Quattrocento Read online

  “ ‘When she goes, all wreathed in herbs,’ ” Matt said aloud to himself, watching the two turn the corner and disappear behind the topiary giraffes. “ ‘As if she hid a stone in the grass.’ ”

  chapter 16

  Painted over crushed azurite, the smallest amount of ultramarine could be made to go a long way. The trick, Matt knew, was to use it in glue size, even when the rest of the painting was done in tempera or oil. That brought out the blue most vividly. The irises would glow; Matt could see them already, in a majolica vase. Copper resinate would work for the green, if he used it right. It wasn’t a stable color, fading over time to a deep reddish-brown, but with green earth under it, the effect was wonderful. Over black, as most of the Italian painters had done, it was a disaster. But who cared about the effects of time? What mattered was now, now when Anna would see it, when the color was fresh and vibrant and as clear as a woodland pool.

  What he really needed was the ultramarine. Anna wouldn’t miss it, he thought, the tiny amount that he had balanced on the thin knife; and, he reminded himself as he carefully dropped it into the tiny bottle, he wasn’t taking it from her at all. He would be bringing it back in a finished painting. He stoppered the vial and slipped it into his pocket. Anything else as long as he was there? No. The panels were tempting; they took a week of arduous work to prepare—but he was going to paint on copper anyway. He had thought of using canvas, but what he intended was small, almost a miniature. It was for her only. And the depth of color, the luminosity of oil on copper—he could see it in his mind’s eye, the flowers in the pot on the shelf against a white wall, by an unseen window. Chardin. But not Chardin; what he saw was not a painting, but three slender stalks, crossed, one blossom arched toward the window—which one? valor, wisdom, or faith?—the other two partly in shadow. He couldn’t wait to take up the brushes, thick with paint, to feel them spread on the ground, a rainbow dissolved and reshaped into irises, a bouquet of molten color fixed in oil, lambent in the afternoon sun.

  He paused for a quick glance at the swallow. It was closer to completion, the underbelly rounded, the fine feathers just suggested with the minute brushstrokes of tempera slowly built up coat after coat. The bird was coming alive, soaring against the sky. The clouds were still unfinished, more like puffs of whipped cream, with no sense yet of their weightless solidity. Not an easy thing to do, but Anna had gotten it in the earlier paintings; more so in the second than in the first.

  Matt set the painting back down on the bench, tilted just as it had been left, and looked around to make sure he had left no trace of his visit. Aware of how late after midday it was getting, he hurried along the arcaded passage and into the church, anxious to be away before Anna might appear for her daily visit. Halfway up the nave he stopped, hearing the telltale creak of the door. The knife edge of sunlight widened into a whitened chasm that began to be slowly eroded by the eclipse of a shadow, a person still unseen. Without stopping to think, Matt dashed to the back of the nave, dodging around the side of the altar and into the welcoming black of the low doorway that led down to the basement of the old church. Struggling to hold his breath and slow the pounding of his heart, he strained to listen. He reached out to the wall to balance himself on the narrow steps that curved down into the dark, finding instead of a rough stone wall an oddly curved surface, smooth and round and cool under his fingers. Another was next to it, and another; a row of them, like newels on a banister, the size of melons. His hand strayed farther, finding a serrated edge. Teeth. And then next to it, the barest brush of warmth and fur that slipped away from his hand with an angry squeal and scrabble of tiny claws. A skull fell from the shelf, detonating on the steps like a ghostly grenade, but by the time it landed, Matt was already gone.

  He tore back up into the nave, slipping on the slick stone floor and crashing into the wall. He braced himself with both hands, face against the cool stone, eyes closed. Rats; God, how he hated rats. That one had climbed up his arm, he had felt its claws. It might have bitten him. Rats. Huge medieval black ones, with coarse hair and yellow teeth and hatred in their beady red malevolent eyes. Who knew what kinds of terrible diseases they carried? He looked at his arm, examining it in the light. He was all right. It hadn’t broken the skin. He would live. Heaving a sigh of relief, he stood away from the wall and turned around. Smothering another exclamation, he jumped back. Anna, with Francesca behind her, stood by the doorway to the cloister, her face wide with surprise.

