An artist called ‘Chicken’? Forget it

Of all the painters he represented, Tiberius Levinson found the Frenchman, Nicolaus Poussin to be the toughest to handle. It started out early on when Poussin first came to see him in Paris. He strode into Levinson’s office on the Rue St-Honoré, sat down on a chair and folded his arms. “Who are you?” barked the irritated agent. “I, am Poussin,” said the artist flourishing his right hand like a King’s musketeer.

“Chicken?” snorted Levinson. “Chicken? What do you think I am – chopped liver? How can I sell an artist called Chicken to my clients? They’re courtiers, men of the cloth and even the king himself. Would they want to be painted by a chicken? Forget it. You need a name change. Your work looks OK. I can sell it. But chicken indeed. If you’re going down that route, how about something like ‘Poulet de Bresse? Now an ‘Appellation Contrôllée’ chicken – that’s got class. And it’ll help raise your prices.”

But Poussin stood firm. He was like that. Levinson would pretend to clients that it was a nom-de-plume and since the work was good, he became a steady seller. Poussin did much of his best work in Rome but in 1660, at the age of 65 he achieved a real breakthrough. He was invited to Versailles to paint king Louis XIII. It was the chance of a lifetime. Levinson was on tenterhooks. He could see a massive payday coming.

Two months later Poussin marched into Levinson’s office followed by two men carrying a huge canvas covered in a shroud. Tiberius puffed nervously on his early-morning cheroot. With a cavalier flourish Poussin unveiled his masterpiece. Levinson looked at it open-mouthed with amazement : “What the hell is that” he barked on seeing the painting. Poussin replied sheepishly. “Look. The only chance I was given to paint the king was when he was visiting his chiropodist, so that’s what I did. And here it is. It shows the king’s human side. Ordinary people will identify with it.”

The pictured showed the king reclined on a chaise longue attended by a scantily clad male chiropodist who was hollowing out his majesty’s verruca and sweeping away fingernail clippings and dead skin. The king, crown on head looked languidly down at him.

Bubbling with rage Levinson challenged Poussin. “What are you going to call it – ‘The King’s Verruca’? You can’t show him that. Let me think. O my God.”

But Tiberius was not without resource. He disappeared into his stock room, rummaged around and emerged a few minutes later with an appalling ‘Landscape with Cherubs’ painted by his nephew, Myronius at summer camp near the river Pactolus in Turkey. He had been meaning to get rid of it.

Levinson carefully detached the figure of the king and the young chiropodist from Poussin’s original. He then placed the cut-out figures over his nephew’s painting, adjusted its position, retouched the edges and then stepped backed and admired the work. “Now that’s a painting!” clucked a triumphant Tiberius. “We’ll call it King Midas at the Source of the River Pactolus. The king will love it. Not bad for a spring chicken during an afternoon at the chiropodist.”

Poussin fainted.

(See ‘King Midas at the Source of the River Pactolus’ on Google Images)

BRING ME THE HEAD OF NERO SHAPIRO

Over the centuries there has been much speculation about Rembrandt’s poignant painting ‘The Jewish Bride’. Who was she? Who is the man in the picture? What exactly is the occasion? And how can you tell she’s Jewish? The recent discovery of a cache of Rembrandt’s letters provides incontrovertible evidence on the origins of the painting and its intriguing relationship to one of Rembrandt’s most celebrated works, ‘The Night Watch’.

The subject in the first picture was indeed Jewish but the bride-to-be as the painting was completed on the day before her wedding. She was Calpurnia, the daughter of Rembrandt’s agent, Tiberius Levinson. They were close friends and Rembrandt honoured Levinson with this painting on the day before his daughter’s wedding to an Amsterdam herring mogul, Nero Shapiro. Tiberius was never totally convinced by Shapiro and over a Jonge Genever with Rembrandt he confessed that “there was something piscatorial about the man”.

If you look closely at the painting you can see Levinson tenderly caressing his daughter’s bosom in a none too subtle attempt to determine whether she is with child.

The day did not turn out to be the joyful occasion the Levinson family were expecting. Shapiro did not make an appearance at Rotterdam synagogue leaving Calpurnia abandoned at the altar. After waiting two hours, father Tiberius, incandescent with rage, called out the local militia, known as ‘The Night Watch’. Rembrandt, who was caught up in proceedings, took quickly to his easel and recorded the event in another fine painting. In it you can see the distraught Calpurnia Levinson looking pleadingly at the posse and an incensed Tiberius furiously directing the militia to “bring me the head of Nero Shapiro”.

The sorry tale ended happily, at least for the Levinson family. Calpurnia mourned for a while but the upside of Shapiro’s defection was her escape from the aura of herring he permanently exuded. She soon met and married a more fragrant option, a deft Delft dentist called, Flavius Fayvelson. Shapiro managed to avoid the clutches of the Night Watch and escaped to Spain where he was captured by the Inquisition. He survived the rack, converted to Catholicism and re-opened his herring business but with a difference. Shapiro’s ‘Challah & Herring’ restaurants were soon to appear all over Spain. But he never married and became known in his declining years as ‘the loner from Gerona’.