How to Be Both (10 page)

And for this, the pickpocket at my side said. We’re to be paid. Only 10 pence per. Bloody square foot.

I made a note to myself to ask the Falcon about my rate of pay : the Falcon, when the speech was done, put his arm round my shoulder and took me over to show me my own wall.

Borse departing on hunt – here, he said. Borse dispensing justice to aged loyal infidel – here. Borse presenting gift to Court Fool – here. St Giorgio day palio – round about here. Gathering of poets – up there. Gathering of university scholars, professors and wise men – up over there. Representation of the Fates – here. Spring image, fertility kind of
thing, use your imagination – that area there. Apollo – there. Venus – there. Minerva – there. All in chariots. Minerva will need unicorns. Venus will need swans. Apollo will need Aurora driving and he’ll need a bow and arrow. He’ll also need a lute and the delphic tripod and the snakeskin.

I nodded.

Illustrate the gods from the poems, he said.

I will, I said none the wiser.

Now, he said. The decans. For the 3 decans of each month, check the schema in the anteroom. For instance, as the schema shows, and this is very important, Francescho. The first decan of Aries should be dressed in white. He should be tall, dark, powerful, a masterful man of great good power in the world. He is to be the guardian not just of the room but of the whole year. He should be standing next to a ram to symbolize the constellation. And next to that please put a figure which stands for youth and fruitfulness, holding, say, an arrow, for skill and for aim. A self-portrait maybe, Francescho, your own fine face, what do you say?

He winked an eye at me.

And over here, April, one of the decans should hold a key. Make the key large. And over here … and here … on and on he went,
and one should have the feet of a camel and one should be holding a javelin and a baton and one should be holding a lizard, and …

There
was no space left in all the requirements for asking about payment.

But I knew my work would speak for itself and bring when done its own due.

I began with May and Apollo : I worked hard on the horses : I invented 4 falcons all sitting on a birdframe : I added the bow and the arrow but had to give a standing girl minstrel the lute (cause Apollo’s hands were already full with the bow, the arrow and the black hole of the sun which I made a little like a black seed, a burnt walnut or the anus of a cat, which is what the sun looks like if you look too long at the sun).

What was a delphic tripod?

I painted a 3-legged stool with a snakeskin draped over it.

When he saw it, the Falcon nodded.

(Phew.)

I painted all the citizens of the Ferara court, not as they looked now but as an infinite crowd of babies swarming out of a hole in the ground as if conjured from nothing, replicating by the second and all as naked as the day they were born, their teething rings around their necks on cords their only jewels and adornments, their arms cordially through each others’ arms as they went their passeggiata.

When he came up on the scaffolding and saw this the Falcon laughed out loud : he was pleased
enough to drop his hand to my breeches to take hold of me where something or nothing should be.

Ah! he said.

I’d surprised him.

He sobered.

I see, he said.

But he put his arm round my shoulder in a brotherly way, and I liked him all the more, the thin scholarly Falcon.

You caught me out. It’s not at all what I expected after the dishevelled state of my maid when you came to my house that day, he said

(cause when I’d come to his house and drawn for him the running torch bearer, and the girl at the door had been sent finally to assure me of employment and dispatch me, I’d asked her could I borrow her cap just to have a look at and she’d taken it off, then I’d backed her gently further into the house off the street so no one could see us and I’d asked her kindly to take off some other things for me just to have a look at, which she smiling did, then I’d kissed her cause I should in the places bared, which she’d liked and had kissed me back and before I’d left she’d tied the cap sweetly in jest about my head and said
you make a very handsome girl, sir
).

So you’re a little less, Francescho, than I believed, the Falcon said now.

A very little thing less only, Mr de Prisciano, I
said, and no less at all when it comes to picturemaking.

No, you’re talented, true, all the same, he said.

Exactly the same, I said. No less.

I said it with passion but he wasn’t listening : instead he slapped the side of his own leg and laughed.

I’ve just understood, he said. Why Cosmo calls you it.

(
Cosmo? talks of me?
)

Cosmo calls me what? I said.

