Finding Vermeer

My second novel, The Music Lesson, is about an IRA splinter group's plot to steal a Vermeer from the Queen. In the course of the story, the mysterious circumstances of the unsolved theft of paintings from the Gardner Museum in Boston are explained. (Make that "explained" for the literal-minded among us. It is a novel. But my fictional explanation may well be on the money.) The 1990 theft (the largest single property theft in American history) of thirteen paintings and objects has never been solved, and today the Gardner continues to exhibit the empty frames of the missing masterpieces.

Last week, the FBI swarmed the Manchester, Connecticut home of "reputed mobster" Robert Gentile (aren't all "mobsters" invariably "reputed"?) , who federal prosecutors apparently believe has a link to that heist.
Gentile, 75, is being held without bail pending his federal trial on drug dealing charges. The FBI used a ground-penetrating radar device as well as dogs in the search. Most intriguing is the site of a filled-in swimming pool on Gentile's property. While the search warrant was apparently for weapons, Gentile's attorney told the Boston Globe "We all know what they are actually looking for - and they are looking for the paintings." Evidence obtained that day is now being sifted. Obviously, they haven't found a cache of paintings. Yet.

Readers of The Music Lesson, published in 1999, nine years after the Gardner theft, will recognize why this latest development is of particular interest to me. Saying more would be a plot spoiler.

"The museum continues to offer a $5 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the artworks in good condition," museum officials said in a statement. "Anyone with information about the theft, the location of the stolen artworks, and/or the investigation, should contact the Gardner Museum." On its website, the museum also urges those in possession of the stolen masterpieces "to conserve them in recommended temperatures and humidity levels."

Stay tuned!

Finding Vermeer?

The FBI arrested the murderous 81-year-old Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger this morning at his condo in Santa Monica, where he had been living with his girlfriend in broad daylight despite being on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List for the past sixteen years. This is fantstic news!

Why do I care? Because I am among those who believe that he may hold some key information about the unsolved Gardner Museum heist, which is central to the plot in my 1999 novel The Music Lesson (just reissued this year from Broadway in an attractive new paperback edition). Does the Gardner get Vermeer's "The Concert" back on its wall where the blank space has been maintained ever since it was stolen in 1990? Fingers crossed.

A Very Complicated Toast to Vermeer

My second novel, The Music Lesson, concerns an IRA splinter group plot to steal a Vermeer from the Queen. It came out in 1999, and was followed within the year by the more successful (which is not to say that The Music Lesson didn't do very well -- it did, and it continues to sell nicely in multiple languages) Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. Both novels, and some others, were written in the aftermath of the Vermeer exhibition in Washington and The Hague, and Vermeer's zeitgeist stock has been blue chip ever since, kept in high public consciousness not necessarily for visual reasons but simply because of the staying power of cultural trends.

On a recent visit to a Dutch Master painting show at The Metropolitan Museum, I was aware more than once of people exclaiming with excitement when they spotted wall text identifying a Vermeer. I wished for the opportunity to experiment with a change of identification on the museum walls, to watch people swoon passionately over a previously bypassed De Hooch or Metsu once it was labelled Vermeer.

But anyway. A recent news article in the San Francisco Chronicle attracted my attention, because it featured a Vermeer-inspired cocktail. It's called The Milkmaid, though it has no milk in it, and no sun-dappled milkmaid will come to your house and make it for you. Invented by Ektoras Binikos, a Greek-born artist and bartender at Oceana in New York, The Milkmaid has an ounce of Bols geneva in it, which apparently makes it sufficiently Dutch and therefore Vermeerish. It's also really, really complicated:

2 thin slices fresh ginger
1/2 ounce Citrus Mint Syrup (see recipe)
3 to 4 dashes Angostura bitters
1 ounce Bols genever
1/2 ounce Domain de Canton ginger liqueur
1 ounce fresh lemon juice
1/2 ounce yuzu juice
1/2 ounce (1 tablespoon) egg white
1 piece crystallized ginger candy, for garnish
Instructions: In a mixing glass, muddle together the fresh ginger, Citrus Mint Syrup and bitters. Add ice and the rest of the ingredients except the garnish, and shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Add the garnish.

Citrus Mint Syrup:
Makes about 2 cups
1 small bunch fresh mint, trimmed and washed
-- Zest of 1/2 orange
-- Zest of 1/2 lemon
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup water
Instructions: Combine all ingredients in a nonreactive saucepan and place over medium heat. Bring to a gentle simmer, stirring frequently, and cook about 5 minutes, until syrup thickens slightly. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. Strain through a double layer of dampened cheesecloth.

Would Vermeer have been interested in this Dutch Mojito? He probably drank Dutch beer and cocoa.

Vermeer Moves the Earth

Every time I pass a construction site and see one of Vermeer's diggers or chippers at work, I regret that I didn't make a reference in The Music Lesson (which features a stolen Vermeer portrait) to the curious coincidence that the uncommon name of one of the greatest painters who ever lived on earth is shared by a company manufacturing construction equipment.