Transcript
Speaker: There's a kind of refusal to accept that artistry is alive and that there can be new pictures.
Speaker: If you don't leave a chance to a picture, if you don't look at it with a benevolent eye, you will never make a discovery in your life.
Speaker: Hello, welcome back to Curious Objects, I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: Five years ago, a long-forgotten painting was discovered in an attic in Toulouse, France.
Speaker: That same painting was to be sold at auction this week with a starting bid of 30 million euros.
Speaker: Why the hefty price tag?
Speaker: Well, it's said to be a masterpiece by the great Renaissance artist Caravaggio.
Speaker: This is only the second painting of his ever to be sold at auction.
Speaker: If true, it's an extraordinary rarity and a once-in-a-lifetime event in the art world.
Speaker: Today, we are talking all about that painting, asking whether it's authentic and, if it is, what is its power and its significance.
Speaker: I'll be joined first by an outside expert, and then I'll speak with the man himself, Eric Turkan, who is representing the painting and selling it.
Speaker: I need to note here, when we recorded the following interviews, the painting was scheduled to be sold at public auction on June 27th.
Speaker: Just today, it was announced that the painting has been sold privately and the auction will not take place.
Speaker: So, we'll have to wait and see if more information comes out about the price and the buyer.
Speaker: In the meantime, before conducting these interviews, I got some help prepping for them from Michael D.S.
Speaker: Griffith.
Speaker: Curious Objects is sponsored by America's oldest auction house, Freeman's.
Speaker: Located in Center City, Philadelphia, Freeman's has been telling the story of valued objects and collections since 1805.
Speaker: With a network of international resources and buyers and a comprehensive knowledge of market conditions, the specialists at Freemans work closely with consignors and collectors to offer unparalleled assistance in the sale and purchase of fine art, furniture, decorative arts, jewelry, books, and more.
Speaker: If you're curious about the value of a single item, an entire estate, personal property, or a corporate collection, our dedicated and experienced specialists are always available to assist.
Speaker: So this is my formation myth.
Speaker: When I was five years old, my parents, they had dragged me to every museum in Italy because my dad was doing his dissertation research there.
Speaker: And we went to the Uffizi, which as a five-year-old, I had no idea the significance of that.
Speaker: And all I knew was that I was bored and tired and hungry and miserable and upset.
Speaker: And we walked through the various galleries.
Speaker: I yawned at all the paintings.
Speaker: And then I don't remember this, but according to my parents, what happened next was we walked into the room that has Botticelli's picture of the birth of Venus.
Speaker: So she's coming out of the ocean, born on a clamshell.
Speaker: And according to my parents, I walked up to this picture.
Speaker: My jaw dropped open.
Speaker: I stared up at it, mouth gaping, eyes wide open.
Speaker: And I stammered, she's so beautiful.
Speaker: Aww.
Speaker: And that is the experience that I credit with my lifelong infatuation with art and women.
Speaker: Your words not mine.
Speaker: That's delicious.
Speaker: And well told.
Speaker: Well, I did turn on the mics for that, actually.
Speaker: Oh, good.
Speaker: You are on mic.
Speaker: We're hot.
Speaker: We're live.
Speaker: So do you want to do a little lead-in?
Speaker: We'll just kind of wing it and see where it goes.
Speaker: Can I hear myself?
Speaker: So Michael, we're talking about Caravaggio.
Speaker: There are how many Caravaggios in the world?
Speaker: A few dozen, maybe?
Speaker: Yeah, I think 65, maybe 66.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And maybe two thirds of those are in Italy.
Speaker: And by my count, maybe six of them are in private hands.
Speaker: And that number seems to have just gone up by one, which is very exciting.
Speaker: And it doesn't happen very often.
Speaker: And part of what I want to get at with this episode is, has that actually happened?
Speaker: Is this painting that's been discovered really a Caravaggio?
Speaker: And I'm going to talk to a couple of people to try and get to the bottom of that.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's going to be more an interrogation than an interview.
Speaker: And I'm excited about that.
Speaker: My reputation is as a real hardball.
Speaker: I want to talk about our personal experience of Caravaggio before we go anywhere with this, because he is a very emotionally rich artist.
Speaker: And I think the experience of looking at his paintings is a very personal and emotional experience.
Speaker: And when I first encountered this particular painting, it was actually here in New York.
Speaker: It's being sold in France at auction in a few days.
Speaker: But I had the good fortune of actually seeing it in person at Adam Williams Gallery here on the Upper East Side.
Speaker: where it was being shown for about a week in advance of the sale, you know, as part of their publicity drive.
Speaker: And that's where I met Eric Turcan, the fellow who is representing the painting and trying to sell it.
Speaker: And he gave me this introduction to the work.
Speaker: And I have to say, it is probably the only time in my life that I will ever be allowed to touch a Caravaggio.
Speaker: They don't like that at the museum so much.
Speaker: They certainly don't.
Speaker: And it was really an amazing experience.
Speaker: I mean, Caravaggio is known for his use of contrast, particularly of light versus dark, this chiaroscuro idea.
Speaker: And standing in front of this picture with a violent scene, we're talking about the beheading of a man, Judith beheading Holofernes.
Speaker: That's the subject of this painting.
Speaker: And standing in front of it and watching this act of absolute brutality painted with vivid realism, you know, it's hard not to be swept up in it.
Speaker: It's one of those pictures that makes you think, yeah, like that's why pictures matter.
Speaker: So I'm kind of, I'll just put it out there.
Speaker: I think it's real and I hope it's real.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that there's something really seductive about the idea that in 2019 or 2016, whenever we can discover new works that were perhaps not known at all, they were in attics, they were in cellars, wherever, or they were unattributed or misattributed.
Speaker: The idea that there is still territory to be discovered is on its own very exciting.
Speaker: And, you know, in my discussions with people,
Speaker: people on the trade side of the art world, of course, that possibility of discovery motivates.
Speaker: It motivates them personally.
Speaker: It motivates their businesses, right?
Speaker: The idea that they'll find something great that has not been fully understood before, or we might say exploited from a business perspective.
Speaker: On the critical side, on the side of scholars and curators, obviously there is a much less sanguine approach to these matters.
Speaker: And I think that's interesting as well, because we need this sort of defensive line of skeptics to ensure that we're not tricked, we're not fooled, and that we don't, with a total lack of judiciousness, allow works into the mainstream of the canon that are not right.
Speaker: What do you think about the Leonardo, the Salvatore Mundi that was sold a few months ago for $450 million?
Speaker: I mean, this is the most expensive painting ever sold.
Speaker: And it has a sort of a troubled provenance.
