Page 98 of Portrait of an Unknown Woman

“You did.”

“Who are you?”

“Come with me. I’ll show you.”

Wrapped in a bedsheet, Chiara followed him into the studio and stood before the canvas. At length she whispered, “You’re a freak.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s absolutely—”

“Amazing, I think.”

“I see a touch of Giorgione in it.”

“That’s because I was still under his influence when I painted it in 1510.”

“Who will you be next?”

Jacobo Robusti, the artist known as Tintoretto, was a learned and unsmiling man who rarely set foot outside Venice and allowed few visitors to enter his workspace. If there was one consolation, he was among the swiftest painters in the republic. Gabriel completed his version ofBacchus, Venus, and Ariadnein half the time it took him to finishThe Lovers. Chiara nevertheless declared it superior to the Titian in every respect, as did Francesco.

“I’m afraid your wife is right. You truly are a freak.”

Next Gabriel assumed the personality and remarkable palette of Paolo Veronese.Susanna in the Bathrequired the largest of the six canvases he had acquired from Isherwood Fine Arts and several additional days to complete—in large part because Gabriel intentionally damaged the work and then restored it. Luca Rossetti visited him three times during the painting’s execution. Brush in hand, Gabriel lectured the young Carabinieri officer on the artistic merits and fraudulent pedigrees of his four forged masterpieces. Rossetti in turnbriefed Gabriel on the preparations for their forthcoming operation. They included the acquisition of two properties—an isolated villa for the reclusive forger and an apartment in Florence for his front man.

“It’s on the south side of the Arno, on the Lungarno Torrigiani. We’ve loaded it up with paintings and antiquities from the Art Squad’s evidence room. It definitely looks like the home of an art dealer.”

“And the villa?”

“Your friend the Holy Father called Count Gasparri. It’s all arranged.”

“How soon can you settle into the apartment and assume your new identity?”

“As soon as you say I’m ready.”

“Are you?”

“I know my lines,” answered Rossetti. “And I know more about the Venetian School painters than I ever thought possible.”

“What was Veronese’s name when he was young?” inquired Gabriel.

“Paolo Spezapreda.”

“And why was that?”

“His father was a stonecutter. It was traditional for children to be named after their father’s occupation.”

“Why did he start calling himself Paolo Caliari?”

“His mother was the illegitimate child of a nobleman called Antonio Caliari. Young Paolo thought it was better to be named for a nobleman than a stonecutter.”

“Not bad.” Gabriel drew his Beretta from the waistband of his trousers. “But will you be able to recite your lines so confidently if someone points one of these at your head?”

“I grew up in Naples,” said Rossetti. “Most of my childhood friends are now in the Camorra. I’m not going to fall to pieces if someone starts waving a gun around.”

“I heard a rumor that an elderly Venetian School painter gave you a good thrashing the other night in San Polo.”

“The elderly painter attacked me without warning.”

“That’s the way it works in the real world. Criminals don’t often announce their intentions before resorting to violence.” Gabriel returned the gun to the small of his back and contemplated the towering canvas. “What do you think, Signore Calvi?”

“You have to darken the garments of the two elders. Otherwise, I won’t be able to convince Oliver Dimbleby that it was painted in the late sixteenth century.”

“Oliver Dimbleby,” said Gabriel, “will be the least of your problems.”

By the time he commenced work on the Gentileschi, he was so exhausted he could scarcely hold a brush. Fortunately, Chiara agreed to pose for him, as the artist he was attempting to impersonate preferred the Caravaggesque method of painting directly from live models. He gave his Danaë Chiara’s body and facial features, but turned his wife’s dark hair to gold and her olive skin to luminous alabaster. Most of their sessions necessarily included an intermezzo in the bedroom—a hurried one, for Gabriel’s time was limited. The end result of their collaboration was a painting of astonishing beauty and veiled eroticism. It was, they both agreed, the finest of the four works.

Like the other three paintings, it was unmarred by craquelure, a sure sign it was a modern forgery and not the work of an Old Master. The solution was a large professional oven. General Ferrari obtained one from the seized inventory of a Mafia-owned kitchen supplies firm and delivered it to the mainland warehouse of the Tiepolo Restoration Company. After removing the four paintings from their stretchers, Gabriel baked them for three hours at 220 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, with Francesco’s help, he dragged the paintings over the edge of a rectangular work table, first vertically, then horizontally. The result was a fine network of Italianate surface cracks.

That evening, alone in his studio, Gabriel covered the paintings with varnish. And in the morning, when the varnish was dry, he photographed them with a tripod-mounted Nikon. He hung theTitian and the Tintoretto in the sitting room of the apartment, surrendered the Gentileschi to General Ferrari, and shipped the Veronese to Sarah Bancroft in London. The photos he emailed directly to Oliver Dimbleby, owner and sole proprietor of Dimbleby Fine Arts of Bury Street, upon whose rounded shoulders the entire venture rested. Shortly before midnight one of the images appeared on the website ofARTnews, beneath the byline of Amelia March. Gabriel read the exclusive story to his dark-haired, olive-complected Danaë. She made love to him in a shower of gold.