Under the Egg by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

Author:Laura Marx Fitzgerald
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

No matter how urgent your medical emergency or dire your prospects, the ER staff always made sure you spent plenty of time in the waiting room. But for us it was time needed for Bodhi to explain her latest theory. And her unhinged arm.

I found us some unoccupied plastic molded chairs in one corner, which was lucky because some drunks had claimed the other rows as beds. “Okay,” Bodhi sat down, arranging her right arm on her lap and checking her phone one-handed, “what do you know about La Fornarina?”

I placed the Samsonite heavily on the floor. “Wait a minute. What happened to your arm?”

“Sit down. I’ll get to it. But what do you know about La Fornarina?”

“What do you know about La Fornarina?”

“Well, tonight after dinner I was Googling Raphael-plus-all the different conservation technologies, to see if anyone had found any clues that way—you know, through infrared or whatever. And I found this one article.” Bodhi was swiping and poking furiously with one hand at her phone’s screen.

“Okay, check this out. Do you know this painting?” The phone in my face showed the same topless painting I’d just flooded with tea.

“Sure, that’s Raphael’s famous portrait of La Fornarina.”

“Right. So a few years back they were restoring it, and they X-rayed it for some reason—”

“Probably to see if there are original sketches underneath. Or changes that were painted out. Jack said artists sometimes make changes along the way, so the X-ray can reveal what their original intent was.”

“Well, check out this original intent. They X-rayed La Fornarina and found this.” Bodhi zoomed in on the image and held it up for me to see.

There, on Margherita Luti’s ring finger, on the left hand that lay demurely on her lap, was the outline of a ring.

“It’s a ring with a square red ruby. Painted over, probably by Raphael’s student,” Bodhi checked the article again, “Giulio Romano, who sold the painting after Raphael died.”

I blinked. “It’s on her wedding finger.”

“Exactly!” Bodhi bounced in her chair.

“But they weren’t married. He was engaged to someone else—”

“—who he strung along for seven years, remember?” Bodhi had read the article and everything. “Now we know why.”

“So Raphael had to hide his marriage to La Fornarina because . . .”

“No,” Bodhi huffed impatiently, “you aren’t paying attention. Raphael painted the ring in. He wanted it there. After Raphael died, his student is the one who painted it out. Right before he sold it.”

“Because—”

“Because what would a painting by the recently deceased superstar of the art world sell for if it showed he was married to the daughter of a baker?”

I didn’t know what surprised me more: the revelation of the ruby ring, or Bodhi’s transformation into a Raphael expert. Or how irritated I was that she’d made such a brilliant discovery.

“So you got me out of bed—”

“You weren’t in bed.”

“I was going to bed,” I pouted. “You dragged me out of bed, got out my,” I lowered my voice, “suitcase, made me sit here in this creepy waiting room in the middle of the night—just to show me that article?”

“No, stupid.

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