THE FACE IN THE MIRROR

THE FACE IN THE MIRROR

Undoubtedly it had been a big,  a good stroke of luck, indeed a colossal stroke of luck, a godsend, as everyone had said him, both friends, relatives and acquaintances, and even those who did not know him, but who had known what (it) had rained on him. Since he, George P., thirty years old, freelance journalist, with modest income, who led a barely dignified life, had suddenly, and at all unexpectedly found himself heir of a truly colossal  fortune, such colossal it was that he was rather scared than enthusiastic when he thought about it. An aunt of his grandmother, who(m) he had never known, and of whom, even if could sometimes have happened that his grandmother had mentioned the name, he could say that he was unaware of the existence, had died, almost centenarian, designing him the unique heir of her immense fortune. The inheritance of the great-aunt ___Adalgisa C.____included large land holdings, both cultivated land, mostly vineyards, and woods, and then wineries, which produced excellent wines, and ceramic factories, and shoe factories, jewelers, not to mention the fabulous bank deposits, and a lot of shares on the stock exchange……a really huge patrimony, too huge, George thought to find it among your hands from day to day, unexpectedly. The great-aunt Adalgisa had been a woman with great entrepreneurial skills, but much of her wealth was due to the inheritances she had received upon the death of their husbands. Yep, the great-aunt had had four husbands , and from each of them she had inherited upon their death. Even if her four husbands had died of a natural died, it was inevitable that certain rumors  had circulated about the great-aunt Adalgisa.

George had been so impressed, indeed shocked, by the amount of that unexpected heritage, that he didn’t have time to think about the difficulties he would have had on complying with the request which his great aunt had made him as an indispensable condition to be fulfilled in order to take possession of the heredity. The request he should have fulfilled was far from easy, it too had something incredible, like that stroke of luck which, without doubts, had been the unexpected heritage.

Adalgisa C. had also been  a passionate collector of works of art, mostly interested in works, above all paintings, which were rarities of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Well, what George should have to do to get hold of the colossal heritage, concerned right the quality as a collector of the great aunt, or, more precisely, it concerned her precious collection, to house which she had built a neo-Gothic building that____George had seen the neo-Gothic building only in photographs ____looked a little like a church, a little like a castle.

From her precious and even renowned collection a drawing , which was a truly rarity, and to which Adalgisa was very keen, also because she had been to find out this very rarity, had disappeared since a long time .It was a pencil drawing on blue paper, of modest size, but it was believed, also by some experts, that it could be a work by Raphael as a teenager, which he had done, still living in Urbino. His great-aunt affirmed, it was written in her will, that she knew who(m) had made the Raphael’s drawing disappear from her collection: it was Count Alvise of Toulose, who lived in a magnificent palace in Venice. He was a passionate collector of art works , too, and it had to be right in his palace on the Grand Canal that he had  taken the precious drawing he had stolen from her collection. Yes, she was sure of it, just as she was sure that Count Alvise had taken it away, she was as sure as she had seen him with her own eyes, even if she had not seen him. Unfortunately Count was dead since a long time without she had been able to regain possession of that very precious drawing ( which had still have been In Count’s palace, she reaffirmed with conviction) . Here was what great –aunt Adalgisa asked to George ( great- aunt’s request to George) : he had to recover that drawing of the adolescent Raphael. Then, he, Count Alvise was gone, but, if not some of his sons, at least some of his grandsons had still to be alive.,

And now they were the owners of the palace and of everything inside the palace. No, great-aunt Adalgisa had not written in her will urging him to enter the palace ______and to steal that drawing. George ,instead, should have convinced the heirs of Count Alvise to return the precious early work of Raphael. If they had not accepted simply to return it, that is for free, he should have tried to buy it back from them, even paying a great amount of money.

Certainly for George it was not a simple and easy request to satisfy.

He couldn’t help wondering why his great aunt, if she had been, as it seemed, adamantly sure that the Raphael ‘s drawing had been stolen by Count Alvise_____and she seemed also have been sure it had been taken in the Count’s palace on the Canal Grand_____why she had not reported him? Perhaps  since she had not been able to denounce the Count? This circumstance left George somewhat perplexed , and (it) remembered him of the rumors, the suspicions which had been made about his great aunt , concerning the death of her four husbands. Of those rumors he, who did not remember to have heard them at the time they had circulated, had found out ( learned) by consulting the chronicles of very distant years, when he was a child , or even when he was not yet born.  So George had happened to read, in the newspapers which had written about the death of her third husband, but above all about of the death of her fourth husband, statements about her great aunt which were rather impressive . It was not uncommon to find headlines like this in the newspapers of the time: “HERE SHE IS, ADALGISA C., THE LADY WHO FIRST MARRIES THEM, AND AFTER KILLS THEM, becoming richer and richer at the death of each of her husband.”

However, despite rumors and even suspicions, his great aunt had never been tried on charges of killing any of her husband.

