The Venice Sketchbook(41)

July 6

Today was my first day of classes. Signora Martinelli boiled me an egg for breakfast, as if she sensed this was a momentous occasion for me. She made it clear that eggs were a luxury usually reserved for Sundays. It was a clear and windy day, which was good, as the canals tend to smell bad when the air is still. I tucked my portfolio under my arm, and off I went to meet my destiny! That sounds a little dramatic, doesn’t it? But that’s how it felt. My chance to escape from the mundane, the routine, the boring, and to discover my true potential.

My first class was the one I’d been dreading but looking forward to the most. The one on painting with freedom of expression. I went up the marble staircase, then up a less dramatic staircase to the next level and into a room that smelled of turpentine and oil paints. It was a lovely space, as befits a former palace, with a high vaulted ceiling and tall windows that let in slanted light. I lowered my gaze to see it was already more than half full. Students had set up easels and laid out supplies. I slunk into an unoccupied corner. Nobody seemed to notice me. I looked around. Some of them seemed incredibly young—no older than the girls I’d been teaching. Certainly nobody of my age. I took out my sketchbook, tentatively arranged pencils, charcoal, paints, brushes. I wasn’t sure that we’d be painting on the first day but noticed the sink by the wall with lots of paint pots.

A clock somewhere nearby chimed nine, and the professor swept in, on the last stroke of the chime. He was a dramatic-looking middle-aged man with grey hair that curled over his collar, and he wore an open-necked red shirt.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I am Professore Corsetti. Some of you are familiar faces, and some are new to me. I look forward to getting to know you and your work.”

That much I understood. He was speaking slowly and clearly.

“Today, for your first assignment, I want you to make a composition that includes a face, an orange and a church. You have thirty minutes to sketch it out. Begin.”

That was that. A face, an orange and a church. What did that mean? I glanced at other students. They were already sketching—big, bold strokes of charcoal across the page. I took my charcoal and tentatively drew the outline of a church, then in the doorway a person, standing half in shadow so that just the face was visible, as was a hand, holding an orange. At least I knew a bit about perspective, I decided, peeking at the sketches ahead of me that seemed childishly simple in their depiction. Professor Corsetti walked around the room, grunting occasionally, nodding infrequently. When he came to me, he paused.

“You are new?” he asked.

“Sì , Professore. I am just arrived from England,” I said.

“And in England one does everything correctly, no?” He shook his head. “So you draw me a nice correct church, a nicely proportioned figure and a nice round orange. Now I want you to forget everything you have learned and turn them all into one design. Incorporate the church into the face, put the face on an orange—whatever you like, but they should all be part of one glorious whole. Capisce? ”

“I’ll try,” I ventured.

He left me to stumble through an orange with a surprised face on it, placed on the altar of a church. When the professor returned, he had to chuckle.

“Now you attempt to say something,” he said. “It is progress.”

At the end of class, we had to bring up our work. Some of them were so experimental that it was hard to see what they were—some shocking and disturbing. When it was my turn, the professor asked me, “What are you telling the world by putting that orange on the altar, eh?”

I had no idea. “That religion should not be separate from ordinary life?” I suggested, blurting out the first words that came into my head.

He nodded. “I think you have made a step in the right direction today.”

As he dismissed the class, he called out certain names. Mine was amongst them. We came up to his desk.

“You are the visiting students from abroad,” he said. “I should like to invite you, my foreign visitors, to a small soiré e at my house tonight to make you feel welcome in Venice. Eight o’clock. It’s the third floor, number 314, on the Fondamenta del Forner in San Polo, not far from the Frari. You know the Frari?”

I didn’t. Neither did a couple of the others.

“It’s the big church called Santa Maria Gloriosa—but to us it’s the Frari,” the professor said. “You will learn in Venice nobody calls anything by its real name. The vaporetti stop is San Toma. If you are coming from the other side of the Grand Canal, you can cross by the traghetto at San Toma. All right. Good. See you tonight. Come hungry. My wife likes to cook.” He glanced at his watch. “And now I must run. Urgent appointment.”

One of the Italian students had been lingering at a nearby desk, putting away his painting supplies. “What he means is that he has an urgent need for un’ombra ,” he said.

“What is that?” one of my fellow foreigners asked.

“A tradition in this city. The drink before luncheon. A coffee with a splash of something, or a grappa. You will find that most morning classes end very promptly for that reason.” He gave us a grin, hoisted his bag on to his shoulder, picked up his easel and went.

After he had gone we stood there, checking each other out. There were five of us.

“Did everyone else understand what he said?” a large, chubby boy asked. He was wearing earnest horn-rimmed spectacles and was dressed in clothes that didn’t really go together. And from his stumbling pronunciation, I could tell he was American. “My Italian is not too good. How did he say we can find his house?”