Dietrich / ConnoisseurshipAndCrimeFiction

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Connoisseurship and Crime Fiction

INTRODUCTION

After retiring from being a curator at the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gisela M. A. Richter, in 1953, went to settle, with her sister Irma, in Rome. An apartment with a lovely view onto the Villa Sciarra was found, and one thing that Gisela Richter now did particularly enjoy, according to her memoirs, was to relax »with Simenon’s Maigret« (see My Memoirs, p. 35).

isela Richter had partly grown up in Italy. More precisely: she had grown up among the connoisseurs, and this not only in Italy, but later also in London, in the UK, where she did also study archaeology. She had grown up among the connoisseurs, because her father, Jean Paul Richter, had been one; and her father had been mentored by Giovanni Morelli, the one connoisseur being associated often, maybe all too often, and without actual reflexion, with Sherlock Holmes. And her father, on his part, had been a kind of mentor to Bernard Berenson, another connoisseur and in a complicated way, or for some time, also a dedicated Morellian. A Morellian that the press, in 1930, had called a ›Sherlock Holmes‹ of his field: art history.
Did Gisela Richter only relax with Simenon’s Maigret? Or did she relax with Maigret from connoisseurship? Or: Did she relax her ways to think about connoisseurship with reading a detective novel?

(Picture: notrecinema.com)

Because for one, Gisela Richter had also entered the field, when becoming a curator of Greek and Roman Art (being on first name terms with Bernard Berenson), and for two: Simenon’s Maigret does represent another type of ›detective‹, and one might call it the exact opposite of Sherlock Holmes. Maigret does represent the more intuitive type, more interested in the people than in solving cases, more interested in human ways than in the beauty of immaculate conclusions. That are meant to bring order back to the world, if order, by a crime, had been disturbed. While Sherlock Holmes has also become a symbol, even a figure of global imagination, representing the triumph of rational thinking. Although Dr. Watson, the imaginary keeper of the Holmes tradition, did also declare that he, Watson, had simply chosen to transmit only cases that showed Sherlock Holmes as a ›winner‹. Which certainly did help to create the myth of Sherlock Holmes.
Gisela Richter says little in her rather secretive memoirs as to actual working methods of connoisseurs, although she does not completely avoid the issue. We do even find a scene of ›visual apprenticeship‹, but Gisela Richter does not, for example, muse upon the ways connoisseurship had changed over the years, now, let’s say, in the 1950s, having much more to do with intuitive Maigret, than with a triumphant ›evidential paradigm‹ (›Indizienparadigma‹) that allegedly her father, and also Bernard Berenson had built their careers upon.

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CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CRIME FICTION I

Picking up the Scent of Colors

He’s a real nuisance, Thomas Murchison, at least to Mr. Ripley. And at times it might be helpful to have a real nuisance on one’s side, particularly if this nuisance is perceptive as to painters’ use of colors. But to Tom Ripley and his machinations involving the bringing of fake Derwatts on the market, it seems, at this particular moment, not being helpful at all. Which is why Mr. Murchison is banged over the head with a bottle of wine, in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley Under Ground of 1970. A novel that also invites us to think about what, in some cases, colors might tell the connoisseur, while, in other cases, a connoisseur might, also by colors, rather get sidetracked.

The basic math is simple: Assuming that you, as a painter, want to use a violet hue in your oil painting, the choice is yours. Because either you might choose to produce that violet by using a violet pigment. Or you might produce that violet by mixing a blue (pigment) with a red (pigment). And it is because Mr. Murchison (who also paints as a Sunday painter) has observed that Derwatt (the painter that Patricia Highsmith has invented), early in his career, did use cobalt phosphate, i.e. a violet pigment, to produce a violet, while, later, Derwatt switched to mixing his violet from blue and red, he is not willing to believe that Derwatt, again, and in his late years, did switch again.

