ADORATION OF ‘THE ANNUNCIATION’

This is a tale of the triumph of innocence. It is wafted on the wings of hyperbole, thickened with the paste of metaphor and spiced with such digressions as may amuse the reader while instructing him in the tangled ways of that fabulous realm known as Artville.

It tells the picaresque adventures of a sweet, small painting from a distant place and a far-off time and how it came to rest in fair Malibu in the villa of the Getty where it astonishes wise scholars and simple folk with the reverent candor of guileless poetry. In it the angel of the Lord announces the good news with a wag of a finger while the Virgin makes a shy gesture of unworthiness. The figures are shown in a sonorous red room and wearing contemporary costume as was the custom of the day.

Looking at this heartfelt scene it seems impossible that it might inspire clever designs to prove it false or that it could--without malice or intent--play a role in bringing plans for a mighty exhibition to a grinding halt.

Our Candide is “The Annunciation” by 15th-Century Flemish painter Dieric Bouts. A shadowy figure and a delicate sensibility, he was until recent years renowned only among scholars, connoisseurs and cognoscenti. Born in Haarlem we know not when, he died in 1475 after a praiseworthy career working in Louvain where he left a legacy of diverse religious paintings and two sons, Aelbrecht and Dieric the Younger, who carried on his tradition. Bouts played an unassuming role in that great revolution that brought human thought out of the flattened symbolism of the Middle Ages into the daylight of a solid Renaissance world sculpted by sunlight and shade. He wedges into history somewhere between such giants as the Master of Flemalle, Rogier van der Weyden and the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck.

Bouts’ style is careful to the point of nervousness and unassuming to the point of shyness. People in such paintings as his “The Entombment” in the National Gallery, London, are homely and slightly proportioned. But these bland characteristics add up to an art of delicate sinew and quirky originality that seem to speak of the power of unvarnished faith. In Bouts’ best pictures earthy little figures are transcendent and weightless as if entranced and about to float away.

There is no question that they deserve their quiet place in the museums. They are exquisitely rare, historically significant and kindred to certain special souls. One imagines the heroine of “The Glass Menagerie” finding them very pleasant.

The world being what it is, however, sweet little Dieric Bouts attained a certain boisterous notoriety in 1980 when the Norton Simon Museum acquired his “Resurrection.” The purchase was made in London at a Sotheby’s auction by Simon’s wife, Jennifer Jones, who paid about $4 million for a canvas painted on linen. The combination of celebrity and big bucks was understandably irresistible to the press and so the humble painter from Louvain was made briefly into a media superstar, grinning sheepishly--so to speak--from the front pages of great newspapers and network news.

It happened again early last year when the J. Paul Getty Museum announced that its purchase of Bouts’ “Annunciation” from Eugene Thaw, a leading New York dealer in Old Master art. The Getty keeps honorably mum about what it pays for art when it is privately purchased, but informed guesses peg the price at $7.4 million, clearly a significant rise over the figure set by the Simon Museum purchase. But something of a coup, at that, for the Getty. Such distinguished colleagues as the Metropolitan Museum and Fort Worth’s refined Kimbell Museum had coveted the picture.

So had Ronald Lauder, a member of the Estee Lauder cosmetics family and recently appointed U.S. ambassador to Austria. Lauder had held the picture on consignment, even loaning it to the Met where it was on view for several months. Lauder showed it to an acquaintance, Alain Tarica, an art dealer based in Paris and New York. Tarica, so the story goes, took one look and pronounced the “Annunciation” a fake. Lauder returned the picture, which the Getty eagerly acquired.

Tarica then took his objections to Art and Antiques magazine where they were put forth in an article that also condemned the Simon Museum Bouts. Charges were rationally countered by Getty Museum director John Walsh, reported in the press, and that appeared to be that to anyone unacquainted with what turned out to be Tarica’s extraordinary doggedness.

