The Colour of Heaven (6 page)

She remembered finding him in the little
rio
on Ascension Day, the rescue from the monks and his work in the foundry; his strange blue eyes, and the way he looked at her as if he could never quite believe what he was seeing. It was a look of both trust and bewilderment. Only she knew it, as if such a look was meant only for her.

Who would look after him now?

As she walked by the shoreline and thought of her son, Teresa became convinced that her passionate concern was Paolo’s only protection.

She began to imagine every possible illness or accident that might befall him, because if she did so then perhaps such disasters might never happen.

Her head filled with all the ways in which her son might die.

It was August. Simone planned to journey south through Padua, Ferrara, and Bologna, over the foothills of the Apennines and then cross the River Arno to the east of Florence. They rode in the back of a cart through winding paths amidst sloping vineyards, collecting water from the wells of the small hill towns which studded their route. After eight days Paolo could just make out the silhouette of the city of Siena high in the distance, a huddle of ochre and deep brown, its buildings folding into each other, framed by crenellations of cypress and pine.

Simone’s workshop lay in the Contrada Aquila. It was situated in a spacious courtyard that opened beside a crowded narrow street. Here the apprentices were trained how to prepare the wood for devotional panels and altarpieces: washing, smoothing, and rubbing down each piece of poplar before applying the foundation of gesso. The more experienced amongst them worked on ornamentation: pressing tin and gold leaf, beginning to gild, burnish, pounce, punch, and stamp. Others employed on frescoes outside the workshop had already learned how to mark up a wall, to wet it down, plaster, true up, and smooth off.

Simone told Paolo that he must know every part of the process of painting: preparing charcoal for drawing, making brushes, paper, and pens, and collecting eggs with which to bind pigment and make the paint tempera mixture. He had to sift lime and sand, prepare plaster, smooth panels, and then, at last, when he fully understood the process, he would be allowed to work with colour.

‘What are you painting?’ asked Paolo.

‘Everything,’ replied Simone. ‘Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the end.’

‘You are painting heaven?’

‘And hell. Out of this humble earth. Can you believe it?’ The artist spoke like a showman addressing an audience. ‘I select each ingredient, like a wife at the market. I cook with paint.’ He crumbled a piece of ochre between his thumb and forefinger. ‘As a chef coaxes flavour so I encourage colour: with egg and tempera, red madder, and saffron. These are my ingredients and my spices.’ He flicked the paint away. ‘There is only one difference.’

‘And what is that?’

‘The meal I create is everlasting.’

Simone was happiest when he had an audience, and Paolo began to wonder if his apprentices were employed not only to undertake the menial tasks which their master had outgrown, but also to provide constant attention, ever ready to laugh at his wit. Keeping Simone amused was almost half of the work because he could be plunged into depression at any moment, such was the fragility of his confidence and, Paolo noticed, his fondness for wine. The man could move from exhilaration to despair in an instant, which made all those who worked for him both nervous and watchful.

At times Simone would throw down his brush, leaving the workshop to drink with his friends, returning too inebriated to continue. He would then compensate for such wildness by working without stopping for thirty-six hours. Talented, unpredictable, and easily distracted, he sometimes gave his pupils astonishing bursts of responsibility.

‘Lippo, do the hands – Mino, finish this halo – Ugolino, decorate the cloak of the Virgin.’

‘How?’

‘Make it up!’

Paolo began by preparing charcoal for drawing: taking strands of willow and cutting them into matchsticks, smoothing and sharpening them like spindles, tying them in bunches, and then placing them in an earthenware pot which he took each night to the baker’s, letting the strands roast until morning.

After four months he learned how to work with colour, grinding pigment from stone on slabs of porphyry or serpentine. In order to make azure, he would boil up hot alkaline mixtures of honey and lye in a series of bowls and then add the pigment, keeping a close eye as the colour gradually settled. Once he had drawn off the liquid, he would be left with paint ready to bind with egg yolk and apply to either panel or fresco.

Just as he had learned to define each shade of stone and glass, so Paolo now began to see how paint could lighten or darken, enrich, or become dull in a moment.

‘Our task is nothing less than to show the glory of God’s creation. Painting is an act of faith, Paolo. We tell stories, inspire devotion. This is the land of miracles’ – Simone smiled – ‘even if they sometimes become repetitive.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Saints can be tedious, do you not think? There are only so many ways in which a painter can depict devotion. Hell is so much more diverting.’ As they blended pigment with egg yolks, Simone began to tell Paolo of his ambition to paint a Last Judgment: the dead emerging from the cracks and fissures of the earth, skeletal, ghostly, waiting either to be clothed in flesh or tormented in hell, haunted by a pale blue light. As he warmed to his theme the story became filled with dreadful detail. There would be blazing rivers and bottomless pits of volcanic despair containing the stained souls of the damned, blackened by sin and lit with flames. Usurers would have to swallow hot coins, and sodomites would be skewered like pigs. Slanderers with their mouths stretched and cut open would be seen with their teeth ground to a pulp and then re-grown only to be pulverised once more. The painting should be a vision of eternal misery, and above it all would be Satan with three bastard heads, bat’s wings, and Judas hanging, half-eaten, from his mouth.

‘So you can see that painting heaven is somewhat dull after all that,’ Simone concluded. ‘We need drama, not everlasting felicity. But this, of course, is our challenge. To make paradise exciting. A place beyond belief.’

