Stone Virgin (38 page)

Raikes sat back abruptly. That feverish incredulity had come over him again. Could an image of stone be affected by what human beings did to her and near her? Could this in turn affect other human beings years, centuries, later? Fornarini’s pun, if that was what it was, even the Madonna’s sanctification, was mixed up with sexual treachery. It was the day we were together near her that I knew I was in love with Chiara. There were no more visions after that. All that randiness when I first started the work … He had gone about Venice in a state of tumescence. All focused now on her, on Chiara. Even now, he thought, just listening to her voice on the phone …

Only once her tone had changed, and that was when he had asked about Litsov’s things. She had been very definite that she did not want them. Of course she would not wish to be reminded of such a terrible experience. Not even some small thing that he might have had about him … She was able to dissociate herself from the past, it was a great gift. Bereavement took different people different ways. Chiara was one of those who seek for consolation in the senses: she would try to warm herself, not sit out in the cold. Like a cat … that gesture of hers was cat-like too. That was why her voice promised him so much, barely a week after her husband’s death. The night they had spent together, had she been in flight from some misery then? If so, she kept her head well, he thought, remembering the clear and definite instructions she had given him before and after. Two different Chiaras, the ardent creature of the night, the cool tactician of the morning. It came to Raikes suddenly that he did not really know her.

Litsov, of course, he had known even less. Litsov was summed up in other people’s phrases, a recluse, a bit of a hermit, highly strung, his prices are going up, Litsov has genius, my husband is an invalid, Litsov hates telephones … He had conquered his fear that day at least, the last of his life. Almost certainly he had phoned to Mestre, spoken to the people who were casting his work. He had learned something that disturbed him, something that determined him to go and see them – there and then, without delay. Childlike, he had dressed up to demonstrate his intention. In this immaculate state, waiting for the return of the boat, he had had a fit, fallen and choked to death in shallow water. He had not taken his phenobarbitone that day. Perhaps he had forgotten, his feelings being disturbed. The same drug, Raikes thought, prescribed by the same doctor. Had Litsov too had abnormal wave-patterns, an invisible, undetectable scar on the brain?

These and other questions presented themselves to Raikes in the course of the evening. Most pressing of all was the severely practical one that came to him as he was undressing for bed. What was Litsov doing down by the water? What could have led him, in the fog and gathering darkness, knowing there was no boat, to go stumbling about at the landing-stage?

6

NEXT DAY HE
began work early – before eight. He had slept badly, waking frequently with feelings of oppression and foreboding, but felt no tiredness now: she was nearly complete, it was a matter of hours, a day or two more at most. There was only her face. The headdress he had done already and all the deeply indented parts where the headdress framed the face, leaving by conscious contrivance only the features themselves, so that the completion of the Madonna would resemble an unveiling: she would be restored to the world. It seemed fitting to Raikes, properly ceremonious, that he should end his work like this – and in particular with her eyes and brows. He was troubled still, as he worked, by something sensed as familiar in the faintly smiling mouth.

The meeting with Manatti at the Soprintendenza – something between a social call and an informal report – took less time than he had feared. By noon he was back at work again. He was involved in the extremely delicate area around the nostrils and the folds at the sides of the nose. An error of judgement here and the Madonna could be permanently disfigured. All thought, all speculation left Raikes’s mind as he worked; his whole being was concentrated on the exactly judicious use of the delicate, savage, faintly hissing instrument clutched in his hand between thumb and forefinger; even the knowledge that he was to see Chiara later on that day was pushed into the background of his mind.

Progress was extremely slow. He was obliged to pause frequently to wipe the dust from his mask. Fear of abrading the healthy stone – something that could happen in a few seconds of lapsed concentration – made him more nervous and tentative, more reluctant to bring the quartz-cutter close. In this absorbed solicitude for the Madonna’s face his lunch-hour came and went, unnoticed. When cramped muscles and strained eyes made him stop it was mid-afternoon, the lower part of the Madonna’s face, to the bridge of her nose, had been cleaned, and it was time for him to start getting ready to go and meet Steadman.

