Old Men in Love

by Alasdair Gray

  “They are right to say so Diamante, but when facts are at variance with Truth we should cling to Truth.”

  Diamante stopped mixing a colour, looked hard at Filippo and asked, “Is a fact not a truth?”

  “Yes, but it is first of all a thing – a piece of our imperfect fallen world, therefore not perfectly substantial. Only truth is perfect, unchanging, eternal, Heavenly. On earth it is only found in our Holy Scriptures, in Catholic traditions, and in history. Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Donatello think it is also in geometry because measured designs help us make beautiful architecture and convincing perspectives. They may be right, but there is no doubt that Holy Scriptures, Catholic traditions and history support Carmelite antiquity. Forty years ago the Saracens broke into our monastery on Mount Carmel and martyred our brothers as they sang the Salve Regina. That is why the Virgin appeared to our Pope in a dream and told him that when a Carmelite dies, after only one day Mary Mother of God will visit him in Purgatory and escort his soul straight to Heaven. We can both take comfort in that, Diamante. Certainly I do.”

  “You would doubt it if you were a Franciscan or Dominican.”

  “Of course. And if I were a Turk I would doubt God’s Holy Trinity and Virgin Birth and be adorning the walls of mosques with patterns of coloured tiles. Instead I can paint God, His Mother, Son, angels and saints with bodies looking almost as solid, colourful and well-dressed as God Himself could make them. God is very good to me.”

  Filippo was now applying paint to the robe of a tubby hermit who sat in a rocky cleft, hearing the confession of a handsome young man kneeling in profile. Diamante noticed that the older hermit was as tubby as Filippo and had his occasional sly smile. Unable to let the conversation end so smugly he murmured, “They say Fra Angelico will be beatified one day.”

  “Unlikely. People qualify for sainthood by martyrdom, or miracles, or deeds of astonishing charity. Angelic John has achieved none of these.”

  “But he has saintly virtues. He kneels in prayer while painting the Holy Family. Has never broken his vows of poverty. Or chastity.”

  “Unlike me. But Brother Angelico comes from a rich family. Finding he did not want money and women he chose to join the Franciscans when a grown man. Aunt Mona made me a Carmelite when I was eight because she could not feed me. Poor soul, she could hardly feed herself. I do not envy Guido’s lack of appetite for some good things God places within my reach. I do not even envy Angelic Guido’s remarkable talent, for his work has taught me a lot. Apart from my master, Messy Tom,14 Angelic John is the best of the older painters. His weakness is an absence of various expression. ALL his holy figures are delicate, sweet and benign. Were it not for the energetic design, harmony of colour and masterly chiaroscuro his greatest works would make me feel I was facing a banquet of twenty courses marinated in honey. Think, Diamante, of that poor haggard ugly gap-toothed Magdalen made by Donatello! Think of Eve’s weeping, grief-distorted face painted by Masaccio in this monastery! It is the finest thing Messy Thomas ever did! Nobody can paint better than that.”

  “The public prefers Angelic John.”

  “Naturally. Among the vulgar public only those made ugly by suffering appreciate pictures of those also made Holy by it. But artists of talent – artists great enough to lead instead of follow vulgar taste – such artists will always come here to learn from the work of Messy Thomas and me. Angelico, despite great virtues, is a Gothic manuscript illuminator enlarged and modernized by the great examples of Florentine art, especially sculptures in bronze. The great paintings of the future will grow from we who are achieving in paint the spatial depth Donatello has mastered in his great door panels, and are learning even more from nature.”

  “Yes,” said Diamante thoughtfully, “Your grief-stricken faces are as natural as old Giotto’s. And your Christ childs are very natural, sturdy little ruffians. And your virgins are always dressed in the height of fashion, which in young girls is natural I suppose.”

  Fillipo looked hard at Diamante who said, without raising his eyes from colour grinding, “And the Medici appreciates Angelico as much as the public do. Perhaps more.”

  “That shows Cosimo’s breadth of vision. He discovered Angelico years before I became a painter and now commissions work equally from us both. He prefers having me in his house because, unlike Angelico, Cosimo and I are sinners. Cosimo is the worst because his crimes are against nature. He breeds money out of money so like other bankers will finally sit in Hell scratching himself among the sodomites. I am only . . . only . . .”

