The Marriage Portrait(91)

“Go on.”

“Who…Elisabetta…it was her who first…sought my company. She was very welcoming to me when I arrived, and then…Nunciata…” Lucrezia falters. She doesn’t know how to articulate it all to him; she cannot understand what he wishes to hear or whether she might unwittingly say the wrong thing. “She…Nunciata…seemed to desire to join us. So now…”

“Now?” he prompts.

“They…she…they are both…kind enough to…spend time with me and…”

“It’s always the three of you together?”

“Sometimes.”

“And other times—what? It is just you and Nunciata? Or you and Elisabetta?”

Lucrezia nods.

“Does anyone else ever join you?”

“No,” she says quickly. “Yes. Sometimes Elisabetta’s ladies. Or…or some courtiers. That poet Nunciata likes.”

“Do you spend more time, would you say, with Nunciata or Elisabetta? Or is it about the same?”

“Perhaps…a little more with…”

“Elisabetta?” Again, his gaze flicks up to her hair.

“Probably, yes.”

“What do you do together?”

“We…take walks…around the loggia. I am invited to…gatherings in her salon.”

“And you leave the castello with her, every few days, do you not?”

“I do.”

“On horseback?”

“Yes.”

“To go riding?”

“Yes.”

He nods, thinking over this information, letting the cintura drop, link by link, into his palm. Then he places it back in its box and takes her hand, guiding her towards the chamber.

“Come,” he says, “it’s late, and you are probably tired.”



* * *





“Could I trouble Her Highness to please lift her chin a little? More. A touch more. Good, good, beautiful. Now turn your face towards the window, slowly, please, slowly. Yes, there! Hold that, please, Your Highness.”

The artist stands in the middle of the Salone dei Giochi, drenched in sunlight that falls from the windows. He is motionless, Lucrezia sees from the corner of her eye, for her gaze is directed towards the wall, feet together, arms aloft, like a swimmer about to dive or an acrobat finding poise before a trick.

“Yes,” he murmurs to himself, his fingers circling gently, as if he is holding invisible brushes, as if he has already begun, in his imagination. Then, without turning his head, he addresses someone behind him. “Do you see, Your Grace? I feel this may be better than the previous pose: we get the curve of her jaw, the elegance of her neck, although how I will ever find the paint to reproduce that flush along her throat. It is exquisite, too exquisite. And that brow!”

Alfonso, clothed in dark colours today, moves about in the shadowy recesses of the room. He is examining sketches arranged on a long table, bending over one, then another, moving along the row, then back again. He told Lucrezia last night that Il Bastianino was the artist responsible for the frescos in this very room. There had been a wingbeat of silence before Lucrezia managed to get out a noise of approval. In fact, she does not like these frescos—babies riding dolphins, mer-folk astride serpents, men with impassive faces engaged in combat. They are, to her eye, oddly static and unappealingly fleshy. Alfonso, however, told her that Il Bastianino was the right artist for her portrait; how apt, he said, that he should have decorated the very walls of her home, and now he will paint her.

For several hours now, Lucrezia has been asked to pose in one way—seated, standing, feet crossed, hands laced, hands apart, head forward, head aside, arm up, arm down, wrist turned—while the artist makes a sketch. He then repositions her and does another.

He arrived at the castello this morning with a great deal of equipment, carried on the backs of several apprentices. Lucrezia’s eyes swept through them: several young boys, a sullen youth, and Maurizio, who was telling the younger apprentices where to set up the materials, where to stack the shells, where to place the paper and the canvases. He was wearing the same blue jerkin as when she first met him, in the corridor of the delizia. No sign of Jacopo. Lucrezia felt a bright flare of anxiety in her chest: Was he ill, had something happened to him? She checked the doorway, but it was empty, then looked back at Maurizio, questioningly. He must have been following her with his eyes because he gave the slightest downwards nod, as if to say, do not fear, he is well, nothing amiss has befallen him.

The artist, Il Bastianino, approaches her, lifts an arm or a fold of her skirt, moves the arrangement of the cintura about her waist, straightens the lace at her throat. And Alfonso stands by, observing, his hands clasped behind his back. Lucrezia finds the situation ludicrous: the idea that Alfonso is permitting another man to touch her dress or her hand or her jewels is so peculiar. If this man weren’t painting her, it would not be out of the realm of possibility for Alfonso to unsheathe the dagger he keeps in his belt and run him through—she has heard of men killed for less.

Every now and again, Il Bastianino murmurs, “With His Highness’s permission,” as he comes near, and without waiting for Alfonso’s response, his fingers will insert themselves into Lucrezia’s cuff, to pull down the lace there, or he will touch her cheek or her temple.