Passion Blue

by Strauss, Victoria

  “I had to…leave it.” Giulia thought of the gap inside the chimney where it was hidden.

  “In Milan?”

  “Not exactly. But it isn’t with me any longer.”

  Humilità’s dark gaze was keen. She was not the stern instructor now, or the energetic workshop mistress, but something else, something Giulia had not seen before.

  “You wouldn’t be at Santa Marta, would you, Giulia, if you had your choice.”

  Dismayed, Giulia looked down at her clasped hands. She’d thought she was doing a better job of pretending.

  “I understand. Truly, I do. Forced vocations are a common evil.”

  “Everyone says that.” Giulia looked up. “But then why are they allowed?”

  Humilità sighed. “Because they benefit the fathers and brothers who don’t wish to support a woman who cannot marry, a woman who is mad or ugly or disfigured or simply inconvenient.”

  Inconvenient, Giulia thought. Yes, that’s me. “Not always fathers and brothers. It was my father’s wife who sent me here.”

  “Giulia, I know it isn’t easy. To sacrifice the world and its delights, to accept a life within walls—no, that is not easy. As artists, too, it is more difficult, for we are not in the world, and can only imagine it in our work”—she gestured to her sketchbook—“with a little help if we’re lucky.” Her voice held the edge it acquired when she spoke of something that angered or frustrated her. “But God knows better than we do what we’re fit for. Your father’s wife may have had ill reasons for sending you to Santa Marta, but she did God’s will nonetheless.”

  “I saw nothing of God in what she did to me.”

  “All things happen for a reason. Santa Marta is the one place in the world where you can become what God made you: a painter. In time, you will understand that.”

  Giulia said nothing. She could not tell the truth, and didn’t want to lie.

  Humilità set her sketchbook aside and shifted on the bench so she could look into Giulia’s face.

  “I have made my workshop famous,” she said. “I know pride is a sin, yet I confess it—I am proud. I thank God every day that He created me what I am, that He has allowed me to do what I most love and thus give Him glory. Padua is a city of painters—Giotto, Lippi, Altichiero, Mantegna—all have left their mark here, and so will I. But of all the gifts God has given me, there’s one I haven’t had. Can you guess what it is?”

  Giulia shook her head.

  “An heir. Someone to take my place when I die, or grow too old to hold my brush. Someone to pass my secrets to. Someone to carry on my work.” She paused. “Perhaps you, Giulia.”

  Giulia was astonished. “Me?”

  “I’m hard on you, I know. But only because I see the promise in you.” Humilità reached out and took both Giulia’s hands in hers. “You have so much talent, child. It is wild and undisciplined, but if you can learn to master it, if you will let me train you as I know I can, you will become a true artist. Perhaps even a great one. One whose name may be remembered.”

  Unbidden, the words of the horoscope fragment came into Giulia’s mind: She shall not take another’s name, nor shall she bear her own at the end of life.…

  “I know that your vocation has been forced. I know you fear the vows a nun must make. But Giulia, those vows will not give you only a nun’s life. They will give you a painter’s life. An artist’s life. And I promise you that a true vocation awaits you there. I promise you that I will show you how to find it.”

  Her grip on Giulia’s hands tightened, almost painfully. Then she let go and rose to her feet.

  “Come, it must be near noon. We should be getting on. Give me your charcoal and paper.”

  Giulia handed them over. She took Humilità’s arm again. They left the market, entering the tangle of streets once more.

  This time, Giulia barely noticed where they were going. Humilità’s excitement over her cortile drawing…being brought into the workshop, as no other novice ever had been…the rigorous and sometimes harsh instruction…she had never thought to put those things together, to imagine what they might add up to. Humilità, master painter, leader of the only workshop of women in the world, thought that she, Giulia, might become a great artist! Even, perhaps, workshop mistress in her turn!

  All at once she could see that future, like a road stretching out before her. The years of training. Becoming a journeyman like Lucida, then a master like Benedicta. Her work displayed in private chapels and in public places, where hundreds of eyes, maybe thousands of eyes, would see it. A life spent painting—an artist’s life, as Humilità had said.

