Raphael, The School of Athens (detail). From left to right: the Christ Child; Raphael as a child; Perugino; Jesus at twelve years old; and, in front, standing and looking at us, Christ.
“Added?” Here was another whole angle. It was difficult enough to decipher the paintings as they were, without wondering if they’d been altered.
“Yes, Javier. Many of the owners of these paintings went to some trouble to disguise them by adding items that made it look as if one of the boys was John the Baptist. Nobody wanted trouble with the Inquisition. So they would dress one of the boys in a goat skin or put in a cross like that to cover up the painting’s main message. Often they would ask the original artist to make these changes, but if he had died, or refused, they had no problem asking somebody else to do it. The point was to make the paintings seem more orthodox, so that no one would ask uncomfortable questions.”
“Can you give me any other examples of paintings that were altered?”
“As many as you like!” replied Romano. “How about Leonardo’s The Virgin of the Rocks?”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. In the first version—the one in the Louvre—there are two identical babies, but in the second version, which is in the National Gallery in London, one of the babies has the long cross of St. John over his shoulder. The thing is, that cross and the halos—they were not painted by Leonardo. They were added later.”
I couldn’t believe this. “Who would dare to defile a Leonardo?”
“It’s not quite how you think, Javier. You should remember that in those days, the artist was not as important as the painting’s message.”
Lucia was looking at me, her eyes blazing. “So, Javier. What do you think now?”
I didn’t know how to answer. My mind was spinning.
Romano went on. “I believe that the hiding of this truth was actually a large conspiracy.”
“But if Steiner was right,” I practically whispered, “those Renaissance painters weren’t part of it. They did reveal the secret.”
“Some did, Javier. Only some.”
“Like Raphael,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied. “Are you familiar with The Holy Family, also known as The Pearl?”
“Very much.”
“Steiner noted that all of Raphael’s important paintings except for The Transfiguration were paintings of events that happened before John the Baptist’s death. And the reason for this, according to him, is that Raphael was . . . inhabited by the spirit of the Baptist himself.”
“Wait a minute! To believe that, you have to believe in reincarnation.”
“True,” said Romano mildly. “Tell me, are you also familiar with the School of Athens?”
“What—is there a Jesus in that as well?”
“Not one—three.”
“Really?”
“And two Raphaels.”
That really threw me. I already knew about Raphael’s self-portrait concealed among the astrologers, but I had no idea that there was another divino of Urbino in the scene. Why would there be two of him?
Romano went on to explain
“This fresco was inspired by Neoplatonic ideas, as I’m sure you know. Raphael wanted to show his contemporaries that science, the ideas of Plato, and the teachings of Christianity could all exist in harmony. So on the right-hand side of the mural he painted the Christian ideas, and on the left-hand side he painted the pagan ones.”
“Where is Jesus?” I asked.
“Well, as I said, he appears three times. One—as the intelligent child described in the Book of Matthew, perched on an unfinished column and reading. Two—as the twelve-year-old who was transformed in the temple. This one is on the other side of the same column. And three—as the adult Christ, dressed all in white and standing next to John the Baptist. John is showing him a book but he is not paying attention to it.”
I was scribbling all this down as fast as I could so that later I could verify everything in the library. When I was done, I resumed my interrogation.
“What about Raphael?”
Raphael, The School of Athens (detail). From left to right: the Christ Child; Raphael as a child; Perugino; Jesus at twelve years old; and, in front, standing and looking at us, Christ.
“Right between Jesus One and Two. He has his hand on the shoulder of a boy dressed in blue who is also reading from the book on the column. Raphael painted this boy with the face of his first mentor Perugino. By placing himself in that spot, Raphael is telling us that he has known about the secret ever since he began to work in Perugino’s studio.”6
“Interesting,” I muttered feebly.
“Not interesting, Javier—” Lucia corrected me sharply, “affascinante!”
I. Literally, “the one from Bourgogne, or Burgundy.”
II. The fact that Luini tended to make his Madonnas cross-eyed is all the more notable because of the significance given to that characteristic in the sixteenth century. Vladimir Nabokov, in his 1924 story, “The Venetian,” coined the term “Luini-esque eyes” to describe this look.