(Picture: kremer-pigmente.com)
And for one we learn (with Mr. Ripley) that this, the way a painter chooses to produce a violet hue, might make a difference, and for two, if we look closely at Mr. Murchison’s argument, we take notice of his assumption that we might share or not (given a particular case, which is, as to a particular painter), namely that a painter who has once dismissed a certain pigment, does not return to a using of this particular pigment. Once dismissed, dismissed ultimately, the amateur does assume.
Since Mr. Ripley is not willing to further discuss, Mr. Murchison, the perceptive American amateur, collector and Sunday painter, is banged over the head, resulting with the novel not exposing a further discussion of the question if the argument of Mr. Murchison is actually being plausible, or being partly also rather flimsy (in other words: the banging over the head cannot be used as an argument that Mr. Ripley actually does appreciate the argument, or that the argument, from the perspective of the novelist, is seen as being actually plausible and justified; in truth Mr. Ripley must assume that the amateur is led to a just suspecting of forgery by a wrong assumption, because Derwatt himself had actually switched, in his very late years, given that the amateur was right in observing that there was a switching and that it occured at a certain time; the forger, if Murchison’s dating was correct, had only sticked to the again mixing of blue and red pigments; and this Ripley does know for certain because he does know for certain when the actual producing of fake Derwatts had begun).

Nevertheless one general principle is clear: to be a connoisseur, for Zeri, does mean also to know about history, about the place of pictures in history, and history does mean also, for example, the history of costumes, of taste, of fashion, of color in fashion and costume. But history does also mean the history of color symbolism, and, once, Zeri is even sidetracked to look at the history of historical botany, the history of immigrant flowers, influencing the use that European painters make of color: Because according to Zeri the wisteria was introduced to Europe only at the end of the 19th century, and he did even offer a bet to anyone that, before the year of 1875, one would not find a wisteria violet in painting.
Be this as it may – the point is that, for Zeri, color is not only color, not only an individual painter’s choice, but history, in other words: a painter’s choice in a particular historical context, a choosing from possibilities, intellectual, material possibilities, that history offers at a particular moment in time. And on all of these levels, one might conclude, the connoisseur might also find his or her arguments as to color being something to have a word in deciding about dating, about authorship, about attribution.
And if we turn back now to look at how Giovanni Morelli did address the problem of color, we find that the allegedly only positivistic Morelli offers actually a much more sceptical grasp of the problem. Or better: there is one earlier Morelli, who is rather decided that painters have favourite colors and that one may also speak of colors as of possible identifiers of authorship; and then there is the second Morelli. The one who has learned from his own having gotten sidetracked by color. Sidetracked from what? Of course from the observation of form (on a level of representation).
And the one Morelli who does know of his own having gotten sidetracked by color, the one Morelli who even stages and orchestrates his refuting of his own errors of having gotten sidetracked by color (thought of as being a possible identifier), does warn us of thinking of color as being a reliable possible identifier (and we may think back again of Thomas Murchison, being lead to a just suspicion by an actually wrong assumption, and although of being an astute observer and dedicated Sunday painter).
One thing, however, is clear: color as an expression of history, color as bearing meaning as being part of content, significant also as to deciding about authorship, is not Morelli’s concern. Only color as an expression of an individual’s preference was. And being mainly interested not in any property, but in distinctive properties, being of the greatest value as to attribution, Morelli did turn from also considering color to a decided privileging of form, regretting ostentaciously his former having gotten sidetracked by color (of particularly Venetian painting).

PS: For a rather new attempt to conceptualize color as a possible identifier, an attempt that focusses on flesh tones and uses the computer as an aid to the connoisseur, see, by the way, here: https://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~leowwk/thesis/ivo.pdf.