  But I’d have to become a nun. I’d have to spend the rest of my life at Santa Marta.

  And just like that, the vision died. She wanted to paint—yes, she wanted that, though she hadn’t really understood how much until now. But she did not want to live as Humilità did, cloistered within walls, ruled by bells, surrounded by sisters, only sisters—never a husband or a lover, never children. Never a home of her own. Painting or no painting, she could not find a vocation for that kind of life. She did not want such a vocation. She hated Santa Marta.

  Or did she?

  An awful confusion swept her. At her side, Humilità strode purposefully along, a look of satisfaction on her face. For a moment, childishly, Giulia was angry with her—for making such impossible promises, for invoking such an impossible future. But then she remembered her own deception, how every day she cheated Humilità’s trust by falsely playing the part of a true apprentice.

  “Is anything the matter, Giulia?”

  “No, Maestra.”

  It changes nothing. What she told me changes nothing.

  She struggled to believe it.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Balcony

  They stopped at last before a well-kept three-story house, with an arched doorway beneath its shady arcade.

  “I was born in this house,” Humilità said. “My mother died in it.”

  She stood a moment, gazing up at the balconied front, then shook her head as if shaking off a thought and stepped forward to bang the iron knocker. The door was opened by a stout elderly woman, her plain brown dress tied up at one side to reveal a bright scarlet underskirt.

  Her look of suspicion vanished when she saw Humilità. “Violetta!” she cried. “Oh, my pet! You’re home!”

  She held out her arms. The two women embraced. Humilità pulled away and put a hand on Giulia’s shoulder.

  “This is Giulia Borromeo, my pupil. Giulia, this is Lorenza, who raised my brothers and me after our mother died.”

  “Welcome, Giulia.” Lorenza offered a gap-toothed smile. “We’re always glad to meet one of Violetta’s girls.”

  “Lorenza refuses to use my religious name,” said Humilità with affection, “no matter how I rebuke her.”

  “Well, my pet, it doesn’t suit you.”

  “I see you still wear your red underskirt.”

  “The day I don’t wear my red underskirt is the day you should remark upon it. Come in, come in. You’re just in time for lunch.”

  Giulia glanced at her teacher as they entered. Violetta? Lorenza was right, Humilità didn’t suit her, for she was anything but humble. But Violetta fit her even less.

  Lorenza led them down a central hallway and into the kitchen, its windows and doors thrown open against the heat. Several women were preparing food; they dropped their tasks and crowded around, exchanging greetings and kisses. Once Giulia had been introduced and Humilità’s basket unpacked, Lorenza led them through the kitchen door, into the courtyard beyond.

  “I’ll just go tell the master you’re here.”

  The courtyard was enormous. Flagstone paving sloped toward a drain at the center, where a trio of boys knelt at a washtub. By the wall that formed the left-hand boundary, two men worked at a carpenter’s table, surrounded by wood shavings and scraps. A single-story brick building rose on the right, with windows all along its front and huge openings cut into its peaked roo
f, their shutters flung back.

  “My father’s workshop.” Humilità nodded toward the building. “When I was nine, he bought the house next to ours and knocked down the wall between the two courtyards so he could build the workshop onto the back.”

  “Will we go inside?” Giulia could hear the sound of voices and hammering and see figures passing before the windows. Some of the excitement she had felt that morning began to return.

  “Yes indeed. My father employs nearly twenty apprentices and journeymen. Some of them live in that house”—She gestured toward the house next door. “My brothers and their families live with my father in this one, where we all grew up.”

  “Your brothers are painters too?”

  “Gianfrancesco and Tiberio are. Fernando’s talents tend more to business.” Humilità smiled. “A good thing for my father. His fortunes have risen since Nando began to manage his affairs.”

