The Passion of Artemisia (13 page)

He stuttered a moment and then turned to unlock a cabinet. He brought out a tied-up cloth, undid the corners, and spread out the stones. “From the Far East,” he said, affecting a hushed, mysterious tone. “Just think how many foreign hands these have passed through to travel that distance.”

“Yes, each one adding to the price. How much?”

“Which stone?” He touched the largest one as a suggestion.

“All of them.”

His eyes opened wide, we settled on an amount, and he said, “May I ask who it is who shall receive such a painting?”

I gathered my purchases and drawings, turned back to him at the door, smiled wryly, and said, “Florence.”

I hired a joiner to prepare the tall, narrow stretcher according to Buonarroti's measurements for a life-size figure, and to build a larger easel and my very own cabinet for my drawings, brushes, and pigments. From now on, we were truly a two-artist family. Someday, maybe even three.

I primed the canvas, and ground the pigments ahead of
time but did not add the linseed oil until the day I needed them. With Vanna posing, I began roughing in only the barest outline in paint. The weeks flew by in the joy of creating shape through color and shadow. I worked in a rhapsody, forgetting everything except the pleasure of laying on colors. I was working on her ankle when I heard Palmira's voice as if from a distant land. “Mama, I'm hungry, Mama.”

I gasped. It was already late afternoon. “Oh, my darling, I'm so sorry. We'll eat right now.” I hurried to get her a bowl of
pici
pasta left from the day before. I sprinkled raw broad beans with olive oil and laid out
pecorino
cheese and bell pepper for Vanna to eat with us too. I put honey on a slice of
pecorino
and handed it to Palmira.

“That's one good thing about having a child around,” Vanna said. “She makes you stop work so we can eat.”

“As good as one of those new chiming clocks.” I pushed a plate of figs toward her. “Have you ever wanted to paint?” I asked.

“Never. Why go through all that agony? Men paint. Women pose. It's the way things should be.”

“If you feel that way, why did you come when it was clear from my announcement that I was a woman?”

“I need the money. I am alone and have two boys. You know as well as I the alternatives.”

Although I wondered what happened to her husband, if there had been one, I respected her privacy and didn't ask.

“Do you think you'll ever become famous being painted?”

“Yes, I do. They may not know my name, but they'll see me on a wall or a ceiling of a palazzo I could never get into myself to have a look around.”

“And there's some satisfaction in that?”

“Yes. There is.” She seemed at once defensive and wistful, a strange combination. “Someone who saw me painted there
might recognize me in a piazza or on the street and take a second look. Or even speak. It could happen.”

“Yes, I suppose. There are also the years to come.”

“You mean when both of us are dead?” She pulled back her shoulders, which thrust out her breasts. “I, as I am now, will last a great deal longer than any artist who paints me.”

I had no way to answer that. What she saw was surface only. That which I contributed was, to her, incorporeal, and therefore of little consequence.

“Do your boys like figs? Take some for them.” A haughtiness came over her features. “Please,” I urged. “We have more than we can use from the tree in the courtyard.”

“It's going to shock them with its reality, you know,” Buonarroti said, looking at the finished painting propped on an easel in his audi-ence hall.

“A naked woman sitting on a cloud has reality?”

He chuckled. “A woman. A real, rosy, flesh-and-blood woman. She's exquisite.”

“I'm sure she'll be happy to know you think so.”

“The academy, Bandinelli, Cosimo, they'll all see it and marvel,” he said as he counted out thirty-four gold florins at his desk, put them in a brown velvet pouch and handed it to me. He grinned. “Do you want to know what part of her I like best?”

Her breasts? Hips? I didn't know. “Her face,” I said.

“No. It's that plump left forearm with that endearing knob of an elbow. You are another Rubens. And I am the first person in Florence to recognize it.”

“I'll be forever grateful.”

With his back to me, he sifted through papers and quills in a desk drawer and drew out a paintbrush about the width of my index finger. The long handle was oiled walnut with a
brass ferule, and the brush hairs were sable. He handed it to me. “Here. Don't lose it. It belonged to my great-uncle.”

“Michelangelo himself?”

He leaned toward me in an amused, fatherly way, wagging his head back and forth. “He's the only great-uncle I have who painted. He'll have to do.”

“It's a treasure! I won't ever use it.”

“Oh yes. You must. Let this serve as a reminder that the blessing of God on genius is only given judiciously.” He shook a finger at me. “Talent is not to be hid under a bushel.” He looked back at my painting. “ ‘Every beauty which is seen here below by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we are all come.' That's from a poem he wrote.”

“God?” I teased. “God wrote?”

“No. Michelangelo.”

“It amounts to the same thing.”

At home I set out the thirty-four coins in rows for Pietro to see. I turned them so the lilies all faced up. I didn't show him the paintbrush. I heard Sister Graziela's voice.
Be wise
.

While I waited I felt something unsettling, unsatisfying that I did not feel when I had finished
Susanna
or
Judith
.
Inclinazione
may have been beautiful. It may have looked real, but it was missing something. For me, the pleasure had been visual, in creating shape and applying color, and tactile, in smearing the thick creamy paint on my palette, but the pleasure was not of the mind. The painting did not have
invenzione
. It did not tell a story. I had gotten paid for craft, not for art.