And we should also mention that Mr. Murchison does not isolately use the more specific color argument. When exposing his argument for the second time, Mr. Murchison begins to argue with ›quality‹, and this in combination with his using of the color argument; and the quality argument (which, by the way, seems also to confuse the German translation of the novel, that all of a sudden and illogically, speaks of cobalt blue, instead of cobalt violet), the question what’s, more specifically, behind the purely abstract, and therefore easily and all too often mystified term ›quality‹, is not the issue here.
Because it is time, as I believe, to once look a bit more specifically at what connoisseurs have said as to the issue of what the particular use that a painter makes of pigments and of colors might tell him, be it that the connoisseur might be enabled to use chemical analysis of pigments or not (it is not about the more simple question here, if the history of the use of pigments, and especially the history of the artificial production of pigments, does exclude a certain painting of being from a particular period or not; it is about, in other words, about what colors might say, given that chemical analysis has not spoken against authenticity, which in itself, of course, in only not speaking against something, is never to be used as an argument backing authenticity in terms of actual and positive identification). And I should like to point to certain statements of two Italian connoisseurs, namely of Federico Zeri and of Giovanni Morelli.

Speaking of violet it is strikingly interesting that also Federico Zeri, in his Dietro l’immagine of 1987, does speak of violet. And since he does even speak of wisteria violet, we are entitled to mention that we have, on this platform, once raised the question if Vincent van Gogh did ever paint wisteria. But not to get sidetracked – it is about the connoisseurs’ (and not mine) understanding of colors, although one might also mention that getting sidetracked is exactly the method of Zeri’s book that is written in a parlando tone, and is about the anecdotal more than it is about the general principles.

(Picture: nlamore)

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CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CRIME FICTION II

The Classic Arabian Medieval Murder Mystery or
The Story of the Three Apples

Having established the tertium comparationis to crime fiction and connoisseurship (which is, of course, close observation, the one thing, but, as we will see, not the only thing that is common to both), we may proceed to discuss the classic whodunnit, the classic test case for every detective or connoisseur, and it is fascinating to acknowledge that the Golden Age of the classic detective novel is also the Golden Age of connoisseurship (the period from about 1890 to the beginning of the Second World War).
But what we want to do first is to put the classic whodunnit into a bit wider perspective. Into a wider frame. To refresh our view onto the classic whodunnit, and to show that it works (at least in a certain, and certainly unexpected way) also without all too much interest for close observation, which is: underlaid to the classic whodunnit might also be another, darker anthropology or, if one likes so, philosophy, a darker picture of human ways than the optimistic view that seems to assume that rationality and close observation is the key to everything.

And yet again another door opens here, another door to the Arabian Nights, and yes, why not reading The Story of the Three Apples with Bernard Berenson? To look at it with Berenson who claimed to have read the Nights (in Arabic), before he had reached the age of 19).
Later he did accept that Isabella Stewart Gardner referred to herself as the ›Boston end‹ of the Arabian Nights, and he even presented, in 1909, Belle Da Costa Greene with a 16-volume French edition.
Yes, the Nights, this must be quite something. The Story of the Three Apples, by the way, is a rather short tale from the collection, but it still presents us with a microcosmos, and it does make sense, in earnest, to look at it with Berenson, or with the eyes of a connoisseur.
Although the story could also be referred to as ›pulp fiction‹, and certainly we do stay aware here that educated Arab readers did not and do not consider the Nights as being part of their ›serious‹ literary heritage. But nonetheless, the Nights (and we expressively do not refer here to editions for children) are, like Arab literature is actually quite often, refreshingly modern in a sense that it, I am totally serious here, beats Western postmodern fiction as regards to ironical inventiveness, wit and intellectual brilliance. Berenson would certainly have agreed to that, if he had known (the often rather boring) postmodern fiction of today.
We check in at ›gate 69‹, i.e. we enter night 69 for the exposition of the problem. It is, as said before, a whodunnit in a the classical sense. A body is being found, i.e. fished out of the river, the caliph wants to know who did murder the lady, and the vizier, the poor vizier, faces the task of finding out who did it – for the caliph.
We might expect now, and maybe young Berenson did also expect that the narration would turn into a classical whodunnit. Only that it does not. For several reasons. The classical whodunnit, did it already exist at Bernard Berenson’s youthful age? One might say that yes, Edgar Allan Poe had already invented it, or that literature, in general, had always dealt with crime and punishment, and that also the medieval reader might have expected some kind of whodunnit story. But still, night 70, the first of three nights that expose the Story of the Three Apples, does not present us with a vizier turning now to become a detective. The vizier, actually, does absolutely nothing. Although the caliph has threatened him that he will be killed, if the vizier is not going to present the murderer within three days.