  “Avaricious?” murmured Diamante, “A fornicator? Forger?”

  There was silence for half a minute in which Diamante braced himself for a wrathful explosion. Instead he heard Filippo warble in sing-song, “We have been companions since our novitiate Diamante! You have learned all you know of fine arts from me Diamante! Let us concentrate on our work Diamante! I promise not to say more about your foolish, ridiculous, extravagant, insane, unChristian expenditure on tomatoes.”

  11: A FLORENTINE NUNNERY

  In a convent cell lent to him for a studio Filippo painted a young nun, Lucrezia Buti, lent to him as a model for his Virgin Mary in Glory. As usual he had begun the session by sinning with her carnally because, he said, that let him paint without the distraction of carnal lust. He had then worked for nearly half an hour in silence before she murmured between rigid lips, “Filippo, if I have a child?”

  “Have you already missed a period?” he said, frowning and mixing a colour.

  “No.”

  “If God wills you a child,” he said, applying his brush carefully to the panel, “six or seven months will elapse before your appearance announces the advent. Plenty of time.”

  “But Filippo – ” she cried.

  “Don’t move! Imagine that I am the Archangel of the Annunciation. Imagine the little baby God is perhaps making in you. It is a wonderful thought, fearful also! What will people think? You are a virgin, and unmarried, yet the child will be God’s as well as yours, so He is bound to save you from harm. You know how God saved the Holy Virgin from scandal – He got old Joseph to marry her before she bore His Son. Wedding a jobbing carpenter must have been the first of her sorrows. You need not stoop so low.”

  Between rigid lips she murmured, “I am afraid.”

  He said cheerily, “Don’t be. You have me.”

  “Not often.”

  He stroked colour into the Madonna’s robe then said firmly, “When I have finished this you must leave here. I will help you escape on a holy day, a sacred festival when the Mother Superior is looking elsewhere. Come and live with me.”

  “As your wife?”

  “Of course not. I am a priest. STAY SERENE!” he shouted, “You are to be my Virgin in Glory, not my repentant Magdalene.”

  “My convent will be dishonoured,” she said mournfully. “My family will be dishonoured.”

  “Your noble brothers are not as rich and powerful as my friend Cosimo Medici. They made you and your sister Spinetta nuns because they could not afford dowries that would fetch you noble husbands. You will be happier when not quite married to me, a butcher’s son, yes, but also a great artisan and priest. There is room in my workshop for you and Spinetta also, if she too wishes to escape. A couple of women will be useful. Brother Diamante does his best but is not a good housewife.”

  “This makes me weep, Filippo,” she said and wept, uncertain whether from sorrow or joy.

  “Weep joyfully,” he urged, “Despair is the one sin God cannot forgive because it prevents repentance. He easily forgives other ones, even murder, which is a nasty big sin. Making babies is hardly a sin at all. In the beginning God commanded all his creatures to be fruitful and multiply. Stay serene Lucrezia!” he pled, but her weeping became sobs until he yelled, “Stay serene or I cannot paint you!”

  With a great effort she mastered the sobs. For a while there was silence but for the soft strokes of his brush, then he said casually, “You will often be painted when we l
ive together. There will always be a market for Virgins with your face and eyes.”

  Lucrezia’s convent was a small one with only four other nuns. The house was of a kind later denounced by the republican friar Savonarola because of a grill in the door behind which young nuns sometimes stood flirting with young men in the street outside. On a day of Holy festival when the Mother Superior led out her Brides of Christ to see the Girdle of Our Lady displayed it was easy for Lucrezia and Spinetta to escape in the crowd.

