Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) Page 16

  “A scudo for a portrait?” he said loudly.

  “Yes, signor. Drawn to the life. Look.” Giulia held up the stranger’s face. “My uncle, a likeness so exact you might expect to hear him speak.”

  “Hmmm.” Bernardo pretended to consider. “Well, why not? If it’s good, I’ll make a present of it to my sister. If it’s bad, you will get nothing. Understand?”

  “Yes, signor.” From her satchel Giulia drew a charcoal stick and a clean sheet of paper, purchased with the proceeds of other expeditions like this one, and fixed it to her drawing board. “Stand just there, if you please, signor. Look a little to your right. A little more. That’s it.”

  The charade had been Bernardo’s idea. “You must show them that they want what you are selling,” he’d said when she had told him what she was doing and the difficulty of it. “Men want what they think others want. Business draws business.”

  And it was so. The first time he’d accompanied her, she had sold five portraits. He played his role with surprising relish, afterward making wicked fun of the fat banker who’d asked her not to draw his double chins, and the young dandy in patterned hose and an absurd feathered cap who had displayed his profile as if expecting to be cast in bronze. She would never have imagined he could take such pleasure in deception; she realized only later that what really pleased him was the opportunity to hoodwink members of Venice’s elite.

  She roughed in the lines of his face, her hand flying over the paper. Already their exchange had caught the interest of the nearby vendors, and two of the pear seller’s customers had paused to watch as well. Humilità had always insisted that her pupils think about what they drew, analyzing line and form, light and shadow, before ever setting charcoal or quill to paper; this was a very different kind of drawing, a transfer of image to page almost without thought, a lightning union of eye and hand. Bernardo’s face especially, for by now she had shaped his features at least a score of times. She imagined she could do so even if her eyes were closed.

  She was finished. She detached the drawing and held it up.

  “Is it satisfactory, signor?”

  “By the saints!” he cried. “It is my very face, there upon the paper! Let me see it close.”

  He reached for it, forgetting his injury, catching his breath as pain reminded him.

  “If you take it, signor,” Giulia said, following their usual wordplay, “you keep it. And if you keep it, you must pay for it.”

  “Oh, very well.” Normally he drew the bargaining out—to attract more attention and also to demonstrate, by Giulia’s refusal to lower her price, that she was not to be trifled with. But today his heart clearly wasn’t in it. “It’s a fair price for so good a likeness.”

  He gave her the scudo. Moving with care, he headed as if by accident toward the men who had paused to watch. As nearly always happened, one of them, a merchant or a banker in the long black robe worn by all older Venetian men of substance, called to him. He held the portrait so the man could see. Some nodding, an exchange of words. Then Bernardo melted into the crowd, and the merchant approached.

  “For my wife,” he said.

  After the merchant came a young man with long blond hair who reminded her of Stefano, and after him a baker with his new bride, and after them several others. Scudo followed scudo—except for the baker, who offered two good loaves in trade.

  The afternoon was drawing on, and Giulia’s hand was tired. She packed her charcoal and papers into her satchel, which now bulged with the loaves, and went to find Bernardo at their usual meeting spot beneath the gleaming gold mosaics of one of the Basilica’s entrance porticoes. He’d brought no book with him today. Instead, he gazed out across the bustle of the piazza, his arm clamped against his side.

  “Did you do well today?” he asked.

  “Two loaves and six scudi. Here’s yours back.”

  He took the coin and slipped it into his belt pouch. Behind him, the great doors were open on the cathedral’s interior, a well of darkness pricked in its depths with candle flames.

  “I bought some roasted chestnuts.”

  He offered them to her, pulling aside the cloth that wrapped them, releasing their delicious odor. Giulia took one and slit its leathery skin with her fingernail.

  “I heard something from my mother yesterday,” Bernardo said. “There’s to be a painting competition, sponsored by Archimedeo Contarini. A single painting, any size or subject, on a theme of music.”