Speaker: I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty about it.
Speaker: There's a lot of scholarly dispute, but that didn't stop it from fetching this world record price.
Speaker: And now, in a sense, it almost seems like it's been proven to be real by the market.
Speaker: In other words, you know, the fact that it's been sold for $450 million seems to lend a lot of credence to its authenticity, whether justified or not.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: I mean, I think there's also a lot of skepticism and cynicism.
Speaker: In fact, around that work, I, you know, I have to state from the beginning that I know many of the players involved and they're all good people.
Speaker: And, you know, good people can be involved in, um...
Speaker: territory that's quite gray.
Speaker: And I think that you're not always certain at first glance of what you're looking at.
Speaker: In the context of, you know, the Leonardo, there are so many questions to do with conservation and restoration work and provenance and
Speaker: legal questions to do with the way the art market functions between America and Europe and the Middle East, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: But one of the things that I always come back to is the idea that the auction itself, the sale in which that amazing value was attained, was in the end a competition between two actors.
Speaker: And the more we know about them, the more...
Speaker: fragile our understanding of that result is.
Speaker: And that's true of auctions generally, and perhaps ever more so.
Speaker: I mean, it's theater, and it's really the contemporary art market where you see auction results that are highly manipulated and questionable.
Speaker: And not that this is, but, you know, it's the old scenario of, you know, if you're the last bidder, you're also potentially the fool.
Speaker: You know, I think with Caravaggio, the other interesting thing here is that
Speaker: the subject of this painting, Judith, is obviously a strong woman who committed a very brave act, and I know that you'll discuss that in your interviews.
Speaker: In a way, the subject matter is a little more seductive and compelling for our times than that of the Leonardo.
Speaker: No offense to anyone in the audience.
Speaker: And I'm just sort of bracketing that.
Speaker: We might not know if that is relevant until we know who purchases, who acquires the picture.
Speaker: Yeah, but the subject has to be important, right?
Speaker: I mean, and in this case, it's just totally fascinating.
Speaker: I mean, it's a great, great image.
Speaker: It's a fascinating subject.
Speaker: Yeah, it is.
Speaker: And image.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's easy to tell is the other thing.
Speaker: You know, it's not a lot of these academic paintings.
Speaker: You kind of have to be immersed in theology or in, you know, scriptural work to really understand what's going on.
Speaker: This one, no, it's a great story.
Speaker: I was going to say it's a David and Goliath story.
Speaker: What other cultural reference points do we have?
Speaker: You know, there's an archetype there.
Speaker: And in this case, it sort of takes the archetype of weak versus strong and adds the gender dynamic and, you know, becomes something that's very interesting to talk about and to think about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and with the added dimension of Caravaggio's commitment to depicting distinct individuals rather than abstracted types, and that's major.
Speaker: That's a big part of the appeal of this type of painting, if it is indeed a Caravaggio, which you will, of course, discover.
Speaker: I'm going to get to the bottom of that, don't worry.
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: I mean, look, this is not my field.
Speaker: It's not my market.
Speaker: I'm not an expert in old master pictures, but I won't be shocked if this piece goes to hundreds of millions of euros.
Speaker: You know, it doesn't seem crazy to me in the context of a world in which a much disputed and questionable Leonardo can sell for half a billion dollars.
Speaker: Why can't a Caravaggio that, at least by the press reports, and I'll find out more about this from my guests, but that seems to be on somewhat firmer footing, why can't that be worth a quarter or a half of what the Leonardo is worth?
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: It just takes one buyer.
Speaker: And an underbidder.
Speaker: And an underbidder.
Speaker: And who is more foolish is a question that can be determined after the sale on the 27th.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So gut check here, Michael, it's neither of us is an expert in this field, but, and I'm going to be talking to experts.
Speaker: So, you know, we're going to hear from them, but right now, what do you think?
Speaker: Is it Caravaggio?
Speaker: Ben, I did not see this thing in person.
Speaker: And so I'm going to, my gut tells me, unless you've seen it in person, even if you're just an amateur, you need to see it in person to have the gut feeling that tells you one way or the other.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I want you to go forth and to sort of find out what these experts think on a really nitty gritty granular level about what authenticity means.
Speaker: And we'll see where this goes.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, I'll see what I can turn up.
Speaker: Now let's hear from James Gardner.
Speaker: He's a contributing editor at the magazine Antiques who writes frequently about Renaissance paintings and who was recommended to me by the magazine's editor, Greg Surio.
Speaker: Oh, and a quick reminder that as always, if you want to follow along with your eyes, you can see pictures of the painting at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: Here's James.
Speaker: So let's start with the basics.
Speaker: How common is it to find a Caravaggio?
Speaker: Well, in terms of findings that is attributed to Caravaggio, that, uh,
Speaker: happens with fair regularity in terms of finding something that's actually by him or that is commonly accepted as being by him.
Speaker: That's far less likely, but it does happen.
Speaker: He's become rather prolific in the final years of the 20th century, the beginning of the 21st century.
Speaker: more prolific perhaps than he was in life, but still prolific.
Speaker: And one of the reasons that these things come to light is that he fell so much from grace shortly after his death around 1610.
Speaker: And he died amidst some scandal and controversy.
Speaker: Yeah, there's some thought that he might have died of syphilis or he was murdered as he was trying to get back to Rome.
Speaker: after he was exiled.
Speaker: And he was exiled because of a tennis match.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I think that it is said that he got into a fight with a fellow artist and he slew that fellow artist and that was one offense too many.
Speaker: So in 1606, he had to leave Rome.
Speaker: So getting back to... So I was saying that
Speaker: One of the reasons these paintings exist to be discovered and sincerely correctly discovered is that there wasn't a strong incentive really before around 1940 or 1950 to attribute a painting to him.
Speaker: because so much prestige and value attached to it.
Speaker: So this is not like Picasso, where he was famous and revered in life, and anything that could reasonably be attributed to him would be worth a lot of money.
Speaker: And also, he was not like, say, Rembrandt or Rubens, who in their lifetimes and after their death especially, were...
Speaker: held in such high esteem that you would attribute a painting to them even if it was not by them.
Speaker: In the case of Caravaggio, he was largely forgotten and he didn't really become
Speaker: famous again until Roberto Longhi, the great Italian art historian and art critic of the first half of the 20th century, revived interest in him.
Speaker: So in consequence of that, and in consequence of the fact that his fame and esteem grow only greater with every year, there is a greater search for works by him.
Speaker: And invariably, there will be some attributions to him that are false, but some of them have to be accurate.
Speaker: Okay, so how do you tell the difference?
