Duveen on da Vinci

"The right eye is dead," said Sir Joseph Duveen, dolefully. "Dead," he intoned, "very dead."

Surely Leonardo da Vinci had never painted a "dead" eye. Leonardo studied artillery, muscle fibres, ladies' lips, everything that quivered with life, mechanical or protoplasmic. He was the inspired archetype of the small boy who wants to know how things work. Sir Joseph Duveen could not believe that the painted "dead" eye was by Leonardo, nor, for that matter, that any part of the canvas had been colored by that amazing Florentine.

But there was another consideration: if the jury should decide that Leonardo had been the painter, Sir Joseph's remarks might cost him as much as $500,000.

And he had been pondering that possibility for eight years.

History. During the War, Capt. Harry J. Hahn, Kansas City auto salesman, served with the U. S. aviation corps. In France he met and married Mlle. Andree Lardoux, niece of the Marquis de Chambre of Brittany. She brought her husband a natural dowry of dark hair and eyes, Gallic chic. Her property dowry included a painting of a gentle faced brunette whose bosom plumply filled her brick-red velvet bodice. The painting was on two layers of canvas, bore on the back the inscription: "Taken from the wood and put on canvas by Hacquin at Paris, 1777."* It had been acquired by the Lardoux family from an aide of Napoleon Bonaparte. Mile. Lardoux owned it with joy, because, in 1916, Georges Sortais, French connoisseur, had pronounced it in writing to be the work of Leonardo da Vinci.

In the Louvre was the famed La Belle Ferroniere (The Blacksmith's Daughter), most often attributed to Leonardo and almost identical with the Lardoux portrait. Thus Connoisseur Sortais' dictum implied that Leonardo had painted this subject twice. But, since the Louvre painting disappeared in 1848 and later reappeared, there loomed other suspicions. Perhaps the Louvre Belle was a fake. Perhaps the Lardoux Belle was the genuine Leonardo. Perhaps both were by minor artists. Apart from dogmatic critical opinions there was no evidence to show that Leonardo had painted either Belle.

In 1920 Capt. Hahn took his wife and her picture to Kansas City. The Kansas City art museum favored the reputed Leonardo. A sale seemed likely. The price, of course, would be in six figures. The news spread to the correct corridors of Manhattan art dealers.

Duveen. None heard the rumors more quickly than stalwart, ruddy Sir Joseph Duveen. Whenever and wherever art dealers come in conflict over some priceless item, Sir Joseph is usually found sitting sedately nearest the prize with a millionaire look which defines and demands his desire. Duveen is unquestionably the most potent name in art marts of both hemispheres. The Duveen offices in Manhattan have an air of grim impregnability rather than a cordial fagade.

When asked for his opinion of the Lar-doux painting, Sir Joseph's crisp moustache twitched and his mobile eyebrows performed a stately and scornful ascension. "The picture," he declared, "is a copy, hundreds of which have been made of this and other Leonardo subjects and offered in the market as genuine. Leonardo never made a replica of his work. His original La Belle Ferroniere is in the Louvre."

Suit. The Kansas City museum did not buy the painting. Mrs. Hahn sued Sir Joseph for $500,000 libel.

Ammunition. Then for eight years the trial was held in abeyance while both sides collected ammunition. Expert minions of Sir Joseph and of Mrs. Hahn went to the Louvre, taking the Lardoux painting with them. They peered, compared, photographed, microphotographed, studied old scripts, gathered historical data.

Back to Sir Joseph came favorable reports by "expertizers" of the two paintings. Said they of the Lardoux portrait: "Soggy and bulgy ... it resembles in portions a child's balloon . . . mouth too luscious . . . angularity of the 18th century is here translated into the suavity of the late 18th."

Back to Mrs. Hahn came favorable reports. Her experts, unlike Sir Joseph's, were relying on history, measurements, concrete evidence, rather than esthetic considerations. They were rumored to have discovered telltale thumbprints.* In Kansas City, art dealer J. Conrad Hug twice mortgaged his home to obtain funds for the defeat of Sir Joseph.