  Giulia reached for another chestnut. “Music? That’s unusual.”

  “Archimedeo is weary of Madonnas and Crucifixions and the agonies of saints. He wants something modern to put in his new palazzo, which by all accounts is already the very pinnacle of modernity.” Bernardo’s lips curled. “If not of good taste. There’s to be a judging on Giovedi Grasso, the last day of Carnival—it will be held at Palazzo Contarini Nuova, and the judge will be Giovanni Bellini himself. The winner will be crowned with laurel leaves and receive a seat of honor at the banquet table. And a purse of five hundred ducats.”

  “Five hundred ducats!” It was an astonishing sum. “For a single painting?”

  “The only thing Archimedeo Contarini loves more than spending money is making sure that all Venice sees him spending it. It will be the event of the Carnival season, or so my mother says.”

  “I’ll tell my master. He’ll surely be tempted by that purse.”

  Bernardo selected a chestnut and shucked it free of its skin but did not eat it. “Are you not tempted by it?”

  “Me?” Giulia laughed. “Bernardo, I am only an apprentice. I couldn’t enter that competition.”

  “Ah, there’s where you’re wrong. Entry is open only to those who are not members of the Venetian artists’ guild. The intent, presumably, is to exclude Venetian painters, of whom Archimedeo is apparently as weary as he is of their Madonnas. But nothing has been said about Venetian apprentices. Who by definition are not members of the guild.”

  “That’s mad.” Giulia shook her head. “It would never be allowed.”

  Bernardo’s ink-dark eyes flicked to her face. “You don’t know that.”

  “Even if it were—I can draw as well as anyone, but I have only a little experience of painting. The size of that purse will attract famous artists. I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “Why not? You have a gift, Girolamo. Even I can see it.”

  It surprised her. He’d never said anything like that before. He had returned his attention to the chestnuts, which he was folding back into their cloth.

  “My old teacher used to say that a gift is like a block of marble,” Giulia said. “It exists, and it is beautiful, but it cannot shape itself. Only teaching can do that. Teaching and experience.”

  “Think of being judged by the most illustrious painter in Venice. Think of all those ducats. Enough to live on for a long time, or even to establish your own workshop. Isn’t that what you want? To be master of your own workshop one day?”

  Giulia looked down at the pavement of the portico. She didn’t want to think about that. For if she did, she would have to consider whose name the workshop would bear and the fact that, realistically, it could never be her own. Which meant thinking about becoming Girolamo Landriani forever, leaving Giulia Borromeo permanently behind. She knew the desire that drove her had no other possible conclusion. But she was not yet ready to embrace it.

  “You’re not afraid, are you?” Bernardo’s tone was challenging. “To test your skill?”

  She raised her head, angry now. “I’m not afraid.”

  “Then why not try?”

  “What does it matter, Bernardo? What difference does it make to you whether I enter this competition or not?”

  His jaw tightened. Once again his eyes slid away from hers. He shifted against his column, turning to stare out at the disorderly bustle of the piazza, the sky above it beginning to darken with the approach of evening. It struck Giulia, suddenly, how reluctant he seemed lately to look her in the face.

/>   “I hate men like Archimedeo Contarini,” he said softly. “Men who think their fortunes give them mastery of the world. Who think the rest of us should bow down and worship before the altar of their wealth. Whatever honors will be given to the winner, the true purpose of this competition is to establish Contarini’s reputation, so foreign painters will come begging for commissions and people will say of him, ‘Ah, Archimedeo Contarini, the great patron of the arts.’ It would tarnish his endeavor more than a little if a mere apprentice were to win the prize, through a loophole in the rules.”

  “So you want me to enter in order to thumb my nose at Archimedeo Contarini? That doesn’t strike me as a good reason.”

  “I’ll give you a better one, then. The competition may be a ruse to build Contarini’s reputation, and the odds against you are great. But the chance that’s being offered is real. It could change everything for you. You would have money. Even patronage, perhaps. Imagine what that would mean.”

