So far we have explored the links between the sacred and the profane in relations of domination within each main type of society; we have traced the evolution of the sanctification of art and artists, and the ensuing consequences in terms of the treatment of the works themselves (separation, conservation, authentication) and in terms of the relationship (distant and admiring) of the public to the works; and we have seen how the fame of Nicolas Poussin gradually took shape. Now we can at last move on to specifics: the specific actors, the specific paintings and the specific events. A structural knowledge of the classes of actor, of objects and of events is a necessary condition for a sound understanding of what is being played out in the here and now of events involving singular people, situations and objects.
By diving deep into the multiplicity of interactions between objects and people, we step inside the everyday reality of the sacred, with its actors (auctioneers, gallery owners, collectors, experts, museum curators, art historians, art journalists, specialist lawyers), its sanctified places (salerooms, galleries, museums, laboratories dedicated to the analysis and conservation of art works, etc.), its events (sales and acquisitions, discoveries, publication of scholarly articles and catalogues raisonnés, exhibitions, trials, controversies, etc.). And it becomes clear that the swarming mass of intentionalities, of strategies and tactics revealed by immersing ourselves in these events could, if we concentrated too much on them, easily end up making us lose sight of where we are and what we are talking about.
The events that we are now going to consider with all the precision and attention they deserve are therefore like the visible tip of the iceberg, an integral part of the great structures explored in the preceding chapters. They never speak for themselves – and if they occasionally appear to do so, it is only that the researcher has been guided by a basic ‘common sense’ – and what might perhaps have been perceived by the impatient reader as long theoretical and historical detours in fact provides the indispensable framework without which these events would be quite simply unimaginable.
One of the chief interests in reconstructing the path traced by a series of objects lies in the fact that it reveals the network of solid links which intertwine, around or about objects, between actors or institutions coming from very different fields of practice, often studied as part of relatively autonomous universes. Sponsors, engravers, copyists, curators, art historians or experts from different countries (France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the United States, etc.) with their publications and their catalogues, journalists specializing in the arts, lawyers, judges, legislators and laws, political actors (kings, ministers, regional presidents, mayors, etc.), auctioneers and their experts, gallery owners, salerooms of varying degrees of prestige, French or foreign collectors, museums, academic institutions and major firms of valuers from various countries, private or public laboratories specializing in the scientific analysis of works of art (in France and in England), organizations participating in the sponsorship operation, all of them relying on each other, their actions depending on what the others are doing in parallel or have previously done, and maintaining relations of cooperation, but also of competition, of subordination and of domination.
The paintings whose trajectories we are now going to study have been the subject of discussions and commentaries, both spoken and written, and have been the focus of numerous exercises in categorization. We have already seen that experts are individuals who do things with words. Many utterances made by actors with some authority to speak on the works are both constative and performative. They can be studied for their locutionary dimension (what they are saying), their illocutionary dimension (what they are doing by saying something) and their perlocutionary dimension (what they are doing by the fact of saying something: the consequences or the effects of an utterance which is in the slightest bit effective).
‘This is a Poussin’ is in every sense an assertion, in other words, a proposal which can be judged true or false. Yet when the assertion is subjected to doubt and no one can easily determine whether it is indeed true or false, it is also inevitably a kind of ‘show of strength’. By stating ‘This is a Poussin’, the expert or the art historian tries to introduce a new reality of the type: ‘This painting, which you took for a mere copy, is in fact a painting by Nicolas Poussin.’ The assertion has, then, an equal chance of failing or of succeeding, of being felicitous or infelicitous. The question is not therefore in the first instance to know if it is true or false, but to know if it has any chance of being considered to be true or false. We could wonder, in the manner of J. Austin or the medieval theologians who preceded him, what the felicity conditions of the assertion in question might be: who is saying it (a suitably appropriate person)?, in what conditions (a more or less appropriate situation)?, at what time (a more or less appropriate opportunity)?, etc. Any act of cataloguing, publishing or publicizing-exhibiting a painting comes under the same type of analysis: these are performative acts very often disguised in constative utterances which have the power to make a painting exist in a manner different to its previous existence, or to implicitly confirm its status by consolidating it.
In the case of the painting acquired by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in 2007, the object in question had, in the course of its history, been subjected to a series of attempts, with differing degrees of success, to link or attach it to different series or classes of objects, sometimes radically changing its status and the uses which could be made of it. It was, for example, linked to art works of the seventeenth century by the dating of the pigments or the canvas, a process which meant that the specialized laboratories involved in tests to date the picture needed to have access to a database enabling comparisons to be made and, in the end, allowing a link to be established between the object and a category of other objects: the paintings of the seventeenth century.
The same painting had been linked with the name of Nicolas Poussin by several important art historians, all Poussin specialists, who had published and catalogued the picture. It then left the category of ordinary objects to join that of works of art and to become part of the prestigious series of pictures painted by Nicolas Poussin. The said painting was, by the same token, linked economically to the other paintings by Poussin on sale at the same time, since as soon as there is any question of selling a painting with the status of an ‘autograph painting by Nicolas Poussin’, the object immediately becomes part of the series of paintings by the same painter sold on the international market. The authenticated and attributed painting was then linked to the series of ‘national treasures’ by means of a state commission, with the result that the painting could not be freely circulated or sold. Then, once in place in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, the painting became linked to the gallery’s local collections. It is now part of a series of seventeenth-century paintings, which includes works by Simon Vouet, Jacques Stella, Philippe de Champaigne, Eustache Le Sueur, Charles Le Brun, Louis Cretey, Nicolas Régnier, etc.
The same object had been successively hung on the dining room wall of a bourgeois house, stored in an attic and exhibited by Richard and Robert Pardo in their Parisian gallery at a time when it was still regarded by the Louvre Museum as simply a copy of an autograph painting. Then, once its autograph status had been recognized, it was re-exhibited first by a group of art historians, then by the Musée des Beaux-Arts, and thus, in each of the public contexts where it was exhibited, it was linked with a series of other paintings of varying degrees of renown. The same painting was, moreover, on a number of occasions shown alongside and compared to the so-called ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version (initially considered to be an autograph work) as well as the so-called ‘Wolf’ version.1 All these links and associations contributed to modifying the status of the object in question, and, as a result, the potential actions or attitudes concerning it.
In order to have a better understanding of what underlies the chronological story which follows here, we can condense into a series of propositions a set of problems which began to be formulated in the section entitled ‘Outline of a general theory of the magic of power’2:
Introducing a chronological narrative of the main elements in the history of a painting (or rather of the different rival versions of a painting) is no positivist abdication to a linear form of the history of events where the only links between events are sequential in nature. It is simply a means of dealing with the need to show the different states the paintings in question have gone through, the elements from the recent or more distant past which determine the attitudes or the decisions of the different actors, and the multiple links forged between the paintings at different moments in their journey with people, institutions and objects (the scientific and technological measures taken by laboratories to analyse competing or equivalent paintings). Like all sociologically based biographies, the biography of objects is not a means of isolating these or of allowing them to close in on themselves,3 but, very much on the contrary, a way of linking them to structures, situations and events, both past and present.
The simple chronological device of linking together a selective (constructed) series of events of very different kinds, biographical or institutional, scientific or judicial, etc., in fact enables us to see the links between relatively independent causal series. It shows us the possibilities that a given legal measure or judicial decision, a publication or an exhibition, a change in direction in the trajectory of one actor or a decision made by an another, etc., throws open to other actors who then use them to their own ends according to their own specific interests.
Moreover, it should be noted that by going back over the various stages which have led to the conclusion, at least provisionally,4 that the painting is indeed an autograph work, by retracing the journeys of rival paintings, by showing the strenuous efforts of those who have gone to every possible length to close the box of uncertainties, by recalling the contradictory arguments and the unresolved controversial points, the task of the sociologist, whether he likes it or not, tends to play into the hands of those whose interests would lie in the re-opening of the case. When a case has been recently closed, any reopening of it, even in a purely scholarly context which is completely detached from economic or museum-based considerations, is a moment which could be seen as potentially dangerous or critical by all those who have an objective interest in the case remaining definitively closed.
The opportune moment has therefore come to reassert that this book has no intention of settling a question which art historians, experts, scientists from analysis laboratories and even lawyers and judges have – historically – been allocated the role of deciding. Instead, by going right to the roots of the matter, it sets out to explore, in a much more radical way, this imperative need to decide, to judge authenticity, to attribute, to admire and, essentially, to sanctify certain objects.
And, in order to objectivize the position of the researcher as much as possible, it should be added that, in the minds of the management team of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, the initial project proposed to a sociologist was clearly part of a public relations strategy in connection with the painting. I was not therefore much surprised to discover, in the archives opened by the museum, a draft document dated 17 October 2007 and entitled ‘Public Relations Strategy’ which mentioned, in a handwritten note, my name and status followed by the comment ‘Responses to a chef-d’oeuvre’. This appeared in the section which listed the objectives fixed by and around the exhibition in spring 2008 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.
The researcher’s independent stance manifests itself not only in disappointing the first expectations of his would-be ‘sponsors’, who in this case were not the ones financing the research, but also in his capacity to undermine all the expectations of those who, involved to some degree or other (institutional, political, academic, economic, judicial, aesthetic, etc.) in a practical relationship with the work, fail to see the ground beneath their feet. It is this ground that I have first of all patiently endeavoured to reconstitute in the course of a long regressive journey focusing on domination, magic, the sacred and art. And it is the scenes played out on this ground by specific actors which will be the focus of analysis in the following pages. Sociological analysis, which sometimes runs the risk of being perceived as a radical criticism or a way of challenging the most commonly shared certainties, is in fact simply an opportunity offered to those who are willing, to become aware of and to free themselves of the beliefs and constraints that can weigh heavily on them.
In the course of the years 1657 and 1658, Poussin painted The Flight into Egypt at the request of one of his patrons, the Parisian merchant Jacques Serisier, originally from Lyon. Eight years before his death, a few years before the famous Four Seasons cycle (1660–1664), the painter was in the final period of his creativity. He had already painted more than two hundred paintings and his fame was considerable both in France and Italy. The works painted during this period were, however, marked by what had become a characteristic tremor in his hand which had begun as the result of an illness in 1640.
Poussin died in Rome on 19 November 1665. In the same year, on 10 August 1665, Bernini (1598–1680), Italian sculptor and architect, visited Serisier to see his collection of Poussin’s paintings. He pronounced the first paintings he saw as ‘beautiful’. But, when he was shown a Virgin in Egypt, his opinion took a more negative turn, as Paul Fréart de Chantelou describes: ‘When he had looked at it he declared: “People should stop working at a certain age; for all men end up declining.” I replied that those accustomed to working found it hard to do nothing, and worked perhaps as a distraction. He agreed that this was so, but added that their work quite often harmed their reputation.’5 It will not escape notice that the defence offered by Chantelou, friend, patron and executor to Poussin, is a noticeably feeble one. If he justifies the painting on the grounds of a simple distraction, it might suggest that he himself is not altogether convinced by the quality of the work. The result of jealousies between patrons (the painting had been done for Serisier and not for him) or simply a matter of personal taste, it shows that, even among his admirers, this canvas is far from being regarded as some kind of chef-d’oeuvre.
A few months later, on 10 October, Bernini once again mentions his visit to Serisier in a conversation with Abbot Butti and reiterates his extremely negative judgement. After describing all his admiration for the Sacraments (‘which I could gaze at for six months without tiring’), he asserted: ‘In truth, since then he has done things which are no longer like that; the painting of The Woman taken in Adultery, this Virgin on the way to Egypt which I saw at this dealer, and your Samaritan Woman (turning to me [Chantelou]) no longer have the same power. A man should know how to stop beyond a certain age.’6
The history of the painting will eclipse Bernini’s negative judgement, which will serve only to confirm its existence in Serisier’s collection. For Bernini, Poussin is, certainly, a very good painter who had first of all imitated Titian, then painted in the style of Raphael, but who did not yet have the aura that would be bestowed on him by ensuing generations. Unanimously recognized as a ‘master of French classicism’, nothing would ever again taint the positive view of the whole of his work, including The Flight into Egypt.
The presence of the painting in Serisier’s Parisian collection is again confirmed on 4 June 1668 by Lorenzo Magalotti (1637–1712), Italian diplomat, writer and man of science, during a visit to Serisier’s collection. Poussin’s Flight into Egypt was certainly there because, like Chantelou three years earlier, he listed ten paintings by the master. Then, in 1685, Félibien, French architect and historian and Poussin’s biographer, mentioned in his writings three paintings done by the painter for Serisier, including The Flight into Egypt. He writes on this subject that in 1657 Poussin made ‘for the sire of Cerisiers a Virgin fleeing into Egypt’.7
Three years later, in 1688, Jacques Serisier died. His collection of paintings was dispersed, but the painting was mysteriously not mentioned in the inventory after his death. All trace of it was then lost for almost three centuries. From that moment on, the accounts written by Chantelou, the comment made by Félibien and a few references to engravings constitute the only proof of the existence of a missing painting.
Thus, in 1699, the French writer and engraver Florent Le Comte (1655–1712) cites the existence of a Flight into Egypt in a catalogue featuring Poussin’s engravings. He refers to an engraving attributed to Pietro del Po (1610–1692, an Italian painter, but better known as an engraver rather than as a painter), which, when compared with paintings that would in future compete for the status of an autograph work, gave Joseph’s donkey a tether and ‘forgot’ the handles of a vase. But at this time, in the absence of the painting itself, no one was in a position to notice such discrepancies between the engraving and the original work. Pietro del Po’s engraving is undoubtedly the first engraving to be undertaken and the one from which the other engravings (eight in total) were made, since the latter usually – except in one case where the handles reappear – feature the same discrepancies from the original painting as that of Pietro del Po. These variations remain difficult to explain in the sense that an engraver is normally expected to respect the original composition. If the absence of handles could be a matter of neglect, the addition of a tether is, on the other hand, an entirely voluntary decision, perhaps an indication that the engraver felt that the painter had simply forgotten this detail. But the existence of an engraving with both handles and a tether complicates matters still further.8 A partial solution to this complicated situation might be to consider that the original painting by Poussin did indeed include a tether and vases without handles, which Pietro del Po and most of the subsequent engravers correctly reproduced. But that would imply that this original painting has never resurfaced since and that the three paintings to emerge in the 1980s are merely erroneous copies. Yet not one of the art historians has ever, even momentarily, put forward such a hypothesis.
In 1713, in a passage from a late edition of the Description de la ville de Paris by Germain Brice, concerning the collection owned by Raoul Pierre de la Porte, Master of the King’s Buildings, a painting is mentioned which could – without any certainty whatsoever – be this Virgin fleeing into Egypt by Poussin. But it would be necessary to wait almost a century before there was any further mention of a painting which could possibly be Serisier’s, or one of the copies, on the occasion of a public sale called ‘vente Solirène’ which took place on 11–13 March 1812.
This composition, simple yet at the same time full of dignity, is a new proof of the profound knowledge of this sublime Artist. In it, not only do we admire the beautiful arrangement of the scene, the accuracy of the drawing, the grandeur of the figures and the exactitude of the costumes; but even more the artistry with which he has succeeded in showing in the Face of the Virgin the anxiety she is feeling. Just looking at this Painting can give an idea of its perfection, and convince us of this truth, that the more we look with attention at the Works of Poussin, the more we pay them this tribute of admiration that is owed to the greatest Painter of the French School.9
The extremely laudatory tone of this excerpt is typical of the style of sales catalogues at that time. But it also reveals the unquestionable renown by that stage acquired by the sublime and admirable Poussin.
A similar painting – was this the same one or a copy? – appeared also on 8 May 1813 at Christie’s in London, in the ‘La Fontaine Sale’. The sale catalogue states: ‘This beautiful picture has been ever greatly admired for the elegance of the design, and the intelligence and feeling displayed in it.’ No doubt unsold at the 1813 sale, the same painting turned up in Paris in a ‘La Fontaine’ sale at the Hôtel de Bullion on 10–11 December: ‘The figures, which are the principal interest, are at the same time well drawn, well arranged and very expressive. The tender concern of Mary is portrayed in her face: that of Joseph is tinged with confidence and kindness. A painting of this quality and this rarity cannot be brought too highly to the attention of art lovers.’10 Here too, Poussin’s painting, or one of its copies, is seen on both sides of the Channel as a moving and rare work.
