Page 23 - Vision & Ecstasy - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's St. Francis.

from the Kimbell. The National Gallery had
contacted them directly without the courtesy of
informing me first and told them what they had
discovered in the laboratory. The left and right
edges of the picture had been sliced off and
reattached to the top and bottom of the
composition but worse, what had appeared as a
war damage tear in the centre of the picture was
in fact a separation in the canvas where the
threads did not match indicating that a slice of
background had been removed. The sale fell
through and we resolved as a result to fully clean
the painting with Robert Shepherd and reattach Fig. 16.
the lateral portions.The result was a Cotán of
more classical proportions and a painting whose surface quality and impasto, with the exception of the knife
cuts, was near perfect.A slither perhaps three centimetres wide of neutral background had been removed from
the centre of the composition. It was still a work of immense beauty but compromised. In 1988 one morning
before lunch Basia came to visit, fell in love with the image (she always had a discerning eye) and reserved the
painting at a significant discount to the Kimbell price but still a hefty profit. That very afternoon Pierre
Rosenberg, the chief curator of the department of paintings at The Louvre visited and repeatedly insisted he
had to have the painting there and then. I said that regrettably he could not as it was reserved. Once again Basia
won the day. Sadly she did not let me handle this painting on resale. Christies muscled in and the painting appeared
as Bodegón with a cardoon and francolin on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 [Lot 00094] where it fetched $
7,840,842 or approximately some six times what I had sold it to her for 16 years earlier! Clearly I am a really
lousy dealer because this was the second time I was trumped by the auctioneers! Nevertheless coming when it
did the sale of the Cotán saved the day for the gallery and ensured total independence from our historic backers.
There was just one more major near sale to Basia and this also occurred in 1989.The gallery was privileged to handle
what may be the most important painting of its recent history, Jacopo Bassano’s Miraculous Draught of Fishes.(Fig.16)
The picture had not been cleaned for 150 years at least and was exceptionally ‘yellowed’ and untouched. In this
‘virgin’ condition it was just what any curator of a major museum dreams of. However, when Basia saw the picture
she was captivated by the beauty of the Raphaelesque composition and wanted an option. Months if not a year of
negotiations with her attorneys ensued until a deal was struck at $12,000,000,or thereabouts,I no longer remember

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