This started a dispute in a new direction. There were those who said they had felt something of the kind and had meant to bring it up until Mr. Cornish’s secretary anticipated them: there were others who brushed the suggestion aside as absurd. But was there not some whiff of Augsburg about both pictures, said others who fancied such intuitions. Knüpfer and Brodersen did not want to hear anything about Mathis der Maler, who had not been a favourite in Germany for some time because Hindemith’s opera about him had made his name unacceptable. Anyhow, elements in the picture put such an attribution out of the question. Strive as he might, Colonel Osmotherley could not push them toward a decision.
What were they looking at?
The picture was a triptych, of which the central panel was five feet square, and the two flanking panels were of the same height, but only three feet wide. What impressed at first sight was the complexity of the composition and its jewel-like richness of colour, so arranged as to throw primary emphasis on the three figures that dominated the central panel, and indeed the whole picture. Two of these were plainly the couple who had been married; they wore fine clothing in the style of the early years of the sixteenth century, and their expressions were serious, indeed elevated; the man was pressing a ring on the fourth finger of his bride’s left hand. Their faces seemed to be male and female versions of the same features: a long head, prominent nose, and light eyes that might have been thought at variance with their black hair. The smiling woman who was third of this dominant group must surely be the Mother of Jesus, for she wore a halo—the only halo to be seen in the whole composition; she was offering the bridal pair a splendid cup from which a radiance mounted above the brim.
There were no figures on the right side of this group, but on their left stood a stout old man of a merry, bourgeois appearance, who seemed to be making a sketch of the scene on an ivory tablet, and somewhat behind him, but clearly to be seen, was a woman, smiling like the Virgin, who was holding an astronomical, or perhaps an astrological, chart. Completing this group was a man who might have been a superior groom or huissier, with a smiling, sonsy face, richly liveried; he held a coachman’s whip in one hand, but in the other what might have been a scalpel, or small knife; almost concealed behind his back hung a leather bottle; obviously this guest was feeling no thirst. This lesser group—wedding guests? specially favoured friends?—was completed by the figure of a dwarf, in full ceremonial armour, but with no weapon unless the onlooker chose so to define the rope that was coiled around his left arm; with his right hand he was holding out toward the stout artist a bundle of what looked like very sharp pencils, or silver-points.
The startling figure in this otherwise spirited but not inexplicable composition was a creature floating high on the left above the heads of the bridal pair. Was he an angel? But he had no wings, and although his face was at once sanctified and inhuman, the effect was idiotic; the small head rose almost to a point. From the lips of this creature, or angel, or whatever it was, issued an ornate ribbon, or scroll, on which was written, in Old German script, Tu autem servasti bonum vinum usque adhuc. Over the heads of the wedded pair it held, in its left hand, a golden crown, while with its right it seemed to point at the couple who dominated the right wing of the triptych.
The background of this central panel, which also appeared in varied form in the other two panels, was a landscape merging in the farthest distance to a range of sun-tipped mountains.
Compared with this arresting central portion, the flanking wings were subdued, almost in some areas to a treatment in grisaille, though here and there were some relieving accents of colour. The wing on the left might seem at first to be readily understood; in it Christ was kneeling amid the six water-pots of stone, his hands extended in blessing. In the foreground, in shadow, were three figures easily identified as disciples: Simon Zeiotes, a vigorous man of middle age in whose girdle hung a broad-headed woodsman’s axe; St. John, identifiable by his pen and inkhorn hanging at his waist, and by the youthful beauty of his features; and—surely not?—yes, it must be Judas, red-haired and with the purse of the holy community safe under his left hand while with his right he calls the attention of his brethren to figures in the central panel.
But before the eye followed that gesture, what was it to make of the two women with Christ, the one standing in what might almost have been an attitude of anger over the kneeling figure, one hand raised as if in rhetorical condemnation, while the other, reaching bare from a servant’s smock, pointed downward at the wine-pots. The other woman, kneeling and seeming almost to protect her Lord, was small, and beneath a curious enveloping cap upon her head her expression was sweet with adoration. Around the head of Christ was a radiance, not strongly emphasized, and otherwise the figure was unremarkable, almost humble.
Following Judas’s gesture the eye moves toward the right-hand panel. The figures here might be taken for wedding guests; a knightly figure, one eye obliterated by a bandage, wears a sword but has a warning finger at its lips, as if cautioning to silence; his companion is a lady of great but cold beauty. If any connoisseur were so pernickety as to extend a string from the pointing finger of Judas to its termination in this picture, it would strike a wealthy merchant and his wife, apparently concerned only with themselves; the male figure carries a heavy purse at his girdle. The physician, somewhat apart, stands with his lancet ready in his hand, ready to let blood from any of the marriage group, all of whom are included in the scope of his penetrating, rodent eyes. But if these are wedding guests, surely those others in the background must be beggars at the feast—that rabble of children with twisted, ugly, hungry faces. They are not looking toward the marriage scene, but are concentrated on one of their number who is gouging the eye from a cat with a sharp stone. In this panel the background is markedly desolate, as compared with the landscape elsewhere.
A strange picture, and the experts were happy to sink their learned teeth into it and worry it to some sort of satisfactory interpretation or attribution.
It was in vain that Colonel Osmotherley reminded them that their task was to say what should be done with the picture, and not to decide beyond question who had painted it, or what its curious assemblage of elements might mean. Schlichte-Martin said that he did not think it could ever have been intended for a Christian church; the relegation of the Saviour to a place on a side wing made it wholly unacceptable. Knüpfer wanted to know why the dwarf was in armour; of course, everyone had seen ceremonial armour that had been made for dwarfs, but why was this dwarf wearing it to hold pencils, and had anybody noticed how much the dwarf looked like Drollig Hansel? (Ross nodded vigorously at this.) Everybody was puzzled by the fact that the Virgin had a halo, but her Son did not. And the floating figure? What was anyone to make of that?
Predictably, it was Professor Baudoin who said the disagreeable thing. As the others disputed he glared at the picture from very close range, plied the flashlight and the magnifying glass, rubbed an inch of paint with his spittle, and at last said loudly, “I don’t like the craquelure; I don’t like it at all; much too even; seems to have happened all at once. I recommend that we get the scientific men to work on it. I will lay any money it proves to be a fake.”
This brought an opinion—protest, demur, some inclination to agree—from all the experts. But even in his deep discomfort Francis could not miss the glance that Saraceni threw toward Baudoin, from his ill-coordinated blazing eyes. It had an impact like a blow, and Baudoin retreated to his chair as if a fierce gust of hot air had passed him.