The treasure hidden behind a wall
(The treasure behind the wall By Vanessa Friedman)
Something in the new ‘Oscar de La Renta’ boutique in Paris was very different from appearances.
The 17th oil painting discovered behind a wall during the development of the Oscar de la Renta boutique in Paris.
Photo credit Julien Mignot for The New York Times
Alex Bolen, the ceo of Oscar de la Renta, had planned to open his new boutique in Paris this week, just in time for Fashion Week. He had planned his presence in Paris even though he had not scheduled a parade. He had it all organized. Then, last summer, in the middle of the renovations, Mr. Bolen received a call from Nathalie Ryan, his architect.
He remembers her telling him, « We made a discovery. » At the other end of the line, Mr. Bolen grimaced. The last time he received a call of this kind to a shop, their plan to move a wall had to be abandoned at the last minute for fear that the building would collapse. He then asked what discovery it was precisely.
« You have to come and see, » she said.
So, while grumbling, he took a flight from New York. Ms. Ryan took her to what was to be the first floor of the shop, where the workers were actively clearing the rubbish and, with a gesture, pointed to the back of the room. Mr. Bolen, she said, blinked. Then he said, « No, that’s not true! »
Something had been hidden behind the wall and it was not asbestos. It was the oil painting, 3 meters by 6 meters, of a Marquis dressed in a 17th outfit, wearing a tarabiscoté headdress, accompanied by several courtiers and entering the city of Jerusalem.
« This is very rare and exceptional for many reasons; namely, its historical quality, its aesthetics and its format » says Benoît Janson, specialist in the restoration of the New Trend workshop, supervising the work done on the work.
Store renovations, like most renovations, often take longer than expected and budgets are often exceeded. But there are few cases where they are delayed or whose budget is exceeded because of a mysterious work of art, resurfaced after three hundred years.
All in arms for the most unique, authentic shop race, still being developed, to live in person, an experience of differentiation between retail and ‘e-commerce’, the discovery of a treasure surrounded by mystery, straight out of a short story by Dan Brown, of which he would be the ultimate accessory.
Beware of your desires
Mr. Bolen had been looking for a store in Paris for a long time. In the early 1990s, when Mr de la Renta worked as a fashion designer at Balmain, the company had a small shop there but this shop had closed shortly after his departure in 2002 (he died in 2014). In 2017, the former Reed Krakoff store, located on Rue de Marignan, (a small street, diagonally from Avenue Montaigne) that leads to « L’Avenue », the fashion mecca, was proposed to Mr. Bolen.
Mr. Bolen liked the location and the building, which had been built in the 19th century, belonged largely to the same family, a number of whose members occupied the apartments on the upper floors. However, he wanted a larger area, and when the office space that occupied the entire first floor was freed up, he seized the opportunity.
« It was pretty unse charmless, » he said. A former insurance brokerage firm, there was a false ceiling with fluorescent lights, particle panels covering the walls, and industrial flooring, in a maze of offices. « We knew we had to take it all away, » Mr Bolen said. The idea was to connect the two levels by a staircase of honor. The ground floor and part of the first floor would serve as a shop, and the back room would serve as a showroom or event space with other spaces for offices and storage.
Designed by Jeang Kim and Will Kim of Oro Studio, the interior would give more the impression of entering the homes of « young people who have just moved into their grandmother’s grand apartment » than in a large, all-white setting, according to Ms. Kim (who is also the sister of the co-artistic director of Oscar de la Renta, Laura Kim, although not related to Mr. Kim).
Photo credit Julien Mignot for The New York Times
Benoît Janson, restoration specialist, working on painting.
Photo credit Julien Mignot for The New York Times
The restoration is scheduled to be completed in May.
Shortly after the demolition began, a discovery was made. One worker, disassembling the false ceiling in the last room on the first floor, said he saw something « strange. »
It would be a coffered ceiling, under the one that was visible, consisting of 29 square boxes, eight of which were painted with different coats of arms and a central diamond. Dating back to the mid-19th century, these were well preserved as they were embedded in the coffered ceiling. Yet, although this was an interesting discovery, it was not a first for a building of that time. It was when the workers began to remove the particle panels from the side and a piece of the wall came off, that things became interesting.
