“You spoke to Alex Janson?” Prof. Horner asked, giggling a little. “That must have been some interview!”
         “Well, she came off a bit pompous,” said Katie. “Mainly, she said she wouldn’t say anything about the Vermeer being authentic or not, because she had seen all the Vermeers in the world, except this new painting, and wasn’t invited to inspect it in Hong Kong.”
         “You can be sure she put in a request.”
         “So, you know her?”
         “Everybody in the scholarly community knows Alex. Her father wrote the textbook every college still uses, Janson’s History of Art.  She’s considered brilliant by some and an eccentric windbag by others.  Her writing is thorough. She does her work carefully. But, if she thinks she will not be consulted on a painting, she just blows everyone else off who is.  She thinks she has a direct line to all the Dutch artists in heaven. Maybe hell, too.”
         “Isn’t that a little ridiculous for someone whose own reputation is as a scholar of Dutch art?”
         “Yes, but, you see, Alex got burned, really burned, a few years back by authenticating a work by another Dutch artist of the period—I think it was a Franz Hals—and it turned out to be a modern-day fake. She’d put her reputation on the line on behalf of the seller, got paid well for her opinion, then, when the thing was discovered to be a fake, both she and the auction house were roundly criticized and sued over the mess.”
         “Does that kind of thing happen often?” asked Katie. “I mean, we’re talking about the most important painting to come on the market in many years.”
         “I’m afraid it does, and collectors, auction houses, sellers, buyers and the families of artists are getting more litigious all the time.  It’s gotten so bad that the College Art Association is selling insurance to the experts in case they get sued. At the moment the Association recommends that art historians offer opinions only if the owner of the work makes a written request and promises to indemnify the scholar against legal damages.”
         “She did hint that because the new painting is not in the official CR that it would be very tough to prove its authenticity.”
         “Well,” sighed Horner, “a CR is still considered to be something close to the bible on an artist’s work—even though there have been a lot of additions and subtractions in the past thirty years, because the tools for identifying an artist are so much better than before. In fact, a scholarly group called the Rembrandt Research Project worked for forty years on his CR and eventually booted 150 works off the list that were once declared to be Rembrandt’s. You can imagine how that felt if you had for years—or centuries—thought you owned a real Rembrandt, maybe worth millions.”
         “And there’s no protection against that kind of thing?”
         “Not really, There are too many experts who hold what is called the droit moral, which protects the artist from being copied or his work altered in any way, and that expert almost always has final say, whether or not he or she really has expertise.”
         “How the heck could that happen?”
         “I’ll tell you a funny story. The Cubist master Georges Braque (left) was a friend of a sculptor named Henri Laurens (below), who had a bicycle accident in which his testicles were crushed. Poor guy, couldn’t father any children afterwards. So, the story goes, Braque himself slept with Laurens’s wife and produced a son, named Claude, who was given Braque’s okay to defend his droit moral and determine his CR. Later, Claude and his son, Laurent, were involved in quite a scandal when Christie’s tried to sell a Braque pastel for $600,000, and others insisted it was a fake.  It was all a big mess. Lots and lots of countersuits.”
         “Excuse the pun,” said Katie, “but Laurent must have had real balls.”
      “So apparently did Braque. The thing about all the authenticating business—and it is a big business—is that it’s getting increasingly more difficult, when these sums of money are involved, just to take the word of the seller and his record of provenance.  A lot of scholarly committees have gotten out of the business because they don’t want to risk being sued.”
         “But you said there are new techniques being developed to determine scientifically the age and paint composition and so on of a painting.”
         “It’s getting better, but they’re just markers put up against the practiced eye of an expert. That’s why Alex Janson never accepts the science. She thinks her knowledge—and it is vast—counts for way more than the chemical analysis of a particular color of blue pigment.”
         “And where does that leave the Vermeer?” asked Katie.
         “Good question. The history of its provenance is going to have to be very strong.  You, David and I and Professors Mundt and Lìu may have come up with a great theory about how it got to China, but it’s only a theory, and would need a lot more investigation. I doubt sales records are still around from the 1660s.”
         “Do you think, then, that the Chinese can get enough documentation to verify the painting?”
         “Y’know, Katie, what makes this all so fascinating is that it does sound so bizarre that a painting by Vermeer would show up in China, and that it’s been lying in secret somewhere for centuries, and then it’s announced as if some curator at the Beijing National Museum tripped over it by accident and said ‘Eureka!’—or whatever they say in China.  But it’s the very idea of its being bizarre that suggests no one would make such a wacky claim without there being a good deal of information and scholarship already done. It’s going to be an interesting show.”
         “This is September,” said Katie, “and I’m told the auction will take place in November. Is that really enough time for analysis?”
         “Not usually, but there’s nothing usual about this whole business. That Young Woman Seated at the Virginal has been poked over for fifty years now without agreement. I suspect the Chinese will bring over bonafide Vermeer experts with unquestioned reputations and theirs will be the final word.  The auction house and the bidders will either take it or leave it and try to protect themselves in the catalog listing with some kind of disclaimer. Y’know, ‘sold as is.’ If it’s real, it will sell for a fortune, and only increase in price in years to come. God forbid the painting turns out to be a fake!  
      “Which is why the auction houses are not speaking to the press at all about it. They can’t afford to make a $100 million mistake on a world stage.”
         Katie had no intention of bringing up David’s and her suspicions about criminal activity.  Those pieces still didn’t fit together. So Katie thanked the professor and said she’d keep in touch with any further news.
         “And say hello to John Coleman for me,” said Horner. “Tell him I like what he’s doing with this story.”
         “Will do. I plan on calling him tonight. At the moment he’s down with a bad cold, so I’ll try to cheer him up.”
         Of course, Katie intended to bounce off Coleman what she’d learned that afternoon from the two art professors. So, when she got home, she poured herself a glass of wine and dialed him at home.
         The phone rang four times, followed by a routine recording saying, “The person you are trying to reach is not available at the moment . . .”    
       Katie hung up, said to herself she’d let Coleman sleep, made herself dinner and went to bed early.
         The next day, not too early, she called Coleman again and got the same message. So, although she knew he was always up to his ears with closing the week’s issue of Art Today on Monday, she  waited till then to call him at his office. His desk phone rang and, after five rings, a young woman picked it up. “John Coleman’s desk,” she said. “Carol speaking.”
         “Carol, hi,” said Katie, “This is John’s friend Katie Cavuto.  Can I speak to John?”
         “Oh, I’m sorry, Katie.  John’s not in today.”
         “Oh, poor guy, he’s still that sick?”
“He’s out of the country. I think he’s in China.  I don’t think he gets back till tomorrow.”
    “Oh, well, in that case, you wouldn’t have his cell phone number, would you?”
         “Sorry, no.”
         “Okay, then will you just have him call me when he gets in, Carol?”
         “Sure thing.”
         Katie hung up and wondered how what seemed to be a very ill friend, who said he was going to collapse in bed all weekend, could fly off to another country for business, especially when Monday was the day his very small, overworked staff pushed themselves to put out the next issue of his magazine.