  “Rats,” he said. “Nothing else down there, really. A catacomb. Skulls. Nothing of any interest.”

  The two women continued staring at him as though he had fallen out of a clear blue sky.

  “I was told there were some frescoes by Masaccio here,” he said.

  “Down there?” Anna asked, looking at the narrow steps vanishing into the black.

  “I took a wrong turn. I should probably be on my way,” he added, and with a bow started to edge his way by the women. As he did, the vial of ultramarine, jostled free by his pell-mell rush into the wall, slipped from his pocket. Lightly, it fell to the stone, fracturing almost soundlessly into a tiny constellation of glittering shards and brilliant blue. The three of them looked at it, Francesca angling to see past Anna’s wide skirt. Matt and Anna both looked up at the same time, their gazes meeting.

  “It works best in a glue size,” he said.

  “It doesn’t work at all there,” she replied. “Come along,” she added with a sigh. Matt followed, Francesca behind him, back through the arcaded cloister to her workshop. Anna took the small bottle of ultramarine and the thin spatula and handed them to Matt.

  “Your questions about painting,” he said, when he returned with the bottle and put it down on the bench next to her. She was stirring one of the small bowls of tempera, the green liquid shining in the white ceramic dish. “They started me thinking. I haven’t used a brush in a long time, and I thought I might give it a try.”

  “I thought you weren’t an artist,” she said.

  “I had forgotten I was,” he replied.

  “Who told you about these supposed frescoes?” she asked. “I see,” she added, seeing the quick glance he darted at Francesca. “Where were you intending to do your painting?” she asked.

  “My room,” Matt answered. “It’s a very small picture. No one would notice.”

  “No,” Anna said. “That won’t do.” She thought for a moment, stirring the paint. She wiped the stick and moved to the next dish, a paler green. “If you’re going to paint, you had better do it here,” she announced.

  “But—” Francesca began.

  “Thank you, Francesca,” Anna said. “That will be all.”

  “Do you need something?” Anna asked the next day, looking up from the panel as she reached over to recharge her brush with a blue as pale as a robin’s egg.

  “Paper,” Matt replied, looking around. “I wanted to do some drawings.”

  “Over there,” Anna instructed him, pointing with the end of the brush to a chest against the wall.

  “Second drawer,” she said, her attention back on the panel as she quickly and deftly drew in highlights on the swallow’s wings.

  Matt, the upper drawer half open, was about to shut it when part of a drawing caught his eye. He pulled the drawer open all the way to see the rest of it, a series of quick sketches surrounding a finished study of an angel. Not just any angel, though, but the most famous of the Renaissance: Masaccio’s guardian of Paradise from the Brancacci chapel in the Church of the Carmines in Florence. Sword in hand, he presided over the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, impassive as he watched the two grief-stricken figures leave.

  “Did you find it?” Anna asked, glancing up again. “Next drawer,” she said, and then, when Matt didn’t answer, got up and went over to see what had so captured his attention.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, realizing she was standing by his side. “You did this? It’s superb. I could have sworn that Masaccio had done it himself.”

>   “He did. You flatter me, to think I could draw anything like that.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Matt replied. “None of his drawings have survived.”

  “These are his.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Matt said.

  “I couldn’t, either. It was only by the purest stroke of luck that I even heard about them. And then a lot of effort to track them down. It was the grandson of Masaccio’s brother—”

  “Lo Scheggio,” Matt said. The Splinter, he was called; also an artist, he had specialized in cassone and deschi da parto, the ceremonial plates commissioned to celebrate a birth.

  “Yes. The grandson was an old drunk, a lawyer living in the most squalid circumstances. But he drove a hard bargain. I was not very good at disguising how much I wanted them.”