Speaker: Well, there's no one way to do it.
Speaker: I suppose the correct way to do it is to establish a canon of works by him that are beyond dispute, and then through comparison and analogy,
Speaker: to see how close the new discovery is to what you already know to be by him.
Speaker: And there are at least some dozens of pictures that we can pretty much all agree are definitely by Caravaggio.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He wasn't as rare a painter as Vermeer, for example, or...
Speaker: Giorgione.
Speaker: I mean, in the case of Giorgione, there are, I understand, three paintings that are securely attributed to him, but not by everyone.
Speaker: And all the other attributions are based upon the provisionality of those attributions.
Speaker: But in the case of Caravaggio, he wasn't
Speaker: Given that he lived a relatively brief period of time, he died around 37, depending upon when you consider to be his date of birth, he wasn't that parsimonious in secreting these paintings out into the world.
Speaker: So this painting is not signed by Caravaggio.
Speaker: Is that unusual?
Speaker: No, I don't think so.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: I'm not aware that he frequently signed his work.
Speaker: And in a way, that could be seen as a warrant of its authenticity because the first thing that a forger would probably want to do is sign Caravaggio in big letters.
Speaker: So there's no chain of custody.
Speaker: In other words, we don't have an ironclad provenance going all the way back to the day that it was painted.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So what else can we look at to determine whether we should take this seriously?
Speaker: Well, one of the first things you want to do is to do some chemical analysis of the canvas and the paint to ensure that it was not painted a few years ago.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And how reliable are those methods?
Speaker: Well, I think they're extremely reliable in being able to exclude a work.
Speaker: In other words, if you can prove, as was recently the case with some paintings sold at Sotheby's in the old master's department, if you can prove that there is something in the chemical composition, some element that did not exist before 1920, and it's present in the paint,
Speaker: that means it's not by an old master.
Speaker: But a clever forger might be able to avoid including those elements in the work.
Speaker: But anyway, the fact that...
Speaker: that does exist in the composition means that it can't be.
Speaker: Sure, sure.
Speaker: So you could argue since this painting, there is another version of this painting by Finzon or Finzonius who seems to- He's a French Flemish painter.
Speaker: Yeah, who worked, who seems to have associated with Caravaggio.
Speaker: I mean, you could argue that some great forger found that painting by Finzon, Finzonius, and working backwards created this, but it should be said that this is a far better painting than that.
Speaker: So that would have to be some extraordinary forger.
Speaker: And stylistically, does it seem consistent with other Caravaggios that you know?
Speaker: Oh, yeah, definitely.
Speaker: The thing to know about Caravaggio is that he wasn't a perfect painter or a necessarily scrupulous painter.
Speaker: He was a very good painter, obviously, but he did certain things hastily.
Speaker: He did not necessarily seek perfection.
Speaker: Sometimes he did seek it and achieve it.
Speaker: And there's an earlier version of this theme,
Speaker: not another version of this painting, but another version of the theme from around 1602, which would be five years before this.
Speaker: Also depicting Judith Beheading Holofernes.
Speaker: Which is, I have to say, a greater painting, and it's brought to a higher level of perfection.
Speaker: and the composition is more interesting.
Speaker: But this... What's better about that one?
Speaker: Well, almost every component of it is more interesting and more fully realized.
Speaker: This is a very good painting, but I would guess that is better.
Speaker: This, we'll put it this way, the reason people are having some doubts is that the main reason is that the old woman in the center who's helping Judith is not as well drawn as the rest.
Speaker: Also, there's something odd about her.
Speaker: For one thing, she has a bad case of goiter and the wrinkles on her forehead are
Speaker: are apt to seem to our contemporary sentiments inartistic.
Speaker: That sort of face is repeat, and also the goiterous condition, are to be found in post-Caravaggio painting throughout Europe for the next 30 or 40 years.
Speaker: It's been suggested that it's possible that those wrinkles in particular were added or modified after Caravaggio painted it.
Speaker: It could be.
Speaker: Does that strike you as... And it could also be that...
Speaker: That sort of image, which, as I say, appears often in European art, especially northern art, for the next 30 or 40 years, had to come from somewhere.
Speaker: And so given that it occurs in a Caravaggio context, it's very likely that there was some lost painting by Caravaggio that was the archetype of that.
Speaker: And something like this would be it.
Speaker: So the fact that that figure looks a little odd is not... It's not disqualifying in your mind.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At the same time, you have certain things that are extremely good, especially the face of Judith, right, which is probably the best part of the painting.
Speaker: And looking straight at us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And when you compare that with Vinson's copy of it, you can see the degree to which whoever painted this work attributed to Caravaggio was a far better painting.
Speaker: I would also say that the drapery on the upper left-hand side is extremely good here, and even better than in the 1602 painting.
Speaker: So, gun to your head, is it real?
Speaker: How much of it is real?
Speaker: I would not be at all surprised that it was real.
Speaker: If, as has been suggested, there might have been more than one hand in this painting, that other hand would be manifested in the handmaid who's helping Judith, and also perhaps in the head of Holofernes, who's about to be decapitated in the painting.
Speaker: But as I say, to get back to what I had said before,
Speaker: The thing about Caravaggio is that he was not a perfect painter, and there is a relatively wide range of quality that he permitted himself.
Speaker: So the lapse in quality, if there is any, in the face, the head of Holofernes, and the maidservant would not be disqualifying.
Speaker: Though it is true that those are not as strong as the drapery or the face of Judith.
Speaker: So if I can't get you to commit 100% to one explanation, can you tell me what do you think is more likely?
Speaker: Do you think it's more likely that the entire picture as we see it today is the way that it was painted by Caravaggio?
Speaker: Do you think that it's more likely that Caravaggio painted most of it and certain details were added by someone else?
Speaker: Or do you think it's more likely that Caravaggio was not involved in it at all?
Speaker: I would think it's by Caravaggio.
Speaker: We're going to take a quick break.
Speaker: When we come back, I'll get the story from the horse's mouth.
Speaker: Eric Turcambe, the French dealer who is selling the painting later this week, will join me for an interview.
Speaker: First, I just want to say thanks for listening.
Speaker: I love hearing your feedback.
Speaker: You can email me at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: And you can reach me on Instagram at Objective Interest.
Speaker: Michael's Instagram is at Michael Diaz Griffith.
Speaker: And you can support Curious Objects by leaving a rating or a review on iTunes or wherever you're listening.
Speaker: Thanks so much.
Speaker: Curious Objects is sponsored by America's oldest auction house, Freeman's.
Speaker: Located in Center City, Philadelphia, Freeman's has been telling the story of valued objects and collections since 1805.
