strong features. He looks like he was a powerfully built man. He could have been a triathlete like you.”

  “I don’t think they were really into physical fitness. And sadly for them, the bicycle hadn’t been invented. Or running shoes.”

  Claudia turned a few pages of the book. “Presumably, the artists would have used models for all these paintings.”

  “Without question,” nodded Ced. “They did it all the time. They used friends, family members, anyone willing to pose. I reckon the female figure Piero used in his famous Madonna del Parto, the so-called pregnant Madonna where she looks about to pop, has the same face as women in a number of other paintings he produced. Could have been his wife, or mistress, I suppose.”

  He looked down at the painting Claudia had turned to. “That’s a fascinating painting. It’s a fresco called ‘The Awakening’ and was only discovered relatively recently in an obscure church in the Tuscan hills. It had been plastered over, but fortunately with a plaster that didn’t wreck the painting underneath. Caused quite a stir in the art world when it was attributed to Piero. It’s an allegorical painting set in the fifteenth century, but it really depicts Christ counselling some of his disciples. I’ve examined it in some detail and tried to do a comparison between the faces in it with those in the Resurrection. I reckon Piero’s there again in the figure of this one: St. Paul. Bit cheeky really, putting his own face on a saint.”

  He noticed Claudia’s hand was resting on another part of the picture with her fingers pointing at one of the shepherds, a background figure but, nevertheless, quite a large one that was painted in great detail.

  “No, not that one, Claw, he’s a shepherd. I mean this one, on the left.”

  She ignored him and masked the figure’s hair with her finger.

  “Do you have a hi-res image of this painting, Ced?” she asked quietly.

  “Um, yes, I should have. It’ll be in the library file in the lab. Hang on a sec.”

  He hit a few keys and the image appeared.

  “Could you zoom in on the figure of the shepherd?”

  Ced looked puzzled. “Sure, if you like.”

  He hit some more keys and the face of the shepherd filled the screen. Claudia stared at it, her mouth open.

  “Can you … could you … um, can you isolate the face, so that the hair isn’t so dominant?”

  “Easy.” Another few keys were pressed. “There. Wow! It’s very detailed for a minor figure. I hadn’t really taken much notice of it before.”

  There was a bump as Claudia sat down hard in the chair she’d been standing in front of.

  “You all right, Claw? You look pale.”

  “Ced,” Claudia gasped in a whisper, staring at the face on the screen. “Ced, it’s him. Look at the eyes.”

  Ced looked in puzzlement at the image. “Who?”

  “It’s John Andrews. I know it can’t be, but it’s him!”