The tiny, cryptic initials "FG," primly stamped in the corner of a stately oil painting, don't look like the handwriting of a 17-year-old.
And the depicted scene in the French neoclassical piece-a synthesis of unfurling silk, distended muscles and climactic Greek tragedy-doesn't look like a 17-year-old's doodling, either.
Appearances can be deceiving.
"Clytemnestra Receiving the News of Iphigenia's Impending Sacrifice," a formerly unnamed and unattributed painting in the Nasher Museum of Art's permanent collection, was confirmed March 28 to be the work of Francois Gerard, a young student in the workshop of neoclassical master Jacques-Louis David.
The painting dates from 1787, meaning its precocious, 1770-born artist was squarely in the throes of adolescence.
Now identified, it becomes the fourth known piece from Gerard's earliest period, and its worth has nearly tripled.
Associate Curator Anne Schroder is primarily responsible for the painting's attribution, and her detective work took her far and wide.
The journey began in the fall of 2001 when, on a business jaunt to Paris, Schroder popped into an art brokerage firm. She was specifically seeking a French piece depicting literary or mythological subjects to add to the Nasher's collection.
After finding nothing that particularly suited her idea of what the museum needed, she agreed to look over a color transparency of a painting that would be delivered to the gallery the next day.
She liked what she saw and returned. "I'd wanted the outside expert opinion of another scholar," she said, referring to well-known David expert Philippe Bordes. "We agreed that it was in good condition and seemed to be well-done, but there was no artist's name yet attached to it, and the subject hadn't been identified yet."
Even though the painting was signed "FG," Schroder said the exceptionally early date of the painting raised skepticism that the work was Gerard's.
But rather than wait for the firm to restore and research the painting's origins on its own-a process Schroder said would have dramatically increased its retail value-she went ahead and put a hold on the piece as it was.
After securing the painting for the museum's collection, Schroder's next task was determining what exactly the subject of the painting was. With the help of Duke's classical studies department and with hours of independent research, she began to amass clues, ultimately pinning it as Euripedes' tragedy of Clytemnestra and Iphigenia.
The depicted interpretation of the myth, Schroder said, could be from a 19th-century operatic version that was shown in Paris around the time of the painting's inception.
"Our painting shows the climactic moment of the final scene, just before the message from the gods announces [Iphigenia] is about to be spared," Schroder said.
After determining the subject matter, Schroder turned her attention to its creator. Having the painting cleaned and restored helped to determine whether the initials "FG" were an original part of the painting-or whether they were unscrupulously added later as a profit-hiking ruse.
"Under the layers of varnish, if the inscription is original, you have the very tiny cracks in the paint that run through the painting itself and through the inscription," Schroder explained. "But if you've added the inscription later, the cracks will run underneath the later paint, as they've been painted over."
Conservationist Ruth Cox removed the discolored varnish and re-lined the painting-that is, backed its deteriorating canvas with a new fitting of fabric. She came back with a verdict.
Not only was the inscription original, but Cox found the words "M Gerard"-"M"for "monsieur"-also written on the canvas's stretcher.
"A painting of that age-it's 220 years old-needed to be re-lined, and when [Cox] took it off the stretcher, she could tell it had never been off before," Schroder said. "You can just imagine the workman who made stretchers for David's studio came to him and said to Gerard, 'This one is for you.'"
While the words on the stretcher are not necessarily a signature of the artist, they further supported Schroder's evolving thesis that the work was Gerard's. She and a student researched the history of David's studio and determined Gerard to be the only "FG" working there during that period.
Later, as Cox and Schroder traveled to see other Gerard works, they looked at details like the painter's brushwork. A painting dated 1790 came up last week at auction at Christie's in New York that had many of the same characteristics as the Nasher's piece.
"It has the same signature-the 'FG' in the same handwriting," Schroder said. "It shows many of the same ways that he personally creates a subject, handles a facial expression and paints hands."
That later Gerard work, a depiction of Biblical figures Daniel and Susanna, went to auction in New York April 6. Its estimated worth is between $200,000 and $300,000.
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