Speaker: With a network of international resources and buyers and a comprehensive knowledge of market conditions, the specialists at Freeman's work closely with consignors and collectors to offer unparalleled assistance in the sale and purchase of fine art, furniture, decorative arts, jewelry, books, and more.
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Speaker: This call is now being recorded.
Speaker: Hello?
Speaker: Eric, hi, how are you?
Speaker: Benjamin.
Speaker: Fine, thank you.
Speaker: So tell me, what do you want me to say?
Speaker: So I just, you know, what I have in mind is I want to have you sort of talk me through this story about how you encountered the thing and tell me a little bit about the painting itself.
Speaker: And then toward the end, I'd like to ask a question or two about the authentication process and questions of originality and that sort of thing.
Speaker: Very good.
Speaker: So actually, I did not discover the picture.
Speaker: The picture was found by the Toulouse auctioneer, Marc Labarbe,
Speaker: He had a friend, client, who was emptying a 17th century house, and when he was finishing to empty the attics, behind a bed frame and a mattress, he found against the wall, stretched but unframed, this painting.
Speaker: The painting was not in the condition it is today.
Speaker: It was covered with dirt, covered with dust, and a varnish that had
Speaker: more than 100 or 150 years old.
Speaker: Very hard, very yellow, very discovered.
Speaker: Mark Labarbe was equipped with American technology, so he had an iPhone and we, in the office here, have iPads.
Speaker: And he sent us a photo of the picture.
Speaker: We are his experts, we advise him, his consultants, for all master paintings since the last 20 years.
Speaker: So every month or so, he sends us photographs.
Speaker: He's one of the very good provincial auctioneers that we have in France.
Speaker: And did he send this to you immediately, as soon as he found it?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: He knew it was a good 17th century painting, sent it to us, and the three of us, because we are three experts, looked at the photograph.
Speaker: And in all fairness, we did not recognize Caravaggio.
Speaker: We saw that it was a good 17th century Italian picture that with some elements of real quality.
Speaker: So we sent him, we don't know what we said to him, we don't know what your picture is, but send it by the next van and we'll work on it.
Speaker: Ten days later, the picture arrives.
Speaker: I was away, but Stéphane Pintin and Julie Ducheck, who were here, immediately thought of Caravaggio.
Speaker: Julie remembered that a year before there had been an exhibition in Naples about a lost Caravaggio around a copy that they had of that painting.
Speaker: And this is the copy by the Flemish painter.
Speaker: The copy by Fincen, which is in Naples, in the Palace of Zévalos today.
Speaker: And it's thanks to this copy that actually we could discover our picture.
Speaker: Because then she opened that wonderful book by Sebastian Schutzer, published in 2009.
Speaker: And in the 2009 book, there was a color photograph of our picture saying this is a lost painting.
Speaker: And of course, it's not a photograph of our picture because...
Speaker: Our picture had been in that attic probably for more than 100 years, but it was a photograph of the copy.
Speaker: And that exhibition really was all about, this is all we have left of a great Caravaggio that was famous in his time and that disappeared in 1617.
Speaker: So your colleague had a suspicion that maybe this was the lost Caravaggio.
Speaker: But when that notion was first raised, you must have had some skepticism about it.
Speaker: Well, I must tell you, I never had skepticism, because they called me.
Speaker: I was far away.
Speaker: Actually, I was valuing a Fincen in the south of France when he has left.
Speaker: There are very many pictures by the artist.
Speaker: And I didn't ask...
Speaker: They called me and said, Eric, there was a bomb in the office.
Speaker: You must come back.
Speaker: I didn't ask what was the bomb, the mark of the bomb, the trademark, but I asked who was the bombardier.
Speaker: And when they told me that the plane was Marc Lavarbe, I was very encouraged because I knew him as a good man.
Speaker: So the next morning at 8.30, I knew I was going to see a great picture.
Speaker: But they had not told me who it was by.
Speaker: But as soon as I saw the face of Judith, I thought of the woman in the death of the Virgin, the head of the Virgin in the Louvre painting.
Speaker: And to me, it was the same hand.
Speaker: From that very second, I never had a doubt.
Speaker: And I don't understand how people can have doubts on this painting, you know, because of the energy of the writing, you know, the energy that you feel in that picture is not the one of a copy.
Speaker: We're talking about truly a once in a lifetime discovery.
Speaker: It's not every day you come across a lost Caravaggio.
Speaker: It's not once in a lifetime.
Speaker: It's one in a generation.
Speaker: This is one of the most, it's of the level of the Leonardo da Vinci that was discovered by Robert Simon for $1,000 in a country auction.
Speaker: You're talking of something, a real enormous discovery.
Speaker: But I knew also that Caravaggio was a difficult artist, that he was a very...
Speaker: contentious artists and that there would be fights so this is why we kept the picture secret for two years and to make sure that the secret would be well kept we kept that picture in our bedroom so I really I hope at least no one would come in and we managed to keep the secret for two years you actually showed this picture to me in New York and we stood next to it and it's I would say the figures are probably about life size is that right?
Speaker: Yes, roughly
Speaker: roughly the picture is in centimeters
Speaker: It's 140 by 160.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's fairly large.
Speaker: It's a big-ish picture, but still it's a house painting.
Speaker: It's not an altarpiece.
Speaker: It's not one of these huge pictures that Caravaggio painted.
Speaker: Caravaggio is an artist who is really in the counter-reformation, in the Baroque movement, and he paints a lot of altarpieces, which are six meters high or five meters high.
Speaker: And he's also an artist who is very quick.
Speaker: He paints very fast.
Speaker: And we know he had commissions of 40 square meters painting.
Speaker: Two months afterwards, they were hanging.
Speaker: So we know he's a very quick artist, fast, when he's really at it.
Speaker: So tell me about the subject.
Speaker: This is a scene of Judith beheading Holofernes.
Speaker: It's a biblical scene.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a marvelous text from the Bible.
Speaker: You know, it's something to read, the book of Judith.
Speaker: Basically, it's a story about the courage, about the idea of not surrendering, about the fighting for your faith and defending your people.
Speaker: Israel is at war with its neighbor of the northeast, Assyria.
Speaker: And the Assad of the time was called Nabucodonosor.
Speaker: And Nebuchadnezzar is really at war with Israel because Israel will not recognize him and mainly will not recognize his gods.
Speaker: because he's pagan.
Speaker: And Israel is the people of God, is the people with the unique God, and it's the people who had made an alliance with God.
Speaker: And the whole theme is around the theme of alliance, of fidelity, of loyalty, of courage.