You don’t know? the Falcon said.

I shook my head.

That Cosmo, when he talks of you, calls you Francescha? the Falcon said.

He what? I said.

Francescha del Cosso, the Falcon said.

(
Cosmo.

I forgive.
)

A mere court painter, I said. I’ll never be. I’ll never do anyone’s bidding.

Well but what are you right now, the Falcon said, but a court painter?

(It was true.)

But at least I’ll never knowingly choose to be in the pay of the flagellants, I said

(cause I knew Cosmo to be making a lot of money with the images asked of him by some).

The
Falcon shrugged.

The flagellants pay as well as anybody else, he said. And have you seen his St Giorgio for the cathedral organ? Francescho. It’s sublime. And – didn’t Cosmo train you? I thought you’d been apprentice to Cosmo.

Cosmo? Train
me
? I said.

Who then? the Falcon said.

I learned by my eyes, I said, and I learned from the masters.

Which masters? the Falcon said.

The great Alberti, I said. The great Cennini.

Ah, the Falcon said. Self-taught.

He shook his head.

And from Cristoforo, I said.

Da Ferara? the Falcon said.

Del Cossa, I said.

The brickmaker? the Falcon said. Taught you this?

I pointed down to my new assistant, the pickpocket, filling the time between plastermaking and colourgrinding by doing the drawing work I’d set him of the pile of bricks I’d made him fetch in from the gardens : I look back at my rich court babies pouring out of the hole in the stony ground into life as if the whole world was nothing but theatre and them its godgiven critics.

Since I was infant I’ve lived, breathed, slept brick
and stone, but you can’t eat bricks, you can’t eat stones, Mr de Prisciano, which is why –

(and here I got ready to ask for my money).

– on the contrary, the Falcon said. Best way to get birds to hunt well, no? Is to feed them stones

(cause it’s true that this is what falconers will do to keep a bird hungry and sharp, they’ll fool it into thinking it’s been well fed by giving it pellets of stone so that when the hood is removed and the bird out working it’s surprised by its own hunger which makes it sharper-eyed than ever in finding prey).

But it was a dodge to my question and he knew it, the Falcon : he looked askance, ashamed : he looked to my army of babies instead.

Infantile sophisticates, he said. Bare of everything, seen for what they are. Good. And I like your Apollo. Where’s the lute? Ah. Yes. And I like very much the grace of your minstrels. And – these –oh. What’s this?

The gathering of poets you wanted, I said, in the top corner, as required.

But – is that – isn’t it –
me
? he said.

(It was true I’d painted unasked a likeness of him, in with the poets : I sensed he’d prefer to be seen as a poet rather than a scholar.)

What’s that I’m holding? he said.

The heart, I said.

Oh! he said.

And this’ll be, see, here, heat, I said. As if you’re
examining a heart off which heat is rising like breath from a mouth on a cold day.

He coloured : then he gave me a wry look.

You’re a politician, Francescho, he said.

No, Mr de Prisciano, I said. A painter, by the work of my arms and hands and eyes and by the worth of the work.

But he turned his back very quick then in case I asked about the money again.

On his way down the ladder backwards he looked back up at me.

Keep it up, he said.

Then he winked.

So to speak, he said.

(One night I came through the curtain over the month room door, it was only midnight, not late, a good damp night and very few others working cause I preferred it when quiet, but as I came down the room I saw by the shadows the swing of a torch up on one of the platforms at the far end of the room : I stayed in the dark by the foot of the scaffolding : the Falcon, I could hear, was somewhere up there speaking to someone –

Veneziano, yes. Piero, certainly. Castagno, maybe some Flems, certainly a bit of Mantegna, Donatello. But as if, your Grace, the work’s soaked itself deep in them all but then washed itself new and clean and come up with a freshness like nothing I’ve ever.

Your
Grace
.

Yes, the other said. I’m not sure I like the way he’s done my face.

There’s a charm, the Falcon said. A great, I don’t know what else to call it. Likeableness.

Must never underestimate charm, the other said.

Lightness of spirit, the Falcon said. Not got from anyone. Not Piero. Not Flemish.

