The Botticelli Caper

One

One false paint stroke and she’d be out of a job permanently.

Her hand shook as she picked up her tool—not a brush but a cotton swab—and held it over one of the most famous paintings in the world: Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

Gorgeous. Old. Priceless.

What if she screwed up? This was the most delicate conservation job she’d ever attempted. Could she do it?

Calm down, Flora. You’ve had excellent training in painting conservation.

But a two-week intensive course in tempera techniques didn’t put her in the same class as a painter or conservator who’d spent years working in the medium. She felt as if someone had shoved her into the Olympics before she’d won even a local competition. Could she match the surrounding colors on Venus’ left knee exactly, so no viewer could detect the repair? That job paled compared to the excruciating task of cleaning the entire painting without removing any of the original egg-based tempera.

The shouts of construction workers and the revving of a motorcycle outside could not distract her. What a painting! Tastefully nude, marble-white Venus perched on a scallop shell, about to touch the shore. A handmaiden standing ready to cover the goddess with a stunning orange robe. Sky and sea in calming blues and whites, luscious green vegetation, delicate pink roses falling on Venus. Exquisitely rendered bodies, with the flesh of the Wind glowing gold among swirling drapery.

Too bad Flora couldn’t kill the tourist who’d thrown his heavy briefcase at the painting. The cell phone had only cracked the protective glass, but the incident had freaked out the chief conservator and accelerated the time table for restoration. All the Botticellis, as well as the masterpieces by Pollaiolo, were being painstakingly cleaned and restored while their new rooms, with state-of-the-art security systems, were readied. Flora had joined dozens of men and women, all laboring in different ways to bring Florence’s Uffizi Gallery into the 21st century.

Staring at the painting wasn’t getting the job done. She hunched her shoulders up and down to relax them.

C’mon, take a deep breath now.

First, she had to test sections of the painting with different solvents to find the right one to remove grime without disturbing the underlying egg tempera. Small jars of distilled water, liquid soap, and acetone stood close at hand. The acetone was a last resort; she hadn’t detected any varnish on the painting with her magnifying visor. She smiled as she remembered a colleague saying he’d used saliva because the enzymes in it removed grime from tempera without harming the painting. Even if she saved up for a week, Flora couldn’t produce enough spit to clean a painting this huge.

Using a magnifying visor, she began with water mixed with a tiny bit of mild soap. A little dirt came off, but Flora expected to lift a tiny amount of paint as well. Nothing happened. She added a little more soap and rubbed fractionally harder. Again, nothing. Was there a light varnish over the tempera? Okay, apply a little acetone, in a tiny spot near the edge that would be hidden by the frame once it was replaced.

Bingo. The grime began to lift, but some areas needed acetone while others did fine with soapy water. Flora worked steadily through a mountain of cotton swabs, trying to ignore the loud voices, clanks of ladders, and the screams of drills just on the other side of the wall. Oh, the joys of working in a permanent construction zone! But Flora had no choice. Her body and talents were on loan to the Uffizi as long as Ottavia, her Roman boss, and Giulia, her temporary Florentine boss, deemed necessary.

Wait a minute, that swatch of dark green was turning bright green! Surely the original color had never been that light. She reached into her satchel and pulled out the test cards her class had made for early Renaissance tempera pigments: malachite, verdigris (copper green), ultramarine, cinnabar, red, white, and yellow lead, red lake, and carbon black. They’d mixed their own tempera with ground pigments and an egg yolk-water mixture and then compared the fresh paints with the faded and pitted colors of Old Master paintings.

Look at the workshop notes: copper green turns brown over time. Shit.

Flora stared at the Botticelli. Browned green should lighten a little bit with cleaning, but not change hue altogether. The new color resembled early spring redbud leaves in Illinois, where Flora had grown up.

A trickle of unease slid down her spine.

"Ragazza stupida! You should have spent more time examining the entire surface before you started cleaning," she muttered as she adjusted her visor and turned her desk lamp so it hit the painting at a raking angle.

After fifteen minutes, she took off her visor, frowning at the painting. It was extraordinarily well preserved for something painted over five centuries earlier. True, there were little nicks in the surface, and darkened pigments, especially the whites.

Flora consulted the notes in the conservation file. The Birth of Venus had been cleaned two years earlier by an employee who was no longer at the Uffizi.

Damn—there were no treatment details. A hasty conservator who didn’t bother to record anything? No wonder she didn’t last.

She examined the painting’s surface again. Where were the abrasions caused by that earlier cleaning? Most cleaning left some traces.

Flora fumbled in her drawer for her second, more elaborate visor, the one with miniature microscopes like those used by dentists. She turned to a higher power on each lens. This time she looked at the quality of the paint. Botticelli had pioneered a new medium: tempera grassa, or egg yolk made more transparent by adding oil. His paintings gleamed, but this one seemed a bit dull.

She moved on. Botticelli was famous for his delicately blended brush strokes. He built up almost invisible gradations of color, especially in the flesh tones of his human subjects. The total effect was a luminous, complex skin of paint.

Not here. The edges of each stroke stood out, and color changes were clearly apparent, as if an assistant had subbed for the master while he was out to lunch. She reached into her satchel again and compared what she saw with micrographs from her favorite book on Botticelli. A neon sign pulsed in her brain: Alert! Alert!

