The Chapel

by Michael Downing

  As most of the audience filtered out, the two other panelists eyed each other wearily and then disappeared out a side exit. I was one of four people left in the auditorium. I didn’t need a break yet. I’d missed most of the first thirty minutes because I’d stopped at my hotel room on the way back from the café. I wanted to pick up my copy of Sara’s map to orient myself in the chapel. And the day had gone hot and humid, and my saggy cardigan was sticking to my blouse, making my back furiously itchy, as if blue dye were leaching into my skin. I found my Marimekko shift waiting for me in the closet, spot-free. And the belt fit. My three linen shirtdresses were still missing, but that barely dimmed my delight. Despite the Bolognese and brioche, I’d lost at least five pounds.

  Eventually, the three other audience members deserted me. I was content to have the place to myself, imagining that the white walls of the little room were the white plaster walls of the chapel before Giotto got his hands on it. Had Scrovegni paired up with another painter, I would not have been there, and maybe no one but a few neighbors and a few friends of Scrovegni would ever have known or cared that the place existed. This seemed to me a kind of illumination of my marriage and so many others—which, like most churches and chapels, were not particularly well made or uplifting, but ordinary and serviceable arenas for the sustaining rituals of a few hopeful people. I didn’t have to denigrate the hard work Mitchell and I did to make a marriage and to make it work to admit that it was a disappointment—not inspiring, not especially imaginative, not even much of a model for our unmarried son and our divorced daughter.

  I finally checked my program and discovered that no one was coming back to join me. Everyone else had reconvened outside, on the chapel grounds. By the time I found my group, the basso profundo was finishing up his description of the chapel’s strange little apse, a polygonal tower that housed both the altar and Scrovegni’s tomb. From the outside, the apse looked like a brick rocket ship pasted onto the end of the chapel’s barrel vault. He promised we would soon go inside and see that its frescoed walls were unrelated to the panels Giotto had painted in the body of the church and could be confidently attributed to much lesser artisans. “In my reading of the arrangement, the apse indicates that Giotto was not the sole or even the lead architect on this project. The hastily painted wooden panel above the altar—I will point out the ersatz image of God the Father stuck into that obvious hole near the top of Giotto’s work—rather seals the case.” He set off down the paved path.

  The white-haired woman did not budge. “Perhaps the original wood panel was lost.”

  The basso profundo said, “I can’t imagine Giotto instructed the workmen to cut a hole in the middle of the plaster wall he had just frescoed to make room for a piece of wood.”

  The woman nodded. “But there is reason to imagine that Giotto had always intended for there to be a hole high up in that wall at the apse end of the barrel vault, a kind of trapdoor used for freeing doves or shining a dramatic bit of candlelight during the liturgical pageants hosted by Scrovegni and his family.”

  The basso profundo smiled. Most of the rest of us were caught between him and his adversary. He said, “I rather agree with the more informed speculation that we lost a stained-glass window in that spot, possibly designed by Giotto before the architecture was revised—without his participation. There is evidence that Scrovegni had hoped to build a genuine transept with two side chapels, which would have made sense of Giotto’s original stained-glass window. A window above the chancel arch would have admitted much-needed additional light. Surely it was a window that had to be patched up with a panel of wood.”

  The third panelist meekly suggested we move directly inside as we had already devoted more time than anticipated to the apse.

  The basso profundo agreed.

  The white-haired woman followed for a few paces and then planted her little heels directly in front of a bricked-up indentation in the chapel’s exterior. This peculiar niche was a six-foot-high arch of no apparent use, not deep enough to have held a statue or any ornament. “This is where we encounter incontrovertible evidence of Giotto’s alteration of the architectural plan of the chapel.”

  We all stared at the blank space, as if we expected the Virgin to appear and fill us in on the details.

  The basso profundo snaked through the crowd to find his meek colleague and, in a very effective stage whisper, said, “I cannot listen for another minute to that migraine of a woman,” and then headed toward the dehumidifying chamber.

  The meek man said, “I think many of us are overheated. Perhaps the significance of the brick indentation can be explained while we are all seated in the cool antechamber.”