Seven years later, on 24 and 25 March 1829, an anonymous sale in the Salle Lebrun, Paris included a Flight into Egypt attributed to Nicolas Poussin, though without any possibility of knowing whether or not it was the same work that had successively featured in the ‘Solirène’ and ‘La Fontaine’ sales:
Poussin (Nicolas). 64. A Flight into Egypt. This subject taken from religious history, has been covered by a great many artists, but none have rendered it with this noble simplicity and this grandeur that we observe in this painting by Poussin, the prince of the French School, and one of the greatest poets of painting. […] this painting is known through Audran’s engraving. This famous engraver from the century of Louis XIV only used his burin to translate the most beautiful things of his time. We dare to hope that this fine monument of painting will not be lost to France; we recommend it to generous art lovers, accustomed to making noble sacrifices for the prosperity of the arts and the glory of their country.11
For the first time here we see a nationalist argument emerging in relation to this canvas: the catalogue appeals to the national sentiment of buyers urging them not to allow this canvas to leave French soil by being acquired by foreign collectors (at this period quite often English). The same year, on 24 November 1829, a painting by Poussin representing a Flight into Egypt appeared in a ‘Léthière’12 sale, but, once again, nothing proves that it was indeed the same painting.
All trace of the painting is lost after that and it was not until 1981 that a first version of the painting made its appearance. In the meantime, works by art historians continued to mention the painting or its engravings. In 1914, Otto Grautoff (1876–1937, German art historian and Poussin specialist) in his book Nicolas Poussin published in Munich, notes the existence of engravings concerning The Flight into Egypt, the best known being attributed to Pietro del Po. In 1966, Anthony Blunt (1907–1983, English art historian, curator of the Royal Collection and Poussin specialist) catalogued the painting without ever having seen a painted version. He reports it to be lost and relies on the engraving by Pietro del Pol as proof of its existence. Then, in 1974, Jacques Thuillier (1928–2011), at that time professor of modern and contemporary art at Paris-Sorbonne University, in his turn was to catalogue the painting which he considered as a lost work.
It was in the twentieth century, in the 1980s, that three canvases would resurface, all of them candidates for the status of autograph work. Written history had noted the existence of a painting by Nicolas Poussin on the subject of a Virgin fleeing into Egypt and there was therefore a vacancy to fill. A vacancy, which at that time, as the whole art world knew very well, was particularly prestigious given the painter’s status.
In 1981, the Belgium gallery owner Andrée Stassart acquired a Flight into Egypt (73.5 × 97 cm), which would subsequently (from 1989 onwards) belong to an American art collector by the name of Barbara Piasecka-Johnson, widow of the millionaire John Seward Johnson. This version, which had belonged to the Russian Princess Schachovskoy and which would be referred to as the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ or ‘Princeton’ version, was one of the canvases claiming the status of an original work (see Plate 2). The British art historian Anthony Blunt, at the time the leading expert on Poussin’s work, published this version of the painting in 1982 believing that it was indeed the original. His article was a significant milestone13 and would prevent any challenge for the next twelve years. Other British seventeenth-century specialists of varying levels of importance confirmed Blunt’s opinion – Wright (in 1985 and 2007) and Mahon (in 1997). However, the historian died on 26 March 1983, a year after publishing the painting. With the disappearance of the first major Poussin expert to defend the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version as the original painting, the social force of his judgement would gradually begin to lose its strength.
Three years after Blunt’s publication, on 2 March 1986, a French owner put another version of the painting (97 × 133 cm) on sale in Versailles. In an interview recorded on 16 March 2011, the owner’s son14 recounts that the painting had hung on the dining room wall of his grandmother’s home since at least 1935 (see Plate 3). The family were not really art collectors and neither did they have any contacts with the art world. On the grandmother’s death, her daughter inherited the painting and decided to sell it without suspecting for a single moment its potential value:
The painting had been in the same place, in my grandmother’s house. My grandparents moved in in 1935. My grandmother hung it in the dining room. And it didn’t shift from there until my grandmother’s death in 1985. It was in the dining room. So, where was the painting before that? There’s the question. The only thing which is certain, is that it couldn’t have been my grandparents who bought it because they didn’t know anything about those sort of things. They had inherited it. Everybody saw it! Every time we had lunch, there it was. When my mother put it up for sale, nobody recognized it. So, there you are you see, that was my family, people who had nothing to do with the art world, and when they saw it hung on the wall, they didn’t pay any attention to it at all! I remember my father telling me, the day my parents inherited it: ‘It’s a religious scene. Religious scenes aren’t worth anything.’ My father knew nothing about all that either, absolutely nothing at all. If you have something you think has no particular value, you’re not going to get it valued! My parents lived on a farm in Normandy and when my grandmother died, there was the furniture, all that kind of thing. My father took a car, he loaded everything in the car and put it all in one of the farm buildings. The painting stayed in the farm building for a few months. It was a farm building which wasn’t in use, one of the buildings with no heating. I’m not even sure if there were windows. I can’t remember. It was there for a few months. I don’t know how many, whether it was two months, three months, four months, six months, I really can’t remember. Anyway, it was in this farm building at my parents’ place. Why? Because my parents simply didn’t have the space to hang it on their walls. And anyway they weren’t really interested! They had just put it there, that’s all! Like you put things in an attic. For us, it was UNTHINKABLE that there was an original Poussin in our family. There was NOTHING to make us think that we had an old master. We had absolutely NO reason to keep it. My mother wanted NOTHING to do with it! She didn’t even have the space to hang it in her house. So if you’ve got something in your house that you don’t know what to do with, either you put it on eBay, or you put it up for auction.
Without this inheritance and the family’s wish to get rid of a painting too big to be kept (‘It was too big! That was why! If it had been small, they would never have sold it! They wouldn’t even have CONSIDERED it’), no sale would have taken place and the painting would have remained in the family for a while, hidden away from any expert eyes:
You inherit a bit of stone, a rock. You find it in your grandmother’s attic. You take a look at the stone, there’s a good chance that you’ll get rid of it. You say to yourself: ‘It’s ended up there, in the attic, by chance, it’s a stone.’ But if the stone is a rare meteorite, it could be worth a lot of money. And when a normal individual finds something in his attic, he gets rid of it. A normal individual isn’t capable of spotting the difference between a rare meteorite and a stone…. You see, it’s the same thing.
The auction took place in Versailles, not a particularly prestigious location within the art world, and Maître Oliver Perrin, a new auctioneer, was put in charge of the sale. He put the painting on sale as a work from ‘the studio of Poussin’. Since 1981 the terms used by auctioneers are supposed to be legally defined (decree no 81-255 of 3 March 1981). Article 5 states notably that ‘the use of the terms “studio of” followed by an artist’s name is a guarantee that the work was carried out in the studio of the named master or under their direction’. But Poussin never really had a studio, and the expression indicates above all proximity, while leaving in no doubt the fact that Poussin was not its creator.15
The valuer for the sale, Jacques Kantor, considered therefore that the canvas could not be by Poussin.16 He based his opinion, quite logically, on the fact that Anthony Blunt, the greatest world expert in the area, considered the ‘Princeton’ version as the only authentic one. Nevertheless, he did write to Jacques Thuillier, professor at the Collège de France since 1977, asking for his opinion, but since he received no reply, the valuer took that to be an indication of lack of interest in the painting which, as a result, confirmed the generally shared conviction that it was merely a copy. Thuillier’s silence, which would be mentioned on numerous occasions during the proceedings instituted several years later by the family who initially owned the painting, consequently takes on the force of a speech act. It is interpreted as the proof that nothing here is important. Saying nothing implies that there is nothing to say; and there is nothing to say because there is nothing important or remarkable about which there would be something to say.
The letter from Kantor, valuer at Versailles, to Thuillier, dated 24 October 1985, was cited, during the legal proceedings requesting the annulment of the sale of the painting, by the valuer’s lawyers, in order to prove his good faith and to point out his attempt to contact the acknowledged leading French expert:
Please find attached the photo of the painting, oil on canvas, of The Flight into Egypt, which I phoned you about when you were away on business. The painting is of such high quality that I thought for a moment that it was the original painting no. 207 of your catalogue raisonné. In the meanwhile, I have seen Mr Blunt’s article in the Burlington of April 1982. I would like to show you this picture.
But, a propos of Thuillier’s non-response, Pierre Rosenberg, former director of the Louvre, had this to say:
Thuillier never replies to letters from dealers or valuers. So, in a sense, the argument may have been used quite fairly. But it was easy to retort that Thuillier NEVER replies. The argument [taking the fact that the professor of the Collège de France had not replied to the letter that was sent to him, to support the claim that the painting was therefore only a copy] was therefore easy to contradict.17
Pierre Rosenberg (1936–), at that time curator at the Louvre and leading connoisseur of the seventeenth century in general and of Poussin in particular, went to Versailles to look at the painting and did not seem particularly impressed by the canvas. As a result, Les Musées de France did not exercise the right of pre-emption.18 Eleven years later, a journalist on the Figaro described this encounter between the curator and the painting:
A few meters from them (the Pardo brothers), leaning over a large canvas yellowed by layers of varnish, a man with a long red scarf examines it attentively. Behind him, the valuer for the sale, J. Kantor. Suddenly, the man with the scarf stands up and, amid a deadly silence, announces: ‘As far as I’m concerned, this is not a Poussin.’ The curator of the paintings department of the Louvre, Pierre Rosenberg, had just given his verdict.19
Rosenberg describes the moment retrospectively, in 1995, at a time when the painting had changed status and some of the experts had begun to consider it as the original version: ‘It was hung very high, it was dirty. I couldn’t be sure.’20 He also mentions another case concerning a Poussin painting over which the Louvre was currently in litigation (‘It must be said that the case of Olympos and Marsyas was not very encouraging’). This was a painting pre-empted at a low price by the Louvre during an auction and shortly afterwards attributed to Poussin. When the Versailles auction took place in 1986, the case of the Olympos and Marsyas painting (called ‘the Saint-Arroman case’, from the name of the owners of the picture) had already been going on for fourteen years and was to end a year later in favour of the initial owners on the grounds of ‘erreur sur la substance’.21 This legal case would be a decisive precedent in understanding the history of the second version of The Flight into Egypt: a precedent concerning a Poussin painting, and a precedent involving some of the same actors – Rosenberg in particular, but also the lawyer for Madame Saint-Arroman, and later to be the lawyer for the Pardo brothers who acquired the second version of The Flight into Egypt in 1986.22
The story of the Versailles sale is told by a journalist from Libération:
When the painting was shown before the auction, Pierre Rosenberg, red scarf billowing in the wind as usual, had turned up. But, bending over the canvas, he exclaimed: ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘The painting was really very dirty’, recalls the man who has in the meantime presided over the whole project of Le Grand Louvre. ‘Seeing it like that, I wasn’t really sure.’ In any case, Pierre Rosenberg had very little choice. He is the first to acknowledge that he felt constrained to behave with the utmost prudence after the precedent set by a previous case involving the discovery of a Poussin painting, for which he was taken to court. What would people have said if he had been behind a new discovery, immediately following one which had caused such a scandal?23
On 21 October 2010, Rosenberg again described his first encounter with the picture, insisting once more on the poor conditions in which he had seen the painting and on a judicial context unfavourable to any desire on the part of the Louvre to seek pre-emption:
I went to see the picture at the sale and I was very impressed by it at the time. The idea of doing anything was difficult given that it was poorly displayed but also that it was at a time when a previous Poussin bought and pre-empted by the Louvre had been taken away from us, if I dare say so, since the law esteemed that the Louvre did not have the right to pre-empt paintings, or at least, that it had to say, at the time of the sale, if it thought a picture was wrongly attributed. The fact that we had had to give back the Olympos and Marsyas that the Louvre had previously bought meant that we weren’t especially interested in this picture which, however, had fetched quite a high price at the sale. There was a lot of very yellow varnish. A yellow varnish, which, in my opinion, meant that the gamble of an acquisition was a considerable one.
And, referring to the Pardo brothers, he exclaimed: ‘Yes! They saw it and took a brave gamble!’24
Tipped off by a dealer, brothers Robert and Richard Pardo, gallery owners in Paris, put in a bid for the painting (lot 61) at the auction in Versailles. With a reserve of 80,000 francs, estimated to fetch between 150,000 and 200,000 francs, it nevertheless ended up being bought for the sum of 1,600,000 francs (approximately €240,000). The very fact that it was sold for such a high price indicates the particular interest potential buyers had in the picture, amongst them probably American art dealers.25 Such a sum, which is too low to correspond to an original painting by Poussin, is also much too high for a ‘mere copy’, even a contemporary one. It was therefore a classic case of what those familiar with sale rooms call a ‘false price’, which indicates the purchasers’ hopes of being able to get the painting recognized as an original. Without needing to say so explicitly, anyone putting so much money into buying a painting sold as a mere copy is indicating by so doing that they are gambling on the possibility of a ‘discovery’.
Professor of history of art at Harvard, Henri Zerner (1939–) was present at the Versailles sale in 1986, at the request of a friend, so as to attend the auction where the painting was to make its appearance. He was not, as he admitted himself, ‘an expert on Poussin’, even if he had begun his career by publishing an article in the Burlington Magazine about a portrait falsely attributed to Poussin. He is primarily a specialist on sixteenth-century art, with some expertise in the nineteenth century, and did not get involved in any of the controversies linked to the painting, even though he personally is of the opinion that the version in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon is indeed the original. The fact that he is of French birth, that during the 1960s and 1970s he had spent a lot of time with Thuillier and Rosenberg, and that he was a friend of the director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, greatly predisposed him to be on the French side of the controversy which would arise a few years later, even if he did not exactly know all the ins and outs of the situation. When he saw the painting in Versailles, ‘it was very dirty and heavily varnished’ and he recalled that he had had to ‘spit on it because if the varnish has become dull, it helps you see a bit better, it improves the transparency of the varnish’. He and his friend thought at the time that ‘there was a good chance that it was the original’. He also remembers the ‘false price’ that it was bought for: ‘It was sold as a copy, but it fetched a sum which was not strictly speaking the price of a copy, because it was more an intermediate price. There were clearly quite a few people who had decided there was a good chance of it being the original without being completely certain, and who were prepared to take a gamble on this picture.’26
Finally, all good things come in threes … In the same year, a third canvas representing the same scene of the Flight into Egypt, with the same overall elements of composition, reappeared. In a letter dated 3 June 1986, the British art historian Christopher Wright27 thanked a collector, Émile E. Wolf (1899–1996) for allowing him to examine his painting. He told him that he was convinced that this third version (the ‘Wolf’ version) of The Flight into Egypt (99.1 × 132.1 cm) was the original. On the basis of his knowledge of Poussin’s work, he seemed to recognize ‘his hand’. He claimed ‘never to have subscribed to the notion put forward by Blunt according to which Poussin only ever painted a single version of each composition’ and that the other version published by Blunt could still be by Poussin without that challenging the authenticity of this one. So as not to directly challenge Blunt’s judgement, Wright simply suggested that Poussin could have painted the same picture twice. But there was no real comparison between the legitimacy of the art historian and that of his illustrious predecessor, or of Blunt’s main rivals, and his ‘find’ would virtually come to nothing. The ‘Wolf’ version would be unanimously considered (notably by Mahon, Thuillier and Rosenberg) as an obvious copy.
From that moment on, everything was in place for a controversy and comparisons between the canvases to take place. For the owners of the two versions, it was clearly in their interests to claim their acquisition was an autograph painting and the art historians, for their part, had a reputation to protect when it came to the attribution of works by Poussin.
On 27 March 1987, Sir Denis Mahon, the great seventeenth-century specialist, wrote a letter to Andrée Stassart, resident of Liège in Belgium in support of the first version of the painting, published by Blunt (the future ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ or ‘Princeton’ version). In the letter he confirmed what he had said verbally to Neil MacGregor, art historian and museum director,28 to the effect that his version of The Flight into Egypt was the original by Poussin. The great British connoisseur thereby indicated that, in spite of the many disagreements between the two major British experts, he supported the judgement Blunt had expressed in 1982. But this judgement remained, for the time being, a private matter and would not be made public for another ten years.
In the same year, on 2 July 1987, an expert’s report (compiled by Karin Groen) was produced by the Hamilton Kerr Institute at Cambridge University on this same version published by Blunt. The painting was at that time owned by an Italian art dealer, Mario Tazzoli. The report concluded by saying that there was no evidence to suggest the painting was not from the seventeenth century. Blunt’s initial attribution of the painting to Poussin was therefore consolidated by Mahon’s interest (expressed in private) and by the laboratory tests.