The women’s clothes are very fine, the other said. But am I well starred throughout? The auspices? And how like the gods? I mean in inference?

Very, your Grace, but very human all the same, the Falcon said. A rare thing, to be able to do gods and humans both, no?

Hm, the other said.

Look at this woman and this child here, just standing, but in such a choreography, the Falcon said. It’s motherhood. But it’s more than motherhood. It’s as if they’re in a conversation, but a conversation made of stance.

And does this particular painter do any more of me? the other said.

Yes, your Grace, the Falcon said

and I heard them move on the platform and I ducked into the shadow of the wall.

Who is he, then, the lad? the other said then as the ladder beneath him creaked.

Not a lad at all, your Grace, the Falcon said.

I held my breath.

– full-fledged
painter, well over 30 years, the Falcon said.

What’s his looks like? the other said.

Youthful in demeanour, sir, the Falcon said. Girlish, you might say. Youthful in the work, too. Freshness all through it. Freshness and maturity both.

What’s he called? the other said.

I heard the Falcon tell him –

and not long after, since the Falcon had liked Cosmo’s St Giorgio so much, I figured him into the fresco again, this time in the month of March (the part of the wall my work was at its best), this time as a falconer with his clothes winged up like the falcon on his hand and the torch bearer drawing he’d liked and I sat him on a horse with a stance a bit like Cosmo’s Giorgio : I made him young and vigorous : I gave him a tasselled hunting glove : above all I made the balls on his horse good and large.)

Painting the months took months.

I made things look both close and distant.

In the upper space I gave the unicorns translucent horns.

In the lower space I gave the horses eyes that can follow you round the room, cause those are the God eyes and whoever has them in a painting or fresco holds the eyes of whoever looks at the work, and this is no blasphemy, merely a reasserting of
the power of the gaze back at us from outside us always on us.

I painted the differing skies of May and April and lastly March (cause I progressed from May to March and grew more used to the plaster from each to each, which made the work flourish) : I dared paint, in Venus’s upper space, with its groups of lovers standing in their 3s, women openly kissed and touched by men (to enrage any visiting Florentines who hate to see such goings-on).

Throughout I did as the great Alberti in his book suggests the best picturemakers should always do and included people of many ages and kinds, plus chickens, ducks, horses, dogs, rabbits, hares, birds of all sorts, all in a lively commerce in and about a variety of landscapes and buildings : and, cause Alberti asks in his book
that as a reward for my pains in writing this work, painters who read it might kindly paint my face into their istoria in such a way that it seems pleasant
I did this too and painted him into it in the gathering of wise men in the goddess Minerva’s space : cause those who do good work should always be honoured, which is something both the greats Alberti and Cennini agree on. As a symmetric to the wise professors I placed on the other side of Minerva’s chariot, where the Falcon wanted the Fates to sit, a gathering of working women and included every woman’s face I could remember from the streets
and workshops and the pleasure houses : I arranged them round a good loom and gave them well-made cavework as a landscape behind them.

I painted my brothers.

I painted the figure of my mother resplendent.

I painted a ram with the look of my father.

In these ways I filled the Marquis’s months with those who had peopled my own on the earth.

But when I did, as can happen when you work to picture someone in paint, as soon as I’d painted them into the skin of the fresco they stopped being the people I knew : this happened especially in the colour blue meant for sky, the place between the gods and the earth.

A picture is most times just picture : but sometimes a picture is more : I looked at the faces in torchlight and I saw they were escapees : they’d broken free from me and from the wall that had made and held them and even from themselves.

I like very much a foot, say, or a hand, coming over the edge and over the frame into the world beyond the picture, cause a picture is a real thing in the world and this shift is a marker of this reality : and I like a figure to shift into that realm between the picture and the world just like I like a body really to be present under painted clothes where something, a breast, a chest, an elbow, a knee, presses up from beneath and brings life to a fabric : I like an angel’s knee particularly, cause holy things
are worldly too and it’s not a blasphemy to think so, just a further understanding of the realness of holy things.