Although he was a craftsman by day Simone was something of a dandy by night, wearing a different tunic for each evening’s
passeggiata
, but cut in the same style, and always in velvet: maroon on a Monday, azure on a Tuesday, vermilion on a Wednesday, burnt gold on a Thursday, lamp black on a Friday, crimson on a Saturday, and white on a Sunday. He rubbed his gums with mint, shaved, washed, and then scented himself with rosewater. Before he left the workshop he checked his appearance in a silvered mirror, and adjusted his curling hair accordingly. Life was a performance and he was its leading actor, presenting and perfuming himself before the world.

The true test of his showmanship came when the Commune of the City announced a competition to paint a fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin, a Maestà, for the Palazzo Pubblico. All the painters of the city were invited to compete: Segna di Buonaventura, Memmo di Filippuccio, Dietisalvi, and Simone. This was the first great secular commission, and it would rival Duccio’s golden Maestà in the cathedral, filling the east wall of the town hall.

Simone was determined to win and set to work immediately, laying out sketches of saints and angels, martyrs, apostles, and church fathers. He began to experiment with azurite and malachite, and brought in great swathes of fabric on which he could base his design for the Virgin’s mantle. Two assistants were asked to find new ways of gilding metal, so that the haloes of the saints would glow under candlelight as evening fell.

‘This is not only painting,’ he cried; ‘we must be the envy of all other trades: the goldsmiths, the weavers, and the dressmakers. We must paint what cannot be achieved on earth. That is our secret. We will depict the impossible.’

Paolo was asked to make charcoal for the preparatory drawings – the Virgin as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, holding the Christ child, with the four patron saints of the city kneeling below: Ansanus, Savinus, Crescentius, and Victor.

‘Hold still,’ cried Simone. ‘You make a perfect saint. Keep working.’

As Paolo bound each twig of willow, Simone began to draw him. The pale face and blond hair curling under the ears. The thin nose. Long fingers. And Paolo’s strangely quiet blue eyes, endlessly puzzled, curious, surprised.

‘Which saint am I?’

‘Ansanus, the young Roman nobleman who first baptised the Sienese. Try to look more spiritual.’

‘I don’t feel very spiritual.’

‘Then look serene.’

‘Can’t I just be myself?’

‘No, no, that is not the point at all. Have you not listened to anything I have said? We must turn men into angels and make the heavens sing. Colour and joy. We are painting infinity,’ Simone cried.

Over three hundred councillors assembled to discuss the commission. Each painter had been asked to present his ideas in the council chamber where the Signori of the Nine, and the Consiglio della Campana gathered around their drawings. One painter suggested a celebratory painting of the recent acquisition of Talamone and a glorious gallery of all lands recently conquered. Another put forward his plan for an enormous panel of the Battle of Montaperti and the conquest of Montalcino; while a third proposed a representation of the day Buonaguida Lucari had laid the keys of the city on the altar of the cathedral and donated all that they had to the mercy of the Virgin Mary, their protectress against the iniquitous and evil Florentines.

As his rivals struggled to make their case, Simone was both impatient and exhilarated, for he was convinced that none could match his vision of divine beneficence.

‘This is my plan,’ he announced. ‘The Court of Heaven and the Seat of Good Government presiding over us all. I will paint the other, eternal world: things unseen and unimagined. The fresco will be a banner from heaven and a blessing on earth, containing all riches. Wisdom. Stillness. Calm. I will show you wonders.’

He walked over to the windows. ‘As the light from the south wall forever changes, so will this painting. Each time you look you will discover truth. The Virgin will sit high above us in an exquisitely embroidered mantle, a garment so rich and so beautiful that it will make the textile workers weep to see it. Her throne will echo that which sits below in the council chamber, and her seat will be our inspiration for both justice and mercy. She will offer us the Christ child, our salvation from death, our guide to the divine and our Redeemer. The scroll held by the child will be of paper, the text of ink.
Love justice, you who love the earth
. The Book of Wisdom.

‘Everything about this Maestà will reflect the majesty of maternal love. There will be jewels in the clothing of the Madonna and diamonds in the tracery of the windows behind her. In the distance the sky will darken into an infinite blue without limit, for there is no end to the glory of paradise. I will turn pigments from the earth, real earth, into heaven.’

Simone made a low bow.

‘I offer you stillness, joy, and peace. My painting will depict our gift from God, the everlasting bounty of heaven, and the grace of our salvation. I have seen this beauty. Only let me paint it for you, here in this room, a divine blessing on our fair and noble city.’

The councillors were silent. The commission was won.

By the time Simone returned home to the workshop he was drunk.

‘Victory,’ he cried. ‘Victory by St Victor. This is a noble day. We have routed our enemies and made straight the high road to our salvation. The whole town attests to my brilliance.’

At first his apprentices were almost frightened by such exuberance, unable to understand quite what their master was saying.

‘I will smooth plaster with the thighbone of a gelded lamb. I will burnish each halo with sapphire. We shall prosper, and we shall vanquish all.
Salute! Salute! Grandi amici!
’

More wine was opened, and Simone began to elaborate on his performance, telling all who would listen of his plan to create eternity in paint.

‘The divine stillness, this is what I have promised, the life of the spirit on this earth. A foretaste of heaven.’