Speaker: That's why it was branded as a very counter-reformation, a very Catholic painting, a kind of anti-protestant painting in the time.
Speaker: So Israel is at war and Nebuchadnezzar raises an enormous army.
Speaker: The text says he raises an army of 120,000 soldiers, plus 20,000 helpers, you know, transporters, surgeons and so on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that army is the biggest army that was ever built in the antiquity, and it marches on Israel to destroy Israel, to destroy Jerusalem.
Speaker: And that army is blocked by that city of Bethulia, which is Judith's city.
Speaker: Judith meaning the Jew, and Bethulia meaning the city of God.
Speaker: And Olofenes, who is the general-in-chief,
Speaker: who is the head of that army, he's a very bad guy.
Speaker: We should not have any good feeling for him, any bad feeling for him.
Speaker: He's deserving what he's getting.
Speaker: He doesn't respect anything.
Speaker: He blows the... He burns the villagers.
Speaker: He kills the men.
Speaker: They don't say what he does to women, but it's probably not fair.
Speaker: And he cuts the sacred trees, the sacred trees.
Speaker: So he's an awful guy, awful man, who doesn't respect his word and so on.
Speaker: And he...
Speaker: He hesitates to attack the city and he has sieged.
Speaker: He decided to put Bethulia under siege.
Speaker: And after three weeks, the Bethulians want to give up.
Speaker: They are tired.
Speaker: They have no water, no salad, no nothing.
Speaker: And they want their elders to discuss, you know, to go and make peace with Olofenes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they discuss it.
Speaker: And eventually, because we are in Israel, they make a compromise.
Speaker: This is the time when there were compromises in Israel.
Speaker: The seventh century before Christ.
Speaker: And the idea is, we will leave us five days.
Speaker: And if in these five days God hasn't given a sign, then we'll surrender.
Speaker: We'll give up.
Speaker: We'll go and ask for... We will surrender.
Speaker: When she hears this, Judith
Speaker: She is furious and she goes to them and says, you are cowards, you are wicked people because you are breaking the alliance with God.
Speaker: God has taken his people out of Egypt.
Speaker: He opened the Great Sea and closed it on our assailants.
Speaker: When we are thirsty, he gave us water.
Speaker: When we were hungry, he gave us food.
Speaker: He gave us the quails and the bread.
Speaker: You can't do that.
Speaker: You are breaking the alliance.
Speaker: Let me go out and I'll try something.
Speaker: She's allowed to go out, and the text says that she leaves behind her widow garment because she is a young widow.
Speaker: The text says, you know, Judith is a patrician.
Speaker: She's a kind of Jewish aristocrat.
Speaker: We know she descends from Daniel or from David, I think.
Speaker: I forgot.
Speaker: Anyway, the text gives that.
Speaker: Truly, it's a wonderful text, and it's really worth reading.
Speaker: It's full of small touches of Jewish humor.
Speaker: It's really delicious.
Speaker: So she dresses herself up as a beautiful girl that she was before widowing, before she lost her husband.
Speaker: And she walks to the camp of the Assyrians.
Speaker: She seduces the sentinels and she seduces the officers.
Speaker: And of course, she's going to seduce Olofenas.
Speaker: She excites him.
Speaker: She goes almost to the end, but not to the end.
Speaker: She doesn't give herself.
Speaker: But he's totally enamored with her.
Speaker: And after three days he says, you know, I want to make the most out of you.
Speaker: And I won't let you go back to your city without trying something.
Speaker: We will make a banquet for you.
Speaker: If you do a banquet for me, I'll spend the night under your tent.
Speaker: So the text says that he drinks wine as he has never drunk in his life, and he falls asleep.
Speaker: When he falls asleep, everybody goes out, and he's left alone with Judith.
Speaker: And Judith sends her servant, Hebra, outside, so she's alone with the man who is asleep.
Speaker: And then there was the best part of the text, which is 10 verses, when she, her prayer to God, she asks God to...
Speaker: to give strength to her woman's arm so that she can do what she has to do.
Speaker: And she has this wonderful saying, this is what she's looking at her straight and she said, listen well to me, I'm going to commit a deed that our children will talk about from ages to ages.
Speaker: It's a very wonderful text.
Speaker: And that's what she's doing.
Speaker: And the text said she takes Olofen's own sword, which was at the head of the bed, and she cuts his throat in two
Speaker: in two goes and she's in the middle of the two.
Speaker: So there is blood spreading, you know, and he's just trying to get off his bed, but it's too late.
Speaker: He's almost gone.
Speaker: It's a very violent scene, you know, with blood, with... But Caravaggio liked violent scenes, you know, and he probably saw some of them.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, and yeah, the blood is spraying out straight toward us.
Speaker: And at the same time, Judith is making eye contact with us.
Speaker: She's looking straight out.
Speaker: She's taking us into the picture.
Speaker: But you know, what was wonderful is when we cleaned it, we discovered that the eyes originally she was gazing at him.
Speaker: She was looking at what she was doing.
Speaker: And then the painter, as Caravaggio had done in the other version, and then the painter changed it.
Speaker: Now she's looking at us.
Speaker: She's taking us as witnesses and said, look, I've done it.
Speaker: You know, it's fantastic.
Speaker: Why do you think Caravaggio painted this scene multiple times?
Speaker: Twice.
Speaker: Because there was, we always forget one thing.
Speaker: Caravaggio never painted things for the market.
Speaker: Most of his pictures were painted on commission.
Speaker: So he had obviously a commission to paint that subject.
Speaker: It's been suggested by certain people that Caravaggio was something of a feminist painter.
Speaker: And this scene depicts a strong woman representing her nation, killing a man on their behalf.
Speaker: Do you think this is a feminist painting?
Speaker: And do you think that Caravaggio is a feminist painter?
Speaker: I don't know if you can talk of Caravage as a feminist painter because there was no feminism in the 17th century.
Speaker: But one thing is sure, the Cantor Reformation was built on women.
Speaker: The Cantor Reformation, the Catholic Church capitalized on the women because there are no women in the Protestant Church.
Speaker: There are no women amongst the reformers or they have a very minor role.
Speaker: So the Catholic, at the same time, in the Cantor Reformation was a kind of
Speaker: anti-protestant move.
Speaker: They pushed the women.
Speaker: That's why the Virgin became so important.
Speaker: The Mary Magdalene, St.
Speaker: Irene, all these are ladies.
Speaker: Judith, Esther, all these were pushed because they were female fighting for the faith.
Speaker: They were associated to the church.
Speaker: There were other depictions of this scene from the period by other painters and even a sculpture by Donatello and others.
