The Raphael Affair (2 page)

‘The more important the painting, the more difficult it was to get it out of the country. I suppose that is also true now. And the most difficult of all were those by – or thought to be by – the great triumvirate of the Renaissance: Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo. Several times dealers or collectors bought works by one of these artists, asked the papacy for permission to export, and were turned down. In many cases the pictures are still here. So, when the di Parma family wanted to sell their most valuable possession, something illicit was clearly needed if they were to collect the money.

‘The di Parmas had been a great family, one of the most powerful in central Italy. Like many others they had fallen on hard times, and when the Earl of Clomorton offered to buy their Raphael for an outrageous sum they agreed. To get it out of the country, they enlisted the
aid of an English art dealer called Samuel Paris, and he turned to Mantini for extra assistance.

‘The routine they came up with was beautifully simple. Mantini was to paint over the Raphael and the picture was to leave the country as one of his works. When it got to England the new painting would be cleaned off and the Raphael would take its place in the Earl’s collection. Presumably Mantini used a coat of varnish to protect the painting underneath, and used only paint that could be removed easily.

‘I don’t know any of the details of how it was done technically, but I do know it was done. There is a letter in the Clomorton archives from Paris assuring the Earl that he had watched Mantini apply the paint and seen the Raphael disappear under its disguise. But Clomorton never hung his picture on his wall.

‘At some stage something went wrong, either accidentally or deliberately. The picture must have been switched; the payment for the Raphael was handed over and a different picture was sent to England. Shortly after it arrived, the fraud was evidently discovered and the Earl died. The family doesn’t seem to have mentioned the matter again.

‘The point is, the Raphael
was
covered by Mantini – this was seen by Paris; it never got to England; and it disappeared from the di Parma collection. On the other hand, the family owned a Mantini in 1728 that they hadn’t had four years earlier.

‘Now, all of this suggests that the Raphael stayed in Rome under cover. If that was the case, I don’t know why they never wiped the disguise off. But they
didn’t, the Mantini stayed in the collection and was evidently considered to be of such small importance that in the 1860s they donated it to Santa Barbara as an altarpiece.

‘And there you are. The picture has rested unknown in that church for more than a century. I first saw it a year ago when I was working on my dissertation. Then I decided a Raphael may be underneath, came back to check, and it’s gone. Someone has pinched the damn thing.’

Even when seen through the stilted prose of an official document, the prisoner’s sense of outrage was clear. Not only had he been jilted out of one of the most remarkable art discoveries of the decade, he had got himself arrested as a vagrant to boot. If, indeed, it
was
a remarkable discovery. Either way, if the painting had vanished, it was something to look into. Seeing an excuse for a stroll, he summoned Flavia, walked down the stairs, and set off for Santa Barbara.

One of the delights of his job, so Bottando thought to himself as they walked, was the chance of living in Rome. Although not born here, he considered himself very much a Roman and had spent most of the past thirty years in the city. Much of his dislike of his previous assignment in Milan had been prompted not by the job, but because he had had to live in a city which he regarded as soulless and drab.

Then came his great opportunity. Bottando was summoned back to Rome to combat the growing number of
thefts of works of art throughout Italy. The creation of his department was due to the theft of a dozen famous works from one of the best – and theoretically best guarded-museums in the country. The police, as usual, hadn’t known where to start. They had no contacts in the art world, didn’t know the likely instigators, hadn’t a clue what might have happened to the paintings.

In a country where the love of art is part of national identity, the matter quickly bubbled up into a potential scandal once it had been raised. The smaller political parties in the ruling coalition began making speeches about defending the national heritage from rapacious foreigners as a way of irritating the larger group of Christian Democrats. At one stage, it had even seemed as though the socialists would pull out of the coalition, and that love of art would bring down the government – thus giving the country another unusual political first.

But it didn’t happen. The polizia, spotting a way of aggrandising itself at the expense of the rival carabinieri, proposed a national task force to combat the problem, and for once were backed up by their minister. And in due course they had chosen Bottando to run it, the call to duty rescuing him from the drudgery of fighting an unequal and losing battle against white-collar criminals and other semi-legitimate hoodlums in the financial waters of central Milan.