But the rival faction had not been idle. In March 1988, Thuillier visited the Galerie Pardo, on the invitation of the owners. At the end of his visit he asked the Pardo brothers if, in the next edition of his catalogue raisonné of Poussin’s works, he could replace the phrase ‘lost painting’, with the accompanying photograph of the engraving, by a photograph of their canvas. For the gallery owners who had for the last two years been trying to attract the attention of French art historians to their version, this was the first sign that their painting could be recognized by one of the great world experts on the painter as the autograph work. Thuillier’s judgement was, however, only a private one without immediate consequence on the existing works, and his catalogue would not be published until six years later.
Wright, for his part, wrote a letter to Émile Wolf on 1 April 1988, requesting him to send him the slides of his recently cleaned canvas for the German version of his book on Poussin. His intention was to gain support for the idea that this painting was, according to him, ‘the original Poussin rather than the version published by Blunt’. Three canvases therefore seemed poised to be defended by different experts. Two years later and after very little discussion, the elimination of the ‘Wolf’ version by Mahon and then by Thuillier and Rosenberg would, however, reveal pronounced differences in terms of the degree of legitimacy of the experts concerned.
The following year, the Pardo brothers continued their efforts to draw attention to their canvas by organizing an exhibition in their gallery from 16 May to 30 June 1989 entitled ‘Themes from the classical age’. Having had the canvas cleaned, the gallery owners made a public attempt to get their version recognized as an autograph work, thereby relegating the version authenticated by Blunt to the status of a simple copy. Their painting was published in the exhibition catalogue29 and was described as the original, right from the introduction, by Franco Moro, Italian art historian and expert in old masters. In the commentary on the exhibited work, Moro makes a passing reference to a rival canvas which is immediately rejected:
An identical composition with a small format, belatedly published by A. Blunt has not succeeded in establishing itself and is clearly an old copy of which moreover a mention exists dating from the eighteenth century. […] The reappearance of this significant painting is in itself an event with respect to the personality of Poussin, whose role and influence continue to gain in importance for the culture of our time.30
This amounted to a true symbolic show of strength, but mounted by a historian who was not a Poussin specialist and whose status was fairly insignificant in comparison with that of Blunt, whose judgement was being refuted without any argument. The show of strength turned out, in the end, to be little more than a bluff.
The performative act consisting in declaring this version of The Flight into Egypt as an autograph work only functions if those who perform it are in an appropriate position to do so. This is clearly not the case for the owners of a canvas, who are in an ineffective position of self-legitimization, nor for a minor art historian. No matter how great the pertinence of their intuition and the quality of their arguments (non-existent in this case), they do not have the specific authority required to pronounce on the nature of the painting.31 It was therefore entirely (socially) logical that the exhibition at the gallery of the Pardo brothers had no impact on the status of the picture.
At the same time, on 25 May 1989, another American art historian stepped into the ring, and took up the role of adviser to Barbara Piasecka-Johnson. The historian in question was Timothy Standring, at the time visiting professor at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. He sent a letter to Mario Tazzoli (London), owner of the so-called ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ painting, letting him know that he was sending a copy of a lecture given in February at the College Art Association in San Francisco. He explained to the art dealer that he had initially thought of including his picture as a variation of another autograph version, but that he had finally abandoned the idea, convinced that the other two known versions (‘Wolf’ and ‘Pardo’) were not by Poussin’s hand.
At the very beginning of the 1990s, the situation was therefore far from clear. It was beginning to be known in the milieu of historians and art dealers that the Pardo brothers’ picture had attracted the interest of some distinguished French figures, but it was also known that the two giants of British art history had fixed their sights on another canvas. A monograph on Poussin cautiously referred to a lost work and simply mentioned the fact that ‘two versions which had recently come to light, were claiming original status’ and that ‘neither had met with a unanimous verdict from critics’.32
One way of settling the matter once and for all was to organize a comparison between the rival paintings. And it was on the initiative of the defenders of the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version that the first comparison was set up at the beginning of 1990. Taking the initiative for such a comparison suggests that the initiators have no fear about the result and no doubt about the value of the canvas. On 28 February 1990, Robert Wills, adviser to Barbara Piasecka-Johnson, invited Timothy Standring by letter to come to the Ritz Hotel in Paris on 13 March 1990 at 15.00 hours, to compare the three rival versions of the painting (‘Wolf’, ‘Pardo’ and ‘Princeton’). The invitation specified that the participants invited to this confrontation by Barbara Piasecka-Johnson would be Professors Wolfgang Prohaska, Giuliano Briganti, Konrad Oberhuber, Dr Jozef Grabski and Sir Denis Mahon. He added that transport costs and accommodation would be covered by Barbara Piasecka-Johnson, but that those taking part would not be paid. This detail was important in order not to give the impression that the advice of these experts could in any way have been ‘bought’.
Widow of a major American industrialist and, from 1989, the new owner of the version of The Flight into Egypt which bore her name or that of her North American art collection (‘Princeton’), Barbara Piasecka-Johnson (1937–2013) had lived a rather exceptional life. Polish and with a masters in art history, she left Poland in 1967 for New York. Working first as a chambermaid for John Seward Johnson, heir to the pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson, she was then promoted to be in charge of his art collection and married him in 1971. The works in their collection, which include paintings by Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet and Picasso, are held in a mansion in Princeton. Widowed in 1983, she was still classed as the seventeenth richest American woman by Forbes Magazine in 2012 (with an estimated fortune of €2.5 billion). She spent the rest of her life in Monaco, managing her art collection and contributing to charitable work in Poland. She is known for having financed the Solidarity union in Poland and for donating a hundred million dollars to save the shipyards of Gdansk.
On 13 March 1990, the comparison between the three paintings duly took place in the Ritz Hotel in Paris. A group of people, including Mahon and Thuillier, examined the three canvases first of all. Then, following this, Rosenberg examined them on his own. Each of them left, however, with their original convictions intact. The only common point between the two sides was the unanimous rejection of the ‘Wolf’ version (which Wright had, moreover, believed to be genuine only two years earlier). The combined weight of the legitimacy of the leading world experts effectively wiped out the third competitor, which had only been defended by an expert of lesser renown, not present on the day of the confrontation.
Speaking about this event twenty years later, Rosenberg explained that he was firmly convinced at that moment that the ‘Pardo’ version was indeed the original: ‘From that moment on, I have never doubted the attribution. I made my own mind up and avoided being present at the same time as Mahon, Thuillier, Cuzin33 … Because I wanted to keep my distance … Not to be with them. I wanted to be able to come to my own conclusions.’ He remembers Thuillier’s clear-cut position: ‘Thuillier made his mind up about the picture quite definitely, very quickly, which isn’t really something he normally would do for a painting that isn’t even in public view. He’s not someone who gets involved with dealers. But he was convinced about it and he wrote the article, you know, in the Revue de l’Art [this was an article published four years later by Thuillier in which he supported the autograph nature of the ‘Pardo’ version].’34
The following day, 14 March 1990, another comparison – between the two main competing canvases – was improvised at the Galerie Pardo by the gallery owners. Barbara Piasecka-Johnson’s agent had asked the Pardo brothers, for reasons of security, if the canvas could be stored in their gallery. Jean-Pierre Cuzin, curator of the department of paintings at the Louvre since 1973, was invited by the gallery owners to view the paintings. He immediately felt that the Pardo brothers’ version was clearly the right one. The comparisons of 13 and 14 March did not, however, resolve the situation. They merely reinforced the position of the two main camps with the British and Americans on one side and the French on the other. However, in spite of this controversial situation, the ‘Barbara Piasecka-Johnson’ version remained the most legitimate, in the sense that this was the only one to have been the subject of an official publication, and a major one at that, coming from Anthony Blunt. The other opinions in favour of the ‘Pardo’ version, and notably those of Thuillier, Rosenberg and Cuzin, remained private and had no effect whatsoever on the status of the object concerned.
On 21 March 1990, in a letter addressed to Robert Wills (adviser to Barbara Piasecka-Johnson), the American art historian Timothy Standring ‘sums up his thoughts’ on the version of the painting belonging to the rich heiress following the comparison organized at the Ritz Hotel on 13 March 1990. He sets out to be reassuring with regard to the status of the painting acquired by the collector: ‘The Wolf and Pardo versions of The Flight into Egypt are definitively not by Poussin. While Wolf’s painting is obviously a pale copy, the Pardo picture is, as we discovered, more difficult to characterize.’ He describes the ‘Pardo’ version as a ‘pastiche’ of the original version and concludes: ‘Of these three versions, the one owned by Mrs Johnson is closest to Poussin’s hand.’35
The letter is followed by a written report on the symposium around the three versions, a report dated 19 July 1990. Timothy Standring indicates that the principal participants were Sir Denis Mahon, Konrad Oberhuber36 and himself. The other people present, including Dr Grabski, Mrs Johnson, Robert Wills, Robert Pardo and Mrs Johnson’s bodyguard, remained more in the background. Thuillier joined the group on his way back from a meeting at the Louvre. Timothy Standring points out that after looking at the three canvases, Sir Denis Mahon, Konrad Oberhuber, Dr Grabski, Mrs Johnson, Robert Wills and he went to see the Poussin paintings in the Louvre where they were welcomed by Rosenberg who exchanged greetings with them but did not participate in any discussions. The group then returned to the Ritz Hotel. The discussions largely focused on the authenticity of the three canvases. From the beginning, everyone agreed that the ‘Wolf’ version was an ‘obvious copy’. Mahon expressed his ‘unhesitating approval’ of the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version; he ‘rejected’ the ‘Pardo’ version on the other hand as a pastiche. As for Konrad Oberhuber, he rejected the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version, whilst also remaining hesitant about the ‘Pardo’ version, especially after the visit to the Louvre. For his part, Timothy Standring expressed reservations about all three canvases, but felt that, out of the three, the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version was the one which had ‘the greatest potential to be an authentic Poussin’. In his letter he apologized for his doubts but points out that ‘connoisseurship is not really an exact science’.37
After the comparisons, the Pardo brothers sensed that support for their painting was growing but that there was still a long way to go before reaching full recognition. Having gambled on the future of the painting by acquiring it for a very handsome sum, the gallery owners then made a second gamble by deciding to close their gallery and to stake their future on the probable recognition of their picture. On 30 October 1990, the gallery was therefore closed down and the painting was one of the canvases kept by the dealers, who put it in the safe deposit box of a big Parisian bank.38
From that point on, the Pardo brothers kept up a constant pressure on the curators of the Louvre to get them to recognize officially, and publicly, the authenticity of their painting and to acquire it. A series of letters is evidence of these negotiations initiated by the gallery owners. In a letter of 15 April 1991 addressed to Cuzin and Rosenberg, Richard and Robert Pardo suggest an agreement be reached to consider the purchase of their version by the Louvre at the price level of a Poussin recently sold in England: ‘We think reference can be made to a precedent of the same type since another Poussin has recently been acquired by English museums’ (the price was approximately 50 million francs, or about €7.6 million). In a letter dated 19 April 1991 and addressed to Richard and Robert Pardo, Rosenberg replies that he is prepared to consider ‘any concrete proposal you may put to the department of paintings’. At the same time, in a letter written on the 22 April 1991, he informs Pierre Encrevé (then special adviser to the Prime Minister) of the proposal made by the Pardo brothers and of the price they refer to in their communication – the painting in question was bought for £7,287,500 in 1988 or 1989. In a letter dated 25 April 1991, Cuzin then writes to Richard and Robert Pardo to let them know that the Louvre is very interested in the painting they own. Such reactions are evidence that the curators of the Louvre were convinced about the authenticity of the painting in question and allowed the bold gallery owners to hope for a happy outcome. But, from a public point of view, nothing had changed since 1986 and not a single article, exhibition or catalogue had confirmed their claim to own the original.
Moreover, the opposing side were trying to strengthen their position. In a letter dated 19 July 1991, Robert Wills wrote to Mahon to congratulate him on the ‘conclusion of the matter’ (he was undoubtedly referring to the comparison in Paris) and reminding him that he had mentioned writing an article about the painting. He told him he could help him with this by providing him with all the necessary information and the means to do it. He also talked about a potential place for exhibiting the painting in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts where Achilles on Syros, a painting from the same period, was already on display. By this discreet reminder, Wills was of course encouraging Mahon to make his judgement public so that it could weigh fully in the balance of contradictory judgements expressed during the confrontation at the Ritz Hotel. At this moment in the history of the paintings, the only version officially considered as an original was indeed the version acquired by Barbara Piasecka-Johnson. But the rich collector’s adviser no doubt wanted to pre-empt any further challenge to the authenticity of the canvas by securing the public judgement of an extremely influential Poussin expert. This was proving all the more necessary in that, since the death of Blunt in 1993, the social impact of his judgement was diminishing. On 4 June 1992, a letter from Beata Piasecka Bulaj, curator of the Barbara Piasecka-Johnson Collection, made it clear that Mahon had gone to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on 13 March 1992 to look at the painting again and to begin preparing the text arguing in favour of the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version.
It was only in 1994 that the controversy began to balance out and took on a more public turn. The Pardo brothers continued their efforts to promote their painting. Promoted to the post of director of the Louvre in the year of the fourth centenary of Poussin’s birth, Rosenberg wrote a crucial letter to Thuillier on 11 February 1994. In it, he describes having ‘had a somewhat confidential visit from one of the Pardo brothers’ and adds that the gallery owners ‘wish to sell their Poussin (50 million francs)’. He goes on to urge the eminent art historian to publish the painting in order to prevent it being sold to a foreign buyer:
What M. Pardo tells me is that he would very much appreciate his painting being properly published. Several participants of the Poussin symposium have asked him for the Ektachrome39 of the work to show in the course of this occasion. Most of them are people with some kind of commercial links. I advised Mr Pardo not to agree to this. He would be more inclined to listen to me if I was able to tell him that you would write a short piece on the work (you, or failing that, Jean-Pierre Cuzin). I do not need to tell you that if you publish the painting, you will make my task considerably easier. Finding a national solution to the acquisition of this work is not easy, as you can imagine.
Finding himself ‘without any news’, Richard Pardo wrote to Rosenberg again on 7 June 1994. He told the story of the painting’s history and that of its rival which had been published a few years before the second painting resurfaced in 1986. He reminded him of the 1991 proposal and lamented the fact that their meetings had not resulted in anything concrete. He also lamented the ‘absence of the painting in the exhibition’ organized by Rosenberg and considered this as ‘an undeniable admission of helplessness’. He continued by saying: ‘We must honestly consider the possibility of abandoning this potential purchase by the Museums of France’; ‘you will agree that a decision is urgent now, after these eight years of playing hide-and-seek’. After eight years in which the status of the painting had not shifted, the art dealer who had sold his gallery and risked everything on the future of this canvas could not help showing signs of impatience and annoyance. Rosenberg wrote again to Thuillier on 16 June 1994 to inform him of the correspondence sent by Richard Pardo (a copy was enclosed) and to remind him of his decisive role: ‘In the meantime I have spoken to him on the telephone and I have tried to explain to him that your article which will appear at the time of the exhibition should be helpful in finding a satisfactory national solution.’
The repeated approaches made by the gallery owners to Rosenberg and the letters of the latter to Thuillier ended up bearing fruit. In August of the same year, in an article in the Revue de l’Art, Thuillier publicly defended the authenticity of the Pardo brothers’ painting.40 This was the first public action contradicting the position adopted by Blunt in 1982. Having introduced Poussin’s main patrons (Paul Fréart de Chantelou, Jean Pointel and Jacques Serisier), Thuillier focused on Serisier’s collection (ten known canvases) writing: ‘We believe that four originals have come down to us. We would like to demonstrate that a fifth canvas can now be added to those, one which until now was known only through an engraving and various copies.’41 He took a decisive stand against Blunt by making clear that he had had ‘the opportunity to study the three canvases’, the first being that published by the British art historian in 1982, the second coming from a North American collection (the ‘Wolf’ version) and the third having been sold in Versailles in 1986 (the ‘Pardo’ version):
In our view, he stated, it is clear that the latter is the original. […] The first two examples can indeed convey something of the beauty and the sparseness of the composition; but only the third manages to preserve the trace of the tragic effort of an elderly man who still wants to be a painter, who grapples with the material and finds in his very powerlessness the most moving notes. A masterpiece resumes its place in Poussin’s oeuvre.42
The trembling brush strokes, which for Bernini in 1665 were the sign of the declining capacity of this ageing painter, become the moving touch (‘each stroke becomes an inimitable signature’) of a highly consecrated artist more than three hundred years later, and the disappointing picture is transformed into a masterpiece.