Belle Da Costa Greene

The story is already prepared to march on. Another person has been threatened with death and will be executed, in case the next and already announced story does not keep up with the caliph’s expectations as to a enthralling story.
But here, with Berenson (and maybe also with Belle Da Costa Greene), we would like to take a pause. To think about the view on life with which we are confronted here. To think about, if this story does give us simply pulp fiction, or rather, or also, does present us with a rather sinister view on the human condition, a rather sinister view that is inherent to The Story of the Three Apples.
Close observation and rational thinking is being part of it. It briefly does show that the vizier is capable of both, and of course it does also show that the narration is capable of both (besides its capacities as regards to the connoisseurship of storytelling, and here, also as regards to storytelling’s speed).
But we do not reveal too much of the actual story’s outline, if we say that a crime has been committed, due to a simple, but tragic misunderstanding, and due to someone acting (acting cruelly and in the heat of the moment, that is unreflected and barbarous) based on completely and tragically false premises. The murderer’s world view, due to false information, had been perverted, prior to the act. And this being perverted of someone’s world view, a connoisseur like Berenson did already know in 1909 and earlier (see here for the also sinister tale of the so-called Donna Laura Minghetti-Leonardo).
And if one goes on to think about why the protagonists of the Story of the Three Apples, at least or nonetheless, show capable of solving the case, with certain roles given to the caliph (the role of being illogical, cruel, irrational), to the vizier (being cheeky as to the caliph, but reasonable and, yes, attentive), one cannot help that the world view of this medieval murder mystery is, despite the cheerfully exposed pulp fiction elements, a rather sinister one. There might be god to act wisely in all this, but if god’s acting here, his tools are chance, human blindness, human deception, human cruelty, as well as human insight, close observation and a sense of justice and for logic. One might further think about, or rather prefer go to bed, or think in bed, if one would be inclined to share this world view, not only as to connoisseurship, but as to life in general. And maybe come also to the conclusion that The Story of the Three Apples, seen as something foreshadowing the classical whodunnit, it also foreshadows a critique of, philosophically, all-too-simply woven whodunnits that only enfold someone’s brilliance in close observation and in that doing do only stage the triumph of rational thinking which, in truth (if we accept this rather sinister truth) does not triumph all-too often in real life.

(Picture: Abhijit Tembhekar)

But the irony is that yet night 70 presents us with a murderer, and with a second one, in sum, with two, to be precise. With two men both declaring to have committed that crime. And one might say that the story, to the reader’s or listener’s surprise, has already turned into pulp fiction. Into cartoonist exaggeration, in a word. Because, what the narration does, is that it deliberately aims at disappointing our expectation for a classical whodunnit story and its (maybe already existing) rules. In that it, the story, turns into the complete opposite: The case is, in its essence, already solved in the first of three nights, it is solved not because a detective has shown brilliance and relied on close observation. No, the case is solved, because the caliph has (yet again) sentenced his vizier to death, because the vizier has no murderer to present after three days, setting in motion something else, namely: the confession of the murderer, since the real murderer is not willing to accept the vizier’s being executed. And comes forward to confess (accepting, one might also say, or not accepting, the cruel logic of the caliph). Only that there are two murderers coming forward to confess, two murderers, to everyone’s, including the califph’s surprise. The story mocks the classical whodunnit, turning into a philosophical comedy.
So be it, the caliph, nonetheless, tends to say, we shall execute both candidates, but now the vizier suddenly shows that he disposes of logic and also of close observation skills. We are not entitled to say that medieval Arab fiction simply has not discovered rationality and close observation yet. On the contrary: the narration shows that it knows of both: because the vizier now reminds the caliph that, if both candidates would be executed, one would be executed despite of his being innocent.
How is this dilemma now solved? By the means of the modern whodunnit, one might say, since it shows that one of the man, the younger one, disposes of knowledge that only the perpetrator can dispose of. It’s about perpetrator’s knowledge in the modern sense. Literally. And the story that enfolds in hight speed, does not give us much time to think that the narration does dispose of all modern ingredients of the classical whodunnit, and that the story only does prefer to do something reminding of pulp fiction – but also something that in a way seems to be redolent of philosophical ambition.
Since, with cartoonist exaggeration, the caliph again threatens his vizier with death. If he will not be in the position to answer another question as to the role of another man, namely a slave, the vizier will be executed, and now for real, one may think. Since the vizier, again, shows completely unwilling or uncapable of turning to become a detective in the modern sense (and this despite the fact that the story has already shown that the vizier would actually give an able detective, but nonetheless, the vizier does nothing). And only accidentally, or better: due to a combination of the vizier being capable of close observation in the end and at the right moment, and of mere accident, the case will be finally explained and solved.

