The Frame in Question

A painting arrives at the museum with three hundred years of paperwork and one impossible detail: the varnish is fifty years too new. Rae, who verifies provenance, has six weeks to prove it is a forgery. Julian, who restored it, is the only person who can tell her how — and the only one with something to lose if she does. They work after closing, in empty galleries and locked archives, arguing about evidence and touching the same brushstrokes. Somewhere between the second and third examination, the question stops being whether the painting is real.