Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Gabriel Allon #22) (60)

“How can one not be tentative when one is forging a Titian?”

“It’s a dead giveaway, Francesco. I have to become Titian. Otherwise, we’re sunk.”

“What are you going to do with that one?”

“Cremation. The others, too.”

“Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“Clearly.”

Early the following morning, Gabriel uncrated one of the paintings he had pillaged from Julian’s storerooms, an early sixteenth-century Venetian School devotional piece of no value and little merit. Even so, he felt a stab of guilt as he scraped the unknown artist’s work from the canvas and covered it in gesso and an imprimatura of lead white with traces of lampblack and yellow ocher. Next he executed his underdrawing—with a brush, the way he would have done it—and meticulously prepared his palette. Lead white, genuine ultramarine, madder lake, burnt sienna, malachite, yellow ocher, red ocher, orpiment, ivory black. Before commencing work, he once again reflected on the shifting fortunes of his career. He was no longer the leader of a powerful intelligence service or even one of the world’s finest art restorers.

He was the sun amidst small stars.

He was Titian.



For the better part of the next week, Chiara and the children saw little of him. On the rare occasions he emerged from his studio, he was on edge and preoccupied, not at all himself. Only once did he accept an invitation to join Chiara for lunch. His hands left smudges of paint across her breasts and abdomen.

“I feel like I just made love to another man.”

“You did.”

“Who are you?”

“Come with me. I’ll show you.”

Wrapped in a bedsheet, Chiara followed him into the studio and stood before the canvas. At length she whispered, “You’re a freak.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s absolutely—”

“Amazing, I think.”

“I see a touch of Giorgione in it.”

“That’s because I was still under his influence when I painted it in 1510.”

“Who will you be next?”

Jacobo Robusti, the artist known as Tintoretto, was a learned and unsmiling man who rarely set foot outside Venice and allowed few visitors to enter his workspace. If there was one consolation, he was among the swiftest painters in the republic. Gabriel completed his version of Bacchus, Venus, and Ariadne in half the time it took him to finish The Lovers. Chiara nevertheless declared it superior to the Titian in every respect, as did Francesco.

“I’m afraid your wife is right. You truly are a freak.”

Next Gabriel assumed the personality and remarkable palette of Paolo Veronese. Susanna in the Bath required the largest of the six canvases he had acquired from Isherwood Fine Arts and several additional days to complete—in large part because Gabriel intentionally damaged the work and then restored it. Luca Rossetti visited him three times during the painting’s execution. Brush in hand, Gabriel lectured the young Carabinieri officer on the artistic merits and fraudulent pedigrees of his four forged masterpieces. Rossetti in turn briefed Gabriel on the preparations for their forthcoming operation. They included the acquisition of two properties—an isolated villa for the reclusive forger and an apartment in Florence for his front man.

“It’s on the south side of the Arno, on the Lungarno Torrigiani. We’ve loaded it up with paintings and antiquities from the Art Squad’s evidence room. It definitely looks like the home of an art dealer.”

“And the villa?”

“Your friend the Holy Father called Count Gasparri. It’s all arranged.”

“How soon can you settle into the apartment and assume your new identity?”

“As soon as you say I’m ready.”

“Are you?”

“I know my lines,” answered Rossetti. “And I know more about the Venetian School painters than I ever thought possible.”

“What was Veronese’s name when he was young?” inquired Gabriel.

“Paolo Spezapreda.”

“And why was that?”

“His father was a stonecutter. It was traditional for children to be named after their father’s occupation.”

“Why did he start calling himself Paolo Caliari?”

“His mother was the illegitimate child of a nobleman called Antonio Caliari. Young Paolo thought it was better to be named for a nobleman than a stonecutter.”

“Not bad.” Gabriel drew his Beretta from the waistband of his trousers. “But will you be able to recite your lines so confidently if someone points one of these at your head?”

“I grew up in Naples,” said Rossetti. “Most of my childhood friends are now in the Camorra. I’m not going to fall to pieces if someone starts waving a gun around.”

“I heard a rumor that an elderly Venetian School painter gave you a good thrashing the other night in San Polo.”

“The elderly painter attacked me without warning.”

“That’s the way it works in the real world. Criminals don’t often announce their intentions before resorting to violence.” Gabriel returned the gun to the small of his back and contemplated the towering canvas. “What do you think, Signore Calvi?”

“You have to darken the garments of the two elders. Otherwise, I won’t be able to convince Oliver Dimbleby that it was painted in the late sixteenth century.”