I would not write to Father about it.

“I can't believe it,” Pietro said when he came home and saw the coins. His mouth seemed unable to close as he was
counting. “Other artists commissioned by Buonarroti for single-figure panels received only ten.”

“How do you know this?”

“One knows these things. It's our business to know.”

That night in bed he lay as still as stone.

10
The Academy

I
washed my hair, and used a twig to dig paint from under my nails. I wiped my old shoes with pork fat, and then I washed my good wine-colored dress. Sopping wet, the bodice didn't look bad, but the skirt looked like a rag. In a cold sweat, I took both parts upstairs to Fina.

“Bless you, child. You don't dunk a dress this fine into water. You just scrub the area you want clean. Now we'll have an awful time getting this to look decent again.”

“Have I ruined it?”

“Put more wood on the fire.”

She showed me how to press it smooth by using two iron pieces in the shape of pointed arches which she heated on the hearth. When I kept making more creases instead of taking them out, she elbowed me out of the way. “Hold up the skirt so it won't drag. My floor is none too clean.”

It took most of the afternoon. “From now on, I'll pay you to do all our washing.”

“Tell me, what's the occasion for such a dress?”

“The Accademia del Disegno has summoned me. ‘
Members ceremony and exhibition in commemoration of the feast day of Saint Luke,' the invitation said.”

“Oh?” She looked at me curiously.

“Buonarroti, the man I did that painting for, showed it to members of the academy. I think I'll be admitted.”

“And Pierantonio?” She scowled at the skirt as she worked. “He's invited too?”

“No.”

“What does he think?”

“He hasn't said.”

“Just be careful is all I've got to say.”

“Careful. How can I be any more careful than I already am? I had to show him the invitation.”

His eyes had narrowed and his mouth made that tight sideways movement when he read it. I'd said, “That overblown steward whose face looks like risen dough better not have put my name on the list of models. Do you think that's what this is for?”

Pietro had given me a look a person would give to an annoying idiot in the street, and said, “How should I know?”

I helped Fina turn the skirt. “I'll be careful.”

The exhibition hall of the academy was filled with men talking loudly in groups in front of paintings. Signor Buonarroti saw me at the door and came toward me holding out both hands.

“You will be a favorite here someday, mark my words,” he whispered in my ear, and then he introduced me to the steward, the man who had tried to register me as a model.

“I believe we've met,” I said. I couldn't suppress a wry smile when I offered my hand.

“Indeed.”

Signor Bandinelli greeted me cordially, which surprised
me, invited me to study the paintings, and moved on to greet others.

Signor Buonarroti pointed out il granduca, Cosimo de' Medici, dressed in a purple waistcoat with slashings showing emerald silk underneath, and matching green silk breeches and hose. Gold embroidery created a panel down the center of his waistcoat. He wore a narrow white ruff.

Oh, to do a painting with such exquisite detail and that brilliant green, to build up the sheen with layers of glaze between paint no thicker than the silk itself, with brush hairs so fine their trailings would look like silk thread. But it was impossible. The only green that bright was made from Macedonian malachite, and could only remain that bright by leaving it coarse ground. That wouldn't do for silk because it would leave fine particles on the canvas. A shame. It was a spectacular portrait, but only in my mind.

Unfortunately for him, although Cosimo was young, still in his twenties, he was unattractive. His bulb-shaped nose cast a shadow on his mouth, and a rather silly looking miniature triangle of beard was tucked under his lower, pouty, rouged lip.

“Give him your most reverent curtsey,” Buonarroti murmured. “Here we go.” He took me by the arm. Hardly believing what was about to happen, I stepped forward, and il granduca took notice, but before Buonarroti could introduce me, the steward rapped his staff for attention.

The academy members arranged themselves in two rows facing each other with Signor Bandinelli at one end. I stood next to Buonarroti. Opposite us, a bearded, full-cheeked man dressed in scholar's brown smiled at me.

Signor Bandinelli cleared his throat. “Il granduca Cosimo de' Medici, members of the Accademia dell' Arte del Disegno, and guests. We are pleased to announce, on this feast day of Saint Luke, patron saint of artists and craftsmen, the new admissions to membership for 1615.”

A fluttering in my stomach made me push my hand against my bodice.

“Members of the academy are held in the highest regard among the artists of the city of Florence, and are accorded the following privileges: instruction in drawing, painting, sculpting, architectural design, rhetoric, and mathematics; admittance to all occasional lectures, to the Uffizi, and, upon application, to other private collections; and the use of studio space, academy library, costumes, props, and registered models. The following individuals, please step forward to receive their matriculation papers and sign our registry.

“Antonello Ignazio Barducci.

“Jacopo d'Arcibaldo Daviolo.”

The steward handed out documents. At each name, the members tapped their staffs against the floor in approval, and said,
“Bravo!”
My toes cramped and I took only quick, shallow breaths.

“Antonio Guido da Fiorentino.

