It would have been absurd for the Commission to examine every picture that had changed its ground during the war. Its job was to concentrate on treasures. Francis recognized in the lists that were distributed pictures by Nobody-in-Particular of Nobody Special which were certainly from the Düsterstein studio where he had worked with Saraceni; they were in the Führermuseum group, and nobody wanted them, so they were allowed to stay where they were. Because it was known to a few experts and had caused some sensation in London just before the war, Drollig Hansel appeared before the Commission in person—that is to say, exhibited on an easel—and was admired as a pleasing minor work, but as it had no known provenance, and was clearly marked with what looked like the Fugger family Firmenzeichen, it was decided that it had better go to Augsburg. This decision sat well with Knüpfer and Brodersen, and was firm evidence of the Commission’s desire to be fair.
Francis felt no emotion he could not dissemble when Drollig Hansel was on the easel, and he was pleased that Ross thought highly of it.
“There’s a kind of controlled grotesquerie about it I’ve never seen before,” said he. “Not the rowdy horrors of all those Temptations of poor old St. Anthony, but something deeper and colder. Must have been an odd chap that painted it.”
“Very likely,” said Francis.
It was a different matter, however, when unexpectedly, on a November afternoon, The Marriage at Cana was carried in by the porters and put on the easel.
“This picture is something out of series,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Osmotherley. “No provenance at all, except that it comes from Göring’s personal collection, if you call that robber’s cave a collection. But it’s thought to be important, and you must make a decision about it.”
“The Reichsmarschall knew a good thing when he saw it,” said Brodersen, who ought to have known, for the Reichsmarschall had taken all the best things from his own gallery, leaving behind cynical receipts, saying that the pictures had been removed for their own protection. Brodersen had not been a Nazi, and only his reputation, and his unstained Aryanism, had kept him in his appointment.
It was a good thing. Seeing it after almost ten years, Francis knew it was a good thing. He said nothing and left the superior experts to say their say, which they did at such length that the light faded and the chairman adjourned the sitting until the following morning.
What the experts said was flattering and alarming to the Calvinist side of Francis’s conscience. Could this possibly be a hitherto unknown Mathis Neithart? The vigour and brilliance of the colour, and the calligraphic line, the distortion of some of the figures and the grotesquerie (that word again!) supported such an attribution, but there were Italianate, Mannerist features that made it unlikely—indeed impossible. The experts plunged into an orgy of happy haggling, of high-powered knowing-best, that filled a whole day.
Ross simply could not keep his mouth shut.
“I know that I shouldn’t speak in such company,” he said, smiling at the great men about him. “But if you will be good enough to indulge my amateurish hunch, may I ask if anyone sees a quality in this picture that suggests the Drollig Hansel we examined a few weeks ago? Merely a hunch.” And he sat down, smiling with a boyish charm that might perhaps have been a little overdone.
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.