The Monuments Men Murders: The Art of Murder 4 by Josh Lanyon

Author:Josh Lanyon [Lanyon, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBT Mystery, male male romance, thriller
Publisher: JustJoshin Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2019-06-29T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

De Haan was not answering his phone.

Jason left a message letting him know he’d spoken to Terry Mayhew, then grabbed his copy of Karl Schütz’s Vermeer. The Complete Works, asked the hotel front desk for some restaurant recs, and headed out to have dinner.

He was used to eating on his own. He actually preferred a good book to dinner with Russell, who never stopped talking sports scores, debating the merits of current girlfriends, or bitching about wasting his best years trailing after Jason on ACT investigations—though in fairness, Russell had eased up a bit on the job complaints in the last month.

He settled on a Mexican restaurant within walking distance of the hotel, ordered tacos with rice and beans, and—remembering Sam’s concerns—diet Coke, and spent a surprisingly relaxing couple of hours reading and occasionally eating.

The Schütz book was beautifully produced and meticulously researched. All thirty-four of the artist’s universally accepted paintings were included, along with gorgeous color plates reproducing every brushstroke, hue, detail, angle, and gesture contained in his paintings. There were even several large foldouts, which Jason did not dare expose to the risk of flying salsa.

Vermeer was a mystery in his own right, down to the exact date of his birth. There was no record of his apprenticeship, leading to the theory—however unlikely—that he was self-taught. But maybe the theory wasn’t so unlikely given how extraordinary and unique his work was—not just precise, not just luminous, but almost inhumanly beautiful. In fact, another theory—dismissed by Schütz—was that Vermeer had used a camera obscura to obtain his hypnagogic results.

What Jason found especially amazing about the quality of universality in Vermeer’s work was that Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes of 17th century Dutch life. What was it about these paintings that so resonated with 21st century viewers? The bulk of his work, certainly the work of his peak years, was set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft. Again and again, the paintings showed the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements, and Vermeer frequently portrayed the same people. Mostly women.

In fact, the only two paintings—the only two surviving paintings—with solitary male figures as their protagonists were a pair of later works titled The Astronomer and The Geographer. Or at least that’s what they were called now. Back in 1713, they had been auctioned as A work depicting a Mathematical Artist and A ditto by the Same Name, demonstrating Vermeer’s gift for really awful titles.

Another interesting point about the two paintings—Jason’s favorites out of Vermeer’s entire body of work—was that although one had been done in 1668 and the second in 1669, the same man had posed for them. One theory was that the man was Vermeer himself. Another theory was that it was his friend and estate executor, the noted microbiologist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. Maybe. The fact remained, a slender man in his late thirties with long dark hair and a solemn face had posed for Vermeer as the painter worked on the two possibly thematically paired pictures.

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