Echoes From Eternity

A Chapter by Lynne

An art curator decides to investigate a strange face she see's in a painting.

Chapter 1

As she unwrapped the new exhibit an all too familiar face gazed up at her. ‘This cannot be possible,’ she thought to herself, handling the seventeenth century masterpiece carefully with pristine cotton gloves. The painting was another religious depiction of ‘Saint Sebastian’ by Carlo Dolci, but the face, this was the face that seemed to be haunting her. She saw him everywhere.

‘I need to get a life,’ she said to herself. ‘All I do is work and this obsession has to stop, it can’t possibly be healthy.’ She surveyed the room slowly, wondering if she was in fact quite insane. He seemed to be staring at her from virtually every painting.

Savouring the peace of the night she worked alone and silently in the museum. She had processed works of art from four different centuries, more than thirty artists of differing genres, countries and continents, and repeatedly saw the same face in many of the paintings. Not only did she see the face on canvas but in her dreams.

‘Yes, Get a life. It just can’t be the same man. Give up Zita.’ Finally aware that she was talking to herself she became even more convinced that this was an unhealthy obsession and she should probably consider giving it up. She stared at him again as she continued to doubt her sanity.

She studied the paintings that surrounded her. Each image was of a very beautiful man, each subtly different yet something was always spookily similar. The same eyes or the same lips, there was always something a little different but always something familiar. She stared into the round sorrowful eyes, studied the long fine boned features of his obviously masculine but still quite feminine face, with full lips and perfectly arched eyebrows. She stood still as a statute, hardly breathing, held captive by the beauty of his face. There was a softness and frailty, chiselled torso and skin so pale it was almost translucent. It was as if there was the same aura, an identical feeling captured within each frame. The haunting expression that stood before her portrayed loneliness, hopelessness, grief, distress, or was it sorrow? Whatever it was she was certain that this persistent face hid a compelling secret, and she for some reason needed to know more.

The museum was upgrading its cataloguing system so all paintings usually kept in storage were being checked, cleaned and either repacked for continued imprisonment in dark basements or proudly exposed to the world once again as long forgotten artists came back into fashion. As an authority on the Italian Renaissance in particular, the choice of pictures for the new exhibition was entirely hers. After three years working at the museum, she was now in charge of her own section, the renaissance gallery. The whole wing was being refurbished and she had the responsibility of selecting the paintings that would be displayed for the grand opening.

She had always been a perfectionist, from early childhood if her mother was to be believed, but this had to be better than perfect. For months she had been cataloguing the items in storage and considering their suitability for her exhibit. She now had five paintings by major artists, more by lesser-known painters and several sketches. All the pictures she preferred were of the same beautiful angelic face, but did she dare to put him out there and see if anyone else noticed the similarity? Part of her wanted to confirm that she was on to something, the other part, the bigger part, wanted to keep him secret, to have him all to herself.

Her new position at the museum put her in charge of a small team of staff. She was not so enthusiastic with this part of her job as she didn’t really consider herself to be a people person, and frequently stayed late at night conveniently avoiding the need to socialize with her new colleagues. She hated speaking to anyone, even the occasional exchange of, ‘Alright,’ with the security guard bothered her. Her team were used to her terse comments and abrupt manner, they put it down to her being Spanish and not understanding the English need for politeness, however false.

Zita was only half Spanish, her father had been English but he died when she was only five. She had no memory of him, but her mother had insisted that she continued to speak English. Even when as a teenager they moved back to Spain she was still insistent that Zita used English regularly, that was probably why she chose to do her degree at an English university. Her mother had not been wrong, languages were useful, and she loved to travel. She lived in Paris and became fluent in French during her gap year even though she spent most of her time at the Louvre, preferring to spend her time with paintings and not people.

Zita finally pulled herself away from staring at the face. She had no idea how long she’d been standing there lost in her thoughts but her neck felt a little stiff. Turning her head to loosen her muscles she looked up and caught sight of her reflection in the glass partition that divided the room in two. She was in the clean zone, further protection for the priceless works of art.

She stared at herself critically; thick dark curly hair pinned back and twisted into a rather ugly knot and eyebrows that even in this poor reflection looked as if they needed some serious attention. She hated her looks, she knew she was attractive and felt that she was never taken seriously because she was pretty. People made instant assumptions about her just from one glance. She tried to hide her natural attractiveness behind bad hair, or under hats, and also by frowning constantly. She would walk without looking up, conveniently avoiding eye contact and conversation with most people. She never spoke to her neighbours either. Three years in the same apartment and never a word. In fact no one had ever been invited back to her home. The furniture deliverymen and a plumber were the only other people to have set foot in her refuge from the world.

She hadn’t always been so guarded; there was a time when she had been happy in company, even at times extrovert. Now she only spoke when she had to, she retreated to her work, books, paintings, and to her imagination. Conversation led to questions and she was not willing to answer those. The painted face was not the only one keeping secrets.

The museum gave her time to herself, and didn’t demand a huge amount of interaction with the human race. The paintings and her books were the only company she needed. Besides, Zita wasn’t working in a museum by accident; this obsession with Sebastian as she liked to refer to him, had been with her for a few years. She first noticed him on a school trip, entranced by eyes that watched her from the other side of the room, and followed her as she zigzagged her way towards them. Blue eyes that reflected the light with such realism she felt she knew him, or certainly wanted to get to know him.

Her interest in art began there but it was a few years later when she began to get suspicious. Just how was the same face in other paintings by different artists from different centuries? It wasn’t a schoolgirl fantasy, they weren’t just similarities. It was the same face - the same, never aging, and strikingly handsome face.

The obsession grew so much that she eventually studied art history at University and spent holidays and weekends amusing herself in museums, trying to find him. As she stared at her own reflection she felt a wave of determination. She smiled at herself, a rare expression for the face that usually reflected such a dark mood. She would not just seek these paintings out, she would find out everything she possibly could about the artists that painted him, their life, and their friends. She would find out just who this face belonged to if it was the last thing she ever did.

It was a Dolci painting where she had first seen him so it seemed an appropriate place to start her research. Feeling elated that her work finally had such a purpose, she continued with her cataloguing though now she also photographed each painting for her own personal research, her mind firmly set that she would somehow get to the bottom of this mystery.

Her mind raced with ideas and was already starting to formulate a plan for her research. The thesis for her master’s degree had included a chapter on Dolci, though she hadn’t told anyone the reason for her interest in the 17^th century Italian artist. She decided that her investigation was to begin with this painting of ‘Saint Sebastian’ and the Florentine painter Carlo Dolci. She considered it to be detective work, though she also felt that she was somehow stalking him, but obviously you can’t stalk the dead. So why did it feel like stalking?