There was also another question that George had continued to ask himself until he had read the writing that the great aunt had attached to her will. How could she had been so irremovably sure that the drawing in her hands was really by Raphael? To him, who was not an art expert, but who knew the Raphael’s works that drawing didn’t seem like much. But when he had read the story which his great aunt had left him, asking him to read it before going to work for the recovery of the precious drawing, a very rarity, he started to understand. The story which Adalgisa C. had attached to her will could have been the story of a novel. She could have believed, without the shadow of a doubt, that she had found out and had come in possession of a very precious rarity, none either than a hitherto unknown work of the very first Raphael , not only since eminent and distinguished and renowned art historians had assured her about it, of course after they had made their expertise of the drawing, and their expertise had to have cost a considerable amount of money to his great aunt.  No, she didn’t write   the amount, but George could understand

the price which she had to pay for…. be assured by all those very distinguished and renowned and eminent experts that the drawing in her hands was really by Raphael (he could understand how she had paid)  from how much she insisted ( had insisted) to name the many academic qualifications and acknowledgments obtained by those very big professors, very great experts in works of art and very great connoisseurs of Raphael.

But there was more, much more besides the reassurances of those very renowned and eminent and distinguished professors which had convinced great aunt Adalgisa to be the lucky owner of a real priceless rarity like that work of a very young Raphael, of a budding Raphael.

She told in that kind of memoir, that she had attached to her will, how she had arrived, after not a few searches, and efforts, and adventures, too, to find out that real treasure, of which a fortune teller had first mentioned to her, whom she had met by chance at a party of charity. That kind of treasure hunt had  finally brought his great aunt to a young woman who, oh, you could say only seeing her, at a first sight of her, but sure that she was what she claimed to be: a descendant, and a descendant in a direct line from ….from Raphael. The young woman had also showed her a genealogic tree which began with Raphael S. ( born in Urbino in 1483---died in Rome in 1520 ) and ended with Cecilia Cecioni ( born in Rome in 1960) Here, the young woman was the daughter of Cecilia Cecioni, even if her name had not yet added in the genealogic tree.  She, the girl who looked like to Raphael, not by chance was called Raffaella , and even,____could it be thought by chance?___she painted, she was an appreciated painter. It had been from Raffaella, the descendant in direct line from Raphael, that his great aunt had finally found the….treasure she had searched for so long. To George it seemed to understand that, at least, as much as….a real treasure she had paid it. George, after he had read the story written by the great aunt Adalgisa, had been seized by a great curiosity to know that Raffaella, a direct descendant of none other than Raphael, a painter she too…… However, he decided, as a first step to recover the precious drawing , of tracing the heirs of Count Alvise of Tolouse. He thus learned that Count’s sons were dead, too. Only his three grandsons remained alive. Two of them , however, had since a long time moved, one to Australia and one to Japan. Only one of his grandsons was still living in the great palace on the Grand Canal, the Prince Bartholomew, of the Counts of Toulose. George sent him an email, asking if he could meet him in person_____and the Prince  kindly invited him to visit him in his magnificent palace. The Prince Barholomew even sent him a gondola to reach his palace from the station. George was thrilled. The palace, built in the sixteenth century, was truly enchanting, fairytale like. The carved white marbles embroidered the façade of a pale pink, which was shining with the sun light and with the reflection of the sun light that the mirror of the water made bouncing, swaying. When he walked through the door, George had the feeling to enter another world, a dream world, ethereal, enchanted, a world made of a subtler matter than that of the everyday world.

However Prince Bartholomew introduced himself  in sportswear and received him in a small study furnished modernly, even if with great taste.

George explained his problem to him, showed him his great aunt’s will, for him to read.

The prince remembered to have heard talking about a drawing by the first Raphael, even if he didn’t remember to have ever seen it. Of course George had brought him the photo of the drawing .  Unfortunately that drawing, which also his father believed was by Raphael,  was not since some time in the collection which his grandfather Alvise had bequeathed to his sons. Prince Bartholomew knew this for sure since he had heard his father complain of the its disappearance.

Ah, he had sighed, it had have been his uncle, Count Alvaro, who had sold the drawing by Raphael to pay his gambling debts. Ah, where , in the hands of whom it could now be, he, the Prince didn’t really know.

George felt lost: he absolutely needed find that drawing in order to get hold of his great aunt’s inheritance. That drawing…..with a light line, rather uncertain than delicate, of which he had only the photograph, portrayed in profile the face of someone who could be indifferently a man as a woman. And this someone was holding a mirror in his hands, a mirror in which it is drawn, as if it were about to come out of the mirror, another face, this front portrait. Here, it was in this face which looked out of the mirror, which seemed to come forward from the mirror, that one could recognize the face of Raphael as it is known by his self portrait. The drawing was nothing exceptional, yet George had to admitted , observing it ,  that is its photo, more carefully, that it struck, indeed conquered, precisely for that face which seemed to be going to come out of the mirror and which was the face of Raphael.

By now, if he wanted to take possession of the inheritance, George had only to resort to…..the direct descendant of Raphael.  Raffaella Cecioni was a painter almost known in Urbino, where she lived, even if no one believed that she was really a descendant of Raphael.

She remembered his great aunt and the drawing of her illustrious ancestor , which she had sold to Adalgisa.  Raffaella accepted, for a considerable fee, to make a copy of that drawing by Raphael.

So George was able to secure his great aunt’s inheritance.