Portrait of a Spy

nobility during their travels were charlatans who did a brisk trade in worthless copies falsely attributed to the masters of Florence and Venice. Occasionally, they erred in the opposite direction. Isherwood suspected that the painting on the pedestal fell into the second category. So, too, did Gabriel. He dragged the tip of his forefinger over the face of the Magdalene, dislodging a century’s worth of surface grime.
    “Where was it hung? In a coal mine?”
    He picked at the heavily discolored varnish. In all likelihood, it was composed of a mastic or dammar resin that had been dissolved with turpentine. Removing it would be a painstaking process involving the use of a carefully calibrated mixture of acetone, methyl proxitol, and mineral spirits. Gabriel could only imagine the horrors that awaited him once the old varnish had been stripped away: archipelagos of pentimento , a desert of surface cracks and creases, wholesale paint losses concealed by previous restorations. And then there was the condition of the canvas, which was sagging dramatically with age. The remedy was a relining, a perilous procedure involving the application of heat, moisture, and pressure. Any restorer who had ever performed a relining had the scars to prove it. Gabriel had once destroyed a large portion of a painting by Domenico Zampieri by using an iron with a faulty temperature gauge. The fully restored painting, while pristine to the untrained eye, was definitely a collaborative effort between Zampieri and the Studio of Gabriel Allon.
    “Well?” asked Isherwood again. “Who painted the bloody thing?”
    Gabriel made a show of deliberation. “I’ll need X-rays to make a definitive attribution.”
    “My man is dropping by later this afternoon to take the pictures. But we both know that you don’t need them to make a preliminary attribution. You’re like me, petal. You’ve been around paintings for a hundred thousand years. You know it when you see it.”
    Gabriel fished a small magnifying glass from his coat pocket and used it to examine the brushstrokes. Leaning slightly forward, he could feel the familiar shape of a Beretta 9mm pistol digging into the flesh of his left hip. Having worked with British intelligence to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program, he was now permitted to carry a weapon at all times for protection. He had also been granted a British passport, which he was free to use for foreign travel, provided he was not working for his old service. There was no chance of that. The illustrious career of Gabriel Allon was finally over. He was no longer Israel’s avenging angel. He was an art restorer employed by Isherwood Fine Arts, and England was his home.
    “You have a hunch,” said Isherwood. “I can see it in those green eyes of yours.”
    “I do,” replied Gabriel, still entranced by the brushstrokes, “but I’d like a second opinion first.”
    He glanced over his shoulder at Chiara. She was toying with a strand of her unruly hair, a slightly bemused expression on her face. Posed as she was now, she bore a striking resemblance to the woman in the painting. It was hardly surprising, thought Gabriel. The descendant of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, Chiara had been raised in the ancient ghetto of Venice. It was quite possible some of her ancestors had served as models for masters such as Bellini, Veronese, and Tintoretto.
    “What do you think?” he asked.
    Chiara joined Gabriel before the canvas and clucked her tongue in disapproval at its deplorable condition. Though she had studied the Roman Empire at university, she had assisted Gabriel on a number of restorations and, in the process, had become a formidable art historian in her own right.
    “It’s an excellent example of a Holy Conversation, or Sacra Conversazione, an idyllic scene in which subjects are grouped against an aesthetically pleasing landscape. And as any oaf knows, Palma Vecchio is regarded as the originator of the form.”
    “What do you think of the draftsmanship?” Isherwood asked, a lawyer leading a sympathetic witness.
    “It’s awfully good for Palma,” Chiara replied. “His palette was unrivaled, but he was never regarded as a particularly skilled draftsman, even by his contemporaries.”
    “And the woman who posed as the Madonna?”
    “Unless I’m mistaken, which is highly unlikely, her name is Violante. She appears in a number of Palma’s paintings. But there was another famous painter in Venice at the time who was said