A month later, in September 1994, Thuillier drove the point home with the publication of the second edition of his catalogue, first published in 1974. In it he again reiterates his position in favour of the Pardo brothers’ painting: ‘The painting was long considered lost. Blunt (1982) claimed to have recognized it in an example conserved in America. In fact, the original reappeared in an auction in Versailles: the workmanship entirely corresponds with that of the last years of Poussin’s life, and a direct comparison left no doubt as to its authenticity.’43
But, between September 1994 and January 1995, discreet support for the painting also came with the big retrospective at the Grand Palais which celebrated the fourth centenary of the painter’s birth. Rosenberg and Laclotte (director of the Louvre between 1987 and 1995) also confirmed in the exhibition catalogue that the ‘Pardo’ version (reproduced in the catalogue) was the original, but they did not include it in the exhibition, to the great despair of the gallery owners. Such exposure would be difficult while a painting was still in a private collection, as Cuzin explained:
I think the Pardo brothers were disappointed that Rosenberg did not include the painting in the exhibition at the Grand Palais. There’s always this unwritten rule, not always observed, but a rule nevertheless, that a painting which is in the commercial domain cannot be included in a major exhibition, which would of course considerably increase its value. Rosenberg has always been very, very categorical about that. It’s an unwritten rule, one which in fact is not always respected. And in the case of the paintings of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century it can’t be applied, because for that period, what with works that belong to collectors and those which are with art dealers, it’s very difficult … But in this case, I’m sure that’s what it is. For Rosenberg, it’s certainly the reason why he didn’t include the painting in the exhibition. It had nothing at all to do with any reservations about the painting.44
In his preface to the catalogue for the Grand Palais exhibition, Rosenberg, who had been elected to the Académie Française on 7 December 1995, implicitly refers to the French version of The Flight into Egypt regarded by him as an autograph work, but he only does so in an indirect manner: ‘To our knowledge, there are currently two important Poussin paintings in France. We would feel gratified by our efforts if they were soon to become part of our national collections.’45 Only those who are familiar with the history of the two rival paintings could conclude from this that the curator was convinced that the French version (as opposed to the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version) is the original. But it was these people that the new director of the Louvre was addressing, in a circuitous and clever manner. Moreover, a black-and-white reproduction of the Pardo brothers’ painting appeared in the catalogue with the anonymized entry: ‘Nicolas Poussin. Flight into Egypt, Paris, private collection.’
These roundabout manoeuvres Rosenberg engaged in so as not to be seen to be intervening too soon in a controversy were not favourably interpreted by the gallery owners who had been waiting since 1986 for the French authorities to clearly recognize the authenticity of their picture and set in motion serious commercial negotiations with a view to bringing it into the national collections. Richard Pardo admitted his disappointment and his bitterness to Jean-Pierre Cuzin in a letter dated 11 January 1995: ‘The difficulty throughout the whole of these nine years in getting the painting recognized as an original, the silence of the museums until the closure of our gallery and the absence of the painting from the Poussin retrospective in the name of some completely ludicrous ethic, end up making this whole affair quite scandalous.’ He announced that he would be applying for an export certificate and said he was ready, in spite of everything, to discuss matters if his interlocutor ‘anticipated any kind of solution’.
Six days later, on 17 January 1995, Richard Pardo wrote another letter, this time to Françoise Cachin, director of the Musées de France. He informed her of his intention to seek an export certificate for the painting given that Cuzin had made it clear that ‘the Poussin was not a priority because of the large number of works by this master already in the Louvre and the current budget difficulties’. He pointed out that the Louvre had not ‘esteemed it useful’ to buy the painting in 1986, nor had it sought to buy it subsequently, and that, in spite of all that, it was banned from export. On 19 January 1995, the Pardo brothers lodged a request for an export certificate with the Minister for Culture so as to be able to sell the painting abroad, then withdrew it at the request of the Musées de France.
At the same time, a second major Poussin exhibition was held at the Royal Academy in London, from 19 January to 9 April 1995. The ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ (or ‘Princeton’ version) was compared to works exhibited and examined by the laboratories of the National Gallery in London. The dividing line was therefore clearly drawn, and publicly assumed, between the British and American defenders of this version initially published by Blunt on the one hand, and the French defenders of the ‘Pardo’ version on the other.
The stand taken by Thuillier and Rosenberg provoked some ‘shift in position’ as witnessed by the proceedings of the symposium on Poussin which took place in October 1994 in Paris and in November 1994 in Rome. If certain historians were still reserved (as was the case with Richard Verdi, a British art historian, who simply said that ‘we know of two supposedly original versions’), others began to acknowledge the potential interest of the French version – Hugh Brigstocke, ex-director of Sotheby’s of London, declared his support for the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version of the painting, while admitting the case was ‘difficult to settle’ given the quality of the ‘Pardo’ version – and two French art historians, Philippe Sénéchal and Olivier Bonfait46 named the ‘Pardo’ version as the original.
Moreover, with the agreement of the gallery owners, the research laboratory of the Musées de France carried out analyses on the ‘Pardo’ version. On 23 May 1995, Robert Pardo received a receipt after depositing the painting in the Louvre. It would be returned to him on 7 June 1995. These analyses would not, however, be made public until the year 2000, in the context of legal proceedings which would delay the process of public acknowledgement of the painting.
In this same month of June 1995, there was a further dramatic turn of events. Following a perusal of the catalogue of the Grand Palais exhibition, which discreetly asserted the authenticity of the canvas sold nine years earlier, the original owners of the painting requested, through the intermediary Maître William Bourdon, the annulment of the sale at auction in 1986 or forty million francs in damages. This was the start of a long judicial journey which would only end in 2003, seventeen years after the sale in Versailles.47
It was the son of the owner who picked up a reference to the painting which had been sold in 1986:
I’m quite interested in painting. When the painting was sold, I didn’t know anything much about it. But I’m interested in painting and from time to time I go to see exhibitions. And then, I see ‘Poussin Exhibition’. So, I say to myself: ‘I’ll go and see the Poussin exhibition. I’ll learn a bit more about this painter, who is someone it will be interesting to find out about’, and about whom I knew NOTHING. So off I went on a guided tour of the exhibition. It was really interesting, there was loads of stuff. And then, at the end, I look at the catalogue done by Mister Rosenberg and what do I see at the end of it? A photo of our painting!!! It’s mentioned in the catalogue but not shown in the exhibition. And I SEE in the catalogue: ‘In France there are two original Poussins, both in private collections. We would like to see them one day become part of the collections of the national Museums.’ Right next to a photo of ours! My heart missed a beat! Honestly! My heart missed a beat. I said to myself: ‘Is this picture the one belonging to Madame Johnson, which we were told was the original, or is it the one we sold?’ And then, really quickly, I don’t really know how, because there are some differences, but I immediately saw it was ours. I said to myself: ‘But that’s funny though! That’s weird! What on earth happened?’ And in less than twenty-four hours I started looking for a lawyer!48
The national press soon picked up on this new turn of events:
‘The case law is clearly established’, stated Maître W. Bourdon. ‘The error on the substantial qualities of the painting must result in the invalidity of the sale and the restitution of the painting.’ ‘I carried out my duties as an auctioneer by calling on an expert’, retorted Maître Olivier Perrin. And Kantor, the valuer, pointed out for his part that ‘you have to rely on what is known at the time of the sale: the original had been published by Blunt’. The trial was scheduled to begin the following year.49
The logic of the trial changes the deal for the gallery owners quite radically. Although they had always proclaimed the obvious authenticity of their painting in their bid to convince their interlocutors of the importance of the work, the Pardo brothers now changed tack by asking Cuzin, one of their interlocutors at the Louvre, to confirm that the authenticity was far from being confirmed. Their objective was, of course, to make it look as though they had bought the painting in good faith and with no certainty they were buying an original painting. Richard Pardo therefore asked the director of the Louvre, in a communication dated 30 July 1996, if he would be kind enough to write a confirming letter ‘to explain how the process of getting our painting recognized has been a long and difficult one’. He explained: ‘Today our lawyers are telling us this testimony could help our case.’ The strategy seemed to pay off since, in October 1996, the family who had initially owned the painting saw their case dismissed by the Parisian court. Nevertheless, they decided to take their case to appeal.
With the process of public recognition brought to a standstill by the legal proceedings which anyway prohibited any sale until a final verdict was reached, the ‘Pardo version’ also had to contend with a counterattack from the opposing side. This came from Mahon who, as we may recall, as early as 1991, had been urged to prepare a well-argued publication. In March 1997, an exhibition was organized in Monaco (Museum of the Chapel of the Visitation). Twenty-five works of religious art taken from the collection of Barbara Piasecka-Johnson were displayed, including her version of The Flight into Egypt, publicly authenticated by Mahon who had prepared a very tight argument for the occasion, equivalent to that produced by Thuillier in 1994, but which contradicted it point by point. For him, the ‘Pardo’ version can be explained by the desire of the art lovers of the time to have a work ‘closer to conventional tastes’, notably by rectifying the colouring of the Virgin’s face, deemed too dark. He supported his argument, moreover, with reference to the scientific analyses carried out two years earlier by the National Gallery in London on the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version. These indicated the presence of two undercoats in brown and grey tones similar to those of an Annunciation painted by Poussin in the same period (1657). They also reveal a pentimenti around Joseph’s head which would be incomprehensible as the work of a copyist who would have been looking at the ruin which forms the background of the original. Mahon, accompanied by Humphrey Wine, curator at the National Gallery, who brought his ‘silent approval to this demonstration of proof’, according to the judicious expression used by Noce, journalist from Libération, was thus aligning himself with Blunt, the British high priest of the Poussinists and universally respected.50
The French national press covered this development, gripped by the controversy which was starting to look like a Franco-British war:
In Monaco, Sir Denis Mahon, another great Poussin specialist, showed himself the ardent champion of the work belonging to Mrs Johnson in a closely argued commentary. For him, the work recognized by his French counterparts was no more than a copy of fairly mediocre craftsmanship. […] The two paintings, Mrs Johnson’s and the one belonging to the Pardo brothers, are almost identical. Sir Denis however emphasized the subtle differences in the play of light on the draperies, or on the tip of Saint Joseph’s spear. Examples such as these seen in the Pardos’ painting were used by him as evidence that the copyist was ignorant of the symbolic references which had guided Poussin. The peripheral areas of the painting also seemed to him to have been executed with much less care. […] The debate is further complicated in that, towards the end of his life, Poussin’s skills were somewhat diminished. The Pardo brothers use this to support their cause, pointing out signs of the painter’s trembling hand in the execution of the foliage in their version. For Mahon, on the contrary, their painting seems more accessible, because it is the work of a copyist who wanted to please. So, in their painting, the Virgin’s face is pale. In Mrs Johnson’s picture, the face is dark, ‘Moorish’, evidence for him of the liberty of the artist (who had perhaps wanted to emphasize that the scene took place in the Orient). The dimensions of the paintings seem to favour the Pardo version since the Monegasque painting is smaller and there are practically no examples of copies which are larger than the original. But Sir Denis overturned this argument seeing in it once again the work of a copyist seeking to please his patron by producing a work which was more explicitly dramatic, a far cry from the ‘mystery’ which suffuses Poussin’s later works, and which, even in his own time, was scarcely understood.51
The journalist concludes by pointing out that ‘only a genuine comparison in front of an indisputably learned panel, supported by scientific analyses of similar status, could resolve this controversy’. But such analyses had been carried out on both sides of the Channel and the comparison had taken place, seven years earlier … without any reconciliation of the opposing sides.
Other, more intrepid journalists, took sides. One of these was Harry Bellet, journalist with Le Monde, who having first described Blunt as ‘the unquestionable specialist on the works of Nicolas Poussin’, went on to challenge that robustly by deciding firmly in favour of the ‘Pardo’ version: ‘We were able to see the Pardo version in the safe of the Parisian bank where it is being kept whilst awaiting the pleasure of the national Museums and the judges. We have seen Mrs Johnson’s version. The former is deeply moving. The other one is just a painting’.52 Proof on emotional grounds may not hold much scientific legitimacy but can still be a factor in supporting the case.
During the whole of this period of controversy53 and the attendant legal proceedings, Poussin’s reputation continued to grow. Barely more than a few years after the major exhibitions devoted to the painter, the price of his works had risen significantly: in the 1990s, The Conquest of Jerusalem was bought for 40 million francs, The rest on the flight to Egypt with an elephant around 50 million francs, and The Plague 45 million francs.54 Whichever painting was to emerge victorious from the controversy, its value would inevitably have increased.
Paradoxically, while the French trial associated with the ‘Pardo’ version centred on the legitimacy of a request for the annulment of the 1986 sale, in order to resolve that, it also had to reach a verdict on the attribution of the painting to Poussin and establish on what grounds buyers and sellers had entered into the contract at the time of the auction. If it were to be proved that the painting had gone from its established status of a simple copy to the equally certain one of an autograph work by a great master, then the owner could legitimately recover his property.
On 24 March 2000, Messrs Jean-Pierre Dumont and Jean-Louis Clément, the two experts appointed by the court to judge the authenticity of the painting, noted in their report the ‘very high quality of the work which, both as a whole and in the details, radiates an undeniable poetry’, adding that ‘it is a moment of pure emotion, a lesson in painting’ and concluding that ‘the work can only be by the great Nicolas Poussin, in his finest period’.55 Taken up again in 2010 by a leading curator at the Louvre, this extract from the final report made by the experts is very surprising in that experts who are less competent than the great connoisseurs of Poussin are invited to reach a decision on the authenticity of the ‘Pardo’ version and its attribution to the painter. Pomarède only ends up quoting the experts’ report because it reaches the decision he believes to be the right one, but in the opposite case, he would certainly have questioned the competence, and by the same token, the legitimacy of the experts named by the court. The extract in question is also remarkable because of the fact that it establishes a direct link between the emotion it provoked and the fact that the painting is by Poussin’s hand (if it is moving, then it is by Poussin), whereas it is far more likely that this emotion results from its having been authenticated by renowned French art historians (Thuillier, Rosenberg, Laclotte, Cuzin, Bonfait, etc.) known to the experts in question.
The experts thus made public the results of analyses undertaken in May and June 1995 by the research laboratory of the Musées de France. Like those from the laboratory of the National Gallery in London on the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version, they remained very cautious and only confirmed that it was indeed a seventeenth-century painting. Nothing stood in the way of the status of an autograph work, but at the same time, nothing prevented the painting from being seen as simply a contemporary copy. As in the case of the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version, the X-ray examination revealed the presence of pentimento, which could indicate the work of a copyist. But, in their enthusiasm in the presence of the painting, the experts added that ‘for them, the tremulous brush strokes were not, as had been suggested, the result of Poussin’s illness, but were very carefully controlled’.56 By dint of seeking to praise the ‘masterly execution’ of a ‘very detailed work’, the legal experts almost ended up providing arguments for the opposing side who believed, like Mahon, that the copyist wanted to make a prettier Poussin than the real thing.
A few months later, on 5 May 2000, in spite of the ongoing trial, the Pardo brothers again requested an export certificate from the Ministry of Culture in order to be able to sell the painting abroad. They still had, of course, no offer of purchase on the part of the Louvre, which was unable to engage in any attempt to acquire the picture until its ownership had been decided by law. However, on 28 June 2000, the Paris court of appeal pronounced the annulment of the sale and the Pardo brothers were required to return the painting to the original owner. The former gallery owners decided, however, to again appeal against the decision.
Before reaching a decision on the request for an export certificate made by the Pardo brothers, the Commission advising on the circulation of cultural assets met on 4 July 2000. J.-P. Cuzin, lead curator of national heritage, head of the paintings department at the Louvre, is the rapporteur on two paintings: The Denial of St Peter by the Le Nain brothers and The Flight into Egypt by Poussin. The Commission’s report says: ‘Monsieur Cuzin announced that Mrs Johnson’s Poussin, which he had examined, appeared very weak in comparison with this one and was unquestionably of less value. Moreover, this one has been examined in the laboratories of the Musées de France and certain elements, certain pentimenti argue its authenticity.’ No mention was of course made at that stage of the pentimenti found on the rival version. The Commission’s verdict was postponed until 23 August 2000, with the request that the opinions of the experts be compiled in the meantime. But on 23 August 2000, the Commission decided to defer judgement since it could not give any ruling on The Flight into Egypt while the painting was at the centre of legal proceedings between the gallery owners and the original owner of the painting. On 26 October 2000, the Pardo brothers referred the case to the administrative tribunal in an attempt to have the Commission’s decision quashed, but on 6 December the tribunal decided to confirm its decision. The painting therefore remained blocked.