  I had developed a deep loyalty to the pushy woman on the panel, but my back was getting furiously itchy again, so I followed the others into the air-conditioning. We dried out, but the debate about who designed the chapel building did not dry up, both sides fueled by questions and speculation from members of the audience. Once we were herded into the chapel, the crowd gathered in the front half of the nave to study the controversial painted wood panel.

  I was more puzzled by Mitchell’s interest in this topic. There were several other morning lectures whose titles looked more promising, and one was devoted exclusively to circular and cyclical elements in the work of Giotto and Dante. His choices for later in the day didn’t make any more sense. If I stuck it out, I would be learning everything I never wanted to know about moneybags and sacred animation. I drifted to the back, trying to locate where that odd niche in the brick outside showed up inside the chapel. I visited briefly with my faceless friend with the noose, Despair, and when I turned around, the little meek man waved from the other side of the aisle.

  “It was over here,” he whispered, “behind the figure of Charity.” He looked exhausted, his dark eyes set in dark circles on his round face, and when I got closer, I saw that someone had shaved away a small patch of the thinning brown hair just above one of his ears. An infection? A bite? He had the demeanor of a sad sack, the guy in a crowd who would be singled out by a nasty crow or an angry hornet. He said, “Is your name really Mitchell, or is it Michelle? The Italians aren’t champion spellers.”

  “Neither,” I said. “My husband’s name was Mitchell.”

  “My partner’s name was Michael,” he said, as if this gave us something in common. “He left me a few months ago.” He looked up into the deep blue sky above us. “Which I have recently taken to telling strangers,” he added. “Maybe I’m hoping people who didn’t know us will act surprised. Or we can debate the significance of this Charity panel.”

  I said, “I’m not a scholar.”

  He said, “Welcome to the club.”

  I said, “I’m not sure what I think I’m doing here.”

  “Everyone else is doing their best imitation of a scholar,” he said.

  I said, “I don’t even know what CPOCH does.”

  “Plans expensive guided tours of significant artistic sites for people who are willing to pay $5,000 and up annually to be treated like VIPs and lectured at by college professors from the provinces.” His affect had not changed since he’d waved to me.

  “So my husband must have been a paying member,” I said.

  “Sustaining member—that’s what the blue-and-white badge means. I think that’s the $10,000 level,” he said.

  He must have noticed the strain in my facial muscles.

  “Or maybe he got a discounted membership. They do offer come-ons. Was this his first year as a member?” He eventually filled in my silence. “You should be receiving a biannual copy of the Centre’s bulletin. You’ll find your husband’s name among the Centre’s Panel of Scholars.”

  Maybe it was reflexive loyalty, or maybe it was a genuine hope that Mitchell had got something for his money, but I said, “I suppose the Centre has more standing in Britain and on the Continent than it does in the States.”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “It’s mostly Americans who sign up. And a few Canad
ians from the mainland. The three of us are based in Halifax. At the College of Art & Design.”

  “All of these experts teach in Nova Scotia?” I had meant to make that sound like a point of interest, but my dismissive tone echoed right up to the heavens. I sounded like a typical Harvard wife. In an effort to muffle the insult, I said, “That arch of brick we saw outside is on the other side of Charity?”

  She was one of the Virtues, and like the other Seven Virtues and the Seven Vices, she was painted all in gray tones, as if she were a statue of herself, a beatific young woman with plaited hair holding a basket laden with fruit and nuts in one hand, and either a giant fig or a small artichoke in the other, which she had raised up toward a tiny haloed figure who had popped into the top of the painted frame to accept her gift. On the ground beside her feet were two sacks of coins, apparently ready for distribution to the needy.

  He nodded.

  I said, “These are as unlike the rest of the frescoes as that God the Father they’re all debating.” The crowd had moved right into the sanctuary, spread out around the altar as if readying a lamb for sacrifice. “Are we sure Giotto did these strange, gray paintings?”

  “About ten years later, he used variations on these very figures for an even bigger commission—the Palace of Reason. He made a vast fresco on the ceiling and walls, an astonishingly accurate astronomical map of the heavens decorated with figures of astrological significance, inspired by the ancients and contemporary science. I really think it was his secular response to all of this Christian folderol Scrovegni had paid for.”