  Them. She had definitely used the plural. Matt, hardly daring to hope, held his breath as he lifted the drawing out of the drawer. He could scarcely believe his eyes. “The tribute money,” he said.

  “Have you seen it?” Anna asked.

  “I’ve spent hours there,” Matt said. “I wouldn’t even be able to begin to count how many.” Looking at the frescoes, drawing them himself—as had generations of artists who had made the pilgrimage to the chapel to see the amazing work that this young man was creating. Like nothing ever seen before; Masaccio had taken up where Giotto had left off. On the walls of that small chapel the Renaissance had been born.

  “The Church of the Carmines was our parish church,” Anna said. “I saw these paintings every day. The Brancacci were friends of my family’s. Until Felice was banished, of course.”

  “The evangelists must still be there,” Matt said. “On the ceiling. And the lunettes, of Christ walking on the water and the calling of Saint Peter, too.”

  “Well, of course,” Anna said, slightly puzzled. “Why wouldn’t they be? When were you last there?”

  “Ten years ago, at least,” Matt replied.

  “I might have seen you,” she said.

  “Possibly,” Matt said, thinking that ten years ago for him was five hundred years in the future for her. He lifted the drawing reverently, placing it on top of the cabinet. “Excellent,” he said, seeing the one underneath.

  “That one’s mine.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “You’ve really caught the feel of it.” And she had—the neophyte, waiting his turn to be baptized, looking genuinely cold.

  Anna shrugged, and hurried the drawing from view.

  “No, I mean it. It’s a way of seeing, and you have it, too. Why does that upset you?”

  “He was a great artist.”

  “And that means you could never be one, too. I see. Oh, my God,” he breathed, looking at the drawing that had been under hers. It was the expulsion itself. Adam, hands covering his face in remorse. And Eve. You could hear her anguished cry. Was it possible? He still couldn’t believe it, but there was no doubt in his mind. Looking at the drawing, he knew that it was Masaccio’s own study for the single most celebrated painting of the early Renaissance. Matt touched the paper. It was real enough.

  “Those walls,” Anna said, “is where I first saw the face of God. Did you know that Filippino is finishing them?” she added, as though embarrassed by her moment of unguarded candor.

  “Someone once asked me where I would go if I knew I only had twenty-four hours to live,” Matt replied. “There was no question in my mind. The Brancacci chapel, I replied right away, without any hesitation.”

  “Would you really?”

  “I left the next day, anyway. Just to go see them. I know what you mean, about seeing the face of God.” Matt glanced at her. “You know Filippino?” Fifty years after Masaccio’s death, Filippino Lippi had begun work on completing the walls of the chapel.

  “He did a Madonna for the chapel of our house,” she replied. “It’s very nice.”

  But not like this, Matt thought, looking at the drawing again.

  “Nothing like this, of course,” Anna said.

  A week later, Anna’s painting was almost complete, and Matt’s flowers were taking form on the small copper plate.

  “What are you doing?” Anna asked.

  “Darkening it,” Matt replied, brushing over one of the stems of the flowers.

  “But that’s red, not black,” she protested, leaning her hand on the bench as she stood next to him. The fine silk of her dress, a saffron yellow verging on orange, shimmered in the light from the high windows.

  “Black will muddy it. It ends up looking dirty. Here, try it yourself,” he said, and handing Anna the brush moved aside. She dipped it in the jar, freshening the paint and working it into the hair, shaping the point against the lip. The red glaze, transparent and shining, ran back into the jar. With a steady hand she began lightly dodging in the color, tiny strokes one after another.

  “Not like that,” Matt said. “May I?” He took the brush and leaned over in front of her. Anna stayed where she was, close enough that the loose folds of her dress brushed the side of his leg. He braced his weight on his left hand and lifted the brush, ready to lay it on the panel, and then paused, aware suddenly of her hand resting on his shoulder as she leaned forward to watch what he was doing. He thought of another day, a plane ascending into a gray sky to the sound of distant surf and a man standing just like that, leaning forward, his hand extended, balanced between two worlds. Matt, holding the brush, knew it was his to choose, that Anna’s hand on his shoulder was a fulcrum between them, between one world and another. He could just ignore it, or he could look at her.