(Picture: Theo Bandi)

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CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CRIME FICTION III

Detectives Appearing on the Scene or
The Police, the Suspect and the Crime Scene

At about the time that Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective story 25-year-old Morelli got interviewed by the police. We will see later why.
Because the point that we are getting at is: connoisseurs, detectives and also the authors of crime fiction inhabit the same space. Fiction and reality might mingle, but real detectives get interested in real connoisseurs of art, and at around 1900 there were detectives of the Pinkerton agency which got interested in Bernard Berenson. And why, we will see later.

If now connoisseurs and real detectives, and also early criminologists and authors of crime fiction inhabit the same space, and sometimes even the same geography, thought in a more narrow sense, it is only natural that investigative methods of connoisseurs might inspire criminologists, and of course vice versa.
But there is also a certain danger in all this, a danger that might affect the historian of connoisseurship.
For example as to Giovanni Morelli and the comparison with Sherlock Holmes. With Sherlock Holmes, who of course is a fictional detective, but this fictional detective, fictionally inhabited the same space as Giovanni Morelli. And when Giovanni Morelli, in 1887, visited London, he visited a London at a time when Sherlock Holmes, according to his fictional biography (of which Giovanni Morelli knew nothing, and could not know much, since many of the 1887 cases were written by Arthur Conan Doyle only much later), but Giovanni Morelli visited a London at a time when Sherlock Holmes was particularly busy in solving cases.
The problem is that it is on the one hand interesting to relate this things (and we do it also, here and anywhere), but at the same time it seems to be all too easy to relate things that, historically, had actually little to do with each other, or at least: had not necessarily influenced each other directly or indirectly, although, here we have to say: although (fictional) detectives and connoisseurs inhabited one and the same space or one and the same historical era.

(Source: Giulio Bora (ed.), Giovanni Morelli – collezionista di disegni, Milan 1994,
p. 91; only detail from original photo being used here)

Giovanni Morelli, by the way, grew up in the pre-scientific age of forensics and of detective methods; at the age of the Räuberroman also being very popular, because, of course, bandids inhabited that era as well. In 1838 and in Morelli’s home town Bergamo there was a former monk very well known as a bandid and his name was Spadino Spadini; and a couple of years later Morelli heard that someone he knew from Munich, where he had studied, had been beaten by robbers, beaten to death because that person had died subsequently after having been taken, by a peasant, to a hospital.
At the time that Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective story Morelli was busy in developing himself as a man of letters, and in 1841 he accompanied one of his mentors, the Florentine nobleman Gino Capponi on a trip to Munich to seek medical advice. Upon their return to Lombardy Morelli was questioned by the police, and probably it was political, since travelling much abroad, from the perspective of the police of the Austrian ruled Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, made a young man suspicious. And the police and the authorities of the Austrian ruled state did much to control mobility within the state territory, and border-crossing mobility they did seek to control very in particular.
Resulting in a young man like Morelli having to get a passport at Milan for every border-crossing trip. And if, much later, he did like to compare the looking at a picture with a retired police commissioner’s interviewing of a suspect, a suspect possibly showing a fake passport to the connoisseur, and lying about his identity, it was due to the conditions under which Morelli had grown up and had lived as a young men. With authorities working also on the problem of identification. Working hard, and also introducing better passports that could less easily be manipulated.
And this all might also be the backdrop against which we have to take note that Giovanni Morelli did not speak of a painting as of a ›crime scene‹. But he did think of the picture as a possible rogue, declaring a wrongful identity when being interviewed by a police detective (or customs officer).

