This had a fine ring of morality and aesthetic probity about it. Saraceni making the past live again. But there were elements in what was really happening that Francis did not understand.
If the past was to be recovered, why not the best of the past? There were pictures hanging in Schloss Düsterstein that plainly needed the attention of a restorer, pictures by distinguished masters—a Mengs, a van Bylert, even a Van Dyck that wanted cleaning—but these did not come to the shell-pavilion. Instead there were several pictures, usually painted on panels, some of which were in bad repair and all of which were dirty. One of Francis’s jobs was to wipe these as clean as possible with soft, damp cloths and then—but why?—wash these cloths in as little water as possible and dry out the pan until the dust from the picture was dust again, and could be sucked up with a syringe and put in a numbered small bottle.
Most of the little pictures were portraits of Nobody in Particular, in all his and her dull variety; just noblemen and merchants, burgomasters and scholars, and their pie-faced wives. But Saraceni would place one of these competent, uninteresting daubs on his easel, and study it with care for hours before removing certain portions with a solvent so that the painting beneath was blurred, or else the undercoating of the panel was revealed. Then he would repaint the face, so that it was the same as before but with a greater distinction—a keenness of aristocratic eye, a new look of bürgerlich astuteness, a fuller beard; women, if they had hands, were given rings, modest but costly, and better complexions. Sometimes he placed, in the upper left-hand corner of the panel, some little heraldic device, which might indicate the status of the sitter, and on one picture, rather larger than the rest, he introduced an ornamental chain, the collar and emblem of the Saint-Esprit. He is tarting up these four-hundred-year-old dullards, thought Francis, but why, and for whom?
Saraceni’s method of painting was wholly new to Francis. On his palette he laid out his colours—the colours that Francis had so laboriously prepared—in small, almost parsimonious dibbets; but elsewhere on the palette was some of the phenol and formaldehyde mixture mingled with a little oil, and before he took paint on his brush he dipped it first in this resinous gum, which served him as a medium. A strange way to paint, surely? Late in November Francis decided that the time had come to ask a question.
“You shall see why I do that,” said the Meister. “Indeed, you cannot help but see. Overpainting on a restored—or revived—picture is easily detected with the naked eye. As a picture ages, and the paint dries out—it takes about fifty years—it cracks in a certain pattern. What we call the craquelure. The cracks are mere hair-lines; only a poor picture develops a hide like a crocodile. But those hair-lines penetrate right through all the coatings of paint, as deep as to the ground you have used to prepare your canvas—or panel—like these I have been working on. So—how do I produce a craquelure in the new work I have done that blends undetectably with the old work? Well, as you see I am using a fast-drying paint—or rather, that phenol mixture that I use as my medium. Tomorrow I shall show you how I produce the craquelure.”
So this was what the electric furnace was for! Francis had assumed it might be to heat the cold, damp grotto-room, but such heat as there was came from a brazier—not much more than a pan of burning charcoal set on a tripod, which gave out about as much heat as a dying baby’s last breath, in Francis’s opinion. On the day following their talk about craquelure Saraceni turned on the electricity in the furnace, and in time, with much rumbling and moaning, it achieved a heat by no means great, but which taxed the primitive electrical system of the castle, where electric light was scant and dim, and did not proceed above the ground floor.
When Saraceni declared the heat to be sufficient he and Francis carefully inserted the painted panels and after about fifty minutes of slow baking they emerged with, sure enough, tiny hairlines that satisfied the Meister. While they were still warm he surprised Francis yet again.
“Before these cool, you must take a sable brush and put back as much as you can of the dust that was originally on these pictures, taking special pains to get it into the tiny cracks over the new work. Don’t be too eager; but be sure to cover the whole picture and especially whatever is new. Of course, you will use the dust from the bottle that bears the number of the picture. We must not insult Burgermeister A with dirt that the hand of time has sown on the portrait of the wife of Burgermeister B. And hurry up. The dust must adhere. Now—on with your work, you understudy of Father Time.”
The next day Saraceni was in high excitement. “Everything now will have to wait until I return from Rome. I must visit my apartment before Christmas; I cannot be separated forever from my darlings, my pictures, my furniture—not even from my bed-curtains, which once belonged to the Empress Josephine. Antaeus had to touch his foot to the earth to gain strength, and I must touch and see my beauties if I am to have the resolution I need for this work.—You are looking at me oddly, Corniche? Does my passion for my collection really surprise you so much?”
“No, Meister, not that. But—precisely what is it you are doing here?”
“What do you suppose?”
“I don’t want to be presumptuous, but this restoration, or revitalizing, or whatever you call it, seems to go a bit farther than is necessary.”
“Oh, Corniche, speak what is in your mind. The word you want to use is faking, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t use that word to you, Meister.”
“Certainly not.”
“But it does look rather fishy.”
“Fishy is just the right word! Now, Corniche, you shall know everything that is proper for you to know in good time. Indeed, you shall know a great deal when Prince Max visits us. He is coming for Christmas, and I shall be back in plenty of time to show him all these greatly improved panels. Prince Max talks a great deal more freely than I do. Of course, it is his right.
“Meanwhile, during the fortnight that I am absent, you shall have a little treat. A treat and a rest. You have seen how I work, and I promised to teach you as much of what I know as you can take in. While I am away, I want you to paint a picture for me. See, here is this little panel. Almost a ruin as a picture, but the panel is sound enough, and so is the leather that covers it. Paint me a picture that is all your own, but would not look out of place among the other panels. Do the best you can.”
“What is the subject to be? One of these bürgerlich turnip-heads?”
“What you think best. Use your invention, my dear fellow. But make it congruous with the others. I want to see what you can do. And when I return we shall have a splendid Christmas, showing these pretty baked cakes to Prince Max.”
Use his invention? Well, if that was what Saraceni wanted, that is what Francis would do, and he would surprise the Meister, who seemed to think his invention would be limited. Saraceni set off for Rome the day after he told Francis how to use his time, and Francis sat down to his table in the chilly shell-grotto to plan his surprise.
Saraceni was not the only one to leave the castle. The Countess and Amalie left on the same day, to go to Munich to enjoy some of its pleasures before Christmas, and Francis and Miss Ruth Nibsmith were left in possession.
Miss Nibsmith was by no means bad company; in the absence of the Countess she expanded considerably, and although Francis never saw her during the day, they met at dinner, which was served at the same stately pace as always. To fill up the time between courses they drank a good deal of the Countess’s excellent wine, and resorted after dinner to the brandy bottle.
“I can never really settle myself in these German rooms,” said Miss Nibsmith, kicking off her substantial shoes and putting her feet on the side of the splendid porcelain stove in the family drawing-room. “They have no focus. You know what I mean? Focus, in the true Latin meaning of the word. No hearth. I long for an open fire. It is as good as a dog in a room to give it life. These German stoves are beautiful, and they are certainly practical. This room is warmer than it would be if it had a fireplace, but where does one look for the centre of the room? Where does one stand when making a pronouncement? Where does one warm one’s bottom?”