They met at Florian’s, as arranged – Raikes’s idea this, as he intended to go on afterwards to pick up Litsov’s belongings at the police station. They sat in the shade of the awning, and watched the life of the Piazza for a while and had some expensive beer. Raikes felt hungry now, belatedly, and ordered a toasted cheese sandwich.

‘I suppose one has to come here once on every visit to Venice,’ Steadman said. He looked relaxed, as far as his saturnine cast of feature could allow, and slightly tanned – the weather had been sunny in London. ‘How have things been here?’ he said.

Raikes thought briefly about telling Steadman what had happened but decided almost at once against it. He did not know the people, for one thing. But there was more to it than that: it was somehow his, Raikes’s, own territory, one he had not found his way about in yet – it was too soon to admit anyone else. ‘Oh, much as usual,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen much of the Tintoretto people. I had a cup of coffee with Miss Greenaway the other day. You’ll have seen her, I expect.’

‘Pauline? Oh yes. Barfield has got the plaster off, I gather. You’re not really looking too well yourself, you know.’

‘I’m all right,’ Raikes said.

Steadman waited for a moment or two, then looked away across the square. ‘Things are getting that summer look,’ he said, his eyes on a group of fifty or sixty Germans flocking round a vociferous guide with a bright red umbrella which she held aloft and waved to draw the attention of strays. ‘You won’t be here that much longer now, will you?’ he said. ‘The old girl must be nearly finished. I’d like to have a look at her, by the way, when the restoration is complete. I want to take some pictures, as a matter of fact.’

‘Of course,’ Raikes said. ‘I’ve done everything but the face. Well, I’ve done the lower part of the face too. It won’t be long now. It’s an amazing bit of work. Even the perspectives … You can see it in the draperies, but it’s particularly clear in the face. She was intended to be seen in half profile, from below – though not so far below as at present. So the artist kept the forms on the farther side more nearly on the same plane. You can see it in the cheeks, the farther one is distinctly less modulated.’

Steadman nodded. ‘It is what I said before,’ he said. ‘These devices were not employed at all in native Venetian Gothic. Commonplace enough later, of course, all over Italy. No, your man came from somewhere else, or was trained somewhere else.’

He paused, looking rather closely at Raikes. ‘Piedmont is what you think, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I did a little work on it in London. Quite frankly, there isn’t a great deal. Artists came to Venice in the fifteenth century from all over Italy, even Florence, though it was usually second-raters who came from there. So obviously there must have been some from Piedmont too. The trouble is that most of the work was done in combination with others or under the direction of others and so it is not recorded anywhere. Most of these people were what today we would call migrant workers. A number of them would have been highly talented, a few might have had genius – there was a lot of it about. But we shall never know their names.’

‘I see, yes.’ It was clear that Steadman was settling into his stride. His voice was eager, he had forgotten to be hard-boiled and laconic. ‘Plenty of work in any case,’ Raikes said, by way of encouragement.

‘Oh, yes, no shortage of work, though they tried to operate a closed shop from time to time. Building going on all over the place, tremendous demand for statues. There are some references to a stone-carver from Piedmont named Donato Baffo who was employed in the workshop of Bartolomeo Bon. He is known to have done two of the waterspouts on the façade of the Ducal Palace – very accomplished and delicate work. But that was in the 1450s. The best bet is the one you must have had in mind when you set me on to this business. No good trying to look innocent, Simon. You must have known there was a contract in existence between the Supplicanti in Venice and one Girolamo Piemontese for a Madonna Annunciata.’

‘Well, yes, I did,’ Raikes said. ‘I suppose I should have told you. It seemed a long shot, you know.’

‘Still does,’ Steadman said. ‘There’s no record of whether the work was ever done, there’s no description of it anywhere, there’s no connection with the present location of your Madonna. Annunciate Virgins were being commissioned all over the place at that time.’

‘Do you know anything about this Girolamo?’

