Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) Read online

  The servant waved them into an immense entrance foyer, where more servants waited to receive the guests’ cloaks. An imposing flight of stairs led up to the pòrtego. Emerging into it, Giulia could not help gasping. But for the churches she had visited, it was the vastest interior space she had ever seen, the ceiling soaring so high she thought a forest might fit under it, the walls enclosing an area the size of a small campo. On the patterned marble floor, more than a hundred of Venice’s high nobility paraded in all their finery: older men in long black or crimson robes; young men in daringly short doublets; women in gowns of every color, their throats and hair wound with jewels, tottering on their high chopines. The air rang with conversation and with the music of the chamber orchestra seated opposite the stairs.

  Giulia felt Ferraldi’s hand on her arm. She allowed him to guide her to the side, out of the way of the entering guests.

  “I have no taste for such events,” he said, leaning close so she could hear him over the noise. “It’s a long walk home, but I know my way.”

  Please stay and vouch for me. The words pressed behind Giulia’s lips. But she knew she had no right to ask.

  “Thank you, Maestro, for helping me.”

  “Good luck.” Ferraldi’s fingers tightened on her arm. “Whatever happens here tonight, be certain that Stefano and I will have a reckoning.”

  He turned and headed for the stairs.

  “They say Contarini spent twenty thousand ducats on the interior alone.” Bernardo was surveying the walls, which were paneled in alternating slabs of green and yellow marble and inset with gilded plaques. “I wonder if it cost more to make it so vulgar. Well. What now?”

  Yes, what now? Giulia looked out at the milling crowd. Even growing up in her father’s palace, where she and the other servant children had spied on banquets and receptions, she had never seen such a display of wealth. The candles burning in the Murano glass chandeliers could have lit an ordinary household for a year. She reached for the anger she had felt in Ferraldi’s workshop, for the courage that belonged to the larger part of herself, the self that had run away to Venice in disguise.

  “Find the paintings, I suppose,” she said.

  They began to walk, imitating the slow pace of the other guests. None were masked: Archimedeo Contarini had forbidden it. “After all, how can he boast of the caliber of his guest list if his guests’ identities are in doubt?” Bernardo had remarked. Younger than most of those present, they attracted curious glances. Giulia’s skin prickled with self-consciousness; at any moment, surely, someone would look past her borrowed finery and know her for an imposter. She wished for her mantle back, far too aware of her bare neck and bosom, though some of the women wore bodices cut much lower than hers.

  By contrast, Bernardo seemed perfectly at ease, inclining his head politely to those they passed. His expression of bland courtesy was as impenetrable as any mask; no one would guess the resentment that burned behind it. Giulia wondered if there were men present whose faces he knew from their visits to Sofia.

  Why is he here with me? What does it mean that he is—or does it mean anything?

  They walked the length of the pòrtego and saw no paintings.

  “Perhaps they’re in another room,” Bernardo suggested.

  Giulia looked around the cavernous space. There were doors, but all were closed.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  The sound echoed over the noise of the crowd: servants in livery striking staffs on the floor. The clamor of conversation subsided. The music fell to silence.

  “Noble and esteemed guests.” A deep voice rang out. “I welcome you to my home, and thank you humbly for your presence.”

  “Humbly?” muttered Bernardo. “Does he imagine anyone actually believes that?”

  The guests had all turned toward the voice. Giulia craned her neck; but there were too many people in front of her, and she could see nothing.

  “Tonight, for your entertainment and delight, I present to you thirteen esteemed painters from afar, and a fourteenth from our own city. Each has created a work of art whose worthiness will be judged by Venice’s greatest master, Maestro Giovanni Bellini.”

  A fourteenth from our own city. Stefano. Giulia’s heart had begun to race. She stepped forward, wanting to get closer, but the brocaded and velveted backs in front of her were like a wall.

  “I have decreed the subject of these works, which is music, but I have permitted the artists to interpret it in the manner of their choosing. As you will see, their inventiveness knows no bounds. There is music here in all its forms, all its history, all its meaning—music made in paint, one art embodying another. Accept this twofold gift of beauty, dear guests. Allow your eyes to sing.”

