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WRITINGS

The Duchess of Something or Other [download]

Rembrandt awoke with a start. He had to paint. It was 3 a.m. and pitch dark but he’d seen her and he had to start. He couldn’t see the door. He couldn’t see the foot of his bed. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. But, he’d seen her and he had to start.
He untangled himself from the covers, dropped to the floor and shuffled to the door eventually stumbling into his studio. He debated whether to light the room or to just start sketching. The vision was so vivid he feared invoking his physical sight would ruin the perfection in his head. He found the pencil and the canvas—closed his eyes and went to work. He’d never done this before. The trained artist in him told him it was stupid—but the master in him overruled the technician. He painted with his heart not his eyes anyway. He’d always told himself that. Now he was putting it to the test.
As the light cracked through the window three hours later, he was mixing the paint and transfixed by the image looking back at him from the canvas. This was the greatest thing he’d ever done and he’d done some of the greatest things anyone had ever done. If the paint flowed like the sketch, he’d have to quit after this one. There’d be nothing left to do.
As the sun set, and the paint dried, Rembrandt looked through his tears at the beauty he’d seen as he slept, brought to life on the canvas in front of him. He knew he was good. In fact, he knew he was the best. But, he knew he wasn’t this good. He was awestruck by his own creation. This woman was all that was perfect in the mind of God when He thought Woman into existence. Rembrandt was done. He’d never paint again.

* * *
“No. Eccentric,” Charlie corrected himself. “Rich people aren’t crazy. They’re eccentric.” He laughed. His dad had always told him that. Charlie restored and maintained masterpieces for the great museums of the world. He also had private clients. Most of them had invested great sums in their art and hired Charlie to protect the value of their investment. Nils Johnson was different. He bought trash and paid Charlie to painstakingly remove paint in microscopic layers to see what was underneath. Nils was fascinated by the notion that a person would paint something and then paint over it or that someone would buy a painting for the sole purpose of painting over it. Nils wanted to know the history of the painting; revealed in reverse chronological order. He wanted to know what changes the painting had gone through from the first moment the canvas was touched by the first artist until it passed cheaply and unceremoniously into the “Nils Johnson Collection.”
Yup. Nils was eccentric alright. Each painting had always been the same story. A lousy, poorly cared for painting covering an even lousier painting. Charlie didn’t mind though. Nils paid him a lot and it was good practice. Hey, you never know. Maybe somebody would screw with the Sistine Chapel paintings again. Charlie would be the most qualified restorer to re-reveal Michaelangelo’s original work.
Nils Johnson’s latest “treasure” had come from a Nevada brothel which had dumped its “artwork” when it remodeled. It was in bad shape. Smoke damaged, dirty, moldy, and thoroughly neglected for many years. The setting of the painting was garish (a brothel, of course) tempered by dingy. The picture contained a woman and a man. The man was hideous. The woman left a lot to be desired as well. Except for the eyes. Despite the terrible condition of the painting and the ham-handedness of the final painter/desecrator of the work, there was something about the woman’s eyes. A hint of substance in a substance-less work.

* * *
Amazingly, after many laborious hours, Charlie was starting to get interested. (So was Nils. But Nils was always interested in these bizarre unveilings.) After the surface cleaning and mold-killing, Charlie had gotten to work on the first layer. This had gotten rid of the man and the woman was looking better already. Whoever added the man was a talentless hack. The man’s presence didn’t complement the woman at all. “What moron put that mope in the picture?,” Charlie wondered aloud.

* * *
As Charlie worked back through time, he realized he was onto something. This woman (he was convinced now that the original work was a woman) had passed through a lot of miserable, ungifted, clumsy hands. They’d all tried to “improve” her by various changes to her or her setting. No one was satisfied with how they found her. They all made their gruesome imprint on her. Her essence had been lost on them and, therefore, they’d each buried it successively deeper under the layers of their own stupidity and egotism—trying to make her their own work. Charlie felt for this woman. He sensed she’d be worth finding if he could just get through the mess that had overwhelmed and concealed her. The eyes got clearer, deeper, and richer as each layer was stripped meticulously away. Who would he find?

* * *

Nils was dumbfounded. He’d bought a Rembrandt from a brothel. “We make a good team Charlie,” he laughed. “I’m lucky and you’re good. Who do you think she is?”
“I don’t know. The Duchess of Something or Other, I suppose. I bet Rembrandt painted this one real slow. If she walked into your life, you’d want to keep her there as long as possible. What a masterpiece. She’s absolutely magnificent in every respect.”
“How could she have ended up in a whorehouse?,” Nils wanted to know.
“My guess is someone stole her and did the first paintover to conceal the crime until he could get her away somewhere and sell her. He got separated from the painting before he could profit from his crime. Nobody else bothered to look below the surface to see what was there. They treated her like she was nothing special and so she seemed—but all along, she was a masterpiece. The greatest creation of one of the greatest masters who ever lived.”
Charlie continued, “Hey Nils. Grab your checkbook and get back on the streets. If there was one hidden masterpiece floating around out there, there’s bound to be another. It’s time to find her.