PS: If Bernard Berenson was being followed by detectives of the Pinkerton agency in around 1900, it was due to his future employer, art dealer Duveen, wanting to know more about Berenson, and about his financial circumstances and business relationships (source: Colin Simpson, The Partnership, London 1987, p. 93).

And this is how a passport of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia did look like (source: Silvio Honegger, Gli Svizzeri di Bergamo, Bergamo 1997, p. 84)

The point is that one should make a clear difference between a mere comparing of things (and historical or fictional figures), and of thinking of these things being directly interrelated. And for example it might be interesting to compare an early criminologist like Cesare Lombroso with Morelli. But on the other hand the historian has to see that these two figures, most likely, did not know each other, nor exerted influence on each other. They inhabited one and the same era, but, and here we have to name another crucial point: while the police of the 19th century was concerned with the identification of people (and Lombroso with the identification of the criminal by nature), Giovanni Morelli was concerned with the subjective imprint that a painter left on the representations of bodily form. And it bears repeating to say that: this is not the same thing (although it is interesting to look at various ways to deal with the problem of identification and of form, and at the motives behind these ways).
In art we do encounter regularities in form, and we do call these regularities, if one and the same person, or a group of persons (inhabiting one and the same cultural space or geography) seems to be responsible for these regularities, style. Style helps a connoisseur to solve his puzzle or case, to answer the eternal question of whudunnit (or ›who painted what‹), but there might be various reasons that explain regularities in painting, and also such reasons which have nothing or only indirectly to do with style. Because the reason we encounter regularity might be: that a painter (or several) used one and the same person as a model (and did, stylistically, commit to portrait likeness); secondly: that a painter left his individual imprint on the bodily representation of a person, even if he was committed to portrait likeness (this was Morelli’s idea and claim); and thirdly: because another painter copied the formula, being used by the former painter, and transmitted style, thus, maybe again to another painter etc.
While now the connoisseur might be interested in all that, the police detective might be concerned only with the problem of identifying a person, of securing this person’s identity, or with the question if two persons could be or actually are related. And Sherlock Holmes, as it well known, by close observing and in various cases, assumed, due to observing form, that two persons must be relatives, but this is not exactly what Giovanni Morelli did or tried to do when working cases. Although the method might seem the same. On a very abstract level it is indeed twice comparing and identifying. But it is not the same, as to the fundamental reasons that might explain, in one or the other case, formal regularity. Because in the one case it is due to nature and to biological heritage; and in the other it is about all the reasons that have worked together in artistic production (which also might be called natural), but it is, according to Giovanni Morelli, about the mind of a painter who is externalizing his notions of form and leaving his imprint. And if (relative) regularity of form is the result of this, it is the result of artistic production, and not of biological heritage, and if there is a hypothesis of regularity, it does not necessarily stand testing. Because a painter is at liberty to change his or her notions of anatomy, while a person is less at liberty to change the shape of ear, like a fingerprint does not change, basically, over the years (at least this is the assumption of fingerprint analysis). Not to mention that, as said, there might be other reasons to explain formal regularity or formal analogy.

