Two years ago, at a major American auction, Robert Simon first laid eyes on a painting of Jesus Christ. It was described as “Venetian school” with no artist attributed. After the painting went unsold, Simon, the owner of an eponymous Upper East Side gallery, purchased the 8-by-10-inch piece from the auction house for, as he tells The Post, “tens of thousands of dollars.”
“I thought it fit with Vittore Carpaccio’s work,” says Simon, 65, naming a 15th-century artist whose pieces routinely sell for six figures. “I had the painting cleaned; layers of varnish were removed. I studied Carpaccio, compared the colors, looked at the way the hand was drawn, recognized details he’s known for. I thought I had something.”
A pair of highly regarded experts agreed. In October, when the European Fine Art Fair comes to the Park Avenue Armory, many attendees will be seeing a work of Carpaccio’s for the first time. It will be Simon’s piece, on sale for $850,000.
This does not represent Simon’s first big discovery: In 2005, he and a partner bought a dusty work at auction that turned out to be a lost Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece. They sold it for a reported $80 million in 2011.
Such finds are not dumb luck. Simon is one of an elite group of curators and dealers, known as “eyes.” Comprising a gifted subculture within the art world, they are able to separate authentic paintings from copies and spot lost treasures.
A recently published book, “The Eye” (New Vessel Press) by Philippe Costamagna, takes readers inside a world where experts can make or break a work. The eyes approximate superheroes of the aesthetic realm. They employ sense, instinct and a unique form of brain power to bring coveted artworks into the public fold — and to keep fakes off the market.
Simon attributes the talent to “a combination of really good visual memory and strong knowledge of an artistic period.”
Xavier Salomon, on the other hand, thinks that eyes are born and not made. “Part of it is a natural gift, like singing. Some people have an eye; others don’t,” says Peter J. Sharpe, 38, the Frick Collection’s chief curator. “It is 70- or 80-percent natural gift, and 20- to 30-percent training. You need a disposition for it.”
He once spotted an unrecognized masterpiece by 16th-century painter Scipione Pulzone casually hanging in a Turin, Italy, hotel lobby. It had last been seen in the 1920s and, one year later, the work, valued at a few hundred thousand dollars, wound up in a major Italian exhibit.
The eye of Costamagna benefited a Swiss attorney whose father had left behind two paintings. One was thought to be by Jacopo da Pontormo; the other by Diego Velázquez. She and her brother each took possession of a single work. The attorney tasked Costamagna with discerning authenticity.
“The Velázquez was from the school of Velázquez,” says Costamagna, meaning that it was painted in his style but not by him. “The sister’s piece was in fact ‘Portrait of a Young Man’ by Pontormo” — whose works go for seven-figure sums. “She was very happy. Then she sold it, and that caused a problem. The brother wanted a share of the money.”
He only cared about his sister having the real thing after cash came into play. “He sued and the case went to court,” says Costamagna. “I testified that it is worth millions. He won the trial, but it’s being appealed. At one point, I think, she will pay something to the brother.”
It is not only works from the Renaissance, owned by refined Europeans, that get scrutinized by eyes. Several years ago, during a round of golf in Hawaii, actor Dennis Hopper told Alice Cooper about having sold a few Andy Warhol pieces for big bucks.
That piqued Cooper’s curiosity about a rolled-up silkscreen of an electric chair sitting in his garage. He reached out to Warhol-centric eye Richard Polsky. Polsky, 63, traced the work back to the Factory — where Cooper’s girlfriend had bought it for the shock rocker who used an electric chair prop onstage — and deemed the art legit.
“It’s worth $2.5- to $3.5 million,” says Polsky. “Alice was stunned.”
Despite the multimillion-dollar miracles, eyes usually bring tears instead of happiness. Such was the case when a 90-year-old man ventured to Bethany, Conn., to the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Albers is known for 20th-century studies of squares. Jeannette Redensek, 60, director of the catalogue raisonné for the foundation, knows as much about Albers as anyone.
Looking at the painting, which could have had a six-figure value, Redensek remembers, “We thought, ‘Wow, this looks strong.’ ” Then she zeroed in through a magnifying glass. “Albers worked freehand with a palette knife; it creates a wavering edge that is very charming. But [this painting’s strokes] ended abruptly. The artist used a straight edge. I said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you this was not made by Josef Albers.’ The man was devastated. He wanted to sell [the piece] to help his family, but I think money was the least of it. It had been in his family for 40 years. He was shocked that it turned out to not be what he thought.”
The outcome would not surprise Simon. He’s seen enough fakes to have developed a rule of thumb: “When there is a version of something hanging in the Louvre and you have one in your New Jersey living room, the one in the Louvre is the original, and the one on your wall is not.”
