The Marriage Portrait(72)
“Never. He’s a mute.”
“I had no idea, he—”
“Or he speaks some strange tongue that none of the rest of us can understand. We’re not quite sure where he came from—Il Bastianino says he found him in an orphanage somewhere in the south. He somehow heard of this child who could draw anything, even after looking at it for only a moment, so he bought him from the monks. You get used to it. It’s quite restful, actually. Most people talk too much, myself included. Now, what’s your name and will we see you again while we’re here?”
Lucrezia looks at them both, sitting there, with their backs against the wall, their apprentice bags by their sides, Maurizio’s face so affable and open, Jacopo’s wan and watchful.
“I think you will,” she says.
* * *
She has ground her pigments and mixed them with the oil; she has applied paint for the curves of the peaches—ochre and cochineal mixed with lead white—and is beginning to mix a green for the bowl. The water-creature is half gone when Emilia comes to tell her that Alfonso has returned from Ferrara.
Lucrezia stares at the maid, brush raised. The way the light from the window is falling upon Emilia at this particular moment means that the scar on her face is hidden in shadow: she appears perfect, exquisite, her fair hair held back under a cap, her capable hands folded in front of her.
“Did he…?” Lucrezia tries to speak but she is still in the world of the painting, her mind running on its interplay of light and shade, the arrangement of shapes, and the ever-intriguing conundrum of how to render something three-dimensional on the flat surface of paper.
“Has he…” she tries again “…sent for me?”
“Not yet, madam. I thought you’d like to know that he’s arrived.”
“Yes,” says Lucrezia, abstractedly, wiping a brush on a rag. “Certainly. Let me know, please, if he…when he…asks for me.”
Emilia nods, then shuts the door behind her, and Lucrezia returns to her painting, relieved, delighted at this reprieve.
She paints for a long time, standing back from the tavola, leaning in close. She progresses from bowl to honey to the pleats and wrinkles in the cloth. She navigates her course through the arrangement of objects, how they interact with each other, the spaces and conversations between them, shrinking herself to the size of a beetle so that she may wander through the crannies between peaches, along the interlocking hexagons of the honeycomb. She feels her way around the corresponding painting, using her brushes like feet or antennae, seeking a route through the unfamiliar terrain of the items, hacking her way through the undergrowth of the work.
She paints while the sun is high in the sky, as it slips down over the pitch of the roofs, while servants rush up and down the loggia. She does not even notice the fading light, or the bustle and flap of the villa around her, or that she hasn’t eaten since midday. She is absorbed in her work; she is her work; it gives her more satisfaction than anything else she has ever known; it intuits the need, the vacancy, within her, and fills it.
It is late afternoon when Emilia knocks again on the door. She doesn’t meet Lucrezia’s eye as she says: “His Grace is asking for you, madam.”
Lucrezia puts down her brush. She feels light-headed, almost dizzy, to be confronted like this with the real world. “Thank you, Emilia. I will go to him directly and—”
She stops, catching sight of Emilia’s face, which is horrified. Lucrezia looks down at herself—the overall, the paint smears, the bare feet—and lets out a laugh. “Perhaps I should change.”
“Yes, madam,” Emilia says, with some relief. “I will come with you.”
* * *
Not long after, attired in a sopraveste of primrose satin, the ruby collar around her neck, Lucrezia is rather hot. The windows of the salon are open on both sides of the room, but there is very little passage of air: nothing moves. The trees outside in the courtyard hold out their motionless leaves at the end of their branches. A few darkening clouds, stained pink and orange, hang above the villa, as if too exhausted to move on.
Lucrezia waits, seated in a chair she dislikes—it has an unyielding pad, and horsehairs poke through the fabric to prick her legs. She attempts to fold her hands meekly in her lap, but that doesn’t feel right, so she leans an elbow on the table next to her, but that feels unnatural. With a suppressed sigh, she picks up some embroidery she has half-heartedly been doing in the evenings spent with her husband. She cannot remember how to be a wife, a duchess consort. It has not been long since Alfonso went away, but somehow during those few days the habit of it has slipped away from her.
The truth is, though, that she is still caught in the microcosm of her painting: that is the only place she wishes to be. All other sights, all other worlds, will be dissatisfying to her until she finishes it, until the painting is complete and will release her back to where she belongs. Here, in this salon, waiting for her husband to appear, an embroidery hoop in her hands.
Lucrezia sighs again and stabs the needle through the cloth, pulling the thread taut. The embroidery is one Isabella embarked on months ago, a rose surrounded by a border of gold: Lucrezia has no idea why it is now in her possession. Most likely, Isabella abandoned it, tossing it aside when something else caught her attention, and somehow it ended up among Lucrezia’s luggage. It is useful to her, as a theatrical prop, to make those around her believe she is the type of person who fills time with such pointless pursuits.