How a biologist turned amateur sleuth to solve a century-old art riddle

OOn a warm summer evening in 2018, Javier Burgos stayed up late on his computer. His wife and daughters were already asleep when he decided to do another round of Google searches. This time, the biologist’s quest to solve a centuries-old art riddle took him to a 2013 exhibition in Ravenna, Italy.

Burgos was dully watching the first few seconds of a video of the show when something caught his eye. When he paused the video, the still image showed a museum wall with two portraits. He recognized one, a 19th-century painting called Le Medecin Chef de l’Asile de Bouffon by Théodore Géricault, one of the masters of French romanticism. But the other portrait was new to him.

It showed a man frowning and staring at the void with sad eyes. The painting was mostly dark except for the lit face, which emphasized the subject’s very pale skin. For Burgos, the craft and colors were again reminiscent of Gericáult, but this painting was not included catalogs reasons for existence which lists a painter’s known works of art. He felt a thrill of excitement.

The mystery that Burgos, who works at the Jaume I University in Valencia, tried to solve dates back to the winter of 1822, when a psychiatrist named Étienne-Jean commissioned Georget Géricault to make portraits of some of his patients.

Georget and other French physicians of the 19th century were among the first to approach the causes of madness in a scientific manner. They created a new way to classify mental illnesses and wrote long treatises describing their patients. These authors argued that insanity could be caused by ‘monomania’” – a pathological obsession around a single idea, such as drinking alcohol, gambling or stealing. They also believed that it was possible to diagnose it by analyzing a person’s facial expression.

Although this field of science is largely discredited today, its ideas were popular for several decades. With Géricault’s portraits, Georget probably wanted to visually record some case studies of these monomanias.

When Georget died, the series was lost – until 1863, when French historian Louis Vardiot rediscovered five of the paintings. They were located in an attic in the German city of Baden-Baden and belonged to one of Georget’s disciples, known only as Doctor Lachèze.

Today these paintings are exhibited in five museums around the world. Experts praise them as some of Géricault’s best works from his final years, painted after his acclaimed masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa, and just a few years before his death. The dignity and accuracy with which he portrayed the patients, and the fact that the series bridges the gap between art and science, make these five paintings extraordinary.

But according to Vardiot there were a total of 10 monomanias. After Georget’s death, five of them were taken over by Lachèze and the other five by another of Georget’s disciples, a physician named Marèchal. No one knew what happened to the second lot.

Burgos was immediately drawn to this story. As an art lover and biologist who researches Alzheimer’s disease, it combined his two greatest interests, art and neurology.

‘If the paintings existed, where were they? I started investigating, and one thing led to another. Trying to find them was almost a no-brainer,” Burgos said.

Over the next few months, he visited museums, leafed through art catalogs, and read the psychiatric treaties of Georget and his colleagues in search of clues—all in vain, until that summer evening, when he finally found a promising lead. He managed to obtain the exhibition catalog and confirmed that the painting was indeed attributed to Géricault. The title was also telling: Portrait of a man. Homo Melancholic.

Melancholy was a known monomania, suggesting that the portrait could be one of the missing paintings from the series. Burgos found additional evidence for this. He noted that the subject was wearing what appeared to be a liturgical vestment, and that his hair appeared to be tonsured. According to ancient psychiatric texts, religious fanaticism was one of the causes of melancholy.

With great difficulty he managed to contact the painting’s owner, a private collector in Italy. To his surprise, they offered to show him the painting. “They were very generous, they even let me hold the painting, a painting worth millions,” Burgos recalls. “It was a beautiful day that changed my life.”

Passionate about art, but without first-hand knowledge of its commercial side, he published his findings in the medical journal The Lancet Neurology. And just a few months later he received an email from a gallery owner in Versailles. He had read the article and had a similar portrait that could also be a monomania. Burgos flew to France to meet him.

This new portrait, which is not officially recognized as a painting by Géricault, showed a bearded middle-aged man wearing a hat and a white shirt. One of the first things Burgos noticed was that the shirt was unbuttoned. The monomania series was painted in winter and all patients wear warm clothing. Burgos and the gallerist speculated that this painting might represent the monomania of drunkenness. The psychiatric texts noted that patients with this monomania experienced abnormally high body temperatures. Burgos identified other elements that support this view: the redness of the cheeks, wounds in the forehead and the fact that the man is wearing a winter hat.

But there was something else. On the back of the painting was a handwritten note in French: “This portrait of an insane man, painted by Géricault, was given to me in 1866 by the widow of D. Maréchal, Paris, November 9, Louis Lemaire”. A chemical analysis of the note dates it to the second half of the 19th century. In 2022, Burgos published this second finding in the same medical journal.

Finally, earlier this year, Burgos claimed that a third painting, Portrait of a Man Named Vendéen, was also part of the series. Unlike the other two, which are owned by private collectors, this painting is currently exhibited in the Louvre and recognized as painted by Géricault. It shows a man with a light beard, a large hat and a blue coat. His face is only partially lit and he is looking to the right.

Burgos had noted that this painting was similar in size and style to the Monomanias, but was aware that experts did not consider it part of the series. He wanted to know why and examined their catalogs. There he began to discover inconsistencies.

“Philippe Grunchec wrote in 1978 that the Vendéen was different in size from the known monomanias, which is clearly wrong. And he cited Klaus Berger’s 1955 catalog to support the idea that the painting is not part of the series,” Burgos said. “Berger did say that the painting was not part of the series, but he did not provide any evidence, he simply cited another expert, René Doumic.”

Doumic had written a review of the Vendéen in 1938, after the Louvre acquired the painting. When Burgos read it, he was surprised to see that Doumic had gone to great lengths to argue that the painting was probably a monomania. Only in the last paragraphs did he speculate about other possibilities.

Once reassured that the painting could indeed be part of the series, he turned again to the psychiatric texts. In one of them he found a description of a 30-year-old man from the city of Vendée “who does not shave”. This man had lived through the political uprising against the French Revolution in his youth, a well-documented episode known as the ‘War of the Vendée’. As a result, the text said, he had developed the monomania of ‘political struggle’.

“It all matched, the size, the style, the data and the medical description,” said Burgos, who published his conclusion for the third time in The Lancet Neurology.

Most art experts have met these findings with silence. Gregor Wedekind, professor of modern and contemporary art history at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, calls the story “problematic” and says: “There is no serious art historical debate about it.”

Wedekind doubts the authenticity of the first two paintings. He argues that without more information about their origins and more thorough analyzes they cannot be attributed to Géricault or the monomania series. He calls for “critical caution” regarding the handwritten note, explaining that such documents are “very common and just as unreliable as supposed original signatures.” And says that Burgos’ credentials and arguments about the Vendéen are insufficient to attribute the painting to the monomaniacs. “This is just not enough,” he said.

Burgos is not concerned about the lack of impact of his findings in the art world and believes that time will prove him right. “I would love it if someone would publish an article on one of the three paintings that confirms or refute my findings so that we can start a high-level academic discussion about this,” he said, noting that it is still too early to do so. it’s early. “But I think it will happen someday.”