“How can you be so certain just by looking at a photograph?”

“I’ve been around paintings for a hundred thousand years. I know it when I see it. This is not only a Rembrandt but a great Rembrandt. And it’s two and a half centuries ahead of its time.”

“How so?”

“Look at the brushwork. Rembrandt was an Impressionist before anyone had ever heard the term. It’s proof of his genius.”

Chiara picked up one of the photos, a detail image of the woman’s face.

“Pretty girl. Rembrandt’s mistress?”

Gabriel raised one eyebrow in surprise.

“I grew up in Venice and have a master’s degree in the history of the Roman Empire. I do know something about art.” Chiara looked at the photograph again and shook her head slowly. “He treated her shabbily. He should have married her.”

“You sound like Julian.”

“Julian is right.”

“Rembrandt’s life was complicated.”

“Where have I heard that one before?”

Chiara gave a puckish smile and returned the photograph to its place on the counter. The Cornish winter had softened the tone of her olive skin while the moist sea air had added curls and ringlets to her hair. It was held in place by a clasp at the nape of her neck and hung between her shoulder blades in a great cloud of auburn and copper highlights. She was taller than Gabriel by an inch and blessed with the square shoulders, narrow waist, and long legs of a natural athlete. Had she been raised somewhere other than Venice, she might very well have become a star swimmer or tennis player. But like most Venetians, Chiara regarded sporting contests as something to be viewed over coffee or a good meal. When one required exercise, one made love or strolled down to the Zattere for a gelato. Only the Americans exercised with compulsion, she argued, and look what it had wrought—an epidemic of heart disease and children prone to obesity. The descendant of Spanish Jews who fled to Venice in the fifteenth century, Chiara believed there was no malady that could not be cured by a bit of mineral water or a glass of good red wine.