Page 25 - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione - Visions and Ecstasy

After all it was the National Gallery. Ten days
passed.Then like a thunderbolt from Parnassus
I received an embarrassed telephone call from
the Kimbell.The National Gallery had contacted
them directly without the courtesy of informing
me first and told them what they had discovered
in the laboratory. The left and right edges of the
picture had been sliced off and reattached to the
top and bottom of the composition but worse,
what had appeared as a war damage tear in the
centre of the picture was in fact a separation in
the canvas where the threads did not match
indicating that a slice of background had been Fig. 16.
removed.The sale fell through and we resolved
as a result to fully clean the painting with Robert Shepherd and reattach the lateral portions.The result was a
Cotán of more classical proportions and a painting whose surface quality and impasto, with the exception of the
knife cuts, was near perfect.A slither perhaps three centimetres wide of neutral background had been removed
from the centre of the composition. It was still a work of immense beauty but compromised. In 1988 one
morning before lunch Basia came to visit, fell in love with the image (she always had a discerning eye) and
reserved the painting at a significant discount to the Kimbell price but still a hefty profit.That very afternoon
Pierre Rosenberg, the chief curator of the department of paintings at The Louvre visited and repeatedly insisted
he had to have the painting there and then. I said that regrettably he could not as it was reserved. Once again
Basia won the day. Sadly she did not let me handle this painting on resale. Christies muscled in and the painting
appeared as Bodegón with a cardoon and francolin onWednesday, December 08, 2004 [Lot 00094] where it fetched
$ 7,840,842 or approximately some six times what I had sold it to her for 16 years earlier! Clearly I am a really
lousy dealer because this was the second time I was trumped by the auctioneers! Nevertheless coming when it
did the sale of the Cotán saved the day for the gallery and ensured total independence from our historic backers.
There was just one more major near sale to Basia and this also occurred in 1989.The gallery was privileged to handle
what may be the most important painting of its recent history, Jacopo Bassano’s Miraculous Draught of Fishes.(Fig.16)
The picture had not been cleaned for 150 years at least and was exceptionally ‘yellowed’ and untouched. In this
‘virgin’ condition it was just what any curator of a major museum dreams of. However, when Basia saw the picture
she was captivated by the beauty of the Raphaelesque composition and wanted an option. Months if not a year of

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