  A warm hand seized Giulia’s own. Bernardo pulled her forward, maneuvering between the guests as neatly as he’d earlier guided the gondola between the boats on the Grand Canal, keeping up a stream of murmured comments: “Your pardon. Your indulgence. My apologies.”

  They reached the front of the throng. The musicians who had been seated opposite the head of the stairs were gone, and a semicircle of easels had been set up in their place. Two men stood nearby. One was tall and bony, with pale skin and red-blond hair, clad in a black robe of sumptuous figured silk. The other was long-nosed and thin-lipped, his hair a mix of brown and gray. His black robe was not as fine as that of the man beside him, though he wore a heavy chain of gold upon his shoulders. His hands were clasped before him, the thumb and fingers of the right darkened to the knuckles with a lifetime of ink and charcoal.

  Giulia closed her own hands, similarly stained. Giovanni Bellini.

  One at a time, the artists mounted the stairs to the pòrtego and bowed to their host, then positioned their paintings on the easels and took a place beside them. Some had brought apprentices or servants to carry their work. There were panels and canvases, small works and large ones; there were celestial choirs, musicians with their instruments, images from myth and Scripture. Giulia, her body shaking with the force of her heartbeat, barely noted the brilliant colors, the intricate compositions. She was counting: six painters. Eight. Ten. Where was Stefano?

  Then she saw him, rising into view at the top of the stairs: the fourteenth entrant, last to appear. He wore clothes Giulia hadn’t seen before, a short green doublet and striped hose tied up so taut he could scarcely bend his legs. And in his hands . . .

  Giulia hissed. She wasn’t aware she had moved until Bernardo caught her arm.

  “Wait,” he whispered. “Let him take his place.”

  She allowed Bernardo to hold her back as Stefano paced stiffly past. Look at me, she willed him. She wanted to see recognition in his face, wanted to see him understand that his lie was known. But he was staring straight ahead, as if the final empty easel were a rock and he a man lost at sea. He bowed to Contarini and Bellini, then set Giulia’s painting on the easel and stood aside.

  “Painters!” called Archimedeo Contarini. “Name yourselves and your work!”

  The painters spoke in the order of their entrance. Later, Giulia would remember that she had recognized some of the names, famous masters from Vicenza and Padua of whom Humilità had spoken with admiration. Now, though, her attention was all for Stefano, ill at ease in his uncomfortable clothes, his eyes darting back and forth as if anticipating discovery.

  His turn to speak came at last. “I am Stefano Scarpazza,” he said in a stilted tone quite unlike his usual easy drawl, “of the workshop of Gianfranco Ferraldi. I am of Venice, and I’m only an apprentice, but Maestro Bellini has judged me worthy to stand here even so. I have painted a Muse of song, her attention captured by the music of the spheres.”

  Giulia’s words—her own exact words, stolen like the painting itself because he had no understanding of what she had made and no care for it except as a means to an end. Rage sucked her down; for an instant she was blind. She threw off Bernardo’s hold and stepped forward.

  “You lie,” she said, lifting her arm, pointing squ
are at Stefano’s chest. “That painting is not by your hand.”

  A ripple ran through the crowd: astonishment, disapproval, excitement. A hundred heads turned Giulia’s way. Stefano stared at her openmouthed, as if she were an apparition.

  “Young woman.” Contarini’s voice was colder than the marble floor of his hall. Behind him, Bellini and the other painters looked on. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Clarissimo.” Lifting her heavy skirts, Giulia sank into a curtsy, a skill learned long ago in her father’s household. “My name is Giulia Borromeo. Stefano Scarpazza is a thief and a liar. He did not paint that panel. He stole it from me.”

  “You are its owner?” Contarini said, his red-blond brows drawing together over deep-set eyes.

  “I am its author, clarissimo.” A fierce and entirely unexpected exultation shook her: to declare herself without disguise, to stand before all these people with her own true face, her own true name, and claim what she had made. “It is my work, by my own hand.”