His return to Rome had been one of the great joys of his career, and he had spent endless evenings walking the streets, revisiting old and favourite sites like the Imperial remains in the Forum, the quietly confident
medieval churches and the extravagant baroque monuments. He was free to wander at his leisure, and blessed the bachelor status which permitted it.

As he and Flavia walked now, he constantly looked around him, and took his assistant on a slightly devious route to their destination. The case they were on was not so urgent that five minutes would make any difference. It was one of those Roman spring mornings which turns the city, for all its traffic jams, noise and untidiness, into a place of magic. The ochre buildings stood out against a clear blue sky, the smells of coffee and of food drifted out of bars and restaurants, there was a hum of preparation as the crisp and immaculate waiters set out tables and chairs in small piazzas, talking incessantly as they clipped the fresh white tablecloths in place and arranged flowers in the miniature vases. A few tourists were in evidence, looking tired as usual and dressed in the crumpled clothes and backpacks that were their invariable uniform. But there were not many; the year was too young, and the annual invasion was still several weeks away. For the time being, Rome was for the Romans, and it seemed like very heaven.

The way to their destination lay through the middle of the Campo dei Fiori market. East of this ran the via Giubbonari, a thin, straight lane lined with clothes and shoe shops behind the ruins of Pompey’s Theatre. It was far too narrow for any sort of car, but nonetheless several Fiats were wedged halfway down it, horns honking as the pedestrians did their best to make their way past. Just beyond these, in a small passageway on the left that was lined with second-hand booksellers, was Santa Barbara.

It was a tiny church, unvisited even by Bottando. It appeared virtually derelict, and was small enough to look almost like a model. Unlike the great basilicas of the city, this was very much a parish church. Built probably in the seventeenth century, its design was entirely conventional, the sort of thing that even an attentive tourist would pass by without bothering to visit.

The first view of the inside confirmed that the tourist would probably have been correct in his decision. The ceiling was of plain greyish plasterwork, there were no chapels along the side and the decorations were commonplace. Nonetheless, it still gave Bottando that brief moment, as his body registered the coolness of the interior, his nose caught the faint smell of old incense, and his eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, that always made him delight in visiting even the most modest of Rome’s churches. Like nearly all small churches, there was something sad, neglected, but entirely welcoming about Santa Barbara. The one discordant note was that someone, evidently the priest, had decided to erect a modern altar, which stood out brashly in the old and worn building. Bottando heard Flavia sniff with disapproval.

‘Modern priests trying to drum up fresh trade,’ she commented.

‘Maybe,’ Bottando replied. ‘I suppose in this area you have to do something. It would be a pity to wake up one day and find that your entire congregation had died of old age.’

‘I suppose so. But I’ve never got on with hairy-chested clerical enthusiasm. The intense beady look in their eyes
always makes me uncomfortable. Give me corpulent corruption any day.’

Bottando began to remark that he would never have thought she was interested in priests. He was trying to push his mind off the subject of his own little paunch, and the worry that this signified decadence in his assistant’s mind, when the subject of their discussion came through a small door behind the old altar.

At first sight, he didn’t fit the caricature of the tall, gaunt, jesuitical type that Flavia evidently had in mind. He didn’t look at all like the sort who spend a few years doing good in the suburbs before rushing off to upset the Pope by running guns in South America. Short, pink and fleshy of face, he seemed more inclined to stay in Rome with a cosy sinecure in the Vatican. But, thought Bottando, you never can tell with priests. At least his greeting when Bottando introduced himself was courteous.

‘I gather that you have lost a painting,’ the policeman began once the preliminary polite noises were over. ‘As I have been told it might have been stolen, I thought I had better make some enquiries.’

The priest frowned, cupping his hands together in front of his stomach in a gesture of clerical thoughtfulness. ‘I can’t imagine who told you that. There used to be an altar painting, true. But we sold it a month or so ago.’