Speaker: How would you compare this particular depiction to others of the time?
Speaker: Well, this is much more violent.
Speaker: You know, the Donaletto is very elegant.
Speaker: You know, here...
Speaker: Olofenes, for instance, has dirty nails.
Speaker: He has tanned hands when the body is white.
Speaker: It's all about opposition.
Speaker: It's an opposition between the young and the old, between the beautiful and the ugly, between the
Speaker: the rich and the poor, not the rich and the poor, but the patrician and the plebeian.
Speaker: Abra is from the people.
Speaker: She has big hands, tanned by the sun.
Speaker: When Judith has a white hand, you know, with a very beautiful sleeve, very elegant, she's a patrician.
Speaker: You know, the whole thing, all of fairness, you can see his violence, you know, his nails make him, even his nails make him unsympathetic to us.
Speaker: You know, he's an ugly man, he's a violent chap, he's a soldier, you know, he's a kind of...
Speaker: run, how you said, out of the run, there is an English word for that, he's like a guerrilla rock, he's just bad, he's a bad guy.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: So talk to me about the actual style and method of the painting.
Speaker: You mentioned to me that Caravaggio you painted very quickly and that this painting was composed of many long brush strokes, sort of rapidly placed on the canvas.
Speaker: That's what make of this picture not only a Caravaggio, but a great Caravaggio.
Speaker: That is, it is a kind of experimental picture.
Speaker: Caravaggio has left Naples.
Speaker: That's David Stone's idea and Keith Christensen's idea.
Speaker: I didn't invent that, but I'm convinced that they are right.
Speaker: Caravaggio has left Rome in June 1606 because he has murdered somebody, Thomas Schoenny.
Speaker: He, for four months, is hidden in the country.
Speaker: He's really hidden.
Speaker: He has no contact with nobody, with no other painters, with no other painting.
Speaker: Then he moved to Naples.
Speaker: Naples is a rich city in 1607, but it's the second most populated city in Europe.
Speaker: It's thriving economically and everything, but there are no great painters there.
Speaker: And the Farnese pictures have not reached Naples.
Speaker: There are no great, you know, Leonardo's, Botticelli's.
Speaker: Perugino, Raphael to be compared, Michelangelo to be compared with.
Speaker: It's very unlike Rome.
Speaker: This is why Caravaggio was striving to come back to Rome.
Speaker: You know, he was, that was his goal.
Speaker: He wanted to go back to Rome because the Rome of the counter-reformation was an incredible boiling city with culture, you know, with musicians, with sculptors, with architecture.
Speaker: And all the cultivated world in Europe was flocking into Rome.
Speaker: you know, because the papacy and the cardinals were spending all the money they could to build a counter-reformation, and they did it through arts, you know.
Speaker: And so, when Caravaggio leaves, you know, brutally, very quickly, that Rome city boiling, and he arrives in the middle of nowhere, and he has nothing to compare himself with, no advice, no competition, no… And now he builds
Speaker: the real Caravaggio, that is an artist who is really very, very original, with a new technique.
Speaker: And it's in this picture probably that he starts using what we call the reserve, that is, he's using the ground, the bare ground, as a background for his painting.
Speaker: and you see the ground through, he builds on it, and then he only, at the end, three years later, he will only draw a few strokes on the ground, and most of the pictures will be covered by the ground, and he will just paint very quickly over this.
Speaker: It's a new technique that he's inventing now.
Speaker: So that makes of this picture an experimental picture.
Speaker: That's also what makes it so difficult for people who do not like the late Caravaggio's, or who do not understand it.
Speaker: And now it's going to be sold on the 27th.
Speaker: And what's the final estimate?
Speaker: There was no estimate.
Speaker: We say we will start at 30 million.
Speaker: In all fairness, very few people know how much a picture like this can be worth.
Speaker: There's not been any Caravaggio on the open market in the last 40 years.
Speaker: So there was no reference.
Speaker: But if a Rembrandt alone, as beautiful as it can be, is worth 165 million euros, let's say $190 million, we are cheap at 100 million, very cheap.
Speaker: Caravaggio is a much more important artist and he's a much rarer artist.
Speaker: There are only 35 pictures known by the artist and more than half of them are in Italy where they will never be exported.
Speaker: And the rest is in museums, so no pictures will come unless we discover them.
Speaker: But there are more to be discovered.
Speaker: You think there are more out there?
Speaker: Yes, yes, there are plenty more.
Speaker: We know for instance that the artist lived for five years painting
Speaker: flowers and fruits in other painters' paintings.
Speaker: We have no one of them.
Speaker: We know that he lived then for a few years painting portraits.
Speaker: We have two.
Speaker: So there are plenty more to find, plenty more.
Speaker: And this allowed us to... Sorry?
Speaker: Did you insure the picture immediately?
Speaker: No, not immediately.
Speaker: Well, what we did is that we insured the picture...
Speaker: every time we raised the estimate that we gave to the owner.
Speaker: So I went to Toulouse back and forth several times, you know, and we told them, your picture is worth more than the 60, 80,000 that we put as an insurance value when it came in.
Speaker: We should place the insurance value at two to 300, then six to 800, then two to three millions, and on and on.
Speaker: So we were very sympathetic to them for a long time.
Speaker: I want to come back to the issue of authenticity, because anytime that a picture of great value and age appears, there is inevitably a skepticism about it.
Speaker: And there's concern that the people involved in selling it, of course, have an incentive to want to believe that it's real.
Speaker: So we saw this, of course, with the Leonardo that you mentioned, the Salvatore Mundi.
Speaker: And now, even after it sold for a world record price, you'll still find plenty of people who will say that it wasn't Leonardo or it wasn't all Leonardo.
Speaker: With this picture, there have been a variety of opinions about it.
Speaker: I've spoken just a little bit ago with James Gardner, who's an art critic.
Speaker: And I spoke with him about this painting and he expressed to me that he felt with any old master picture, it's more of a question.
Speaker: It's less of a question of proving that it's authentic and more of a question of removing as much doubt as possible.
Speaker: And his view was that this painting looks to him very much like a Caravaggio.
Speaker: He said there were certain details that stood out to him as being quite indicative and representative of Caravaggio's hand.
Speaker: And there were
Speaker: A couple of details that he thought showed the possibility of coming from another hand.
Speaker: Overall, he felt that it's more likely than not that the painting is Garavaggio.
Speaker: And my sense, based on reports in the press, is that the general consensus among experts, and you can give me your perspective on this,
Speaker: The general consensus among experts is that this is probably a Caravaggio and that it's possible that a couple of elements, like, for example, the wrinkles on the maid's face, that there's some chance that they've been done by another hand.
