The canvas looked bare without its heavy and ornate frame. Its cracks and crevices glimmered under the spotlights of the workshop. The oil paint had darkened with the passage of time and its surface shimmered hiding details and contours under a black hue. She drew back away from the glare of the lights and tried to focus on what she thought she had seen under the ridges of the peeling oils after she had carefully applied the solvent with an unsteady hand.
What had led her to that particular corner of the vast painting? Instinct? The appraisal of the eighteenth century landscape that unfolded too serenely, dotted with shepherds and bucolic herds grazing over rolling hills amid generic Arcadian ruins? The bed of the canvas did not display the same morphology as under the other crevices. It did not possess the same tincture of grime, dirt and unraveling threads. She desperately wanted to peel the paint with the sharp scalpel, to destroy the serenity of the Arcadian landscape, to see what lay underneath.