“Almost all?” Glenwood said. “Some of the pigments are not from Vermeer’s historical period?”
“No,” said the expert from New York’s Met, “but they could have been added later during restoration attempts. After all, the provenance of this painting is clearly documented, and it includes several dealers throughout the centuries, some of whom might have tried to clean or repair the Vermeer for resale. And, of course, it has a provenance, which your newcomer does not.”
The New York expert had already made her position clear. She thought the “newcomer” was a clear forgery and Painting #1 the real thing. Glenwood was not so sure. He thought scientists, and even art experts, oversimplified.
Really skillful forgeries were notoriously hard to detect, and Vermeer’s art had been plagued by imitators. At one point, “experts” had attributed seventy paintings to him. Today the number was thirty-four, with more in dispute even under scientific analysis. Vermeer’s Young Woman Seated at the Virginals was considered genuine until 1947, a fake from 1947 to 2004, and then genuine again, with some disagreement. Science could only go so far.
A craquelure expert spoke next, and scornfully. “I don’t know, ladies and gentlemen, why we are even here. Painting #1 is clearly the real thing. Its pattern of surface cracking is completely in keeping with an age of 354 years, and with the Dutch template of connected networks of cracking. The “new-comer” has almost no craquelure at all. Furthermore, look how bright and new its colors are—it might have been painted last year. Its total lack of aging tags it as a forgery to anyone actually looking at it. Dr. Glenwood, why are we here?”
Everyone looked at Glenwood. He pushed down the temper rising in response to the craquelure expert’s tone.
“We are here because I, and not only I, am bothered by other differences between these two paintings—differences that were not obvious when we had only Painting #1 and could not compare them side by side. Now we can. Look at the pearl necklace in the second painting. Vermeer painted pearls often, and always they have the sparkle and luster of the second painting, which the first mostly lacks. The second also contains far more tiny detail in the painting-within-a-painting on the wall behind the woman sewing. That sort of painstaking detail is another Vermeer trademark. Look at the woman’s gown. Both versions feature the underpainting in natural ultramarine that Vermeer did beneath his reds to get a purplish tinge—but in Painting #2, the result is crisper. And Painting #2—I regard this as significant—was revealed by the X-ray analysis to have underlying elements that the artist painted over. Vermeer was obsessive about getting his pictures exactly right, and so very often he painted out elements and replaced them with others. Painting #1 shows no overpainting. I think Painting #2 is the original, and the picture we have hung in the National for sixteen years is the forgery.”
A babble of voices:
“You can’t believe that!”
“Perhaps a young artist, not yet proficient in his craft—”
“We have a clear chain of ownership going all the way back to Pieter van Ruijven—”
“The scientific evidence—”
“The lack of aging—”
In the end, Glenwood’s was the only dissenting voice. He was a Vermeer expert but not a forgery expert, and not the Director of the National Gallery. The painting that had mysteriously appeared would be banished to basement storage so that no one else would be fooled into paying some exorbitant sum for it. And the one that had hung in the museum for sixteen years would continue to hang there. It had been declared the real thing.
2270
The physicists spend six days trying to fix the Square. Finally they give up, because they can’t find any indicator that it is actually broken. Cran, who knows that it is not, insists over and over that the Square simply went dark. For six days, he holds his breath, not knowing what might happen. There are now two versions of the Vermeer loose in the timestream—what if that turns out to be so significant that something terrible happens to the present?
Nothing does.
Scientists and engineers wait for something—anything—to appear in Square Two. On the sixth day, something does: a crude Paleolithic figurine. Everyone goes crazy: this is the oldest piece of art the Squares have ever found. The expert on Stone Age art is summoned. The Director is summoned. The stone figurine is replaced with a lump of rock. No Transfer this early will disturb the timestream, not even if it’s witnessed; the Transfer will just be attributed to gods, or magic, or witchcraft. The fertility carving is reverently taken to the Gallery. Toasts are drunk. The past is being recovered; the Square works fine; all is well. Cran’s chest expands as he finally breathes normally.
As he leaves, the chief physicist gives Cran a long, hard look.
A few days later Cran goes to the Gallery to attend the presentation of Tulia’s painting. It is so beautiful that his heart aches. The picture is neither abstract nor mimetic but, rather, something of both. What moves Cran so much is the way she has painted light. It is always the use of light that he cares about, and Tulia has captured starlight on human figures in a way he has never seen done before. The light, and not their facial expressions, seems to indicate the mood of each of her three human subjects, although so subtly that it does not feel forced. The emotion feels real. Everything about the painting feels real.
A woman behind him says, “Pretty, yes—but actually, it’s just an exercise in an archaic and irrelevant art. Flat painting in a holo age? I mean, who cares?”
Cran wants to slug her. He does not. He congratulates Tulia, forcing words past the tightening in his throat, and leaves.
At home, he can’t sleep. He is agitated, dispirited, depressed. No—he is jealous, so jealous
