The Unknown Masterpiece Read Free

relics: the saint was believed to be embodied in his or her icons, and could be prayed to for benign interventions. We still hear about wonder-working Virgins and
Sacri Bambini
. These are images that have no reference to museums of fine art or to connoisseurship or art appreciation, nor do they belong in collections. Stories about them appear in the Metro sections of newspapers, but not in the sections devoted to culture.
    From the perspective of magic,
every
image has the possibility of coming to life, and perhaps the first images ever drawn, however crudely executed, were viewed with an awe that still remains a disposition of the most primitive regions of the human brain. This is why images have been forbidden in so many of the great religions of the world, and why they have been destroyed in the name of iconoclasm. It is why Plato was afraid of art, and drove artists from his Republic. History and literature are filled with legends of images that come to life (think of the portrait of Dorian Gray). Mythical artists like “Master Pygmalion” have been envied and emulated by those with Frenhoferian ambitions. Pygmalion fulfilled the dream that artists can turn their effigies into real beings. By carving and polishing, his statue came to life! “You’re in the presence of a woman. And you’re still looking for a picture,” Frenhofer tells his stupefied colleagues, who are unable to see either—who see only a “wall of paint.” And we are left in the end wondering if the old painter has lost his mind or the younger painters have lost their eyes.
    I want to respond to this in a moment, but I must first point out a third history, interwoven with the other two, as it is in Balzac’s story. In this history, there are certain parallels between looking at a picture and looking at a woman—particularly at a woman’s nakedness if one happens to be a man. There are traditions in which it is regarded as dangerous, or even lethal, for a man to see a woman’s genital area. But that aura extends, in certain cultures, to all parts of a woman’s body, which must be veiled to protect her from the gaze of males—and males from the sight of unveiled women! Balzac allows us to infer that in Frenhofer’s painting, his mistress, Catherine Lescault—who is further described in all but the final version of the story as the courtesan known as
La Belle noiseuse [6]
—is depicted naked. The artist’s extreme reluctance to allow anyone to look at his painting must mean that she is shown nude, so that seeing the picture is equivalent to seeing Catherine herself naked. Even in fairly recent memory, when nude photographs of the singer Madonna were printed in
Playboy
, it was at first felt that this must be an extreme embarrassment to her and, at the very least, an invasion of her privacy. There are real-life scenarios in which possessing nude photographs of a woman would give someone the power to blackmail her.
    Frenhofer will finally permit his painting to be viewed only because this is the price he has to pay for being able to complete it. He evidently cannot complete it until he finds the right model: “I’ve made up my mind to travel—I’m off to Greece, to Turkey, even Asia, to look for a model.” One wonders what has happened to the original model, Catherine Lescault herself. Perhaps she is no longer as beautiful as she once was, which is what happens to the model in Henry James’s later story “The Madonna of the Future,” in which the painter waits for too many years to execute his great painting. [7] In fact, I believe there is a more natural explanation, but in any case Porbus tells him that Poussin’s mistress, Gillette, is of an incomparable beauty. And he tempts the old painter with an irresistible bargain: in exchange for allowing him to use Gillette as the needed model, he must permit Poussin and himself to see
La Belle noiseuse
. There is thus a symbolic exchange of women. Poussin and Porbus are allowed to see