‘All that is known about him comes as a footnote to the life of Jacopo della Quercia, the Sienese master. Girolamo Piemontese is known to have worked in Bologna, at San Petronio, as an assistant to della Quercia. How he came to Bologna no one knows. He is mentioned by name in connection with the reliefs round the main doorway, but this would have been under direction, not independent work – probably. Nobody knows of course. He left Bologna in a hurry, again nobody knows why. Possibly some trouble with the authorities. Then he turned up in Venice and seems to have lived obscurely until he obtained the commission from the friars.’

‘They rejected her, you know. At least they didn’t use her on their church. Could this have been something to do with the style or execution of the work? There’s a very sensuous treatment of the drapery, for example. The friars might not have approved.’

‘Too sexy, you mean?’ Steadman considered a moment. Then he said, ‘I don’t think it is very likely. One doesn’t know of course. The Supplicanti were an ascetic order, it is true – though this Venetian lot doesn’t seem to have been, or not for long. More of that in a moment. Asceticism was seen as a sort of bloodless martyrdom, you know, by emphasizing Mary’s purity the monks could see her as a model, and in that case the more abstract the method of composition, the more removed in time and space, the better. All the same, this was fifteenth-century Italy. The cult and depiction of the Madonna were well developed by then, and very delicate and varied grades of emotion were finding expression through her, among them the erotic. No, I think there would have been a fair degree of tolerance at the time. Mind you, asceticism has its other side too, and I think that is what may have gone wrong with the Supplicanti.’

‘How do you mean?’

Steadman drank some more of his beer. ‘I did some work on them too,’ he said. ‘Once I had discovered the connection. Of course, if you had not been so devious, Simon, I would have known the connection earlier.’

‘I should have told you,’ Raikes said again. But he could see that the other man bore no grudge, was even, in his rather morose way, enjoying the situation.

‘I have a theory about them,’ Steadman said. ‘Nobody knows for sure why they were expelled from Venice. This stuff about indiscipline and debauchery doesn’t get us very far. If it had been only individuals, they would have been dealt with as individuals. It had to be something collective, something dangerous to the Establishment. It wasn’t political, or the secular authorities would have been involved. As far as I can see that leaves heresy. Now the only heresy I could think of which might tie up with sexual malpractices, no pun intended, is gnosticism. Art history takes you into odd corners sometimes – I once did a paper on gnosticism in relation to early Christian sculpture. So I knew there was a standard work on the subject by a man called Abrahams.’

Steadman paused and drank again, obviously savouring the moment. Then he said, ‘It’s got a reference to the Supplicanti in the index, Simon. It seems that the founder of the order, a man named Matteo da Polenta, had been a follower of the Christian Gnostic Pipo Fiorentino, who was burnt for heresy in 1302.’

‘What did the heresy consist of?’

‘They saw the physical world as irredeemably evil. There was nothing to be done about this, it began with the
descensus angelorum
, the mingling of spirit with substance in the creation of the world. The business of the soul was to repudiate the body and so reach awareness of its divine origin. Seems mild enough now, but these beliefs were passionately held and they were regarded as a serious threat to a church which was set on affirming the sacramental nature of the world through the doctrine of the Incarnation. Serious enough to burn them when they caught them, in preceding centuries at least. All the same they lingered on here and there.’

‘In an established monastic order? At the tail-end of the fifteenth century?’

‘Why not? They were a flagellant order, weren’t they? Contempt for the flesh can take various forms. You can leave it alone, you can flog it or you can debase it through perverted practices. I think it was this third way that the Supplicanti took and that’s why they were kicked out. None of which helps you much with your Madonna.’

‘I don’t know,’ Raikes said. ‘Paradoxical, isn’t it, if they despised the flesh so much, that they should commission a Madonna Annunciata, one of the great Christian symbols of flesh sanctified?’ He paused for a moment or two, then he said, ‘What happened to Girolamo afterwards? Did you find anything out?’

‘Absolutely nothing. No more commissions, no more references to his name at all. A complete blank.’

‘Surely it’s unusual for someone to disappear like that, without trace?’ Raikes found it difficult to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

‘Not really. He disappears from our view, that’s all. There are gaps of years in even the best documented lives of the period. Our lad may have married well, or come into money. He may have decided to give up the trade of carving for something a bit more regular.’