The Collector

It took two hours before the crowd had thinned enough for Milani to get a close look at the painting, which he’d viewed several times when visiting the Louvre. After standing for more than twenty minutes with his eyes nearly pressed to the bulletproof glass, he removed the camera from his pocket, accessed the magnifier app, and took a closer look at several sections of the masterpiece. Several minutes later, he returned the phone to his pocket and searched for the person who had replaced him as curator, seeing him speaking with the pope at the far corner of the room. “What you did was remarkable,” the curmudgeon said to the pope, interrupting the conversation. “Your hard work and diligence made the exchange of paintings with the Louvre a fait de complet by the time you retired.” “I want to talk about that exchange. I’m surprised that the French promised you they’d send the original Mona Lisa and instead provided a replica. I guess they don’t trust anyone, even the bishop of Rome, to safeguard it.” “This is not a replica, Cristoforo,” the curator interrupted indignantly. “I inspected this masterpiece before it left the Louvre, authenticated it as da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and kept it constantly in sight until it was brought into this room.” “Nevertheless, it’s a forgery.” “That’s impossible.” “Take a look,” he responded, pointing to the painting. The younger curator believed the curmudgeon had dementia or impaired eyesight. However, noticing the pope’s uneasiness because of Milani’s accusations, he reluctantly agreed to examine the painting again and followed the former curator to the exhibit. “This is the original work created by the hand of da Vinci,” the younger curator reaffirmed after a five-minute examination. “Look closely at the face. The subtlety and sfumato are off.” The young curator looked again at the painting. “You’re mistaken,” he replied. “Explain subtlety and sfumato,” the pope asked the curmudgeon. “Leonardo used thirty layers of paint to create the subtleness of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo’s expression.” Because of his past discussions with Milani, the pope nodded in understanding that instead of saying the Mona Lisa, the curmudgeon gave the name of the wealthy silk merchant’s wife and mother of five, who was the subject of the painting. “The layers of paint on the original,” the curmudgeon continued, “have a known thickness of forty micrometers or half the width of a human hair. This layering is substantially thinner, changing the subtlety by a fraction,” Milani replied, taking a dig at the curator. “And how can anyone discern with the naked eye a variance in the thickness of paint that's less than that of a human hair?” the young curator asked. “I can. But even if the subtleness was the same thickness, it’s nearly impossible to reproduce da Vinci’s genius at layering the unique colors he mixed to create the desired effect. The best a forger can hope for is to produce an effect that would be difficult to detect. The better the forger, the greater the difficulty in discerning the variance in subtlety. This forger was excellent.” “And sfumato?” the pope inquired. “The sfumato was Leonardo’s way of softening the transition between colors, allowing the tones and colors to shade gradually into one another. This produced a soft outline.” “The sfumato and subtlety of the painting I just inspected are certifiably by da Vinci’s hand,” the young curator countered. “None of the art experts in attendance this evening saw the irregularities you claim.” “They would if they took an objective look. I’ve spent six decades examining Renaissance paintings, and I’m very familiar with the techniques and idiosyncrasies of artists during this period. This is not da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It’s a magnificent forgery of that masterpiece.” The young curator was exasperated, his voice displaying his frustration with what he perceived to be the curmudgeon’s stubbornness. “Are you implying that the Mona Lisa has been stolen and replaced with a replica?” “I’m not saying the painting’s been stolen, just that the French might not have trusted us with the original.” “And they assumed we didn’t have the expertise to detect a forgery? That’s preposterous.” “It’s an exemplary fake which, from a distance, is impossible to detect,” Milani countered. "It fooled you and every other expert in this room." Knowing that neither person would change their view, the pope intervened. “I’d like to know if the painting on display is the Mona Lisa,” he told the young curator. “Can we scientifically determine if it’s a replica?” he asked, suggesting a means to settle the dispute between the current and former curator. “I’ll have the chief restorer and his staff return to the Vatican and, when the exhibit ends this evening, have them analyze the painting,” the young curator said, knowing he had no choice now that the pope wanted a scientific confirmation. At ten pm, the VIP exhibition ended. Once the last guest left the Apostolic Palace, the alarm system was deactivated, and the restoration staff brought the Mona Lisa to their laboratory. Once there, the painting was carefully removed from its protective case. “We'll begin with the X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, or XRF, to study the paint layers and their chemical composition,” the chief restorer told the pope as six of his staff gently carried the painting to the machine. “What will this tell us?” the pontiff asked. “The composition of the pigments used by the artist and the number of layers of paint. As a control, I have pigment graphs from one of our da Vinci paintings,” the chief restorer said. The chief restorer aimed the XRFs handheld analyzer at various parts of the painting, the readings transferring to his desktop computer, where a program converted them into a series of blue graphs. He then brought up a series of red graphs from a known da Vinci painting. “The red graphs are from Saint Jerome, which this lab previously authenticated as a work of da Vinci,” the chief restorer stated. “You’ll notice thirty red graphs, each corresponding to a layer of paint the artist used to create subtlety. The shape of the graphs shows the chemical analysis of the pigments used in each layer. If the number of graphs and their shapes are the same, the number of layers and the composition of the pigments are identical.” “There are only fifteen blue graphs, and their shapes differ completely from the control readings,” the young curator said, his voice showing his surprise at the findings. “Meaning the Mona Lisa in our possession is a fake,” the restorer said. The young curator collapsed on a nearby chair.