  Exclamations from the crowd: some scandalized, some disgusted, some delighted at the unfolding of this unanticipated entertainment, a tale they would tell tomorrow to those who had not been there. The painters exchanged uneasy looks. An expression of distaste spread across Contarini’s face.

  “Clarissimo, I know this girl.” Stefano spoke up. “Poor creature, she is mad. She dabbles her fingers in ink and believes she paints. I don’t know why she has followed me here. Her delusion must be deeper than I thought. But I beg you, clarissimo, forgive her interruption and do not treat her harshly. She doesn’t understand what she does.”

  Fury robbed Giulia momentarily of breath. Bernardo moved to stand beside her.

  “She is neither mad nor a liar,” he declared in a ringing voice. “The painting is her work, stolen by Scarpazza as a fraud on you who are gathered here. I vouch for all she has said.”

  He used no title of respect in addressing Contarini, did not bow or cast down his eyes. Giulia could see that this was not lost on the nobleman. “And who are you?” Contarini demanded.

  “I am Bernardo Gentileschi, a citizen of Venice.”

  Murmurs from the crowd. Giulia, clearly, heard someone say, “La Fiamma’s son.”

  “Clarissimo—” Stefano began, but Contarini raised a hand, his long, black sleeve expanding like a crow’s wing, his eyes never moving from Bernardo’s. Stefano flinched and was silent.

  “Is this girl in your care?” Contarini said to Bernardo.

  “She is a guest of my family.”

  “And it is your assertion”—Contarini’s tone made clear his disbelief—“that her claim is true? That she made this painting?”

  Bernardo began to reply, but it was not his voice that spoke.

  “I assert it.”

  Giulia felt a shock of recognition. She turned, the faces of the guests wheeling before her. Ferraldi stood at the head of the stairs in his plain mantle and paint-marked hose, his silver hair half out of the cord that tied it: a clay mug among glass goblets. But his back was as straight, his gaze as self-possessed, as any of the nobles’.

  He changed his mind. He stayed to vouch for me after all.

  “And who might you be, signor?” Contarini’s exasperation was plain.

  “I am Gianfranco Ferraldi, clarissimo, a painter of this city, whom you invited here tonight as you did other masters of my art.” Ferraldi advanced across the floor. “Stefano Scarpazza is my apprentice, though after this night he shall not set foot in my workshop again—nor, I venture, in any other workshop in Venice. The girl tells the truth. She is the true author of the work he claims as his.”

  “You have evidence of this?”

  “My own eyes, which saw her paint it.” Ferraldi halted at Giulia’s side. “She has been my pupil for some months now.”

  “Your pupil?” Stefano’s face was scarlet. “She wasn’t your pupil! You didn’t even know she was a girl! Clarissimo, she is an imposter, a runaway novice. She disguised herself as a boy and took a false name and tricked her way into my master’s workshop, and he never knew it, never even suspected it, till someone came looking for her to get back what she stole from her convent in Padua.”

  A hum of comment and exclamation arose.

  “Ah, Stefano. Have you not told lies enough?” Ferraldi raised his voice to carry above the rest, looking directly into his apprentice’s eyes. “Let it end here. Admit that you were envious of this girl’s gifts. Admit that in your greed for the reward that will be won tonight, you took advantage of her absence to steal her work and present it as your own.”

  “I signed it. Look!” Forgetting himself entirely, Stefano snatched the painting from the easel and thrust it toward Contarini. “Do you see, there is my signature, plain as day!”

  “He painted his name over mine,” Giulia said. “Not three days ago. The paint will still be soft.”

  Until that moment, Giovanni Bellini had watched in silence. Now he stepped forward. Giulia saw Stefano’s face change as he realized his mistake. He tried to pull back the painting. Bellini caught it, twitched it from his hands.

  The great master tipped the panel to the light of the candelabrum overhead. Blue flashed—Gamma blue, Giulia’s blue, as ravishing as a sapphire’s dream. With his blackened thumb, Bellini rubbed at the little scroll below the Muse’s foot, where Stefano had obscured Giulia’s signature with his own.

  “She tells the truth,” he said. “Another signature lies beneath.”