He continued to press his case in Europe, interesting several newspapers in his story, notably The Times of London, which produced three feature-length articles by sales room correspondent Geraldine Norman. They scrutinized every aspect of the painting, questioning its admittedly spotty provenance. Nobody knows where it was between the 15th Century and the time of its recent discovery by London dealer Derek Johns, who declines to describe his source beyond “European private collection.” It is believed to be a panel of an altar whose separate sections have slowly emerged since 1860 when Sir Charles Eastlake, director of London’s National Gallery, acquired “The Entombment” section in Italy.

Tarica’s accusations and Getty ripostes went back and forth like a match at Wimbledon. Tarica questioned the absence of such normal iconographic features as the doves and scepters that usually act as symbols in Annunciations of the period. The Getty replied that a lunkheaded forger would surely have used the conventions of the day and that their absence in the Annunciation only attest to Bouts’ originality. Tarica questioned the brightness of “The Annunciation’s” colors compared to the muted tones of the “Entombment.” The Getty replied that the faded picture has been sitting under a skylight for a century. Back and forth.

Finally the Times of London called for the intervention of an independent expert such as might be provided by the Belgian Institut Royale de Patrimonie Artistique. It seemed a trifle redundant to the Getty since it already has Frank Preusser as head of its own Scientific Research Program. Previously he directed the Doerner Institute in Munich, the world’s leading art sleutherie, examining suspected fakes for museums, police departments and customs agencies. Preusser did nearly 30 scientific tests of “The Annunciation” and as far as laboratory evidence can determine it is a 15th-Century painting by one person, not as Tarica insists, a modern fake by two forgers.

The Getty declined to invite an expert since it is satisfied with its own but agreed to make their facilities available to any expert who wished to come. No expert answered the call so Tarica and Norman came on their own. Tarica got into a shouting match with Getty curator Andrea Rothe and was ejected from the viewing room by the Getty Trust’s public relations director Phillipa Calnan.

After a monumental squawk, Tarica and the Times of London failed to bring forth any solid physical evidence and only a few minor scholarly whimpers about acknowledged oddities in the picture. Weighty and respected authorities such as the Met’s John Pope Hennessy, the head of its conservation institute John Brealey and Edmund Pillsbury, director of the Kimbell Museum, lined up solidly behind the Bouts.

Everything appears to argue in favor of the Bouts integrity and yet there is a mystery here, possibly more than one. The most intriguing, it seems to me, is the question of how the Bouts came to be a cause celebre in the first place. Tarica, like anyone else, is entitled to his opinion but he has admitted from the start that he has no scholarly expertise in Netherlandish art. Every editor he approached would have been perfectly correct to say, “Well that is an interesting yarn, but an equally provocative web of doubt and innuendo can be woven around literally thousands of works in hundreds of museums around the world. I am afraid that what you have here is simply not news.”

The only way to prove unflinchingly that a work of art is what it purports to be is to have rock-solid documentary evidence of its whereabouts from the moment the artist daubed on the last bit of paint or flicked off the final chip of marble. Anything short of that puts the authorship of a work in the realm of conjecture. Laboratory analysis can put an object in an historical neighborhood and close to a particular hand but rarely can assign it incontrovertibly to an individual personality. Even signatures--in the relatively short historical span that works have been signed--can be unreliable even when they are authentic. The French master Camille Corot was occasionally approached by admiring students who had painted a picture in his manner. As an act of kindness Corot would sign them so the students could make a few sous from their sale.

History is not as neat as we would have it. It is messy. The authenticity of works of art is determined as objectively as possible by careful scholars who spend lifetimes concentrating on narrow swaths of art history and staking their careers and reputations on their ability to recognize validity in their special sphere. When a mysterious work is found to be “genuine,” that determination is an act of scholarly consensus, an act of faith. When that consensus changes over time and after careful study, as it did recently when the famous “Man With the Golden Helmet” in Berlin was denuded of its attribution to Rembrandt--that is indeed news.

Cases like the Bouts brouhaha so lacking in initial substance attract attention for other reasons. Here, of course the principle one has to be the hypnotic fascination exercised by the imperially rich Getty Trust and everything it does.