I said, « Oh! My God, it was — wow, » says Ms. Ryan, who was Dior’s interior designer for several years and set up his own company, Kirei Studio, in 2010. Behind the wall, a single painting, darkened by time, from one end of the panel to the other. « Sometimes when you work for castles, you find things, but often it’s a hidden fireplace, or in Italy, maybe a fresco, » says Ms. Ryan. « But in an apartment? In a shop? She had never seen anything like it.
« Everyone panicked, » Ms. Kim said. « It was like discovering a mummy. I immediately turned off my phone and looked. Nothing like this had happened to me in my work before. »
The demolition was interrupted to understand what this painting was and how it ended up in what was to be a shop. Seeing the aristocrats on horseback and the mosque on the painting, Mr. Bolen recounts that visions of crusaders and Templars began to dance in his head. « I think I’ve seen too many movies, » he says.
The enigma
In the theory of six degrees of separation, it was a good one: Mr. Bolen’s mother-in-law, Annette de la Renta, had a cousin (by his mother, Jane Engelhard) who had married a La Rochefoucauld, a descendant of this illustrious family of the French aristocracy. . It turned out that one of the members of this family lived across the street from the future shop of La Renta.
So when the painting was discovered and it became clear that Mr. Bolen should speak to the owners of the building he had never met, (the lease had been negotiated by a real estate agent), his relative was able to make the presentations. Another La Rochefoucauld, who worked at the Louvre, was advised to contact an art historian: Stéphane Pinta of Turquin, an expert on ancient masters of painting. Mr. Pinta established that it was an oil painting made in 1674 by Arnould de Vuez, a painter who had worked with Charles Le Brun, the first painter of Louis XIV and interior decorator of the Palace of Versailles. After working with Le Brun, Arnould de Vuez, known for his involvement in the duels of honour, had been forced to leave France and forced to take refuge in Constantinople.
Mr. Pinta found the painting in a plaque that had been reproduced in a 1900s book « Odyssey of an Ambassador: The Journeys of the Marquis of Nointel, 1670-1680 » by Albert Vandal, which told the story of Charles-Marie-François Olier’s travels, Marquess of Nointel and Angervilliers, Louis XIV’s ambassador to the Ottoman court. On Page 129, there is a heliogravure of the work depicting the arrival with great pomp of the Marquis of Nointel in Jerusalem, that of the painting of the wall.
But no one knew how it ended up stuck to that wall, or why it had been covered. There are some hypotheses that this may have happened during the Second World War, given the situation. It could be some kind of « fog of war » says Mr. Bolen.
What everyone knew was that it would be dangerous to move the work because of the way it had been attached to the wall: lined with a gauze on which it had been glued. And Mr. Bolen, recounts that his wife Eliza warned him « If you move this painting, you will have 100 years of misfortune ». He thought she was probably right.
The next mystery
However, Mr. Bolen reached an agreement with the owners of the building: he would take charge of the restoration of the work if they agreed that it would remain in the shop during the time he was a tenant (the original lease was 10 years). Mr. Janson went to work at the end of November.
« The work was very dark because of the varnish and the old paintings (old restorations) that covered it, » says Mr. Janson.
Team of restaurateurs passing a stamp on the varnish to find the original colors
Photo credit Julien Mignot for The New York Times
Over the past two months, teams of three to five people have carefully unloaded some of the varnish in order to regain the original colours. They hope to be done by May, says Mr Janson, although Mr. Bolen thinks the work will be done before then. Gradually, the details confirming the provenance of the painting, began to appear: the mosque, the western wall (wall of wailing), the sophisticated brocade of the French visitor.
After this discovery, it was necessary to rethink the interior and make practical changes. Ms. Kim frequented the auction houses to acquire furniture from different eras linking the past to the present, including chairs by Marcel Breuer and pieces from Pierre Bergé’s collections.
« We’re not going to put a wall of clothes in front of it, » Ms. Ryan said. Security will be enhanced and the ten windows on the first floor, which run from floor to ceiling, will be equipped and treated. The goal is to open before the summer.
In the meantime, Mr. Bolen has not given up his research. « I have to find an expert in heraldics to examine the ceiling, » he says, sifting through the photographs and pointing out some coats of arms. « This one has three stars, a royal crown — and a fish? »
He looked at another one. « What do these three stars mean? » he wondered. « I don’t know. But I think it should be known. » He looked all excited.
Customers with a strong penchant for conspiracy theories and a taste for history could be just as much.