A LAWYER AND THE LOST  CARAVAGGIO

Michael Sean Quinn**



            Lawyers are from time to time involved in commercial or mercantile problems related to fine art. A few large firms have departments specializing in it. There are several forms of insurance for it. From time to time, lawyers get involved in litigation over this or that piece, and they played a good sized role in dealing with Nazi looting. Lawyering art fraud and art forgery can be lots of fun.

If you enjoy this kind of thing, you will find Jonathan Harr’s THE LOST PAINTING published in 2005 more than merely amusing.  It is not really about lawyers and the arts. It is not actually about frauds and forgeries.

It is really about two graduate students, two art historians, and one or two art restorers finding a lost painting of Michelangelo Mersi da [or some combination of names, anyway] Caravaggio.  (Incidentally, Harr is also the author of a very exciting book on a whole series of law-related  events, A CIVIL ACTION, published some years ago. Its topic was a water contamination case in Massachusetts during the 1980s.)

Really informed scholars knew that it had existed at one point in time, several centuries, but had been missing for centuries, and all those with qualifications agreed that none of the look-alikes were the original but merely quite good copies.

Harr’s tale is of two Italian art history graduate students looking for something else—another Caravaggio—to see there was an uncontroversial original. Along the way, they found meaningful clues as to the existence of the lost painting, namely The Taking of Christ, a dark but exquisite work.

Here is to be found something implied about lawyering.  The “girls” spent months combing through very old—centuries old—commercial documents regarding various aspects of sales and logistics. Some of the work had to be conducted in the “archives” of long wealthy families, some of whom had come on what many of us would regard as hard times, and some of it was conducted in more comfortable, not to mention, European libraries.  Does any of this sound a little like what junior lawyers in large commercial firms do all the time?

Eventually, our heroines confirmed which of the first painting was the original and became involved in locating the Taking. It turned out to be in a Jesuit monastic building in Dublin.

Restoration began. It was a long and arduous process, and a nearly disastrous mistake was made in its “relininig.”*  During this period, and immediately afterward, the Order had to decide what to do with it. It was too much an international treasure to keep in a monastery residence building.  Hence, should it be sold? Should it be sent to Rome and housed in the city out of which the painter had to escape to avoid a charge of murder? Or what?

(*This is a  traditional method to address restoration problems involving “ancient” paintings. Its function is to reinforce the back of the canvas by attaching a new canvas to the old one.  The process often referred to as “relining.” A number of techniques and adhesives have been employed to do this, but as with all methods there is a risk of altering the surface texture of the painting if the procedure is not exactly right. Some compare—perhaps extravagantly–relining to heart surgery, and it is done “nose to canvas,” like a lot of other painting identification and restoration work.  In this case, the mistake was to use Irish linen as the reliner, as opposed to Italian material.  The reason was that it would take too long to get the Italian stuff to Dublin, given that the restoration process was behind schedule and over budget, I think. Perhaps there was a bit of nationalism involved too, I conjecture. In any case, the error was corrected and no injury to the painting can be found.)

At this point we get an explicit inclusion of an Irish lawyer.  It had been decided that the paint would go to the national museum in Dublin, but it was not be given or sold to it. It was to be lent to it pretty much forever.  After an oral agreement had been reached following international but very quiet debates and various negotiations, in which lawyers undoubtedly participated, “the Jesuit lawyer [then] worked out the conditions of the indefinite loan, none of them very stringent. The gallery would consult the Jesuits on all matters concerning the painting, such as loans to other museums, which would require Jesuit approval. The society would also derive income from licensing the rights to the painting’s reproduction on cards and posters. And finally, the gallery would provide a full-sized, high-quality reproduction, complete with fame, to hang on the empty wall in the parlor of the” Jesuit residence where the picture had been found.” Although nothing is said about this, I conjecture that more than one lawyer reviewed this document; I think I would call it a “quasi-lease.”

Three closing points.  First, I realized for the first time how little classical religious painting have often had to do with spirituality or religious institutions. The real focus is on beauty and drama. . . .period!  (Well. Maybe not completely.  There is also the commercial value painting can generate out of interior decorating.) Second, Harr ignores the dimensions insurance must have played in the final transaction he discusses and in many, if not all, of the later ones. I would expect that lawyers would have a continuing involvement in those processes too. Finally, I note that a knowledgeable satirist might be tempted to  call the arrangement between the Jesuit Order and the museum a Jesuit “indulgence.”


Michael Sean Quinn, Ph.D., J.D., C.P.C.U. . . .
The Law Firm of Michael Sean Quinn et
Quinn and Quinn
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