  Giulia was silent.

  “You’re only fifteen, Girolamo. You don’t yet know what it’s like to feel your life closing around you like the mud at the bottom of the canals. You don’t yet understand how rare an opportunity like this truly is—a chance to move beyond the place where you stand to somewhere better. If you do not take it, you may look back years from now and wish most bitterly that you had.”

  He had shifted toward her again. He wore an expression of such bleakness that Giulia’s heart turned over. She wanted to go to him, to take his hands and ask him what was wrong—what was really wrong, for she knew it was more than sore ribs and the ugly memory of a fight with a stranger that lay behind what she saw now in his face. But she could not do that, any more than she could tell him that she understood exactly what it was like not only to be trapped, but to risk everything to tear free.

  Beyond the portico, a group of black-robed nobles hastened past, sending a clutch of pigeons into clattering flight.

  “Well.” Bernardo pushed away from the column, grimacing in pain. “You’ll make up your own mind, I suppose.”

  “You should see a physician,” Giulia could not stop herself from saying.

  “And be bled and cupped and wrapped in some stinking poultice? Thank you, no.” He pulled his mantle close. “I’ll go on ahead, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not.” Giulia swallowed a completely unreasonable disappointment.

  “Take the chestnuts. I don’t want them.”

  He offered them to her, wrapped in their cloth. She took them, forgetting to be careful. Her hand touched his, warm despite the cold. Startled, she flinched. Strangely, so did he.

  “Sorry,” she said stupidly—what was she apologizing for? But he was already turning away.

  She watched him go, striding off across the piazza, canted slightly to the left to favor his injured ribs. Inside her a familiar question turned, painful yet irresistible: What if she told him the truth? What if she revealed herself? If he knew her, truly knew her . . . what might happen then?

  It made her light-headed to imagine it, made her close her eyes and catch her breath, even as she recognized it for the dangerous impulse it was. She knew him well enough to know he would be furious at being deceived—too angry, perhaps, to forgive her. And if not . . . though he adored and admired his mother, a woman with a man’s intellect and a man’s will to make her own way in the world, was there any reason to think he could accept Giulia’s desire to do the same? She had not forgotten Ormanno the thief, who, though a painter himself, had scoffed at her ambition.

  And then there were her stars—the implacable prediction of her horoscope, which all but guaranteed she could not have had him, even if she had been herself when she met him.

  Girolamo or Giulia: It was the same.

  This isn’t why I ran away from Santa Marta, she reminded herself. This isn’t why I came to Venice. I am here to paint, not to be distracted by a passing infatuation.

  Though she knew—could no longer deny—that it was more.

  On the dimming piazza, torches were being lit. Somewhere a bonfire had been kindled—she could smell the smoke of it. She stepped from the shelter of the Basilica and made her way slowly toward the Merceria, her fingers closed around the chestnuts, which still, faintly, leaked their warmth into her palm.

  CHAPTER 17

  A LOOPHOLE

  All through the evening and into the night, Giulia thought about the competition.

  Was Bernardo right? Was she afraid to challenge her talent? She didn’t think so, though she did fear exposing herself to attention if, by some extraordinary circumstance, she were to win.

  It was more the sheer improbability of the idea—that with her limited experience of painting, she should have any chance at all against the professional artists from Padua and Verona and Brescia who would be drawn like ants to the sugar of that purse. That she would be permitted to exploit what was undoubtedly an unconsidered flaw in the rules.

  And yet . . . the flaw existed. And while there were true artistic geniuses such as the Bellini brothers and Vittore Carpaccio and Andrea Mantegna, most painters were like Alvise—entering the profession as a family business, regardless of talent or the lack of it—or else like Stefano, who was good with his hands and had wanted a trade that did not require him to work outside. In such company, was it really so improbable that her painting would shine?

  And to be judged by Giovanni Bellini, whose colors are as beautiful as the Maestra’s . . . what might come of that? And the purse. Five hundred ducats. A fortune.