  “ ‘Gamma’ for Giulia,” Giulia said in a voice that seemed to arrive from somewhere very far away. “Gamma Me Fecit.”

  The master’s eyes rose to hers. “It is so.”

  A sound like wind rushed through the pòrtego: a hundred people, drawing in their breaths. Contarini’s face was thunderous. He clapped his hands. A pair of servants came forward.

  “Remove him,” he ordered, gesturing to Stefano.

  Giulia thought that Stefano, even knowing himself beaten, might struggle or protest. Instead, to her surprise, he mustered some semblance of dignity, lifting his chin and squaring his shoulders. He did not resist as the servants took his arms and urged him forward. Giulia turned to watch him pass, no more than an arm’s length away. His eyes were fixed ahead, his face rigid. His escorts pushed him onto the stairs. A few steps and he was gone.

  “Young woman.”

  Giulia turned. Bellini was approaching.

  “This is yours.” He held out her painting, smiling kindly. “A little turpentine will clean the rest of his forgery away.”

  Giulia took it. At last she felt the awe she had not been able to experience before: Venice’s greatest painter, whose magnificent altarpiece in the church of San Giobbe had stolen hours from her life, standing before her in the flesh. He’d judged her painting worthy to be shown. Now he had acknowledged her as its author. Her heart was racing again—not with fear or anger, but with hope.

  “It is a creditable effort,” he said. “No doubt that owes much to your teacher”—he nodded at Ferraldi—“whose skill I know.”

  “He has helped me, Maestro. But the work is my own.”

  “And now you have it back.” Bellini smiled again. “Good fortune to you, my dear.”

  He turned to go.

  Giulia did not believe it at first. That can’t be all. Surely he has more to say to me. But he was moving away, toward Contarini and the painters, where another servant was folding up the fourteenth easel.

  “Maestro.” Giulia stepped after him. “Maestro Bellini.”

  He wheeled around, his eyebrows rising in surprise.

  “Maestro, my painting is here, and there is an easel for it. May I not stand with the others and be judged?”

  “With the others?” Behind Bellini the contestants stirred, some frowning or shaking their heads, others bending toward one another in whispered comment. “No, no. That is not possible.”

  “Maestro, you judged it worthy to be shown when you believed Stefano painted it. Why not now?”


  “My dear, you are a lovely young girl, and very brave to do as you have done, though some might judge your actions less kindly. It is clear you have some talent for the brush. But you are not a painter, nor will you ever be. You cannot stand among the masters gathered here.”

  Giulia clutched the Muse. A huge and crushing disappointment was unfolding inside her, all the worse because she had allowed herself to believe it was not inevitable.

  “Why not, Giovanni?” Ferraldi said. “The work is fine. I only counseled her—she conceived it entire, and the whole of it is by her hand, even that marvelous blue, which she made herself. She has a natural skill I have rarely seen equaled, certainly never in any of the male apprentices I have taught. Let her stand.”

  “To what purpose, Gianfranco? Even if she is as gifted as you say, what can come of it? Your liberal views are all very well, but that is not the way of the world, and you know it.”

  “Then perhaps the world should change.”

  “Perhaps,” Bellini said. “But nothing we do tonight will make it so.”

  Ferraldi might have said more. But Contarini, his patience clearly at an end, intervened.

  “Maestro Bellini has spoken,” he said. “Maestro Ferraldi, accept my thanks for preventing the perpetration of a fraud. Honored guests, my apologies for these distractions that have taken us far from our true course tonight. Master painters—” He turned toward the contestants. “You have my gratitude for your patience, which will be tested no further. We will now begin the judging.” He extended an imperious hand toward Bellini. “Maestro.”

  Bellini glanced once more at Ferraldi. Then he turned away. The crowd, sensing that the drama was at an end, began removing its attention, though some still watched in hope of more to come.

  Giulia was trembling. Whatever had sustained her till now had gone out of her all at once, like sand from a shattered hourglass.

  “Please,” she whispered. She didn’t want to fall to the floor or burst into tears before all these people. “I want to go.”