  12: SOMEWHERE IN ROME

  A revolt by the nobility of Rome in 1434 forced a Pope (like several of his predecessors) to flee the city in disguize. For ten years Eugenius IV was a guest of Cosimo de Medici in Florence, usually residing in the Medici palace where he met Brother Filippo. In 1443 the support of foreign kings let the Pontiff return to Rome and soon after he commissioned an Annunciation from Filippo. Sometimes he relaxed while watching the painter at work and grumbling about his problems. One morning he said gloomily, “Strange times, strange times! I have healed the thousand-year-old schism between Roman Christians in the west and Greeks in the east. The Byzantine Emperor John Palaeologus and the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismond recognized my supremacy, and now so does Emperor Frederick. I have signed agreements with Copts in Egypt and Nestorians in Mesopotamia, so Christians in Africa and Arabia will be restored to Roman Christendom. What do you think of that, my Pippo?”

  “No previous Pope has done as much, my Pontiff,” said Filippo politely, “except Saint Peter, perhaps.”

  “Has done as much on paper. Potentates sign agreements with me and go on doing as they please. Palaeologus signed because he needs me to organize a crusade to save Byzantium from the Muhammadans – they have cut his empire down to a circle of suburbs round Constantinople. But that damned remnant of the Council of Basel still supports Antipope Amadeus Duke of Savoy, who is not even a priest! Antipopes are always Antichrists! I cannot raise a crusading army from a schismatic Europe, so in a few years Constantinople will be conquered by pagans. The last of the ancient Roman Empire will be destroyed and Greek Christianity extirpated. O O O I detest the ambition that dragged me from my monastery. I weep tears of rage when recalling the profound peace I once enjoyed as a young monk.”

  “Don’t return to your old monastery, my Pontifex Maximus,” said Filippo, chuckling. “A previous pope threw up the job because it was damning his soul so Dante describes him eternally racing round the outer walls of Hell, one in a crowd of souls hated equally by God and Satan. Continue being as good a pope as you can in these strange strange times and you need only suffer a few years in Purgatory.”

  “More than you expect to suffer!” said Eugenius grimly.

  Filippo stiffened the corners of his mouth to prevent a smile and with a modest shrug murmured, “Well, I am a Carmelite.”

  A little later he wiped his brush clean, laid it down, stirred crimson powder into a pot of medium while saying, “Surely several Christian kings would join a crusade if your Holiness raised his own army to fight against Islam?”

  “A papal army is a dissonant concept, both theologically and pastorally.”

  “Yet Martin V, your great predecessor, defeated Braccio da Montone in the battle of L’Aquila and crushed Bologna by force of arms. He regained the lost papal treasury. The Papal States now dominate central Italy.”

  “Pope Martin belonged to the Colonna family, chiefs of that gang of noble scoundrels who forced me to flee Rome twelve years ago. He enriched his relatives as much as he enriched the Vatican treasury, which is not inexhaustible. My only possible armies now would be lent me by French or Spanish kings whose troops would probably sack Rome while passing through.”

  “Hire soldiers from outlandish nations who would only demand their soldiers’ wages – Switzerland, the Baltic countries, England and Scotland.”

  “I say again, Pippo, our treasury is not inexhaustible.”

  “Will your Holiness forgive the prattling tongue of a bird-brained monk who imagines a new way to make your treasury inexhaustible?”

  “Speak, parrot.”

  “In Mainz upon the Rhine there is a wonderful German engine with a lever which, pressed down once, stamps a sheet of paper with inked words more clear, regular and legible than the finest penman can write.”

  “I know that very well,” said Eugenius gloomily. “Already German bishops are buying letters of indulgence in bulk from the engineers, each with a blank space for the name of the soon-to-be-forgiven, and room at the foot for the bishop’s signature and seal. Twenty good scribes working for a week in my chancellery could not write as many letters of indulgence as this engine stamps in an hour.”

  “Then your Holiness should hire a German engineer to build this lettering machine in Rome, and announce ex cathedra that only indulgences signed by you and cardinals in the papal college are valid. The vastly enlarged revenue you received would never stop pouring in.”

  “Do not tempt me, Filippo. I am a Venetian so no enemy of commerce, but I fear this clerical engine will effect the Church in unforeseen ways, just as gunfire (another German invention) is changing warfare. I will not use or ban or try to control these engines until I see clearly what their effect is liable to be.”

  Filippo silently resumed painting. Eugenius said, “This picture has more domestic furniture than most Annunciations, also more browns. I suppose oil paint allows that. I am glad you have confined your usual wild forest to a narrow view through the arch.”