‘Sold it? To whom? Isn’t that church property? I thought these sales normally went through the Vatican. They generally tell us about them.’

The priest looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, it’s like this.’
He paused. ‘Do you have to make a report or something? I really don’t want to get into a bureaucratic muddle over forms and things.’

‘It all depends. We’ve been told that a painting here was stolen. The niceties of Vatican routine are not our concern if it wasn’t.’

‘It wasn’t.’ He thought for a moment, then launched into an explanation. ‘I run a small programme for the addicts who live in the Campo area – food, shelter, some attempts to keep them off drugs, and awake.’ Bottando nodded and politely encouraged him to get on with it. He had come across dozens of these individual programmes in Milan, generally run by well-meaning priests. As a rule, they didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the problem, but the state provided no better alternative.

‘We need a lot of supplies and, as you can see, it’s a poor parish. We don’t get any donations from visitors, not a penny from the diocese, nothing from the city. About a month ago a man appeared and wanted to buy the altarpiece. He offered enough money to keep the programme going for a year and I took it. The sale wasn’t registered with the Vatican because it would have taken most of the money. I decided that my addicts needed it more.’

Bottando nodded again. It happened all the time and was understandable, even if it did make his job more difficult. ‘How much did he pay?’ he asked.

‘Ten million lire,’ the priest replied. ‘I knew all about the painting. It’s virtually worthless. I told him so, but he said it was for a collector who wanted a piece by Mantini and was prepared to pay over the odds for it.’

‘Did he give you a receipt or anything like that?’

‘Oh yes, it was all done properly. The deed of sale was even franked properly. If you will wait I’ll get it.’ He hurried back to the sacristy and returned a few moments later with a large piece of white, lined paper with a stamp in the top-right corner. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Sold, One Reposo by Mantini from the Church of Santa Barbara, Rome, for ten million lire. Dated 15 February and signed by myself and Edward Byrnes, dealer. I see he gave no address. I’d not noticed that before. But he paid me in cash and gave me a donation for the programme as well, so I suppose that doesn’t matter much.’

2

At about eight that evening, Flavia di Stefano sighed, dumped the remainder of her work, finished and unfinished, in the ‘out’ basket and walked briskly out of the office. It had been a busy day, and not a particularly satisfying one.

After the visit to Santa Barbara, the rest of her day had been taken up with routine enquiries about the Mantini, all of them frustrating for someone who loved finding corruption in high places. Everything about the transaction was entirely legal. The owner had wanted to sell, the buyer had taken the picture to England and had been scrupulous about informing everybody of his intentions. All the forms had been filled in properly, and every legal obstacle with the arts ministry, the treasury and the customs surmounted by the rulebook.

A model of a respectable art dealer in operation. Except that Sir Edward Byrnes, prince of London art dealers, might have been taking a Raphael out rather
than some piece of junk. But an afternoon spent combing through the penal code had produced nothing which gave them a case. If Byrnes had painted over the Raphael and concealed the fact, a clear crime. If he had smuggled it out, ditto. If he had stolen it, no trouble. In all those cases they could probably have recovered the picture. But, as far as she could tell, there was nothing against taking out a Raphael covered with a Mantini, if you were not the one who’d put the Mantini over it in the first place. And Byrnes would say he didn’t know there was anything special about the picture at all. He’d be lying through his teeth, of course, but nothing could be done about it.

It was annoying. Doubly annoying, in fact. Flavia took it for granted that all art dealers were crooked at some level. Their business, after all, consisted of buying things that they knew the sellers could get more for elsewhere. Byrnes, however, was an absolute model of propriety. Utterly fluent in Italian, he often donated works to Italian museums and lent other pieces for exhibitions. His services in other matters had been rewarded with honours in Italy and France, as well as with his knighthood. By reputation a distinguished and learned man, there was not a trace of his ever having even bent the rules, let alone broken them. It was infuriating and, to Flavia, merely demonstrated that he was too clever to get caught.