The Portrait in the Louvre

by Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé

translated by Patricia Worth

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

In one glance he took in the figures he knew as they came forth into the dimly lit space. He could see them all from a distance, as though they had come out of their picture plane. He lost them and found them again in their constant movement. Some would appear, others would disappear. Was this capricious game of lights and shadows simply the moon moving across the sky, some clouds veiling it? He no longer sought to understand. He who knew so well that all these people were living, why would he be amazed to see them moving about? He was not even surprised by the sure sign of life when a gown or cloak projected onto the ground a shadow, so light and diaphanous! He gave himself up to the intoxication of this silent ball, pursuing the familiar forms in their flight.

They mingled in new groupings. He recognised, gathered at each end of the room, people from Venice, people from Florence, some Flemish burghers and Spanish saints. Around the Virgins some monks in ecstasy; near the ladies of beauty, some men assembled to gaze on them, with happy eyes, not with desire or infatuation, contemplative in perfect bliss. More than ever he could read on all these faces the internal joy of an uninterrupted thought, the immense sweetness of a peaceful life, having forgotten pain and worry. He envied them but was not bitter, he felt close to them, he was swayed by their calmness, except he would have liked to communicate more, and for it never to end.

On the following nights the spectacle was repeated. Each time, the brotherly creatures came a bit closer and seemed to admit him more willingly into the mystery of their meetings. He could not have recalled what he had done during the day; he was very tired, half asleep, insensitive to external things.

Come Christmas Eve, a memory was awakened in his mind, the idea of an irksome obligation to fulfil. The idea came to him from far back in an existence almost abolished, like a letter received from a land where one has sojourned in the past. He went out. For a moment the noisy bustle of the crowd drew him out of himself once more. The flow of this present life took hold of him again.

In the house where he reappeared after a long absence, he was greeted with surprise, then scorn. He had the effect on others, and on himself, of a dead man returning to his place and finding it occupied by successors. When he was near the woman whose cruel cheerfulness droned in his ears, everything to him was acute suffering, a reopened wound. The radiance of this beauty, the voice, the laugh, the perfume, all of it was too strong for his organism, which was used to extremely tenuous sensations. It was an unbearable torture; human tears rose from this heart detached from humanity, tears too heavy, too passionate for him. He fled. Night was falling, covering the sombre city in a layer of snow. He automatically ran to his refuge.

He entered through the Galerie d’Apollon. The moon was rising behind old Paris, transforming the city beneath a white veil. Diagonal moonbeams streamed in through the wide windows at the corners, light which had gathered up all the diffused whiteness from the rooves, the quays and the river rolling its pale water past the Louvre. The bright Elysian light, wherein hung a slight mist, bathed the depths of the rooms, looking less like a night than a sickly dawn. Through the open doors he saw all the dear figures who were calling him with their indulgent gravity. At this welcome the bad things of recent days fell away from his heart.

He was waking after a nightmare; in this intangible society he was regaining his mind’s balance. As on previous nights, the figures were moving about, harmonious and free. While he was watching them, the hard, heavy lines of stone walls or ceilings vanished into thin air behind boundless horizons; woods and green wheatfields caressed by Ruisdael’s watery suns; Canaletto’s grey lagoons; Van der Neer’s sleepy seas; Perugino’s ideal Umbrian landscapes with their backgrounds of blue mountains and spectral trees with narrow golden leaflets, slender as ferns from a primitive world.

He wandered through these fanciful countries one by one as they merged in changing combinations with the silhouette of the snowy city glimpsed below. Time had stopped; the clock hands no longer moved. And this stopping of Time gave him the impression of a final victory over human misery.

But what was that indistinct noise disturbing the usual silence? The sound of bells, no doubt, sent out around midnight by the churches, fragile and feeble as a sigh. Such a ringing from a distant bell tower descends into the fireplace in winter through the tall chimney, and seems to come straight from heaven. Perhaps the sigh was even coming from the organs in Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois? No, it was softer than the organ and shyer than the bell; it was the wind brushing a swamp of reeds, all whispering in unison. And now he could distinguish words with German or Italian inflections; but although he had mastered these two languages, he could not understand them; they were incorporeal words, their meaning elusive.

He made every effort to concentrate, and at last, as he slowed his steps beneath the encompassing gaze of the Mona Lisa, he caught an appeal in a whisper: “Dream with us.” Farther along, the two old alchemists by Rembrandt were reading from their books: “We have the secrets of life.” The Charles I by Van Dyck murmured: “Here, you are revived and you reign.” A Virgin by Raphael spoke more distinctly: “There is only one way to come to us. Suffering. You are at the end. Come.”

Then he turned towards the beautiful company of people enjoying themselves around the table in The Wedding at Cana: he cried out, his hands clasped: “Oh, receive me into your eternal peace! Protect me from the living. I feel I am yours, make a place for me among you!” Heads bowed; they smiled at him from everywhere, hands reached out to him with a touch less perceptible than a breath. They led him towards the great light in the Galerie d’Apollon, where the cortège of noble beings was spreading out before him.