Her heart pounded as her suspicions grew. Cold sweat ran down her sides under her blouse. Flora examined the edges of the huge unframed canvas.

The painter had experimented with color mixtures on the portions of canvas usually hidden by the frame. Here, the colors matched those on the front of the painting, but they were brighter.

She added it up: A coating that didn’t behave like a varnish.

A green pigment that changed hue unnaturally, as if it had been painted over with something else.

Brush strokes applied unevenly, without the delicate finesse of Botticelli but still extraordinarily skillful.

Trial color swatches in brighter paint on the edge of the canvas.

She looked at the edges of the canvas again. At one corner, she spied a little circle. Zooming closer with her magnifying glasses, she saw a little face, a smiley face.

It was painted in colors that didn’t match anything in the painting.

Flora leaned back in her chair, her thought process in rags.

That little face...modern pigments...almost like ha, ha in a cartoon...Who? How? When had it been done?

Her chair legs slammed down onto the stone floor. At this unlucky moment, head conservator Giulia Rossi entered the lab. Flora! How’s it going? I hope you’ve made progress. We have such an unbelievable amount of work now that the Director—

She moved close enough to see Flora’s face. What’s wrong? Are you okay?

Flora stood on wobbly knees. She sucked in a deep breath.

I have good news and bad news for you, Giulia. The good news is...we can stop cleaning this painting. The bad news is...it’s not a Botticelli.

Two

W hat on earth do you mean? Of course, it’s a Botticelli! It’s one of the most important works of Renaissance art in all of Italy! Giulia Rossi’s brown eyes snapped as she thumped her notebook on the worktable.

Flora felt her knees wobble again as she confronted the stylish woman twenty years her senior. She inhaled another breath. "I think not. I mean, the original painting is everything you say it is, but this painting was not painted in the fifteenth century."

How could you make such a determination? Are you an expert in art forgery? And that tempera course you just took, it was only two weeks long!

Anger turned to acid in Flora’s stomach. "Giulia, I told you when Ottavia sent me here that my expertise is not on the same level as someone who does tempera exclusively. But the workshop was led by someone who is such an expert: the specialist from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

I’m over ninety percent sure this painting’s a clever forgery. You don’t think I’d make such a statement without proof, do you? Listen... Speaking with all the authority she could muster, she told Giulia her reasons.

Show me. Giulia’s body quivered inside its expensive sheath of layered black, adorned with a scarf in muted blues and browns.

Flora pointed out the areas where she’d been working. I think more than one coating was used on this painting. And the pigments on the edge of the canvas don’t match the colors on the painting’s surface. And look at this little smiley face. I think it’s a deliberate taunt by the forger. It couldn’t be seen until the frame was removed.

Giulia’s shoulders slumped. "Oddio, you could be right. We’ll have to test the pigments and the surface coating."

In multiple places. I’ve only checked four sections of the painting so far.

I can’t believe it. Giulia pulled out a chair and sank into it. Testing will take at least a day, longer if we have to send the samples to another lab in another city. How on earth...wait. Before I go to the director, we have to figure out when this forgery—and the switch with the original painting—could have happened.

The painting was last cleaned two years ago. By the way, the conservator who performed that cleaning left no notes—

That’s not our standard practice, not at all! exclaimed Giulia. I knew that conservator was always late, always full of excuses, but not that she left us no documentation! She shook her sleek bob vigorously.

"Anyhow, I’m guessing the Venus hasn’t had the glass removed since that cleaning, and it’s impossible to thoroughly examine the surface without doing that."

Giulia frowned. Unless a visiting expert requested a closer examination. I’ll check on that. So, if the painting were switched sometime within the last two  years—

Then the police will have a heck of a time figuring out how and when it was done. And who! Flora shook her head. I’d sure like to meet the forger—he’s an extraordinary painter.

"Not to mention the multi-million-euro question: where is the original Botticelli?"

The two women stared at each other, all previous animosity forgotten. Then Giulia said, Last week you told me you have a friend in the Carabinieri’s Art Squad in Rome. What’s his name?

Vittorio Bernini. He’s a captain now, and this kind of investigation is right up his alley. And he has great contacts in the art world as well as in our various police forces.

Here, write down his contact information. Giulia opened her notebook to a blank page and shoved it across the table to Flora.

Flora wrote and closed the notebook, handing it back to her boss.

Giulia stood, patting her hair back into place and squaring her shoulders. I’m dreading Dr. Romano’s reaction. He likes to yell at any employee bearing bad news. Then she brightened. But he won’t waste too much energy on me if the Uffizi Gallery really has been duped by a forger and lost a priceless painting. He’ll be too busy explaining this fiasco to the police, the Ministry of Culture, and the press.

Flora stared out the window. She could almost see the vultures of blame gathering in the clouds above the long courtyard between the wings of the museum.

This could be the worst shit storm to ever hit the Uffizi.

Three

It was the day after the discovery of the false Botticelli. As Flora walked to work from her neighborhood south of the Arno River, she indulged in her favorite pastime: daydreaming. When she wasn’t thinking about conservation or art forgery, she liked to imagine personalities for the buildings where she worked. The Uffizi