The Captain's Bargain

Among the world's art mysteries, one of the most durable was the case of Caravaggio's missing Musicians. Seventeenth-century contemporaries glowingly described the masterpiece. But though modern experts looked high & low, they could find no record of the painting--much less the painting itself. Once in the early 1920s, an Italian thought he spotted it in the col lection of Florence's Uffizi Palace; it turned out to be the work of an admirer. Last week Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art proudly announced that Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's Musicians had turned up and been identified beyond a doubt. Furthermore, the museum had bought it and hung it on the wall for anybody to see: a masterly composition of four languid, toga-clad young men idling to lute music.

The first inkling that The Musicians was still in existence came in the mid-'30s, when a north-of-England antique dealer named Joe Cookson spotted an interesting painting in a Cumberland country house. "It was very grimy," recalls Dealer Cookson, "and you could see that it had been painted over and over. The name 'Caravaggio' was on it, and the tag end of the 'Michelangelo da.'"

But Cookson had never heard of the missing Musicians. He got the painting at a bargain when the owner died, then let it gather dust in his shop for ten years. After the war, he thrust it on an old customer, a retired British navy surgeon, Captain W. G. Thwaytes. "You can have it for -L-200," he told Thwaytes. The captain said he had never paid -L-200 for a picture. "Oh, go on," urged Cookson, "have it for -L-100 [about $400 at the time]. I'm sure it's a genuine Caravaggio."

Thwaytes carted the old picture home but never bothered to have it examined. Last year a friend showed a snapshot of Captain Thwaytes's picture to an expert in London. The expert gasped, demanded to see the picture. Sure enough, despite flaking and repeated clumsy attempts at restoration, it was, as Dealer Cookson had said all along, a genuine Caravaggio. "Expert restoration established it as the long-lost Musicians. The Metropolitan Museum put in a prompt bid, got it from v, delighted Captain Thwaytes for something more than $50,000.

Only one mystery remains: Where was the painting all those years before Dealer Cookson spotted it? The experts may never find out. The lone record of the family from which Cookson bought it is a 1933 inventory that reads: "No. 846--a musical party signed Helang da Caravaggio, 36 x 46 inches."

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