  There was a small commotion inside the workshop, and a man burst through the door. He was as big as a bear, with a broad, craggy face and iron-gray curls swept back from a high forehead. His clothes were stained with paint, as were his hands, outstretched as he strode toward Humilità and Giulia.

  “My favorite daughter!” he cried in a booming voice that seemed to fill the court. “Come to pay her old father a visit!”

  He swept Humilità into his arms, lifting her off her feet like a child. Before that moment, Giulia could never have imagined anyone treating her strong-willed, dignified teacher so.

  “Your only daughter, Papa.” Humilità laughed as he set her down.

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t have a favorite.” He winked at Giulia. Humilità had his eyes—deep-set, dark as olive pits. “And I assume this lovely young lady is the new apprentice you wrote to me about.”

  “Yes.” Humilità tugged at her wimple, which had been pulled askew. “Giulia Borromeo, this is my father, Matteo Moretti—artist, artisan, and chairman of the Fraglia, the Paduan painters’ guild.”

  “I’m honored to meet you, sir.” Giulia curtsied.

  “The honor is entirely mine!” He made a little bow and smiled, displaying a perfect set of teeth. Gray hair and all, he was a good-looking man—but also, in his bigness and his loudness and something else that Giulia could not quite put her finger on, intimidating. “Violetta has never apprenticed a novice before. She must believe you have promise.”

  “Giulia has great talent, Papa. She’s farther along than I was at her age, even though she’s entirely self-trained.”

  “Saints protect us.” Matteo cast his eyes heavenward. “Another female genius. What is the world coming to?”

  “Of all my brothers,” Humilità said to Giulia, “none is my father’s equal. He has long wondered what sin he committed, that God should give the greatest ability to his daughter.”

  She was smiling, but Giulia heard the edge in her voice. Her father laughed.

  “You’ve made the best of it, haven’t you, Violetta?”

  “What of my brothers, Papa? Are they not with you?”

  “Nando is away—”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Yes, my dear, I’m sorry, he was meant to be home but there was some difficulty with the delivery schedules and he had to extend his stay. But you’ll see Gianfrancesco and Tiberio when they return later this afternoon. Come, ladies.” Matteo Moretti gestured toward the stairway that rose from the side of the court to the second floor. “We’ll lunch in my study.”

  The study was a big room with a low ceiling and several windows looking down onto the street below. There was a large worktable strewn with drawing and writing materials, at least a dozen chests and cabinets crammed with books and papers, and, at the windows, a dais for posing, with several lecterns set up nearby. Giulia was reminded of Maestro—not because this room was similar to Maestro’s study, but because it spoke so clearly of a man completely dedicated to his craft.

  Humilità’s father directed them to a small table laid for a meal. Lorenza and one of the women from the kitchen brought in bread, cheese, olives, a salad of artichokes, and the fruit Humilità had purchased at the market. Humilità and her father talked of family matters—the recent illness of her oldest brother, Tiberio; the engagement of her youngest, Gianfrancesco; her middle brother Fernando’s spendthrift wife. Matteo Moretti spoke of the major commission he had recently received, to furnish and fresco the newly renovated chapel of a noble family, and Humilità described the completion of the Santa Barbara panels.

  Giulia ate and listened. It was odd to see the confident workshop mistress flush as her father teased her, and even odder to hear him interrogate her about her work as if she were a journeyman, rather than a master painter. Was it hard for her to come home this way, Giulia wondered—to return to the world she had renounced, and then renounce it all over again when it was time to go? Despite the frustration with the convent’s limitations that Humilità occasionally revealed, she had never said anything to suggest that her vocation had been anything but willing. Still, Giulia remembered her words, in the market, about sacrifice. She remembered how Humilità had stood looking up at her childhood home when they arrived.

  Was Santa Marta really the only way she could paint? Couldn’t her father have kept her with him?

  “You should have seen it in its original form.” The conversation had shifted to the San Giustina commission, and the unusually detailed contract the monastery had insisted on. “They wanted to specify the exact composition of the central panel, can you believe it?”

