Portrait of an Unknown Woman (gabriel Allon, #22)

The novel is an installment in the long-running Gabriel Allon series. Gabriel Allon, a gifted painter and art restorer with a background in Israeli intelligence, has settled into a quiet life in Venice with his wife, Chiara, and their young twins, Irene and Raphael.

His peace is disrupted when Julian Isherwood, an old friend and London art dealer, arrives with a troubling story. Julian recently sold a painting called Portrait of an Unknown Woman, attributed to Anthony van Dyck, for six and a half million pounds to Masterpiece Art Ventures, a New York art-based hedge fund. Valerie Bérrangar, a French woman who raised concerns about the painting's authenticity, contacted Julian and asked to meet in Bordeaux. Before they could speak, Bérrangar died in a suspicious car accident. Julian asks Gabriel to investigate.

In Paris, Gabriel consults Maurice Durand, an antiques dealer and covert broker of stolen art, who reveals that Galerie Georges Fleury has a reputation for selling forgeries. Gabriel visits the gallery, spots several paintings he believes are fakes, and purchases a river scene attributed to the Dutch painter Aelbert Cuyp for one million euros. He takes it to Aiden Gallagher, founder of Equus Analytics, a Connecticut firm specializing in detecting forgeries. Gallagher reports finding polar fleece fibers embedded in the paint, confirming the work is modern.

Gabriel and Sarah Bancroft, Julian's business partner and a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, return to Paris to confront the gallery. They arrive to find Galerie Fleury rigged with a bomb. Gabriel hurls a bronze bust through the glass door moments before the explosion. French police detective Jacques Ménard questions Gabriel and investigates, but the probe stalls under political pressure. Four forged paintings from Fleury, worth a combined 34 million euros, have entered the Louvre's permanent collection, and French officials want the scandal buried.

Ménard proposes an unofficial collaboration: Gabriel will identify the forger and track down the bomber while Ménard handles the French side. Gabriel travels to Corsica with Christopher Keller, Sarah's husband and a former professional assassin now working for MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service. They seek help from Don Anton Orsati, the patriarch of a Corsican crime family who once employed Christopher. Orsati agrees to search for the bomber. A local signadora, a Corsican healer, tells Gabriel to paint four pictures, promising that a "Spanish woman" will lead him to the man he seeks.

In Provence, Gabriel and Christopher locate Françoise Vionnet, whose late partner, a painter named Lucien Marchand, forged Impressionist and modern works sold through a gallery in Nice. Françoise reveals that a mysterious Spanish woman tried to recruit Lucien for a rival network. Lucien initially accepted but reneged after his existing dealer made a larger counteroffer; six months later, he was murdered. Gabriel burns the unsold forgeries found in Lucien's studio. Durand describes the network as an "unholy trinity" of forger, front woman, and businessman, with galleries across Europe and Asia.

Gabriel pitches a plan to General Ferrari of the Carabinieri, Italy's national military police, which includes a dedicated art-crime unit. He will forge four Italian Old Master paintings, market them through Oliver Dimbleby, a London dealer, and lure the Spanish woman into the open. Working in his Venice studio, Gabriel produces a Titian, a Tintoretto, a Veronese, and a Gentileschi, artificially aging them to simulate centuries of wear. Luca Rossetti, a young Carabinieri officer, assumes the undercover identity of Alessandro Calvi, a Florence-based dealer.

Oliver orchestrates fictitious sales that generate buzz in the London art world. Rossetti visits a Berlin gallery connected to the network and deliberately leaves behind a photograph of the Gentileschi, signaling the emergence of a talented new forger. The bait works: Magdalena Navarro, a suspected operative of the rival network, flies to London from Madrid on a Spanish passport. Over several days she pursues Oliver, eventually revealing she knows the paintings are forgeries because she works for a competing operation. Following Gabriel's script, Oliver gives her the name Alessandro Calvi.

Magdalena travels to Florence, where Rossetti shows her the Gentileschi. She agrees to pay ten million euros and arranges a wire transfer. Rossetti then drives her to a villa in Umbria, where she expects to meet Calvi's anonymous forger. When she sees the Van Dyck portrait Gabriel is painting, she screams and fights before being handcuffed by the Carabinieri.

Facing a lengthy prison sentence, Magdalena cooperates. She reveals that the mastermind is Phillip Somerset, founder of Masterpiece Art Ventures, the same fund that purchased the forged Van Dyck from Julian's gallery. Somerset's fund is a Ponzi scheme propped up by forged paintings used as collateral for bank loans, their values inflated through phantom sales among shell companies. Somerset recruited Magdalena in New York, where she had been involved in cocaine distribution, and groomed her as his front woman. She built a global network of galleries across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Somerset hired Leonard Silk, a corrupt former CIA officer, to eliminate threats, including the murders of Bérrangar and Marchand and the bombing of Galerie Fleury.

Gabriel negotiates Magdalena's cooperation in exchange for immunity. Using Proteus, an Israeli cell phone hacking tool, he monitors Somerset's communications. Christopher triggers a wave of investor redemptions in London by spreading rumors of the fund's instability. Within hours, five major investors withdraw $135 million. Gabriel contacts Evelyn Buchanan, a Vanity Fair reporter, and offers Magdalena as a whistleblower.

In New York, Magdalena meets Somerset at his town house, photographing a forged painting and recording incriminating conversations. Gabriel hacks into Somerset's warehouse and identifies 227 forgeries valued at over $300 million. Silk discovers Magdalena's betrayal and abducts her from the Pierre Hotel, forcing her onto Somerset's helicopter bound for East Hampton, where Somerset plans to flee the country. Silk's hackers delete Buchanan's article, though she rewrites it from memory.

Buchanan's exposé appears on Vanity Fair's website that evening. At East Hampton Airport, Lindsay Somerset, Phillip's wife, having learned the truth about her husband's crimes, drives her Range Rover into him at full speed, killing him. Gabriel and Sarah arrive by helicopter, collect Magdalena, and fly her to safety.

The collapse of Masterpiece Art Ventures shakes the art and financial worlds. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) searches Somerset's properties, European dealers are arrested, and the Louvre acknowledges four forgeries in its collection. Don Orsati's men locate the bomber, Rémy Dubois, in Antibes and extract information about Silk's involvement before killing Dubois.

Gabriel later receives a parting gift from Ménard: the forged Cuyp, accompanied by a French laboratory report finding no polar fleece fibers in the painting, contradicting Gallagher's original analysis. Gabriel realizes that Gallagher himself is the master forger: a trained painter, restorer, and authentication specialist uniquely positioned to create undetectable forgeries and validate them. Gallagher fabricated the fleece-fiber evidence and relayed Gabriel's travel plans to Somerset, enabling the bombing at Galerie Fleury.

Gabriel visits Magdalena in Madrid, where she has given away most of her illicit fortune and is painting original works. He offers to launch her legitimate career with a London gallery show. He then flies to Connecticut, breaks into Equus Analytics, and confronts Gallagher with the evidence. Though Gallagher neither fully confesses nor denies the accusation, Gabriel destroys both forged paintings with a laboratory knife and extracts a ten-million-dollar check payable to Isherwood Fine Arts, covering Sarah's losses and all expenses.