  Giulia arrived in the workshop the next morning to discover that Ferraldi had hired a man to model for the workshop’s next commission, a painting of San Sebastiano. As Ferraldi positioned the model in the saint’s agonized pose, pulling at the man’s limbs as if he were a jointed doll, Giulia fetched her drawing board and joined Zuane, Antonio, and the three apprentices before the dais where the model stood. Ferraldi encouraged his painters to take the opportunity to sketch whenever he posed a scene like this, but for the apprentices, participation was mandatory.

  Ferraldi got the model arranged to his satisfaction at last and took up his own drawing board. The model stood in the light from the windows, as still as a stone in his contorted posture, his naked limbs corded with muscle and the shape of his sex clear beneath the linen of his breechclout. Drawing nudes from life, as she would never have been permitted to do at Santa Marta, was one of the things Giulia had most looked forward to in Venice; she’d been furious at the embarrassment she could not help feeling at first, the shameful blushes she could not control. Now, though she was still not accustomed to such frank nakedness, she had learned to set her discomfort aside—to become, not a disguised girl looking upon the unclad body of a man or a false boy pretending to be familiar with such sights, but simply an artist, her eye entranced by light and form, her mind consumed with the need to reproduce those things as precisely as possible upon the page.

  Midway through the session, Ferraldi got up and moved quietly around the semicircle of artists, offering criticism and advice. Though he could sometimes be quick-tempered, he was a generous and perceptive teacher. Giulia valued the counsel he had given her. Today he stood behind her for a while, silently observing, then moved on to Alvise, whose work, as usual, did not please him.

  The session ended at noon. The model was paid and dismissed, and the workshop returned to its normal routine. Giulia, sent to fetch a bag of gypsum from the storeroom, brought her drawing down to join her growing store of sketches.

  She paused before she put it away, looking critically at what she’d done: the model with his head thrown back and his arms pulled behind him, surrounded by smaller studies of different parts of his body: the knotted muscles of his shoulder, the slight bend at one knee, the curled toes of his foot. No one, she thought with pride, would guess that before three months ago she had never seen—much less drawn—a man’s nude body.

  She thought of Humilità, who had never had this opportunity,
remembering her teacher’s furious frustration with the restrictions that denied it to her—restrictions that would have bound Humilità just as firmly outside the convent, for it was scandalous for any woman, nun or not, to look upon the naked human form. Now here I am, free to do what she longed to do, what no true artist should be prevented from doing—but only because no one knows that I am female.

  Giulia felt it stirring again, the conflict that gripped her whenever she thought deeply about her disguise. Girolamo Landriani could paint whatever he wished; he could go anywhere, do anything in pursuit of his art. Giulia Borromeo could only dream of such liberty. Free to be herself, she would always be captive as a painter. Yet freedom as a painter meant perpetual captivity in disguise.

  Or not. For at any time, misfortune or circumstance or my own carelessness could betray me, and it will all be over.

  A sudden reckless purpose gripped her. Bernardo was right. An opportunity stood before her. If she didn’t at least try to seize it, she might indeed look back one day and regret that she had not.

  You are the sum of your work. She heard Humilità’s voice, words the workshop mistress had spoken many times. Every stroke you paint, every line you draw. Nothing is wasted.

  She placed the San Sebastiano drawing with her others, fetched the gypsum, and returned upstairs.

  —

  Ferraldi had retreated to his study. Entering, Giulia found the room in its usual chaos, for Ferraldi never allowed Beata, his maid, to set foot in here. He was standing before his easel, frowning at a recently completed commission: a portrait of a richly dressed elderly man with a huge, warty nose. It was a fine, if unflattering, likeness, with a lively sense of life in the tilt of the subject’s head and the humorous twist of his lips. The man’s brocade doublet was still wet: Giulia could hear the rasping insect-hum of brown ochre, and also the bright tang of yellow orpiment.