  He barely had to move his head. Absorbed in the brush and the painting and what was about to happen, Anna was unaware of his glance. And there it was, that look of contemplation, as he had first seen her, when all he knew of her was the painting. How could it have seemed so complete? Within every world is another, he thought, all waiting to be discovered.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Anna looked at him. A deep green, her eyes were like jade brushed with the finest vermilion lake. But so much more than that, he thought; no painter could ever capture what he saw, a world beyond naming. She nodded, and looked back at the painting. Her hand stayed on his shoulder.

  The brush descended and with one long, fluid stroke he was done. “You see?” he said. “Oil is different. Long strokes.”

  “I can’t wait to try it,” Anna said, as they both stood up from the table. “I think I’ll start the next one now.” The panel that Matt had prepared of four pieces of Lombardy poplar carefully joined, with a knot filled and the surface primed with white lead, leaned against the wall at the edge of the table. Drawn in silverpoint, the composition was already laid out, the bird poised in midstroke against the clouds.

  “But you have to finish the one you’re working on,” Matt said.

  “I have to?” she asked. “Is that an order?”

  “A request,” Matt said. “But one heartfelt enough to carry the weight of an order.”

  “Why would you care if I finish it or not?”

  “Thirty years from now when you look at it you’ll wish you had.”

  “That?” Anna asked with a laugh, looking at her painting. “I sincerely doubt that thirty years from now I’ll be looking at that.”

  “I will be.”

  “You? And how will you come to have it?”

  “You’ll give it to me.”

  “You expect me to give it to you? Isn’t that being a bit forward?”

  “You just said you didn’t want it. I do.”

  “All right, then. I’ll finish it.” Anna picked up her own brush and added a drop of green to the white, stirring it in. “Why did you leave home?” she asked, as she began shading the underside of the clouds.

  “There was no reason to stay,” Matt replied, cleaning his brush of the red glaze. “Where did you get this yellow?” he asked, picking up one of the dishes arranged in front of her.

  “It’s just lead-tin,” she said.

  “This vivid? I don�
��t believe it. Look at that,” he said, tilting the dish so the color ran back and forth. “That’s gorgeous.”

  “It’s from a glassmaker in Murano.”

  “For glazing ceramics,” Matt said.

  “No. I stopped using that a while ago. The color’s too weak and insipid. This is the one used in making glass.”

  “I wonder if it would work in oil.”

  “Why not try?”

  “It would look great next to the ultramarine—”

  “Do you mean the specially floor-cured ultramarine?” she asked, handing him a jar from the shelf.

  “A secret I learned from Van Eyck,” Matt said. He tapped some of the yellow powder onto the large glass plate used for grinding colors.

  “How do you mean, there was nothing to keep you there?”

  “My parents are dead, my sister has a family of her own.”

  “But it’s your home. Don’t you miss it?”

  “No, not really.” Saying it, Matt realized that he didn’t miss it at all. The world he had left behind seemed completely unreal to him now, like a dream that some chance occurrence had brought to mind days later—it was now a world veiled in a mist that obscured everything but an occasional vivid detail, detached and curiously disproportionate.

  “So you are rootless.”

  “I’m not a plant, so why would I have roots? I know, I know—another not,” he said, hand raised before she could speak. “But human beings are equipped with feet, not roots. We were designed to be nomads. This idea of staying in one place is a recent invention.” He began to add linseed oil to the color, the thick viscous liquid running from the slender bottle like cold honey. The straw-colored oil fell like the first big drops of rain from a coming storm, each one slightly flattening the mound of yellow powder before rolling down the side to melt slowly into the others. “There’s too much of the world for me to feel attached to any one particular spot,” he added, using the knife with a swift, casual back-and-forth stroke, as though he were buttering toast, to blend the two into an oily, lumpy paste.