It would be another three years before the legal system would definitively close the case of this version of The Flight into Egypt. Initially, the Paris Court of Appeal announced its judgement on 28 June 2001. It confirmed, on the basis of the experts’ report, that this work ‘of masterly execution’ corresponds to the ‘very personal technique of Nicolas Poussin’. Noting the divergence between the canvas sold as a simple copy and its current status as an acknowledged autograph work by Nicolas Poussin, it called for the annulment of the sale. The Pardo brothers lodged an appeal. And, in a final act, on 17 September 2003, the Court of Appeal rejected the Pardo brothers’ appeal and confirmed the annulment of the sale. The work was therefore restored to its former owner, seventeen years after its sale by auction. It was valued between 45 and 60 million francs (between €7 and 9 million approximately) according to the price fetched by Poussin paintings from the same period, in a similar state of preservation and of similar size. As for the Pardo brothers, they had lost everything: the court case, the painting and their gallery.
By giving the painting back to its owner, the law was at the same time liberating a work whose trajectory had been frozen since 1995. But between 1995 and 2004, the object in question was no longer the same one. Only just ‘published’ as an autograph painting by Thuillier in 1994, it had attracted solid support over the course of these years. The law would itself have played a part in confirming the attribution of the object to Nicolas Poussin.
Hoping to sell the painting in the United States, the family who owned it were required by law, like the Pardo brothers a few years earlier, to apply for an export certificate, which they did on 12 May 2004. In such cases, the State possesses a legislative weapon, voted 31 December 1992, permitting a ban on any works classed as ‘national treasures’ from leaving the country.57 This is clearly how the law protects public interests and particularly the interests of public collections. Objects which, like works of art, fall into the category of ‘national treasure’, are temporarily removed from the market and are subject to regulation.58
The law on the classification as a national treasure and the ban on a work leaving the national territory (exception to the free circulation of goods), which is a direct consequence of it, like the right of pre-emption of a work of art at the moment of its sale, are an indication of the strength of the State, of its capacity to seize people and goods and, in certain cases, to take them over in the name of national values. And when the State is at the same time the one which authenticates (through its experts or through the highest authorities within art circles, amongst them curators from the Louvre and the major art historians), pre-empts, classes as ‘national treasure, grants or refuses export certificates, acquires and exhibits in national museums, it is easy to see how the objects it intends to appropriate have a destiny which is very largely determined by its own interests.
However, the national or public interest takes precedent over individual, private interests though its power is limited. The State could, indeed, brutally confiscate works of art, as happened during the Revolution, or as it has often done in the course of numerous international wars, which have seen the victor claiming part of the cultural inheritance of the conquered country. Today, it compromises between the national interest and the right to individual ownership, by protecting those it constrains. So, for example, the State cannot indefinitely ban the export of a work of art, but is granted a specific period of time in which to make an offer to buy and, in the case of classification as a national treasure, any potential public buyers have exactly thirty months in which to make their offer. Likewise, the State cannot arbitrarily fix the purchase price of a work classed as a national treasure but must propose a price close to the international market price (the law of 10 July 2000 makes provision for the State to make a purchase offer which ‘takes account of prices on the international market’). If the vendors and the State cannot reach an agreement, a judge can be nominated to reach a decision in accordance with the law. Moreover, classifying more works of art than it can possibly buy, the State only succeeds in definitively keeping a small amount of works.
The notion of a ‘national treasure’ is not linked to the nationality of the painter or to the location in which the work was created. If that were the case, works such as the Mona Lisa, created in Italy by an Italian painter, or of artists like Poussin, born in France but producing most of his work in Italy, or Picasso, of Spanish nationality, but living and working on French soil, would pose an insoluble problem to legislators. A national treasure can be a work which attracts the interest of the nation, that is to say almost any kind of work, independent of its provenance (a Byzantine manuscript, an Egyptian statue, a Spanish painting are all just as relevant as paintings and sculptures by French artists). The only constraint lies in the fact that the work must have been on French soil for at least fifty years.
Before 1992, the State had three solutions in order to prevent works of art from leaving the national territory: the right of pre-emption (during public auction sales, the State could substitute itself for the last bidder), automatic classification (which in fact fixed a work within the national boundaries) and a ban on export. From 31 December 1992, the law concerning classification as a national treasure required owners to have a certificate of authorization in order to export the work and to sell it abroad. This remains the preferred tool of any procedures seeking to prevent a work of art from crossing the borders. If the owner finds themselves refused the export certificate, he or she can no longer sell their work abroad.59
Less than two months after the application for an export licence for the painting, The Consultative Commission on National Treasures (CCTN) met on Wednesday, 7 January 2004. Jean-Pierre Cuzin, head of the department of paintings at the Louvre since 1994 and appointed in 2004 as assistant director of the Institut National d’Histoire d’Art, was replaced by Vincent Pomarède who in turn had vacated his post as director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon which he had held since 2000. Pomarède therefore took over as rapporteur to the Consultative Commission on National Treasures in the case of The Flight into Egypt. He suggested the application for an export certificate be rejected in this instance: ‘The work is admirable because of the vigour of its craftsmanship, its original composition and the quality and power of its iconography. Painted during the last years of the painter’s life, at the height of his career, it is one of Nicolas Poussin’s most moving compositions, one of the last still remaining in private hands. This painting indisputably deserves therefore to remain part of the national heritage.’60 Convinced from that point onwards that this was indeed an original painting by Poussin and wanting to classify it as a ‘national treasure’ in order to give the French Museums the chance to acquire it, the curator’s phrasing is eulogistic. Again, we see the long route travelled from the somewhat harsh perspective of Bernini (1665), who saw in the trembling of the paintbrush the signs of a decline in the painter’s creative capacity, and this description of one of the most moving paintings from Poussin’s mature years.
Moreover, referring back to the point made by Cuzin in 2000 within the context of the same commission, which brought up the subject of Poussin’s absence from ‘the most important museums in France, such as Lille or Lyon’, Pomarède suggested that this painting should be integrated into the Louvre collections or into those of ‘a major regional museum – the two museums which could be envisaged being Lyon and Lille’. The fact that Pomarède had been director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon was, of course, not without bearing on the lead curator’s insistence on the possible future venues for the painting.
Following Cuzin’s departure for the Louvre, Sylvie Ramond, former director of the Unterlinden museum in Colmar, had been appointed director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in February 2004.61 Five days after the Consultative Commission on National Treasures had met, on 12 July 2003, she wrote a letter to the director of the Musées de France in which she announced that the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon wished to acquire the painting. She requested a meeting to discuss the financial arrangements.
On 17 July 2004, the Ministry of Culture officially classified the painting as a ‘national treasure’ in order to prevent it leaving the country. The ban on leaving the country was valid until its end date of 11 February 2007. The State therefore had thirty months, according to the French laws on cultural heritage, to make an offer at the international market price.
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon officially declared its interest in acquiring the painting and initially found a single sponsor (bioMériuex) who eventually withdrew for financial reasons. To successfully achieve such an important acquisition (and such a costly one: estimates were in the region of around €10 million), the museum finally ended up setting up a group of sponsors under the law of 4 January 2002 and the decree of 2 May 2002. This law (no. 2002-5), the so-called ‘Aillagon’ law (after the name of the then culture minister) modified the general tax code. Following acquisition of a national treasure, companies participating as sponsors benefit from a tax deduction of 90% of the amount of the gift (limited to 50% of the corporate tax they pay). Moreover, a company purchasing on its own account receives a tax deduction of 40%. Finally, the company had the right to 5% of the total sum spent in the form of benefits in kind from the museum: passes for their employees, the right to organize visits and public events, private visits, use of the museum’s reception space, etc. This law, which links to the law on national treasures, would turn out to be determinant in the purchase of the painting by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. The trajectory of the painting, now safely settled in France, therefore depended in a very real sense on the legislative measures in question and on the capacity of the museum’s curators to mobilize those companies likely to participate in the operation.
It is, however, difficult to refer to a sponsorship operation when companies only contributed in reality a total of just 5% of the overall figure committed, 90% corresponding to tax deductions and 5% to benefits in kind. ‘It would be better’, as Sabine Rozier observes, ‘to refer to private contribution to a public expenditure.’62 The law is, in the end, a sort of homage paid to the idea of the major role companies play in the cultural policy of the country, even though the government ends up financing 90% of the costs of acquisition. In spite of the fact that companies do not in the end make a major financial contribution, it is nevertheless them, and not the State (and the citizens), who are honoured and thanked for their civic duty by the Ministry of Culture and the museum directors. That gives the impression that in future no policy of acquisition that was in any way ambitious would be possible without the participation of private enterprise.63
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon set up a steering committee centred on the Foundation Léa and Napoléon Bullukian, dedicated to art, science and Armenia, chaired by Jean-Pierre Claveranne. A first meeting took place in February 2006. Fundraising operations began in September of the same year and on 8 December, coinciding with the Festival of Light, the museum and the foundation organized a grand dinner at the town hall in Lyon in the presence of Gérard Collomb, Mayor of Lyon, Pierre Rosenberg, ex-director of the Louvre, Jacques Rigaud, president of the Association for the development of industrial and commercial sponsorship (Admical), together with assembled business leaders. A guided visit of an exhibition dedicated to Jacques Stella, a contemporary and friend of Nicolas Poussin, was followed by a presentation of the painting The Flight into Egypt given by Pierre Rosenberg in front of an audience of the thirty or so local business leaders invited for the occasion.
In their speeches, the president of the Bullukian Foundation as well as the Mayor of Lyon and the director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts emphasized the positive impact that the presence of a masterpiece by Poussin in Lyon would represent. In doing so, they tried to convince regional companies to get involved in a sponsorship operation which would help to expand the cultural renown of the city of Lyon, with all the economic benefits that would bring.
References were made to competition between cities within Europe: ‘I believe’, declared Jean-Pierre Claveranne, ‘that even beyond Poussin, this project we are involved in is a challenge for Lyon, just as it is a challenge for all major international cities today. The question that could be asked is: “Should we always go to Paris, to Barcelona, to Bilbao or could Lyon, the second largest city in France in economic terms, also be the second city in terms of arts sponsorship?”’ After announcing that the municipality would be contributing a million euros and that companies becoming sponsors could benefit from a tax exemption equal to 90% of their donation, the Mayor of Lyon spoke in turn about the importance of Lyon’s image in making the city economically attractive within Europe:
In order for a city to stand out, it needs to be able to do so on every level. It is not enough, therefore, for it to be economically successful. It has to be successful in every domain. To take an example which has nothing to do with culture, the fact for example, that the Olympique Lyonnais is a great football team does a lot for the image of Lyon. And therefore brings an extraordinary boost to every company in Lyon. And I think that, of course, in the cultural domain the same is true. Today we don’t have isolated sectors. We have an overarching image of a city. And so we either have an image of a city which stands out, which is forging ahead in all sectors, or, on the other hand, we have one of a city which is stagnating, a city turning in on itself. So there it is, I think that all of us are faced with a challenge. The purchase of this Poussin is not just a matter for Sylvie Ramond, nor for the Musée des Beaux-Arts, it’s a matter for the City of Lyon and for our region. Either we want to forge ahead, to keep up the momentum which has been driving us ahead for the last few years, but that effectively means each of us needs to be part of it, or, on the other hand, it’s every man for himself, but if it is every man for himself I’m concerned that we’d be going against the common interest, but at the same time against ourselves because you never win on your own. You win collectively. I’ve just been elected president of Euro cities and so, in this rather strategic role, I am able to see the efforts the major European cities are making. I can see the dynamic which drives them. So, either we are capable of generating the same sort of dynamic in the greater Lyon area, in our region, in a broader sense, or we can go backwards. And let me go back to what Jacques Rigaud was saying. When foreign investors want to come and set up, first of all, in Europe, they always have three or four choices. And I’d say that, from an economic point of view, they’ve already made their choice, because the three or four cities they are choosing from are all on the same level economically speaking. Apart from that, I agree with him, there are the issues of education and bringing up children, which is of course absolutely essential, and then that leaves the issue of the quality of life and culture. And so, being able to provide that dynamic of the quality of life and of culture, means giving ourselves, over the next few years, the capacity to become a leading European metropolis. And that’s not something that’s created out of just a municipality, out of a group of local councillors, it’s something that happens if all the forces of a city want to act together. So, let’s give ourselves the means to act together and make sure that we can acquire this Poussin.
Then it was the turn of Sylvie Ramond to speak. In her speech, she mixed together different registers of language, justifying the acquisition of The Flight into Egypt in the interests of France, of Lyon and of the Musée des Beaux-Arts. She began by singing the praises of the museum’s collection ‘which is one of the finest in terms of French seventeenth-century paintings’. She explained how she felt that, as someone who had been ‘called on to direct this institution two years previously, this represented a duty. A duty to make sure that the collection would continue to stand out, both in France and abroad’. She emphasized the fact that Jacques Serisier, commissioner of the painting, originated from Lyon, and that in Lyon at that time, there were a great many art lovers amongst the merchants, bankers and manufacturers. Then she played on the string of nationalism and of Lyonnais patriotism:
A few months ago we learned that The Flight into Egypt by Nicolas Poussin was in danger of leaving French soil. It’s my duty to do everything possible to keep it in France and it’s my greatest wish to see it included in the Lyon collection, a collection without a single Poussin, a great gap. […] It’s everyone’s duty, I believe, to make sure it comes to join the works of Stella, his Lyonnais friend. […] We won’t ever have this opportunity again: we must do everything we can to keep this seminal work by Poussin for France’s cultural heritage, and what better place for it than Lyon, the birthplace of the Serisier family.
She then went on to explain the tax advantages for companies, pointing out that only 5% of the sums paid out would actually be paid by the companies involved: ‘Example: a contribution of €1 million gives companies the right to a tax reduction of €900,000. The true cost of the transaction for the company amounts to only €100,000. Furthermore, they would have the right to benefits in kind from the museum for an amount of €50,000: use of the museum premises, private visits, passes …’.64 She finally ended her speech by emphasizing that if the canvas were not to be acquired, it ‘will go far, to the States, or elsewhere’. If that happened, ‘only the privileged, those who can travel, would be able to see it. Whereas if we buy it, it will belong to us all. Every Lyonnais could see it, and we would hand it down to future generations who would also benefit from it. … It’s the true meaning of the museum in its republican conception, generous in its principle and democratic’.
The ban on export was lifted as decreed in February 2007. The work then passed automatically from the status of ‘national treasure’ to that of ‘work of major patrimonial interest’ after thirty months of negotiations. The lawyer for the owners of the painting, Maître Bourdon, declared that the family set great store by it remaining in France, but only if the price offered corresponded to its value on the international market (estimated at between €10 and 15 million): ‘The owners will be delighted if the painting enters French collections. That depends on the capacity of the French institutions to offer a price worthy of an exceptional work.’ The time was economically very favourable to sellers since the French museums were keen to obtain French seventeenth-century paintings: ‘When we talk about evolution in tastes, we also mean advances in prices, which for certain artists, have increased tenfold in ten years’, Roxanna Azimi explains.65 Even the pupils or successors of the seventeenth-century masters were selling much better:
At Sotheby’s in December 2006, Atalante and Hippomenes, by Nicolas Colombel, an artist greatly influenced by Poussin, was bought for the high price of £512,000 (€758,600) by the New York dealer Otto Naumann. It had been estimated at only £70,000! ‘Ever since the big names started to be in short supply in the sales, people have been falling back on lesser names’, explained Nicolas Joly, a specialist at Sotheby’s. ‘Beautiful pictures by names without any special magic are now fetching good prices’.66
The collective magic still works, therefore, even when the degree of sanctity acquired by certain painters is weaker than that of the great names.
An extra four months were granted by the family to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon before the release of the export licence. This mobilized the interested parties in the form of the City of Lyon (and notably Patrice Béghain, deputy mayor responsible for Culture), the Rhône-Alpes region, the Louvre (in particular Sophie Pidoux, responsible for developing sponsorship, and Victor Pomarède, head of the department of paintings), the Ministry of Culture and the management of the Musées de France (notably Anne Distel, head of collections at the DMF, the French museums service) and Jacques Rigaud, president of the Admical.67
On 6 February 2007, five days before the end of the time limit, Patrice Béghain, deputy mayor, responsible for Culture and Patrimony, sent a letter to the director of the Musées de France to give an update on the sponsors involved in the acquisition of the painting: ‘To date we have a firm commitment of €3 million from companies in the region. Ongoing contacts allow us to hope for a further €1 million. In total, in the most optimistic short-term hypothesis, we could count on an investment of €4 million.’ He also confirmed that the City of Lyon would contribute €1 million and was awaiting a response from the president of the regional council. He indicated that, during a recent visit, the director of the Louvre, Henri Loyrette had offered to match the search for sponsorship with a sum of up to €2 million. He announced that a study of the prices paid for works by Poussin between 1981 and 2003 revealed a price range between €75,000 and €18 million and confirmed also that at the beginning of the 1990s the Pardo brothers had offered to sell the painting to the Louvre for a sum of 50 million francs (approximately €7.6 million).
