Restoration Portrait

     Van Dyke was so overburdened with commissions for portraits that he [. . .]

     had a number of assistants who painted the costumes of his sitters arranged

    on dolls, and he did not always paint even the whole of the head.

—E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

She’s practically drowning in tippets.

The windrowed stoles seize her torso

like a startled invertebrate

she’d dragged up from the seafloor

to nurse. Somewhere beneath the chemise

hides a head strangely sucking at her salt.

Her face has too many bones.

Her skin is a decadence of blue.

She has the look of someone born

to live under glass, tagged with Latin.

Something has been sketched against her elbow

to keep her from tilting out

of the frame. It is not important

whether it is a fishbowl or a tambour.

There’s a bit of red in the picture where

someone’s pried her stitches open.

We might peel her off in layers

and find another subject

entirely beneath the thick duff

of oil and lacquer. That sitter might even

be historical, the creature at her neck

a proper familiar after all.

There may even be scapular or habit

enough for us to see the touch of God

luminating her like a tasteful maquillage.

For now, it is impossible to say

if the likeness is good—everyone

who could have known her is dead.

A chip of white sits in the coffer

of her right eye, deliberate as a chess piece.

Her feet have been a mystery for centuries.