Trial. Last week the trial began. Rubberneckers swarmed into the Manhattan courtroom of the U. S. Supreme Court as though legal curtains were about to be raised on the scene of some glamorous crime. The jury, chosen for its ignorance of Leonardo, was composed of a clerk, two agents, two realtors, an accountant, a shirtmaker, an artist, a poster artist, an upholsterer, a vendor of ladies' wear and a man without occupation. Chief counsel for Mrs. Hahn was large, ironic S. Lawrence Miller. His opponent was excitable Lawyer George W. Whiteside. The room was littered with books on esthetics, histories of art. On an easel stood the Lar-doux painting.

Attack. For the first few days, Sir Joseph was constantly in the witness box. First salvo for the prosecution was Lawyer Miller's statement of intent: "We hope to show that Sir Joseph has built up an organization which is the finest of its kind in the world and has a strangle hold on the picture business. . . . He has established such contacts with the richest clientele in the world that scarcely anyone else can sell an oil painting. He has built up such a business that when he condemns that picture it is dead, and he knows it. He has had competitors who have found that he uses the tactics of condemning a picture or a work of art offered for sale by a rival. He is the man who is going to sell all the old paintings."

Then Lawyer Miller elicited from Witness Duveen the following evidence:

Sir Joseph knew nothing of pigmentation or the chemistry of .colors. He had pronounced on the Lardoux painting without seeing either the painting itself or -a photograph. Once he stated his dou'bt that the Louvre Belle was by Leonardo, then he retracted and said he was sure of it. He could not find hatching strokes on the Lardoux portrait which he claimed to have seen eight years before; he apologized for his failing eyesight.

Defense. Sir Joseph volleyed in return. He defined an expert as "a man who knows pictures and can tell a copy from an original." Of the Lardoux painting he said: "The neck is a clumsy cylinder of flesh . . . there are unnatural plates of flesh . . . faulty construction, faulty anatomy." He pointed to "poor" shadows, an off-perspective eye, awkward drawing. He defined technique as the "handwriting" of an artist whereby a "friend" can always recognize his work. Leonardo, he felt, could never have been a botchy anatomist, nor did the picture reveal his technique.

Jokes. Lawyer Miller mentioned a painter named Garbo, suggested a relationship with Cinemactress Greta Garbo. Sir Joseph failed to understand. When Sir Joseph indicated the contours of the painted bosom Lawyer Miller jocosely murmured: "We will not go below the beads." Lawyer Miller denied perceiving certain innuendoes of color and form in the Louvre Belle. "If I were with you, you would see it," gibed Sir Joseph. When Sir Joseph was asked if he belonged to the French society called Friends of the Louvre he sighed and said: "I don't know. I shall have to ask my secretary."

Aspects. As the trial wore on, the absence of absolute evidence grew obvious. There was a deadlock between the connoisseur, foiled 'by the need to express nebulous impressions in concrete language, and the shrewd lawyer, facetiously tilting and impaling but hampered by lack of the factual material of law. Sir Joseph grew lugubrious, exasperated, weary. Said he: "Last night I did not get a wink of sleep. All night my mind was filled with images of pictures going round and round. How long is this sort of thing going to last, do you think?"

To some spectators it seemed wise to let Leonardo da Vinci lie quietly in his undiscovered grave in Amboise by the sunny river Loire; to sell pictures for whatever they may bring regardless of recondite aspersions. The New York World editorialized: "We believe it would be a good idea if the court found out whether the talesmen know a Corot from a Wallace Nutting, and whether the Louvre is an art museum, a hotel or a disease. . . . There is grave danger that the verdict will be i cent to the plaintiff, 'with costs on the said Devinchey.' "

*M. Hacquin restored paintings for French monarchs.

*Lefthanded Leonardo often rubbed his pigments with his curiously burned right thumb.