During the time in which the sponsorship operation was being set up, the city’s reputation (both economic and cultural) as well as national pride were the subject of many articles in the local and regional press by the principal actors involved. Rallying cries of encouragement, of mobilization, of justification and appeals to civic duty, they stressed the publicspirited and economic role of art.68
In June 2007, the owners of the painting loaned it first to the Louvre and then to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, in order to thank those sponsors already involved and to encourage those still undecided. And in July 2007, the painting was acquired for the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for the sum of €17 million. The painting, which legally had been bought by the State and registered for legislative purposes to the Louvre, was placed with the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the transfer of ownership would only become definitive after a period of three years from 9 April 2009. The object was therefore initially associated with the Louvre before switching association at a later stage. This action, which deferred ownership, and also the exhibition of the painting in Paris which would precede its showing in Lyon by several months, expresses the relations of domination between the two cities and the relative legitimacy of two major museum institutions.
From the outset, the acquisition process was described in the national press as ‘the biggest sponsorship operation ever launched in France’.69 The sponsors finally involved were, on the public side, The City of Lyon (€1 million), the Louvre (€630,000), the Heritage Fund (€300,000) and the Rhône-Alpes Region (€250,000), and, on the private side, la Fondation d’entreprise Gaz de France (€3 million), Axa (€2 million), Total (€2 million), Webhelp (€1 million), la Caisse d’Épargne Rhône-Alpes (€1 million), Crédit Agricole Centre-Est (€1 million), an anonymous company (€1 million), Groupe Mazars (€500,000), Seb (€500,000), the bioMérieux laboratory (€500,000), Toupargel (€500,000), the CIC Lyonnaise de Banque (€500,000), GL Events (€500,000), GFC Construction (€250,000), Siparex Associés (€200,000), JC Decaux (€150,000), the accountancy firm Bonnet (€70,000) and a private donor (€150,000).
With the success of the ‘sponsorship’ operation, Ramond has demonstrated that the 2002 legislation represented a potential solution for museums. She justified in public the choice of appealing to private finance, because of the difficulty of directly financing acquisitions through public funding:
So, even for a city as ambitious in its cultural policies and as generous towards its institutions as Lyon, the budget for acquisitions is not enough in comparison to the level of prices fetched by major works in international sales. The need to enrich its collections is problematic for a museum which is the most important in the region after the major Paris museums. In order to have an international policy, devise an ambitious programme of exhibitions, consider outstanding acquisitions, we have to turn towards private sources of finance and appeal to the public-spirit of companies. Without such help, we could not hold our own.70
A few months later, she re-affirmed the need to appeal to businesses: ‘In the future, we will not be able to manage without the support of the economic world if we want to acquire works of quality.’71 Her views were supported in the local press by journalists who supported sponsors and criticized ‘the purists of the Cause’ who were complaining about the introduction of private money in the purchase of works of art. One journalist raised the question:
How is this worse than the arbitrary choice of some councillor from the Drac or from some highbrow administration who will suddenly decide, according to who knows what criteria, if such and such a work deserves such and such a place in a museum? Of course, companies will keep reminding us about their great contribution. They’ll benefit from ghastly passes to go and run motivational seminars in the museum rooms, in front of the works their contribution has helped keep in France. So what? To these moaners who are objecting, let’s just say that if the said companies hadn’t put their hands into their pockets, the said painting would currently be snugly in an American museum entertaining charming Americans. The same motivational seminars would be organized in front of The Flight into Egypt. But they’d be dining on chips and ketchup instead of on andouillette sausages.72
The stakes involved in the acquisition of a Poussin by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon is linked to the fact that it represents what is seen as an ‘exemplary’ case for anyone advocating the introduction of private funding of public museums and the entrepreneurial spirit. This is made clear in an editorial by Bruno Jacquot, in the weekly publication Le Figaro Guide of 7 November 2007. He refers to ‘twenty or so generous sponsors’ and writes: ‘The State is encouraging its cultural institutions to look for money outside of its own coffers. By way of compensation, over the last fifteen years or so it has introduced various incentives in favour of sponsorship. […] Here too, the Poussin affair is a good example of this development.’ He goes on to talk about the entrepreneurial spirit of the museum team:
What is also striking, in the Poussin adventure, is the entrepreneurial side of things. When public subsidies turned out not to be enough, the people from the Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the Louvre, probably without even realizing they were doing it, stepped into the shoes of a company director in quest of capital to finance his business. It’s not surprising that such a step should have met with a favourable response on behalf of businesses, without them necessarily being aware of the connection.
On Friday, 14 September 2007, Christine Albanel, Minister of Culture and Communication, mentioned and thanked the major donors during a reception for sponsors and for the institutional partners of the European Heritage Days: ‘And finally, I’m not forgetting the role recently played by the Crédit Agricole Centre-Est in the acquisition of the magnificent painting by Nicolas Poussin, The Flight into Egypt, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. The Ministry of Culture and Communication is extremely lucky to have you at its side.’
In the flurry of thanks to the companies involved which rained down on all sides, protesting voices were rare. One such was, however, raised by an elected representative of the Ecology party, quoted in the local press: ‘It’s not the sponsoring companies we should be thanking for the purchase of a painting by Poussin by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, but the taxpayers.’ Such is the view of the Ecology party representative Étienne Tête, who points out that 85% of the €17 million was paid by the State and that, if major companies such as Total, did indeed have their role, it should not be forgotten that 90% of their investment is tax deductible. ‘In the end, it will only have cost them 10% of their contribution!’73
The business leaders, moreover, made no attempt to hide their interest in benefiting in terms of public image for sums which in the end turned out to be quite modest in the context of their publicity budgets. Thus, on the question of how a company can benefit by participating in the acquisition of a work classed as a national treasure, Olivier Klein, chairman of the board of directors at la Caisse d’Épargne Rhône-Alpes, had this to say: ‘Benefits in terms of image: showing that the new Caisse d’Épargne Rhône-Alpes which is the result of the merger of Lyon and the Alpes is involved in the life of its region.’74 Similarly, Bonnet, a local accounting firm, the only SME amongst the sixteen private sponsors, makes no secret of the good deal it represented for them: ‘We donated €70,000 and, once the tax deduction is applied, that amounts to an excellent public relations operation for only €7000.’75
On 4 February 2008, a ceremony of thanks for the sponsors of the Poussin was organized at the Ministry of Culture, rue de Valois. The programme included a ‘personal thank you to each sponsor’ by the minister (Christine Albanel). This meant the State was publicly legitimizing the sponsors and reaffirming the need for the existing legislation on sponsorship.
A few days later, on 11 February 2008, during a meeting of the municipal council of Lyon, which was to vote the approval of the agreements between each of the sponsor companies contributing to the purchase of the painting, the Louvre and the City of Lyon, Patrice Béghain, deputy mayor responsible for Culture and Patrimony, announced:
You have all I think, my dear colleagues, been able to see with your own eyes this painting now hanging on the walls of our museum – or if you haven’t, may I invite you to do so. You will also have observed, as the Mayor himself did on the opening day of the accompanying exhibition, the crowds of visitors flocking to see it and you will also have witnessed the extent of the interest that this operation has brought for the City of Lyon in the national and international press.76
The opposition leader (other right-wing parties) Amaury Nardone also praises the ‘successful operation’: ‘It was indeed a genuine operation of cultural decentralization. Everyone knows that the Paris region literally engulfs the Ministry of Culture’s budget. But the tax credit attached to donations from sponsor companies is really an excellent way of channelling some of the national taxes to the benefit of regional culture.’
In September 2008, Lyon was one of the candidates for the European Capital of Culture in the year 2013.77 The Lyon cultural committee met with the jury and, amongst the various visits planned, took them to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, in connection with the recent purchase of the Poussin painting. The painting was a significant element in their case, clearly indicating the municipality’s support for cultural attractions. Such a prestigious painting therefore also acts as an instrument of cultural politics in the rivalry between major cities to attract attention and tourists.
From the beginning of the fund-raising operation, the French press were no longer concerned about whether this was indeed an autograph work or not. Whether favouring the decisions of the law or the opinions of art historians and French museum curators, the case seemed definitively closed. And the purchase for a record-breaking sum of €17 million (many press articles focus almost exclusively on this evidently fascinating fact) would be a contributory factor in the closure of the case. Who indeed would dare cast doubt on the authenticity of a canvas bought at such a high price?
It is acknowledged today that this version (also known as ‘with reclining traveller’) is the original.78
After long and stormy proceedings, the law recognized in the appeal court in September 2003 and confirmed in the final court of appeal in May 2004, that this painting, sold at auction in Versailles in 1986 as ‘from the studio of Nicolas Poussin’, was by the master.79
No more doubts about authenticity, no more negative comments from Bernini about a mediocre painting from the end of a career. Instead, the press were proclaiming that ‘the picture is considered exceptional’ and that it ‘demonstrates the maturity of a painter at the height of his art’.80 Once the acquisition had happened, Christine Albanel’s words on 17 July 2007 were widely quoted, with references to her ‘pride’ and her ‘powerful emotion’ at seeing, secured within ‘the national territory’ this ‘showcase work’, this ‘major piece of our heritage’, this ‘masterpiece of national artistic heritage’ painted by an ‘eminent artist at the height of his talent’, and now part of the ‘French national collection’. The minister even seemed to see in this acquisition the ‘deep attachment of the whole of French society to our heritage’. ‘The Flight into Egypt will indeed remain in France’81 proclaimed a monthly art magazine.
The French acquisition of this version thrust the painting owned by Barbara Piasecka-Johnson into a difficult position on the international market. As Isabelle Dubois-Brinkmann explains, ‘now, insofar as the art market is international, I think that she (Barbara Piasecka-Johnson) is stuck. That is to say, she can no longer sell it. Because if she sells it as a Poussin, even the saleroom won’t agree to sell it as a Poussin. And if she sells it as from the studio of … she’s going back on her word. … So she’s really stuck.’82 Nevertheless, in spite of everything, the defenders of the other version had not changed their minds. So, in 2007, in his catalogue raisonné on Poussin,83 Christopher Wright, a British art historian, indicated that The Flight into Egypt, once considered to be lost, now belonged in the private collection of Barbara Piasecka-Johnson and was ‘generally’ considered to be the original. The man who for a time had defended the idea that the ‘Wolf’ version could be an autograph work had therefore rallied to the dominant British camp. The ‘Wolf’ version had even been sold on 28 June 2001 at Sotheby’s in New York, as a copy. Moreover, he attributed the ‘Pardo’ version, at the time in the process of being acquired by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, to Jacques Stella (1596–1657), painter and friend of Poussin.
The French version of The Flight into Egypt was nevertheless exhibited in the Louvre along with other paintings by Poussin (in the Poussin room) from 20 December 2007 to 4 February 2008, more than twenty years after being sold at auction as a simple copy. Following this exhibition, the work would become part of the collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.
In a document from the department of paintings of the Louvre entitled ‘Picture of the month’ and published in January 2008, Sylvain Laveissière forcefully reaffirmed the autograph status of the painting, now classified as a ‘masterpiece’:
The quality of the work, in a perfect state of conservation and carefully cleaned, is obvious, and its status as an original work is confirmed by the many ‘pentimenti’ revealed by laboratory analyses. So, for example, the entablature of the portico has been modified on the left, the most distant vase is painted on the sky, whereas the nearest one is done so ‘in reserve’, the rock on the right-hand side was also made bigger once the sky had been painted; the garments of the reclining traveller, first uniformly blue-green, were then altered later.
The pentimenti observed in the rival copy did not get a mention since this would weaken the arguments being advanced. The growing competition had, moreover, forced the two sides to seek to prove at any price the presence of such pentimenti in their version, with the unquestioned notion that pentimenti are a sure indication that the work could not possibly be that of a copyist.84 This classic argument often used in authentication is based on the model of a perfect copyist, who never makes a mistake. But, above all, the two opposing sides seem to have forgotten what the X-ray analyses of Poussin’s work reveal more generally, notably that, always extremely attentive to the preparation of his composition, he made very few changes to his work.
In order to complete their scientific file and prepare the catalogue for the exhibition centred on The Flight into Egypt, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon called on the services of the private company Lumière Technology. On 6 February 2008, the version now called ‘MBA de Lyon’ and the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version were therefore photographed with the multispectral camera owned by the private laboratory. The data relating to the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version could not, however, be included in the catalogue for the exhibition, at the express demand of Barbara Piasecka-Johnson’s lawyers. In an email dated 18 August 2009, addressed to the president of the Lumière Technology company, Léna Widerkehr, responsible for publications at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the person behind the catalogue of the Lyon exhibition, wrote that, following the ‘threat of legal proceedings issuing from Mrs Johnson’s lawyers in case of publication of her painting and of prejudicial evidence to the authenticity of the latter’, the museum finds itself obliged to ‘withdraw any comparative evidence with Mrs Johnson’s painting’. By stopping the publication of a disadvantageous comparison, the American owner was protecting her painting and refusing to accept that the file was now definitively closed.
On 11 February 2008, the official arrival of the painting in Lyon represented a key moment of social magic. The video of the installation of the painting in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon85 shows a group of people (including the director of the museum and Patrice Béghain) gathered around the painting, which is carefully protected in a wooden frame and in the process of being unwrapped by specialized packers using electric screwdrivers and wearing white gloves in order to handle the canvas with maximum care. One of them explains to the camera that the painting – the same one which, during the 1980s, had been stored for several months without any particular precautions in an unheated farm building – was only unpacked forty-eight hours after its arrival to give it chance to ‘acclimatize to its new environment’.
The flickering of photographers’ flash bulbs, cameras (three, in addition to the one filming the scene), microphone booms, everything is done to capture the scene and to turn it into a special event. With a round of applause at the moment when the painting, freed from its protective frame, is turned towards the gathered spectators, a second round of applause when the picture is hung on the wall, the delight of the deputy mayor as he embraces the museum’s director several times, the scene is essentially just as mysterious as the ritualistic ceremonies of societies completely alien to us. A journalist described the hanging session in these words: ‘A ceremonial unwrapping last night at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (1er), where The Flight into Egypt was gently lifted out of its crate, and hung to the accompaniment of bursts of applause.’86 It is easy to imagine what anthropologists from another civilization might write on the magic and beliefs of these individuals handling with such care an object that they welcome like a god and publicly demonstrating their collective joy. The attentiveness, the safety measures, the precautions, the jubilation, the applause, all provoked simply by the arrival of an object. It requires powerful collective beliefs in the sanctified objet d’art to trigger such a reaction and such an outpouring of emotion.87
Sylvie Ramond adopts a similar tone: ‘At last, it’s ours. We’re going to be able to show it. We’re going to be able to show it the people of Lyon. It really does belong to each of us. It’s certainly been a long story and an emotional journey.’ We can also see Isabelle Dubois-Brinkmann (curator of the MBA de Lyon and organizer of the exhibition) examining the painting with another person (wearing magnifying glasses), comparing a photograph of the work with the original work and then the same Isabelle Dubois-Brinkmann speaking about an ‘exceptional event’: ‘This is a major work in a number of ways: because it’s one of the rare examples of Poussin’s late works in any French collections. […] And also because it’s a work which is significant and moving because of its strict sobriety, because of the enormous emotion that emanates from it, but all achieved by very simple means. Just four people on a path, running away.’
From 15 February 2008 to 19 May 2008, a Poussin exhibition was consequently held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. The exhibition was organized around The Flight into Egypt, with ten paintings by the artist from the largest European museums and various paintings by artists from Paris or Lyon from the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV (Vouet, Stella, Régnier, Champaigne, Blanchard, Bourdon, Le Sueur, Le Brun, etc.). The painting is therefore linked to other pictures by the same painter (of the same period or on a similar subject), but also to other, more minor painters who had covered the same subject of the Flight or the Rest on the flight to Egypt.
But the biggest event organized by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon took place on 13 May 2008. This was a study day dedicated to The Flight into Egypt and bringing together major French and foreign experts. The recently acquired work was placed alongside its principal rival, the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version. But, after Blunt’s death (1983) and in the absence of Mahon (then aged ninety-eight), the major opponents were now inactive, and anyone who might have been in a position to question the authenticity of the work did not have the legitimacy of Rosenberg. In the absence of Thuillier, already very frail and who would die in 2011, it was Rosenberg who very much dominated on this occasion.