There is a story in this affair but it is a human drama, not an aesthetic one. Whether that drama is as upright as Dickens or as seamy as Harold Robbins must be left in the realm of speculation. In either event it has nothing to to do with the little painting hanging seraphically in Malibu oblivious to its own shocking price tag and those who would say it is unreal. It knows it is real because it hears the sigh of the occasional visitor who sees what it is in fact about.

And now for something completely different. It is the story of an exhibition of Northern Renaissance Art that was to appear this month at the National Gallery and visit the County Museum of Art in the fall. It is not to be. Not now. Maybe later. For a time the reader will think this tale has nothing to do with the previous narrative.

Patience.

For the next couple of years West Berlin will celebrate its 450th birthday. To gear up for this auspicious event, it seemed to the city’s museum people a good idea to have a grand flourish of a show over here demonstrating the city’s artistic riches. Appropriately such an exhibition should be about the art of Northern Europe in the glorious period of the 15th and 16th centuries when Germany and the Netherlands joined Italy in opening their eyes to the beauty of the three-dimensional world.

The Renaissance discovered the planet is round after all and the Northern lands celebrated solidity by producing a brace of artistic geniuses and masters including Rogier van der Weyden, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Duerer and Hans Holbein the Elder among others.

The exhibition was conceived as a sumptuous spread of 42 sculptures, 50 prime drawings and 12 pieces of renowned silver and goldsmiths’ works with a centerpiece of 33 paintings including Rogier’s Miraflores Altarpiece, one of arts most deservedly famous icons.

According to County Museum Director Earl (Rusty) Powell’s account of the affair, everybody was as excited as maidens around a Maypole. Carter Brown, director of the National Gallery, was excited. All the German museum folk were excited. The showman within their collective mind liked the idea of astonishing the public with rare delights galore. The scholar liked the educational value of an exhibition of art whose appreciation still lags behind that of the Southern schools. Rather tickled with themselves, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the National set off hand in hand down the yellow-brick road to make bright hope into reality.

That’s where the trouble started. That’s where the trouble always starts.

A corporate sponsor had to be found. Sounds easy. Old Master exhibitions drip dignity and prestige which must reflect public respect on their institutional patrons, right? It makes sense, so naturally it is not right. In truth, it is not easy to find corporate backers for even the finest Old Master exhibitions, according to Powell. In 1984, for example, the National Gallery presented a landmark exhibition of the the paintings of French Rococo innovator Antoine Watteau. It made strong men sob and liquefied the stoniest hearts but it never did find corporate backing.

Corporations seem to like to fund certain kinds of contemporary art because it makes them look up-to-date but the hands-down favorite is Impressionism because of its enormous general popularity .

“It took me about 10 minutes on the phone to get backing for (LACMA’s Impressionist show) ‘A Day in the Country,’ ” Powell said.

The gentle reader will wish to contemplate the implications of such corporate habits during an era when they are asked to furnish more of the art patronage. Is the art world to dance exclusively to the tune of art that feeds the image of the multinationals?

Anyway, no angel appeared to shower gold on “Northern Renaissance: Art of the 15th and 16th Centuries in the Netherlands and Germany from the State Museums of Berlin (West).” Maybe it was the snappy title.

Even stickier, however, was the matter of the paintings. Such images as Rogier’s “Portrait of a Young Lady” were the obvious jewels of the exhibition. In spite of the seraphic excellence of a sculpture by Tilman Riemanschneider or a silver cup by Hinrich Grabow the exhibition would not quite play without the paintings.

Woe and alack, the paintings are all on wood panel.

Sounds good. Lots sturdier than flimsy old canvas.

Makes sense, so naturally it’s wrong.

Paintings on wood are considered the most frail and vulnerable of objects. Wood cracks, bends, torques, shivers, shudders, sneezes and convulses when subject to changes in temperature and humidity. This causes the painting on top to crack, congeal, erode and wrinkle faster than Margo turning 123 years old in 10 seconds in “Lost Horizon.”

