The Painter's Red Hand

Madrid, one week in October. Nuria Velasco, a former restorer at the Prado, takes on what her trade calls a night appraisal: taking down a small portrait by Andrés Caravallo de la Espina, a minor nineteenth-century painter, from a private gallery in Lavapiés. The painting isn't worth what the client is paying for it. What matters, as almost always, lies beneath the first layer.