The art historian Olivier Bonfait describes the day:
We would like to commend Isabelle Dubois, curator for the exhibition in Lyon and the person behind this study day, along with Sylvain Laveissière (as well as the generosity of the establishments participating here). The gathering brought together about forty researchers from different geographical (from Denver to Saint Petersburg, including New York, Rome and Frankfurt) and intellectual (from art market to university and also of course museums and CNRS) spectrums. Given the interesting variety of themes suggested by the exhibition (the cycle of Christ the child related to the Flight into Egypt; the Serisier collection; Nicolas Poussin in the years between 1655 and 1657; the iconographic sources for the work), the organizers of this study day had chosen to have discussions in front of the works and then read the papers in the auditorium.88
The various different works by the master which had come from all around the world were taken out of their frames and placed onto easels so that curators, art historians, scientists from analytical laboratories and restorers could examine them in detail and compare the different works directly. But the very fact of being able to bring together a large number of American, British, Irish, Italian, German, Russian and French specialists around the recently acquired painting had a performative effect which escaped everyone’s attention. The meeting of this august assembly was in itself a way of legitimizing the painting. Each specialist, the bearer of a share of the legitimacy of their institution, and, in certain cases, of all the institutions they had been associated with, vouching, simply by their presence, for the importance of the canvas in question.89
The art historians, museum curators, restorers, engineers, etc., who gather for this kind of day never really question all the historical conditions of possibility of the interaction they have with the paintings they observe and comment on. They play their role in complete ignorance of everything which has led to this precise situation. However, to reach this point required some of the great international Poussin specialists to declare themselves in favour of the attribution of the painting to Nicolas Poussin, the opposing side, defenders of the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version, finding themselves considerably weakened, the scientific laboratories conducting their analyses, the law giving a judgement in favour of the original owner by citing the ‘erreur sur la substance’ argument, the State classifying the painting as a ‘national treasure’, that same State supporting corporate sponsorship operations by voting in new laws, companies gaining in both fiscal and symbolic terms, the municipality of Lyon and the Rhône-Alpes region taking an interest in this acquisition from the point of view of the cultural image of the city and of the region, the Musée des Beaux-Arts wanting to acquire the painting in order to consolidate its seventeenth-century collection, etc. But, more fundamentally still, on a more structural level, it demanded that art occupy a dominant position within the social world, that it was sanctified and that it would provide a variety of services to all manner of dominant entities (political elites, ‘aristocratic families’, scholars, curators, companies, etc.). As a result of the division of work and the differentiation between the various roles, each individual could thus play out their role without needing to be in any way aware of everything that had made that role possible, or in other words, without needing to be involved with, or take responsibility for, the multitude of actions which have nevertheless made all this possible.
During this day on 13 March 2008, Pierre Rosenberg frequently addressed the audience and was listened to attentively. His legitimacy was recognized by each and everyone in this gathering of the initiated, and particularly by the connoisseurs of seventeenth-century art. Everyone clustered around him and hung on his every word, he was the go-to reference, he was permitted to interrupt, etc.
For example, right at the beginning of the day, Pomarède, whose role was to introduce the day, found himself immediately interrupted by Rosenberg:
Pomarède: So the idea is that you cut in whenever you want, even if you want to interrupt when someone is in the middle of speaking, on the contrary, that’s good… welcome. That way we’ll be able to exchange ideas more quickly….
Rosenberg: Can I interrupt you right there?
Pomarède: Go ahead! [laughter from the group]
Later on in the day, at the end of a series of comments, he again intervened with a metadiscursive commentary, the one in the position of meta being of course the person in a position of power, above all the others: ‘[Listening to] what you have all been saying, it’s easy to see why Poussin is not an easy painter; how, in front of a painting like that, people … feel a little bit … Yet once they manage to penetrate this world, they are saved … But it’s the getting in, that’s the thing … penetrating this world requires a level of erudition, or at least a whole range of knowledge about things which in our day are all too often lost.’
Because of his status as world expert on Poussin, because of his role as honorary director of the Louvre and because of his membership of the Académie Française, Rosenberg majestically dominated all those assembled. Only Mahon, Blunt or Thuillier could have attracted the same level of attention. But Blunt had been dead for twenty-five years, Mahon was too old to attend and Thuillier was seriously ill. Pomarède described the gathering as follows:
There were Italians, Germans, English, an American. Academics and curators, with a Pierre Rosenberg very much present. And that’s very much evident in the film,90 because he is not the moderator but almost acts as though he were. It’s a bit unusual because everyone is standing and moving around between the art works, talking; well, it’s really, really animated, and he certainly played a real role in the dynamics of the morning.91
In the course of the day, Rosenberg turned his attention to another work by Poussin, The Massacre of the Innocents (from the Petit Palais). A work from the artist’s youth, painted around 1630, the authenticity of this painting had long been questioned, notably by Blunt. By reminding those present of these facts, Rosenberg took advantage of the occasion to say that Blunt was not always reliable when it came to authentications, thus implying that the British historian might have changed his mind about The Flight into Egypt had he lived longer: ‘Depending on the context in which this painting is placed, it is either by Poussin or it isn’t by Poussin.’ For him, there could be no doubt that this Massacre of the Innocents was indeed by Poussin (‘In my view, it is irrefutable’), but he admitted that he had not always believed the painting to be authentic:
It had its detractors – it sounds stupid, but it was at a time, before 1628 and 1629, when it was impossible to imagine Poussin painting a lot and quickly, and sometimes not always very well, or even badly. But it’s funny, because frankly this painting has changed enormously.92 Even, um … [he hesitates and shows his embarrassment, lowers his head, smiles as though to excuse himself] even I have changed my mind on this painting [smiles or laughter from those present].93
The ‘even I’ of the Académie Française member implies, without saying so directly, an awareness on the part of the speaker of his own eminence and says, in essence, to the participants: ‘If I, Pierre Rosenberg, have changed my mind even though I am one of the biggest Poussin experts, you can imagine how difficult it is for everyone else.’
Twenty-two years after his visit to the sales room in Versailles, Rosenberg re-writes history a little by explaining that his intuition was largely positive, but that everybody had been a little negligent in terms of the care given to how the work was shown and to the valuation of the painting:
In Versailles, I can’t say I would have 100% sworn that the painting was genuine. But I already had some … No, I can’t say that I was sure. I think though that, at the time, we probably could have, should have, taken a closer interest in the painting, that’s true. That said, the painting was in a sales room, there were lots of paintings in that room. In a sense, for a painting like that, what might have happened if things had been a bit more normal? This painting would first of all have been examined before being put up for sale, it would have been shown to specialists before going up for sale, it would probably have been cleaned up a bit more. A whole lot of things could have happened prior to the sale which should have been done and which were not done, that’s clear.94
Rosenberg has what is commonly referred to as ‘natural authority’. All the things he gives himself the right to do (the right to interrupt the day’s main presenter, the right to subsume his colleagues’ ideas and to dress them up in metadiscursive commentaries, the right to politely denigrate laboratory analyses in front of a representative from the research laboratory of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, the right to admit he made a mistake and spark off knowing laughter by doing so, the right to attack one of his major direct rivals, Anthony Blunt, for changing his opinion according to different contexts, etc.) were only possible because everyone, within the context of this gathering, accepted his superiority.
In the rushes from the filming of the Poussin day,95 Sylvain Laveissière, head curator of the department of paintings at the Louvre, in his introduction to The Flight into Egypt, declares with much conviction: ‘There is no issue about the originality of the painting for reasons of …, even if the informed gaze of someone who has seen a great many Poussins in his life, or anyway has at least seen the ones from this exhibition, were not enough, there are what we call repentirs, pentimenti.’
Two years later, recalling this day of 13 May 2008, Isabelle Dubois-Brinkmann, curator of ancient paintings and sculptures at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, is also struck by how strikingly obvious the authenticity of the version now belonging to Lyon seems:
Another comparison took place in the month of May 2008. It was completely obvious, and every single one, EVERY SINGLE ONE of the specialists who were there said they didn’t understand why anyone was even asking the question, because it just jumped right out at you. When you see the paintings side by side it makes you wonder why there was ever any doubt. […] A comparison was made with one of the versions, the Johnson version from the United States. It was extraordinary, and you wonder how even at the time anyone could have had any doubts about the attribution. I think there are photos of it. It’s really incredible. Suddenly, it’s so obvious, it just seems so obvious. Well, there you are, you wonder how anyone could even have hesitated. […] There is simply no way anyone could claim that the [painting from the] Johnson collection is an autograph work. The comparison in 2008 had everyone in agreement.96
But in saying that, in re-writing history, the two curators seem to have forgotten that both Blunt and Mahon, two of the great world experts on Poussin, had defended another painting and that the latter did so even after seeing the two pictures in question on several occasions. The comparison therefore only succeeded in securing the agreement of those who either agreed already, or had not clearly chosen to join the British camp. How could it be that what was not obvious to the two great British experts, would be to each and every other person? How, if not because everything had been collectively done in order to produce this sense of the obvious, even if the part played by the voluntary manipulation of beliefs was essentially very small. It is the accumulation of facts and the effects associated with the sense of legitimacy which brings about the sense of what is obvious, something not necessarily felt by those who have not lived through the same events.
The photograph (see Plate 4) of the comparison between the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ and the ‘MBA Lyon’ versions, published in the context of an article by Bonfait on 18 May 2008,97 was accompanied with the following explanatory text: ‘On the right, The Flight into Egypt from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, on the left, the so-called Piasecka-Johnson version. The confrontation took place in Lyon, 13 May 2008. Photo: D. Rykner.’
Such a photo ‘says’ silently that an original painting is on the right and a copy of it on the left. How does it say this? On one side, a framed painting, on the other a painting without a frame; on one side, a painting which is hung on the wall and placed high up, on the other, a painting placed on an easel and lower down, in front of the picture on the right. Everything is done here to dramatize the original painting, framed and hung, and its copy, un-framed and on an easel, as though the painter had just finished the copy of the original. The original and the copy, the sacred and the profane, the high and the low, the framed and the un-framed, the hung and the not hung.
In the catalogue of the Lyon exhibition of 2008, which was published in 2010 and describes itself as the account of the ‘exceptional acquisition in France of a national treasure for a regional museum’,98 it is clear once again how the history of the painting has been re-written from the standpoint of someone for whom the autograph status of the painting is obvious:
If Saint Francis announcing the end of the plague in Rome, the last painting to be re-discovered, was able to enter the Louvre collection very quickly and was immediately accepted as being the original – it should be pointed out that no copy had ever been registered – The Flight into Egypt, just as obviously an autograph work, and published as such in 1994 by Jacques Thuillier, was ignored by a certain number of specialists in favour of a smaller canvas previously published by Anthony Blunt in 1982.99
On Sunday, 9 January 2011, in an article by Didier Rykner published in La Tribune de l’art and devoted to the catalogue published under the direction of Isabelle Dubois-Brinkmann and Sylvain Laveissière, we can read the classic amazement of the person who, arriving in the wake of the battle which seems to him to have been won, cannot understand that anyone could have considered the first version of the re-discovered painting as the original:
It is hard to understand how example A, the one belonging to the Piasecka-Johnson collection, could for a split second have appeared to be an authentic Poussin. Put side by side, the evidence stuck out a mile: apart from its mediocre quality, its much smaller size (an unlikely choice on Poussin’s part for a composition on this scale), makes it look completely cramped. Yet, a great connoisseur like Mahon still believed in its authenticity, in 1997 (even though he had seen both paintings together in 1990).100
An article like this first of all demonstrates the fact that people are more easily convinced that a painting is genuine if the balance of power between competent authorities, recognized as such, tips in favour of one particular side. The author does not question the reasons which could explain that what appears to him so obvious, in other words that the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version could not be painted by Poussin, was not at all so for two of the greatest Poussin experts in the world (Blunt and Mahon), and that not only was it not obvious to them, but that one of them, who had been able to carry out a direct comparison (Blunt died in 1983, before the second version surfaced in 1986), namely Mahon, confirmed his initial judgement after the comparison.101
Discussing the situation of the two rival paintings in an interview, Duret-Robert explained that the acquisition by a major museum tends to put an end to any debate:
So, now, we have two paintings. There’s one which is very beautiful, the one belonging to the Pardo brothers. It looks like a Poussin from his finest period. And then there’s the second one, the one that belonged to Madame Johnson and which was defended by Sir Denis Mahon, who is a very good historian, with a very good eye, hmm! He’s much better than Thuillier. Thuillier doesn’t have a good eye! He’s a good art historian but … He’s dead, so I can say it now. But he was very much respected, as a professor at the Collège de France. […] In the case of Denis Mahon, I don’t see what’s changed since, except that the painting is in the Louvre, and when a painting is in the Louvre, nobody dares to say it’s no good.102
The closure of the controversy was helped by the disappearance of the main defenders of the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version. After Blunt’s death in 1983, that of Mahon, on 29 April 2011, further weakened the position of those who had insisted that the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version was the original version of The Flight into Egypt. With his death, the art historian left a vacant place and the last word to those who had taken up the cause of the other canvas. And to crown it all, on 1 April 2013, Barbara Piasecka-Johnson (born in 1937) also died, making it even more unlikely that any further attempt would be made in the near future to re-open the file on the Flight into Egypt.
After the event of 13 May 2008, Isabelle Dubois, organizer of the exhibition, contacted those who had attended to ask for written commentary about the Lyon painting for possible publication:
We would be very grateful, should you be interested in doing so, if you could provide us with a brief text which would enable us to compile a selection of comments from during and after the symposium. These could include comments on the Flight into Egypt and on the other Poussin pictures in the exhibition which formed the basis of the discussions, or even on any general subject relating to the artist. These contributions will be published in the form of quotations and will appear under your name.103
Hugh Brigstocke (ex-director of Sotheby’s of London), who had initially thought, in 1994, that the Piasecka-Johnson version was the right one,104 and had subsequently had doubts but had not wanted to take sides in the controversy between Blunt–Mahon and Thuillier–Rosenberg, wrote to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon declaring himself convinced that the right version was the one held by them. He explained that he had not seen the canvas formerly owned by the Pardo brothers since 1989 (during the exhibition ‘Thèmes de l’âge classique’), but that it was ‘obvious’ that the painting bought and exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon was an ‘autograph painting by Poussin’.
He indicated that the X-ray analyses of the two rival canvases showed that the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version did not include the ‘subtle details’ in the treatment of the sky, in Joseph’s face and in the landscape that are a feature of the Lyon painting. He added that when the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version was compared at Lyon, it had literally almost seemed to disintegrate in front of the gaze of those present (‘it did not even look like a very good copy’). But why did what seemed so obvious in the eyes of Brigstocke in 2008 fail to strike Mahon in the same way during the successive comparisons of the two paintings? What were the conditions in which this ‘disintegration’ of the Princeton version occurred? What is interesting in Brigstocke’s testimony is the fact that, without seeking to do so, he reveals the social conditions in which the magic can operate, in other words, the circumstances in which the spell can work in one direction or another.
Brigstocke thus described seeing Madame Piasecka-Johnson’s painting for the first time, in Richmond in May 1994, with Keith Christiansen (head curator of the department of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York in 2008). The visit was organized by Mahon. He remembers that Christiansen had suggested leaving the room rather than being involved in a discussion about what was obviously a copy. He went on to describe how in 1994, on the occasion of a major symposium on Poussin in Paris, he had tried to remain neutral on the issue of the two versions because he had not seen the painting owned by the Pardo brothers since 1989. Moreover, he explained that, as Mahon and Blunt supported the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version and Thuillier and Rosenberg defended the Pardo brothers’ version, it would have been extremely presumptuous of him to pronounce on the issue. But, with the first two dead, the concern about not taking sides was no longer relevant …
In May 1994 therefore, Mahon organized a new ‘assessment’ of the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version in London with all available British experts. He asked Dr Ashok Roy from the National Gallery to explain the scientific examinations which had been carried out on the painting. The latter pointed out the ‘double layer of priming’ comparable to that used by Poussin for his Annunciation; he mentioned the pentimento above St Joseph’s head, which suggested that this was the original and not a copy. A restorer from the National Gallery talked about pigments found in the canvas which resembled those from the Russian painting The Holy Family in Egypt which was on display at the Royal Academy.