Old paintings on wood are considered so brittle and delicate that they are high on the list of conservationists’ 10 commandments.

Thou shalt not ship, bend, fold or spindle.

Old paintings on wood are considered so fragile that the Federal Indemnification Act of 1975 will not underwrite their insurance.

That was really bad news for “Northern Renaissance.”

The Federal Indemnification Act was instituted during the Nixon Administration to encourage international loan exhibitions like “Treasures of Tutankhamen.” It guarantees the insurance on foreign loan shows and is the legal instrument single-handedly responsible for the era of the International Blockbuster Exhibition. Without it there would have been neither “5,000 Years of Korean Art” nor “Treasure Houses of Britain.”

When our heroes requested underwriting for “Northern Renaissance” the FIA board said, sorry fellas, not the panel paintings.

Lesser mortals would have tossed in the sponge. Our heroes rallied and the conservation departments of LACMA and the National Gallery (with a little help from their friends over at J. Paul Getty) set out to question received wisdom about the movability of panel paintings.

“We are against all travel (for such works) except under special conditions.” said Pieter Meyer, head of LACMA’s conservation lab. Nonetheless he joined with colleagues to look into the question and finally decided that “under certain conditions, panel can be more safely moved than paintings on canvas.”

Those conditions stipulate that the panel can’t have any active cracks in the support. Fellow conservator David Bull checked the Berlin paintings and found them sound. Conservators then devised the most astonishing high-tech, climate-controlled shipping crate yet seen by man. A panel painting ensconced in its embrace looks like art’s version of an intensive-care patient on a life-support system, bristling wires attached to a computer called a data-logger that monitors the paintings’ vital signs with gauges for strain, pressure, shock, vibration temperature and humidity. Test flights with these mummified panels hand-carried on commercial jets found the pictures underwent less variation than in a normal day hanging in their galleries.

A veritable breakthrough. German conservators pronounced the new container the “Porsche of shipping boxes.” Advanced technology allows geriatric paintings to travel safely to distant lands.

Feeling rather set up, our heroes presented their findings to the FIA committee along with a reinstated request for insurance indemnification.

The FIA said, good work, but no indemnification for panel paintings.

Even our heroes felt a little discouraged.

Meantime two years had gone by. The J. Paul Getty Museum had paid $7.5 million for a little Dieric Bouts.

A German curator quipped, “Well if that little Bouts is worth $7.5 million, what do you suppose the ‘Miraflores Altarpiece’ is worth?”

Everybody chuckled, paled with panic and ran to their calculators.

The price of insurance for art exhibitions is pegged to current auction and other published prices. Since the inception of the idea for the Northern Renaissance show the Old Master market has gone bananas with large prices like that paid for “The Annunciation” or the $10 million the Getty later paid for a painting by early Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna.

Powell is quick to point out that nobody is claiming that the Getty is single-handedly driving up prices for old art. It only outbids its competition by a large enough fraction to land its catch.

All the same the organizers of the German opus suddenly faced more hard truth. The FDI guarantees insurance of as much as $75 million. Nobody will state on the record what the insurance value of “Northern Renaissance” would now be but a reliable guess pegs it at $600 million. To complicate matters further, the FDI only allows insured value of $7.5 million for any given shipment of art--again coincidentally the price of the Getty Bouts.

“Given the comparative value of the German pictures we would have to run a regular reverse Berlin Airlift of Lufthansa jets to get the pictures over here,” Powell said.

Even in the face of such complications Powell said he and his colleagues remain optimistic that the exhibition will gel in the next couple of years while admitting, “Organizing a show like this is a house of cards: If one piece falls down the whole thing collapses.”

It all makes one philosophical. What an arsenal of backstage pulleys, gears, intrigues, politics and economics must be heaved, grunted and finessed in order that we get a few lovely quiet moments with a good picture.

Meantime “The Annunciation” still hangs modestly in Malibu piping its ditty of no tune.