Speaker: So I want to ask you to comment on this.
Speaker: No, but the thing to understand with Caravaggio is that he's an artist who had a blank in his history for 300 years.
Speaker: Caravaggio was totally forgotten from 1650 to 1951 until Roberto Longhi's exhibition in Milan 1951
Speaker: This artist was worth nothing.
Speaker: Nobody would look for him.
Speaker: His pictures would go for nothing in auctions.
Speaker: They would not be recorded as Caravaggio.
Speaker: To give you an example, the great English guide in the early 20th century is the Karl Baedeker's guide.
Speaker: And Karl Baedeker's guide in of San Luigi dei Francesi is one page.
Speaker: And he talks about the Guido Reni.
Speaker: He talks about the Domenico, which is marvelous.
Speaker: He doesn't talk about the Caravaggio.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He doesn't mention, he doesn't even mention the name.
Speaker: That's, that gives you, yeah, no, it's not incredible.
Speaker: That's the way artistry go.
Speaker: You know, artistry is a lesson of humility for the whole of us.
Speaker: And we should not forget, forget, you know, that our predecessors, our grandparents, great grandparents,
Speaker: totally forgot the greatest artist of the 17th century.
Speaker: And if we had not had Robert Olonghi, that artist would probably still be unknown.
Speaker: You know, and he's a difficult artist because he changes all the time.
Speaker: He's not, this is what Keith Christensen says, you know, he says...
Speaker: This is an artist that you cannot put into a box because the box is going to explode.
Speaker: He has huge potential and he's a very fast, violent building painter, who never repeats himself exactly.
Speaker: He's looking for new things all the time, at least from 1600.
Speaker: That's what makes it difficult.
Speaker: But to come back to this picture, this picture is documented.
Speaker: We know that there's a picture of the same measurements, the same description by Caravaggio, which is lost.
Speaker: We know that picture from a copy.
Speaker: That copy had been published by everybody for 25 years as being the copy of a lost Caravaggio.
Speaker: Now that we found the original, they start questioning it.
Speaker: There is a kind, particularly in Italy, there's a kind of refusal to accept that artistry is alive and that there can be new pictures.
Speaker: And, you know, I've been fighting like a lion for that painting for the last five years.
Speaker: But I'm not fighting for that picture.
Speaker: I'm not fighting only for my stand as an expert, who is at risk in that thing.
Speaker: I accept that.
Speaker: I'm fighting for the possibility of finding pictures, the possibility of finding new things.
Speaker: And I'm amazed that a documented picture, published by everybody, when there was a kind of reward bill saying, please find us that picture.
Speaker: When you find it, they don't want to give us the reward.
Speaker: There is something wrong there.
Speaker: you must understand why certain experts and commentators are skeptical or why they would begin from a place of skepticism.
Speaker: And the reason is just that there are plenty of people out there who would like to deceive us and to sell us fake pictures.
Speaker: So, you know, I don't think it's unreasonable to begin with a healthy skepticism about a new discovery.
Speaker: So the question is then, what's the process that you go through to convince a skeptic?
Speaker: So tell me about the... I want to go back on this.
Speaker: The picture is by Caravaggio because Keith Christensen says it's by Caravaggio.
Speaker: Keith Christensen is the authority on Caravaggio.
Speaker: And I would not have dared to call that picture Caravaggio if he had not said yes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that's the thing.
Speaker: Now, there are a lot of, we call them the yellow jackets of the art history who will criticize it.
Speaker: But that's the case with that Leonardo.
Speaker: You know, let's face it.
Speaker: That picture is right.
Speaker: It's perfectly authentic.
Speaker: And I'm fed up to see all these people criticizing a picture just because they didn't handle it.
Speaker: You know, I see people who have no legitimacy to talk about it because they are drawing persons or they are not specialists of Leonardo.
Speaker: They don't know.
Speaker: We saw, the whole of us saw that picture in the London show in 2011 and we admired it.
Speaker: That picture is damaged.
Speaker: True, it's almost ruined.
Speaker: They can say that.
Speaker: But to say that is not by Leonardo.
Speaker: It's just not acceptable.
Speaker: It is not acceptable.
Speaker: And I'll tell you what, the market gave them a very good answer.
Speaker: I hope it's going to give them the same answer on the 27th of June.
Speaker: You know, you are talking of art historians who do not want to see new pictures, who are totally unable to make a discovery because they have that negative approach, and who criticize...
Speaker: things, without seeing them for most of them.
Speaker: In Italy, many art historians had taken a position, not against the picture, but against Nicola Spinoza, because they don't like him.
Speaker: And before seeing the picture, they said, this picture cannot be right, without looking at it.
Speaker: How can you do that?
Speaker: Is this the new art history?
Speaker: That's very, very annoying if it is, I can assure you.
Speaker: So that picture, I can assure you, in five years' time, this picture will be uploaded by everybody.
Speaker: But it's true that I don't... You tell me you should understand the skepticism.
Speaker: Well, I do not understand it, because I do not understand that somebody who loves Caravaggio cannot love that beautiful face of Judith.
Speaker: That face of Judith in itself is a fantastic piece of painting.
Speaker: So bloody hell, if they don't think it's by Caravaggio, well, they should produce a name and they should support the attribution.
Speaker: They should be what I'm doing today.
Speaker: I'm sorry to be so... No, I appreciate it.
Speaker: Maybe because it's the end of a five years fight, but I'm getting pretty fed up.
Speaker: Pretty fed up by people who are not sensitive to the beauty of things.
Speaker: I cannot accept it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, your passion is certainly persuasive.
Speaker: I'm passionate because for once, we have a documented picture.
Speaker: We have a picture that is documented by letters of the 17th century.
Speaker: It's a picture that has been documented by technicians who made radios, who made infrareds, who made pigment analysis, everything
Speaker: conducts you to Caravaggio.
Speaker: So, or that picture is a copy, or it's the original.
Speaker: And as it is not a copy, it is the original.
Speaker: And we can prove it's not a copy because there are some big changes.
Speaker: And these big changes cannot be the work of a coppist.
Speaker: Because a coppist doesn't change.
Speaker: A coppist copies what is there.
Speaker: He doesn't copy what is underneath.
Speaker: Like the change of Judith looking at us versus looking at Holofernes.
Speaker: The change in the eyes of Judith, the change in the hand of Olofenes, the change in the hand of Ebra,
Speaker: the fact that the black veil was painted over the robe of the servant, who is totally painted, a coppice never does that.
Speaker: Why would he paint underneath?
