"That's paint," Hollister answered.
"It looks like a crack to me," I put in.
"Oh, that!" Hollister exclaimed, bending down closer. "That's a crack."
"And it's not on the report," said Hemerick. "But it doesn't mean it's new, because, like I said, the Tate doesn't record anything old."
"But wouldn't the Spanish have done it?" I asked.
Hemerick smiled wryly. "Well, we do make mistakes. We do, like, miss something. It's a crack. I'll just write it down."
I asked her how a crack like that comes into being. Does it appear suddenly, following a long and invisible process of deterioration?
"It can happen," she replied. "A crack can have been caused many years ago, and only shows up suddenly. We can't speculate. We can't say that [this] is something that happened many years ago and is only now showing up, or [that it's] because of vibrations, temperature changes, or even that it's been there and hasn't been noticed before."
As it happened, that was the only condition change recorded in any of the works in the show. And when I looked at the painting again after the exhibition had opened, the crack wasn't even visible.
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