In the face of all these scientific commentaries, together with Mahon’s comments on Poussin’s style, Brigstocke admitted feeling he was in the presence of the real version. His account constitutes a rather rare description of the effects of enchantment – he speaks of the ‘mass hysteria’ evident in the words of authority, those spoken by the laboratory analysts and by a great connoisseur with a world-wide reputation:
In one way or another, the group of eminent and experienced art experts on the receiving end of all this information had somehow been affected by a mass hysteria that I find hard to explain, and in the absence of the Pardo version, they began to accept the idea that we were in the process of looking at a genuine painting by Poussin, independently of the fact that the absent Pardo version could just as easily be an autograph work or could even be the first version.105
But enchantment is only evoked in cases where the person who is aware of it is describing an error of judgement. He explains in this way the note added to his text in 1994 (taken from the symposium) which mentions this London meeting and expresses the hope that the scientific data on the ‘Pardo’ version could be compared with the scientific information on the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version.
Brigstocke continues his account by observing that art historians are often too easily influenced by technical and scientific data which, according to him, are arbitrary and rarely decisive in the authentication of paintings. As a result, there was a danger of over-interpretation on the part of scholars: ‘With hindsight’, he suggests, ‘that is probably what happened in London in front of Johnson’s painting. Fixated on the coat of primer, the pigments and the pentimenti, those who were present forgot to look at the quality of the image itself, or at the unusual use of colour.’
Brigstocke was however amazed that the controversy did not end in March 1990 when Mahon (as well as Thuillier and Rosenberg) had the opportunity to see the two paintings side by side. Quite the opposite, since Mahon spoke in Monaco in 1997 in support of the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version. In conclusion, he thanked all those who had played a part in the recognition, acquisition and exhibition of the painting currently in Lyon: the Pardo brothers, Thuillier, Rosenberg and the curators from the Louvre and from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon who had ‘organized the context of a brilliant and persuasive exhibition’. He did not, however, appear to realize, in writing these words, that this context itself was as much responsible for his opinion as the one which had reigned at the London meeting considered, fourteen years on, as a great moment of collective illusion. But, with Blunt dead and Mahon very frail, the French charm and enchantment would inevitably gain ground. He concluded finally by thanking Mrs Piasecka-Johnson for ‘her courage and her generosity’, a discreet way of asserting that her painting was only a copy and that she needed to be ‘courageous’ to accept the risk of having it disqualified as an autograph work.
In the deliberately simplified history which has been set out so far, only three relatively similar paintings, representing the same scene of the Flight into Egypt, with the same characteristics in terms of composition, although of varying sizes, are presented as potentially attributable to Nicolas Poussin, finally narrowing down to just two canvases after the confrontation held in March 1990 at the Ritz Hotel.
Yet the list of versions does not stop there.106 Amongst the other paintings, there are first of all the very approximate copies, such as a poorquality painting, with very different colours, and only including the central theme of Poussin’s painting, found in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament in the church of Notre-Dame-des-Anges in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgues (Vaucluse). Clearly done from an engraving, it shows the famous tether Joseph was supposed to be holding, although this was in fact the result of an error made by the first engraver (Pietro del Po), unless of course the engraver did not after all make a mistake and the original remains lost. The same representation can be seen in the ceiling of the choir chapel in the abbey of Sainte-Marie-d’en-Haut in Grenoble, painted by the seventeenth-century painter Toussaint Largeot. The scene is reversed in comparison to the other better-known paintings, as in the engravings. And another clumsily executed copy, probably based on an engraving (it also features the tether, considered to be incorrect), is in a private collection in Lyon.
It is, however, on a fourth painting, similar in its composition and considered to be a seventeenth-century work, on display in the very modest museum of Verrières-le-Buisson, that our attention will focus for a moment. The painting in question respects the composition, the colours, the dimensions, within a few centimetres, of the ‘MBA de Lyon’ version of the painting. It is mentioned by Yves Di Domenico in the catalogue of the exhibition based around The Flight into Egypt published in 2010: ‘The painting in the museum of Verrières-le-Buisson (in the southern suburbs of Paris) deserves special mention, since it is clearly executed either from the original or from a faithful copy and not from an engraving. […] This version, skilfully executed, is extremely faithful to the original painting. We even believe it could have been created within Poussin’s circle.’107 In the paper he devotes to this work, Rykner writes: ‘The existence of a previously unknown version (ill. 3) was revealed by Yves Di Domenico in an essay on the fortunes of The Flight into Egypt by Poussin. This painting, kept in the André Malraux museum in Verrières-le-Buisson, seems to be of quite good quality and its dimensions are identical to those of the original. It was probably painted by someone in the artist’s circle.’108 This passing mention, without any further commentary or debate, of the ‘Verrières-le-Buisson’ version, which had been flagged up by a young art historian of very minor status in comparison with Rosenberg, and which at first sight seems altogether banal, turns out in the end to be astonishing.
It would be perfectly reasonable to wonder naively why a canvas so close to the ‘MBA de Lyon’ version in terms of composition, size, colours or pictorial quality, has not been examined with more attention unless it were simply that its very late discovery within the history of all the controversies as well as the absence of any suitably qualified authority likely to be interested in its case, meant it had consequently no chance of being able to compete for the status of an autograph work (see Plate 5).
But let us look more closely at the context of the museum which houses it and at the circumstances of its coming to light.109 The museum of Verrières-le-Buisson was opened in the 1980s and consists of a single room on the top floor of a municipal building. The room, which is fairly long, previously housed another museum, belonging to Vilmorin, a French seed producer, which exhibited its products, seeds, fruits, vegetables to clients and curious passers-by. Once the company had left the region and had no further use for the building, a municipal museum took its place. The collection consists of a series of works which had previously been housed in the church of Verrières-le-Buisson since 1790 (date of a first inventory of the church’s assets). These works already included The Flight into Egypt. In 1906, a new inventory of the church listed twenty-three paintings, including The Flight into Egypt then referred to as an Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise… Then, in 1975, on the impetus of Malraux, who lived in Verrières-le-Buisson, an inventory on a national scale was instigated, which began in the department of Essonne. Eleven paintings were found in the boiler room of the church and these were listed in L’inventaire supplémentaire des monuments historiques on 17 June 1977 and, in 1978, were moved to the regional archives of the Essonne. In 1982, the museum of Verrières-le-Buisson was opened and the paintings were included in the exhibition ‘Images and memories of Verrières-le-Buisson’.
Since then, the modest museum has been run by volunteers who together form the Society of Friends of the Museum (less than ten people), in the room on loan from the town hall. It only opens one Saturday afternoon per month and, on each occasion, a volunteer from the association is in attendance. Twelve canvases are on show, eleven of which were previously in the church, plus various show cases containing the vestiges of past exhibitions (on the school, local history, ancient crafts, etc.). Since the paintings were judged to be in very poor condition, the association of Friends of the Museum put pressure on the municipality to support their restoration and in 2004, were granted the funding to go ahead. The Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise, which turned out to be nothing other than a version of The Flight into Egypt, was the first painting to benefit. The president of the Society of Friends of the Museum at Verrières-le-Buisson, Michel Colonna Ceccaldi,110 PhD in electro-chemistry, engineer with Thomson-CSF and retired for twenty years, explained that before its restoration the painting was very dark with the figures hidden under a thick layer of dirt and varnish, but that once the restoration had taken place, he had been really impressed by the work, quite independently of its status:
I’m not a great believer in signatures. My own feeling is that a painting either pleases or it doesn’t, whether it’s signed by a fancy name or by an unknown … I think some paintings by Titian or Veronese are hideous and then there are unknown painters who have painted really beautiful things. In this painting, it’s the colours that I really like. They are definitely Poussin’s colours, that’s for sure.
He explained how the media exposure of the Poussin painting, now in Lyon, was precisely what drew attention to this painting and then led to the restoration request. Reading in the press articles about the painting then being acquired by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, with the accompanying photos of the painting, one of the people involved with the museum of Verrières-le-Buisson quickly spotted the connection between the two canvases. Michel Colonna Ceccaldi describes how (in 2008) he contacted the curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon to inform them of the existence of their version and it was this that had led to the visit made by Di Domenico in preparation for his article in the exhibition catalogue:
So my deputy, who keeps up with the art world because his wife sold artworks for a long time, was following this business in the press and then he said: ‘We ought to find out if this picture that all the papers are talking about might not be very similar to ours…’ And so, we had it stripped (laughs), cleaned up. It was in quite good condition, except for the bottom part where there were a few marks around where the feet are, but in the end that doesn’t change anything very radically. And once it had been restored, we saw that it was EXACTLY identical to the painting that was in Lyon… And the strangest thing was that the dimensions were exactly the same, give or take the odd centimetre. That’s when we said: ‘We’ve got to do something…’ I wrote to the museum in Lyon. It was just during the exhibition they did [in 2008]. Unfortunately, I should have done it earlier (laughs). So anyway, I wrote saying: ‘We’ve got a painting that resembles yours astonishingly, are you interested?’ And they were interested. They sent someone along, this Mr Di Domenico, who then mentioned it in the book about the painting. I got in touch with the curator of the Lyon museum six months too late. If I’d written to her six months earlier, she would have been able to see it before the exhibition.
Di Domenico had had a series of temporary contracts since graduating from the École du Louvre. For example, he gave courses in the same school and was assistant to Sylvain Laveissière (head curator at the Louvre) from 2006, taking part in the 2008 study day and being involved in the catalogue of the exhibition around The Flight into Egypt in the same year. At the time of the interview, on 7 June 2012, he had left the Louvre four years earlier and was working at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in the department specializing in bibliographic and digital information on a sixmonth contract. As a result, he no longer had time to work on the subject and hoped to go back to it at some later stage. Di Domenico did not have power to request a scientific analysis of the Verrières-le-Buisson painting but regretted the fact: ‘And that’s such a pity! Because it OUGHT to be looked at by Lumière Technology. Personally, I’d like there to be a much more technical analysis of this painting. Maybe all the specialists think there’s no point in doing it.’ He went to see the painting in December 2009, after seeing a letter from Michel Colonna Ceccaldi addressed to Sylvie Ramond, and thought that a direct comparison between the two canvases would be useful, since this was a copy of the painting not based on an engraving. The vase has its handles and the donkey’s halter and tether are missing, the colours are respected and the size is approximately the same (‘It really is a work of great quality’). Before this letter from Michel Colonna Ceccaldi, no one knew about the existence of this painting and Di Domenico emphasizes the fact that ‘this REALLY is a discovery’. But apart from him, no one else connected to the Louvre had been to see the canvas at the time of the interview.
On the subject of a possible Poussin authentication, Di Domenico has no illusions about the importance of a suitable position of authority. Any research on the authenticity of canvases presupposes the power to order scientific analyses, a power which not everyone can claim. But more importantly, the power to authenticate, to attribute or disattribute, to make an old master’s canvas exist or to relegate it to the status of a crude copy, relies on positions of power within the major firms of experts or in the great museum or academic institutions. Looked at this way, Rosenberg’s authority appears virtually absolute, particularly given that all the great worldwide Poussin specialists capable of competing with him have now died. It is enough for those individuals who have the authority to say what paintings really are, to fail to take an interest in them, for all sorts of reasons (heavy workload, conviction that the genuine canvas has been definitively recognized and that there is no point in further research, etc.) for paintings to remain in obscurity:
You know, attributing a canvas to Poussin is a complicated business. You can’t do it just like that. If Pierre Rosenberg says no, it’s no, huh! We’re talking about Poussin, so it’s not that simple! With this painting, I don’t know what will be discovered if it continues to be worked on but… With Isabelle [Dubois-Brinkmann] we’d really planned to keep going with it. And then I think it’s all very much linked to the fact that the various people involved all went off in different directions. Everyone got caught up in other things. When you’re a curator like S. Laveissière, he’s tied up with other projects, same with Isabelle Dubois too, Sylvie Ramond, well you know, all that stuff. They don’t need to look any further. Poussin, that’s Pierre Rosenberg’s subject. I personally wouldn’t say anything! For the time being. I think it’s a painting with a certain interest but, beyond that, no! I can’t say today that it’s a work by Poussin, that would be completely crazy, no-no.111
This painting, which is closer to the ‘MBA de Lyon’ canvas than to the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version, represents an interesting case of a ‘fine example’ which has not yet found its legitimate defender(s). Yves Di Domenico, at that time just an assistant to Sylvain Laveissière, only came to look at it in the context of the preparations for the catalogue linked to the exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and in the context of writing a piece about copies of the autograph painting. Straightaway, even before examination of any kind, the status of this new painting cannot be anything other than a copy since nobody had enquired about seeing it except in the context of a presentation of the version purported to be the original, the one for which everything possible had been done in order to acquire it, in spite of the €17 million price-tag. The legitimate place was therefore already taken. And it was perfectly logical that an assistant, without any performative power to qualify, should find himself delegated to look at the case, in the context of an article on ‘copies’ he was writing for the exhibition catalogue.
For their part, the association of the Friends of the Museum of Verrières-le-Buisson112 are not very keen to see the painting taken out of their hands. Attracting too much attention to it, by having it looked at by experts, would mean running the risk of losing it or of provoking a whole raft of problems (problems of insurance, security, etc.):
We’re not really interested in finding out whether it’s an original, a studio copy, or nothing at all. Because I don’t want to make too much of a thing about it … If it was (laughs) a studio copy or an original, I’d find myself obliged to construct some kind of transparent bullet-proof wall, etc., well, anyway, a whole lot of fuss that I don’t have (laughs) the means to pay for. And then, I’ve been threatened with having it taken away and put in the storerooms at the Louvre for example, if it’s not adequately protected. It would be a source of awful problems. So we’re not really interested in finding out if it’s an original or a studio copy. But it’s still pretty strange given that it looks more like the real painting (laughs), the painting which has been declared as the original work, than anything else that’s been found, including the painting that was in Monaco [the ‘Princeton’ version, shown in Monaco by Mahon]. I must admit that it’s all a bit awkward. The mayor was already kind enough – we’ve known each other for a long time – to pay for the restoration, when there were lots of other more urgent things that needed doing in the town, so asking him to pay for an armoured panel, wouldn’t really … I’m not keen on getting it appraised, first of all because I’m afraid of finding out that it is an original, and then I’d be in trouble! And also because it wouldn’t be cheap! Again, it costs a fortune, and then if it turns out that it’s an original painting, we’d be facing a whole host of problems!
Nevertheless, even though he claims not to be particularly curious to know whether the painting is a simple copy or an original work, M. Colonna Ceccaldi has in fact taken steps to re-contextualize the presence of such a painting in Verrières-le-Buisson; a step which leaves open the possibility of a link with the Poussin painting:
How is it possible that valuable paintings can turn up in a shabby church in a little town which a hundred years ago had a population of 2000 people? It’s quite simple really. Verrières is a bit of a special town. I’ll give you a quick history of the town. Louis XIII and Louis XIV loved to hunt. They had the woodland around Versailles of course but it wasn’t big enough. So they seized all the woodland which belonged to the church across the whole area. This included the forest of Verrières which was called Buisson-les-Verrières and which was very attractive to them, because it was a little bit more remote. So the kings hunted there a lot up until the Revolution, and even afterwards too. … The result was that practically at the beginning of the seventeenth century, there were seven or eight great estates here, which belonged to people who were going to seek favours from the King. These estates were not as expensive as the ones around Versailles of course. So the area became a sort of second home for certain noblemen. And so, until recently, the town had a rather bizarre shape to it. In the centre, there were the Verriérois, who lived around the church, and who were for the most part, well 95% of them, peasants, and further out, there were these seven or eight huge properties which completely blocked their view … And so, you need to understand that, in Verrières, there were the peasants, but there were also seven or eight noble families who could very well have donated paintings to the church. … A Poussin, at the time when it was painted. We know the names of the owners of these chateaux. Some of them were quite well-known. For example, the chateau which is now called le Château Estienne d’Orves, or the Château de Paron, was owned by someone quite well-known, a certain Benoît. Benoît was sculptor appointed to Louis XIV. And he made a certain number of well-known busts. And he also created, a bit like the Musée Grévin of the time, wax models of people, etc. It was the fashion at the time, when someone was buried, around 1700, to have lifelike figures of people in wax, etc. So this famous sculptor lived here. And he must have been pretty well-off, since he was Louis XIV’s favourite sculptor. … So why couldn’t he have bought a Poussin?
Be all that as it may, although their intrinsic properties are very similar, the paintings of Lyon and of Verrières-le-Buisson exist in radically different contexts and are treated in very different ways. One of them is permanently exhibited in one of the great regional museums in France. The other is visible only one afternoon per month in a little museum in the suburbs outside Paris. Only the most daring young art historians, looking to defy the judgements made by existing or departed art historians could possibly show any interest in this version and seek to change its status and its value and what happens to it.