But the gallery was fading. The forms were wandering in the blank space, over the slow-rising water of the river, the very place which the windows looked out onto earlier. Was it the water, the liquid moonlight, or the light from all these eyes fixed on him? He did not know, he followed them along the indistinct path, lost with them in this element filling him with a delicious coolness.

Something heavy flowed unceasingly out of him: it was suffering; something light entered; it was peace. The remains of his body were slowly ebbing away into the fluid that crept over the threshold of his lips. He felt himself becoming thin, transformed and empty like them; empty at last of all suffering, while more peace entered, always peace...

* * *

Mysterious links connect all the phenomena occurring in the world in the same moment. When one is convinced of this truth, one can find a lot of meaning in the apparent jumble of the newspaper, that mirror which vaguely reflects all the facts of contemporary life. While flicking through the papers of the era, we gathered the following information lost in the flood of daily news in just one issue, dated the last day of December. Firstly, a brief human interest item:

Recently we reported to our readers that one of the Louvre curators had disappeared. We still have no news about this employee. He led a very uneventful life; his colleagues have considered every possible conjecture. Today, for a while, we believed we had solved the mystery. Last night some bargemen pulled a body from the Seine, upstream from the Saints-Pères Bridge. It was entirely unrecognisable. A few distinctive features of the suit and the brands of his shirt and undergarments would fit with the description of our missing man’s clothing; but the facial features are too disfigured for any definite conclusions to be drawn from this poor evidence.

There is, in any case, one serious objection: Monsieur X went missing five or six days ago at the most, and doctors have declared that the body submitted to them for examination had been lifeless for several weeks. Since doubt remained, the Undersecretary of Fine Arts had decided to hold a funeral at the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. We have just learned in the last hour that this plan has been postponed due to insufficient evidence to establish the identity.”

We read a little later on, in the Fine Arts column:

In a few days we will have the pleasure of viewing a masterpiece of the Italian school, which by an absolute miracle has just enriched our national art museum’s collection, and for which all of Europe will envy us. Among the paintings submitted this year to be re-canvased, the administration had included a rather mediocre portrait of an unknown man, a heavy painting with no style that was curious to encounter in the Louvre collections. As the conservator was closely examining it, he noticed that a much older figure was concealed beneath some rough overpainting that had been added by an unknown hand. One of our most skilful restorers removed this extra layer from the canvas.

After he had successfully completed the delicate work, he found himself in the presence of a new portrait, a superb work in which the experts quickly recognised the style of Leonardo da Vinci. A few features of the unknown subject were only sketched in, which might be explained by the sacrilege of one of the master’s students taking liberties. The physiognomy is nevertheless admirable in its expression and its life, with the serenity which distinguishes the compositions of the great Tuscan painter.

In the report which the State Undersecretary of Fine Arts has just prepared about this discovery, he says quite correctly: “It seemed to us that a soul, at last released from its envelope, was revealing itself to us in all its freedom and beauty.”

Everyone admired the portrait in the Louvre and agreed with this appraisal. Is it really a creation by Leonardo? Like all works of art which have the supreme gift of life, it has no date, since it remains outside of time. The first time we saw it, a few connoisseurs who had stopped before the portrait were listening to the witticisms of an old dauber:

“These beings are superior,” he was saying, “because they have all the same thoughts that we have, all the same feelings, and many more besides, except they bear them more lightly, without tiring. While thoughts are constantly tormenting us, in them they rest peacefully.

“As for what you’re telling me, that you’ve seen this face somewhere, it’s always like this for men of consummate beauty; we believe we’ve seen them somewhere; we have them within us. I would refer you to Plato. Good Lord! It’s like this woman here, yet another type that existed at an earlier time, for our punishment!”

And he pointed to a passing beauty, surrounded by a group of artists, offering her arm to an older man, a relative or a husband. She was laughing loudly, feeling like a queen under the admiring gaze of those following her. At the painting, she suddenly turned away from them and said:

“You know, I, too, have seen that face somewhere, but it was not as handsome. Oh! Beautiful portrait! How I love it! I must have it! What I wouldn’t give for it!”

Her companion smiled. “That’s the only one of your whims that will not be satisfied. The portraits that come in here are sacred, secured even against your impulses. The State guarantees them a place in perpetuity.”

“And I’m telling you, if they let him, he would follow me. See how his eyes are looking into mine!” she said as she moved away.

“It’s the usual optical illusion. Being a da Vinci, it’s not surprising that this portrait has the effect of following an observer with the eyes, like the Mona Lisa.”

“Stop that! It’s me his eyes are seeking; I can feel it. I mean, he is moist-eyed; it wouldn’t take much for him to cry.” The rest of the conversation was lost in her laughter.

The old dauber shrugged: “There she goes! It’s not enough for her to torment the living. She imagines she can bring tears to these immortal eyes.”

While he was speaking, we were looking at the portrait. Was this another optical illusion? For a moment we seemed to see, on this face so calm, a sad flame unsettling the eyes.

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