  Matteo Moretti was frowning. “Why did you not write to me, Violetta? I could have advised you.”

  “I’ve been running a workshop for some years, Papa. I am quite capable of doing my own negotiating. I admit I made more concessions than I ordinarily would, but San Giustina is a prestigious monastery, and this will advance my workshop’s reputation. A balance of interests. Didn’t you teach me that?”

  “I did, I did.” Matteo leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “What sort of concessions, if I may ask?”

  “They want it complete by the middle of October so that it may be dedicated at the feast of All Saints in November. The requirements for the framing and gilding are extremely detailed—that’s one of the things I want to talk to you about today. I must also use a large amount of Passion blue. The abbot wants to give glory to God with a magnificent altarpiece—but he also wants everyone to know how expensive it was.”

  “Naturally,” Matteo said.

  “And I’ll be painting every figure in the central panel myself, and the thieves in the side panels as well.”

  “Every figure? Violetta, Violetta. That’s why you have journeymen—to spare you that kind of labor. Particularly with such a close deadline.”

  “Never fear, Papa, the fee I demanded would please even you. Although my expenses will be higher than I anticipated. The cost for one of my blue’s ingredients has gone up.”

  Her father raised his eyebrows. “Lapis lazuli? It’s been some time since I purchased any. What’s the increase?”

  “Ah, Papa.” Humilità shook her finger at him. “Did you really think you would catch me that way?” She turned to Giulia. “My father never tires of trying to trick me into telling him what’s in Passion blue. He wants the recipe for himself, you see.”

  “And why not?” Matteo spread his arms. “Imagine the fame and fortune my workshop could command if I had the formula for that most mysterious of colors!”

  “Your workshop already commands fame and fortune, Papa.”

  “Ah, but it could command so much more! Your blue wouldn’t lose its secrecy, my dear—it would just become a family secret.” He set his hands on his knees and leaned toward her over the table. “A good daughter would obey her father and share the recipe.”

  “I am your daughter,” Humilità said. “Whom you taught to know her worth, and also how to hold her counsel.”

  Their dark eyes, so much alike, were locked. Giulia felt a change, like a breath of cold ai
r sweeping through the stuffy room. Then Matteo threw back his head and laughed.

  “Ah, Violetta, I never could make you do a thing you didn’t want. But you can’t blame me for trying.”

  “Can’t I, Papa?” The edge was there again in Humilità’s voice.

  “You must pass it on to someone, you know.”

  “Why? Perhaps I would rather that it die with me.”

  Matteo shook his head. “You’ve a God-given gift, the equal of any man’s. But only a woman could be so stubborn and capricious.” He surveyed their empty plates. “I think we’re finished here. Giulia, have you had enough?”

  “Yes, sir. It was a delicious lunch.”

  “Good. I’ll just go fetch my recipe book so we can discuss the gilding and anything else you might need. Excuse me a moment.”

  He disappeared through a door in the left-hand wall of the study, closing it behind him. There were scuffling sounds, then a muffled thump.

  “He keeps his recipe book hidden under a loose floorboard under the window in his bedroom,” Humilità said, her eyes on the door. “He thinks no one knows, but my brother Gianfrancesco found out when we were children. All four of us know what’s in that book. We all know his secrets.”

  The words carried a strange bitterness. Giulia said nothing.

  The door opened and Matteo came out again, holding a leather-bound ledger in his arms—very much like Humilità’s own recipe book, but without a brass clasp.

  “I doubt Giulia will find our discussions interesting,” he said. “Perhaps she’d like to sit on the balcony and observe, as you used to do, my dear.”

  “That’s a good idea, Papa.” Humilità turned to Giulia. “When I was a child we all trained together, me alongside my brothers and the apprentices, as if I were a boy. As I grew older, though, that was no longer proper. So when my father built the workshop, he made a special place for me, so I could draw from life and yet be separate. You’ll be able to see everything from there.”

  “Yes, Maestra.” Giulia felt a thrill of anticipation. “May I draw too?”