(Picture: DS)

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CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CRIME FICTION IV

The Mystery of a Chord

I have never seen forensic methods being applied to a chord before. But it’s the Beatles’s genius that resulted with a particular cult surrounding a particular chord: the opening chord of the Lennon/McCartney song A Hard Day’s Night.
That also plays a role in Jo Nesbø’s 2008 novel Headhunter, wherein it, the chord, is heard, when… well we have to wait and see.

As a hypothesis we might accept that the chord is indeed the G11sus4 chord. This is what Nesbø suggests in giving chapter eight even the title of ›G11sus4‹. But the mystery of that chord might be only one front of our investigation.
Because, yes, it is about stealing a painting. A putative Rubens.
Which turns out, later, not to be exactly a Rubens. But why not appreciating a Rubens copy, headhunter Roger Brown might perhaps think, when looking back upon his adventure (from beyond that novel, if this is possible). Looking back upon his attempt to steal a putative Rubens.
And everything had seemed to work so well. As always Brown had been informed by his client himself (the candidates headhunter Brown used to meet and interview). And also as to their, the clients’s, habits, their art works at home, and as to security measures etc. Enabling headhunter Roger Brown to enter his clients houses. To steal their art. And now even a Rubens.
This, it had seemd to him then, might give his life a new impulse. And after this theft… well, there might be a brighter future. With his wife Diana, and perhaps with kids…
Well. As a connoisseur’s apprentice Rober Brown even does show, when stealing that picture. When just having entered, as a burglar, his client’s flat. And having looked at the putative Rubens (that later would turn out to be not exactly what it seemed).

As a connoisseur’s apprentice Roger Brown does now learn something. His visual apprenticeship does reach a crucial moment. Since while looking out of the window, what he saw had seemed to be that beautiful to him. Beautiful as the painting he had just looked at. That is: when looking out of the window Roger Brown learned that nature, that life could look as beautiful as a work of art did look that he had just seen in the flesh. And as trivial as this thought may seem – what Roger Brown did learn in that very moment was no less that art and life could be seen as being intimately interrelated. In other words – what you might see in art, you might suddenly see also in life (and perhaps because you had just seen art; and even if you had not see, not detected that beauty, the possibility of beauty, in life before). And this is a way of looking at life, at art, that not everyone is used to (especially those who see art as mere decor or investment). Everything can happen, this means. And: you can see life from inumerable angles (because every single work of art, every real work of art, might provide you with such angles, new angles, unknown angles, and this is why art may be called life enhancing: it does speak back to life, from where it is also coming from). Life may seem dull to you for the time being, but it can certainaly turn all of a sudden into something else.
PS: I tend to say that it does make more sense to interpret the chord as a D7 substitute, because it does introduce into the song. So: G11sus4 or Dminor7add4, this is not of great importance (and also depending on how you look at it, that is: the angle; the chord, thus, can also be seen as a musical embodiment of ambiguity), and certainly the elegant G11sus4 does work better as a chapter’s title.

(Picture: kevinhouston.net)
(PS2: the question of the Ruben’s authenticity is another matter. We might discuss it later, because in involves the question if it is enough to think that a picture is genuine because it had been owned by a high-profile Nazi officer)

And this is also what Roger Brown now has to learn. And now the hard way.
Because just now a cellphone is ringing. And this ringing tone sounds familiar. And we even might say that this ringing tone is also surrounded by mystery and that there is a certain cult about that ringing tone.

(Picture: rogerbourland.com)
Well, yes. It is the mystic G11sus4 chord, but here this chord does not exactly announce the Lennon/McCartney song A Hard Day’s Night. But since this ringing tone is the ringing tone of the cellphone of Roger Brown’s wife Diana, Roger Brown immediately does become aware that his wife has cheated on him. And had been in that particular flat. The flat with the Rubens painting, owned by a client of Roger Brown who had been, as Roger Brown does become aware, the lover of his wife. And thus the chord, the becoming aware of being cheated, the (putative) Rubens’s beauty, nature’s beauty, the dream of a bright future, all this fuses into one (rather distorted picture). Or: the magic chord becomes loaded with all this.

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