  After more unhelpful remarks that Filippo ignored the Pope said, “God’s mother is not usually approached from the left.”

  “Yes, entrance from the right is customary. My previous Annunciations have that.”

  “You are trying something new.”

  “Your Holiness perfectly understands me.”

  Eugenius sighed and said, “Yes, Florentines must always be innovating. It produces brave new art but also heresy. Too many of your scholars learn Greek, study Plato, start doubting the theology of Aquinus and à Kempis. Nicolo Granchio is a splendid administrator.15 As my legate in Constantinople he persuaded Paleologus to meet me in Italy, which was not easy. Like several German priests he makes a surprisingly uncorrupt cardinal, neither simoniac nor nepotist, not an adulterer, sodomite or pederast, not even given to impatience or anger – my own worst sins. Yet he thinks Christendom and Islam could unite! How can a member of the Sacred College indulge such a cloud-cuckoo idea? Luckily he puts ideas into abstruse Latin jargon that hardly anybody understands. He tells me Muslims believe in the Jewish Old Testament as we do, that the Koran accepts the Virgin Mary as Christ’s Mother. It seems the Koran also says Jesus is a God-inspired prophet and forerunner of Muhammad! Blasphemy! Muhammadans who do not believe Jesus was God’s Only Begotten Son are as damnable as Jews who reject Him.”

  “But not as damnable as atheists who call Moses, Jesus and Muhammad the three impostors,” said Filippo, adding with a long brushstroke a bright crimson plume to the archangel’s wing. Eugenius shuddered and said, “Your artistic confidence makes you dangerously jocose, my son.”

  “You are right to reprove me, Papa, but Cardinal Nicolo is also right to think the Turks are not exactly barbarians. I was once the slave of a Turk.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “On a boating trip off Livorno I was captured by corsairs and sold with the rest of the crew in Morocco. My master, though pagan, was a man of humane and liberal views and my skill in portraiture entertained him. He certainly did not think all Christians would go to Hell. He quoted an Arabian poet who said that when our souls stand before the judgement seat of God we will find Him so infinitely merciful that we will gnaw our fingers in rage at the sins we might have committed on earth without offending Him.”16

  “I see why that heresy delighted you,” said Eugenius, laughing. “But God’s mercy is only for the repentant.”

  “I know that Your Holiness, of course I knew my master’s words were a blasphemy leading to the circle of Hell where schism
atics are repeatedly hacked in two. But some Christians are over-obsessed with their sins and God’s judgement. When you consider the scope of His work – the great dome of the stars and clouds, the seas and snowy Alps, the brown and green and flowery lands surrounding our cities of splendid men and women, our glorious churches and palaces, rich markets of fruit, vegetables, meat, cloth, furniture and all other fine goods – why, it is perfectly obvious that God spends more time creating lovely things than he spends condemning bad ones.”

  “You are making a God in your own image!”

  “No father, I promise you, it is the other way round.”

  Eugenius shook his head, rolling his eyes in an Italian way indicating despair and resignation.

  And after more silence asked, “Are all your Virgins derived from the figure and face of the same woman?”

  “I almost think so, Papa.” said Filippo, dreamily. “The Virgins I painted before I met Lucrezia must have been prophecies, because on seeing her in the parlour of that little convent I recognized her at once. Yes Father. Yes indeed, Holiness.”

  “That is another Greek heresy,” said Eugenius, not severely. “Plato or perhaps Socrates (they are practically the same) said souls are eternal as God who made them, so birth is not the making of a new soul but a reincarnation, and those who love at first sight recognize their mates from an earlier life.”

  “As you say, Father, a heresy. Only God knows how such miracles happen.”

  “Brother Filippo, you are too amorous for a priest. I have power to dispense you of your clerical vows. You now have a son by your Lucrezia. Little Filippino will not be a bastard if I make you a layman able to marry her.” Filippo dropped his brush and stared at the Pope, open-mouthed and shaking his head in many small vehement negations. Then he cried, “Holy Father, you must not deprive me of my priesthood! My link with Holy Mount Carmel! My promise of release from Purgatory by God’s mother!”