“Gianlorenzo Frapelli.”

I held my breath.

“Francesco Alfonso Grepini.”

My heart thudded to the pit of my stomach.

“Giacomo Luigi Romano.”

I wanted to sink into the floor.

“And Artemisia d'Orazio Gentileschi Lomi.”

For an instant, the sound of my name echoed in the room. Then the racket of staffs against stone, and the shouted word,
“Brava!”
My wild heart flew out of my chest and engulfed everyone. I stepped forward and signed with a big A, G, and L. I turned back to the men and met their smiles all around, from il granduca too, and especially the warm, proud face of Signor Buonarroti, looking like il divino himself. I wanted to hug them all.

No one mentioned that I was the first woman to be admitted. There was only that one word—
Brava
.

Was that resentment I saw in that man's stiffened back at the side of the room? In the arch of the brow of the man next to him? Was there anyone who did not tap his staff? Who was it I would have to win over with my words and not just my brush? Later. I'd watch for it later. Right now I was being congratulated.

“It is time for you to be one of us,” Signor Bandinelli said. “The achievement of your
Inclinazione
alone makes you worthy of admission.”

“That alone?” Apparently, he still didn't appreciate my
Susanna
and
Judith
. “I am most humbly grateful, signore.”

Wine and sweetmeats were served and Buonarroti ushered me around the room and made sure everyone knew it was I who painted
Inclinazione
. Would I eventually find the entire membership to be more impressed by craft than by hard-won, thoughtful
invenzione
?

Just when we were about to approach il granduca, the steward stepped in our way. “Come with me, signora, for a tour.” An oily command. With his palm out directing me, he gathered three other new members and took us upstairs to the library and studios and showed us the cabinets of drawings, the skeleton, the sculptural casts, and then iterated a long, detailed description of classes. None of that had to be done now. As quickly as I could, I paid my matriculation fee and registered for a class in writing and rhetoric. When I came downstairs, the gathering had dispersed. Il granduca was gone. It was over, just like that—a dream.

I held the document to my breast as I left the building, wanting to dance my way home. I'd write to Father. And Graziela and Paola too. But my excitement fought with the cold dread of telling Pietro.

I hurried back on narrow streets, weaving between two beggars in a piazza. In front of Pietro's friend's
macelleria
, still-feathered chickens and geese hung from iron hooks, and
the blood dripped into a trough that emptied onto the street. I stepped across it and went in and bought some boar sausage, something unusual for us, Pietro's favorite. Then, I walked on to a
vinaio
.

“A bottle of your finest wine. For a celebration.” My voice wakened the sleeping dog lying on the steps down to the wine cellar.

I picked my way past children playing in the street, past black-clad brethren of the Misericordia bearing a bier to Santa Croce. I crossed the large piazza diagonally. Because that wild-haired penitent was whipping herself and wailing by the church door, I didn't even stop at Michelangelo's tomb just a few steps inside the church as I usually did. He'd understand my excitement.
“Brava,”
they'd said.

What could I tell Pietro to soften it?

The lengths of colored silk on Corso dei Tintori seemed to be waving in my honor. I hurried down the Lungarno a short way, up the stairs, three flights, two, breathing hard, only one more, and heard Palmira crying. I opened the door. Huddled on the floor in a corner clutching my dressing gown around her, Palmira was hysterical. I ran to her.

“Oh, Palmira,
tesoro
. Where's your papa?”

My heart stopped. He wasn't here. God knows how long he had left her alone. He could have taken her to Fina.

I gathered her in my arms and kissed her reddened cheeks, her forehead, her ears, her little fists. Her tears salted my lips. “My little lonely one.
Poverina
. Don't cry.” I felt her little body wracked with sobs. I held her close and rocked her. “Mama's here now.”

She quieted, and her wet hand stroked the embroidery on my bodice. She walked her fingers up the braid at my neckline, but she wasn't willing to let go of her anger yet. Knowing she had my full attention, she sucked in a gulp of air and her bottom lip protruded. “I want a dress like this.”

“You will have many. I promise you. Mama's in the academy now. Maybe someday you will be too.”

I fed her half a hard-boiled egg and broth with zucchini in her favorite blue faience bowl, and when she was finished she squirmed off my lap and put my dressing gown over her shoulders and pranced around the room dragging it behind her. Any other time, I wouldn't have let her do that, and she knew it.

I laid out the boar sausage for Pietro in thin slices like dark old coins touching each other around the edge of a pewter plate. In the middle I arranged pear wedges around the other half of the egg. “See how pretty? Like a star.” Another plate for olive oil. And bread. How would I tell him? I couldn't allow my voice to sound exultant. I practiced saying it—“I've been admitted”—flat, like saying “It's going to rain,” but I couldn't trust my voice. I sprinkled ground oregano on the surface of the oil, trailing shapes of an A and D for
Accademia
and
Disegno
. I put the document of admission with its large A and D next to the plate, and poured two glasses of grappa and waited.

“Hold still,” I said to Palmira, and drew a humorous, exaggerated sketch of her with my dressing gown trailing off the page behind her.