“We have to find the Mystical Man,” my father said, in a room of Renaissance paintings on the ground floor of the recently reopened Frick Collection. Which Mystical Man? “He used to be here. You’ll recognize him.” We ventured upstairs to the newly accessible second floor, by way of the old staircase, once perpetually roped off, the organ above just barely in sight. In the sitting room among Medieval religious images was Hans Memling’s “Portrait of a Man,” from 1470, and I did indeed recognize him. My father calls him the Mystical Man because he remembers his undergraduate Art History 101 professor saying he seemed not of this world. In all black, a bag strap slung over his shoulder, wispy little bangs and curls before a miniature green landscape with trees and a tower and tiny figures in red, the Mystical Man’s brown eyes gaze into the distance, serene and contemplative. “Where is he going?” my father asked.
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