Speaker: He doesn't see what is underneath.
Speaker: And what do you think about the detail of the wrinkles on the maid's neck?
Speaker: That's one area where... No, no, no.
Speaker: Nobody criticizes the neck.
Speaker: They criticize the wrinkles.
Speaker: They say the wrinkles, they don't look like what he paints.
Speaker: Well, I don't agree with this because...
Speaker: They never bothered me.
Speaker: I think actually the face of Ebra is very beautiful and that it is a wonderful counterpart to the beauty of Judith's face.
Speaker: He tried to make her the eldest and the most ugly possible.
Speaker: And so some people say it's a caricature, but that's how he becomes at the end of his life.
Speaker: If you compare that picture to Roman pictures or to early pictures, of course it won't work, but you have to compare it with the latest pictures, you know.
Speaker: And it works perfectly.
Speaker: But again, if you don't leave a chance to a picture, if you don't look at it with some benevolent eye, you know, positive eye, you will never make a discovery in your life, you know.
Speaker: If a doctor, if your physician is only interested in corpses, well, you should not go and see him.
Speaker: I like that analogy.
Speaker: So this painting is being sold on June 27th.
Speaker: And you could follow, you will be able to follow the sale on the internet, on the site, thetoulousecaravaggio.com.
Speaker: The sale will be online there.
Speaker: You can't bid online, but you can follow it.
Speaker: But you can watch it.
Speaker: But you can watch it.
Speaker: And how do you feel right now about the sale?
Speaker: Well, of course I'm not anguished, but I'm nervous because I know it's going to sell, but I don't know for how much.
Speaker: It's true that if it only sells for 30 million, I'll be sad because I think that picture had a much bigger potential and you, Turkey, have not been able to reveal it.
Speaker: But if it sells for more than 40, I would be happy.
Speaker: And if it reaches the estimate that I gave, I think it's normal.
Speaker: And we won't dare to think about what happens if it goes beyond normal.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: I don't think that's possible, no.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: My pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Well, I think that there is probably a consensus in there, Ben.
Speaker: Good job.
Speaker: Did Eric convince you to bid 150 million euros to buy this picture?
Speaker: You know, I might even go to 170.
Speaker: Wow, that's bold of you.
Speaker: I have been saving money for an acquisition for the past year and a half.
Speaker: So if I check my compounding interest rate, it checks out.
Speaker: Maybe I'll have 170 for this.
Speaker: Well, it's an appreciating asset, I'm sure.
Speaker: So you need to take a loan, put it on a credit card.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll do that and get some air miles.
Speaker: No, I was really impressed with your interrogation.
Speaker: Never mess with a silver dealer.
Speaker: And although I feel that in disciplinary terms, there are a lot of really interesting differences in the way these men look at the work, they are kind of in consensus about its authenticity.
Speaker: Yeah, I didn't, I mean, James didn't raise any serious doubts about Caravaggio's hand being the primary hand.
Speaker: It sounds like he feels there's some possibility that certain elements might not have been by Caravaggio.
Speaker: And when I asked Eric about that, you know, he didn't oppose that with any great vehemence.
Speaker: But he made this really interesting point, which is that if you don't believe a picture with the kind of evidence and documentation that this one has, then you're maybe you're just never going to believe anything.
Speaker: Yeah, and that leads to the question of why do you believe all these people from the past who tell you that the works in our great museums are authentic?
Speaker: They were also often working from nothing, far less than we have for this picture.
Speaker: And maybe the answer is that everything in the Louvre needs to be questioned from square one.
Speaker: But maybe the other response is, well...
Speaker: You know, there are people with an intent to deceive.
Speaker: There are people who create fakes or who try and sell things with sketchy provenance or who, you know, are basically trying to make money off of dishonest practices.
Speaker: But there are also people who are selling legitimate objects in a legitimate fashion.
Speaker: And these pieces really are what they purport to be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I loved, though, that the wrinkles that were discussed by both of your interviewees
Speaker: which are felt to be anomalous.
Speaker: I mean, Eric said they didn't bother him.
Speaker: And by the way, I love that language because it speaks to a 20th century vocabulary of the art market that I'm really personally comfortable with and delight in.
Speaker: And I love this sort of language of the trade where someone like Eric says, ah, the wrinkles didn't bother me.
Speaker: They didn't feel anomalous to him.
Speaker: I just love that.
Speaker: He doesn't say they are or are not authentic.
Speaker: He's kind of thinking through his eye and the ramifications of his connoisseurship in action.
Speaker: Anyway, I love the confidence of that.
Speaker: I love the culture that comes with that.
Speaker: Well, it's like something that James told me was that with old master pictures, it's not so much about proving that they're authentic in some ironclad way.
Speaker: It's more about removing as much doubt as possible.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And he mentioned, he said, well, it's one thing if it's the Sistine Chapel, you know, that hasn't been moving around a whole lot.
Speaker: But for most pictures where you don't have a, you know, a complete provenance since the day it was painted, you know, you can never rule out every possibility, right?
Speaker: But you can say the most likely thing, the most likely story behind this picture.
Speaker: Given what we know.
Speaker: Given what we know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: is that it was painted by Caravaggio and that it was in Italy for some time and that at some point it was, you know, went to France and then it sat in an attic in Toulouse for 150 years.
Speaker: And then it turned up a few years ago and now it's being sold.
Speaker: And that's the most, that seems to me, having now talked with these people about it and having talked with you about it and reading about it, you know, that to me is the convincing story of this picture.
Speaker: I love that we might never get to degree zero and that may be okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: these works are actually you know unless we have ironclad provenance or authorship these works are in a way living documents you know we kind of have to live with that i don't know that i'd want to gamble hundreds of millions of dollars on any interpretation like that but i think that those interpretations constitute a larger part of our um understanding of works of art than we maybe think about routinely
Speaker: And maybe that's also, maybe that's our view of our understanding of history in a nutshell.
Speaker: You know, like we kind of understand the 19th century based on what we know of it today.
Speaker: Another document that comes down the pipeline will cause us to have a different understanding of the 19th century tomorrow.
Speaker: That's just the way it is.
Speaker: And it'll be exciting when that happens.
Speaker: It will be.
Speaker: And someone may make money from it, but hopefully many, many more will have an experience that transcends value so that this all isn't just a discussion about the art business.
Speaker: It's a discussion about art and what it means to us.
Speaker: Amen to that.
Speaker: I think that's a nice note to close on.
Speaker: Thanks, Michael.
Speaker: Thanks, Ben.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit with a special edition from Ashrei Harishankar.
Speaker: Until next time.