  It had never occurred to me that the chapel might not reflect Giotto’s beliefs and convictions, that he had applied his genius to please his patron, not for the glory of God. I said, “Isn’t the Palace of Reason right here in Padua?”

  “Yes, but the original burned to the ground in 1440-something,” he said, saving me the bother of venturing beyond the tiny sector of town that was all I knew of Padua or Padova, or Italy for that matter. “So much of what Giotto painted has been lost or destroyed. Even in here. For centuries, moisture in the air drew salts in the plaster to the surface and popped paint off the walls.” He reflexively touched his bald spot, as if he was hoping to find a few bristles of new growth. “And about fifty years ago, all of the frescoes were restored and covered with a resin, which kept the salts in place but so effectively sealed the surface that the entire painted surface started to dry up and peel away, like dead skin.”

  I said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The horrors of hell were looming above us in Giotto’s superb rendering of the Last Judgment, but he didn’t crack a smile.

  “We’ll never know even the half of who Giotto was,” he said. “The paintings we do have—the ones that weren’t lost or destroyed—acquire a disproportionate significance. It’s like discovering one stupid thing someone did one night and judging him on that mistake, imagining he spent all of his free nights like that.”

  I think we both realized he had shifted the topic from painters to partners. Nonetheless, he had a point. I couldn’t tell if he’d been the cheater or the cheated, but I had devoted a disproportionate amount of my Mitchell scholarship to exegesis of his brief affair with Rosalie.

  “I love these panels,” he said. “For all of the Virtues and Vices, to set them apart from the living characters, Giotto used this bravura technique—as if to announce he was moving on to something new—this almost monochromatic approach to painting that puts more emphasis on the precision of line and shape than the bright colors and depth of field that had made him famous.” He looked at his shoes. “I’m lecturing you.”

  “Don’t stop now,” I said. “I’ve got a $10,000 credit to spend down.”

  He may have smiled, or maybe he winced. He seemed determined not to express any more emotions, as if he were practicing to become a statue of himself. “Look at Charity. It’s as if you are reading an etching, but the drawing is done here with a paintbrush in fresco—an almost impossible show of mastery. It’s called grisaille. It turns up later, notably in work by van Eyck and Brueghel and the other true master drawers among the Dutch, and, of course, in the Sistine Chapel. But Giotto invented the technique. Or so say those who actually know about these things. I’m just paraphrasing a couple of journal articles I read last week by way of preparation.”

  I said, “I think you know more than you let on.”

  He said, “I know I was lying when I said I’ve been telling strangers about my partner leaving me. You’re the first. Even my colleagues on the panel don’t know yet.”

  I tucked away that confession. If you have a tomb you’re not using anymore, you can always find someplace to stick another secret or sadness. “Is that a crack in the plaster I’m seeing or something Giotto painted?” I was staring at a white line that bisected Charity. It looked like a fissure in the wall that extended from beneath the bottom of the painted frame, through an incomprehensible Latin inscription, and right up between her legs into her high-waisted gown, across her profile, and on up into the wall above her.

  “It’s a crack. That brick alcove outside was originally a public entrance to the chapel.”

  I said, “An exit.”

  “Yes,” he said, “a door.”

  “But you can’t get out,” I said. “You can’t get out unless you can slip through that crack. It’s like the eye of the needle.”

  “Easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of the needle than to enter the gates of heaven?” He sounded genuinely interested and genuinely confused. “You mean Scrovegni? I don’t get it.”

  I was thinking of those moneybags at Charity’s feet, the money Mitchell had left for me to distribute to Sam and Rachel, which I was still withholding. I said, “There used to be an exit behind her?”

  “Yes, there was a door,” he said. “Probably it was Giotto who demanded it be sealed up and plastered over to preserve the geometry and symmetry of this grisaille border of opposing Virtues and Vices. Over time, the building settled and the open space that was originally a portal caused the stress fracture. It does indicate Giotto had some sway over the final design of the building.” He tilted his head toward the altar. “She’s right about that much, though it’s hardly her idea. We all read the same journal articles. Am I being petty?”

  I said, “Not a model of charity.”

  “I should go up there and call that contest a draw,” he said, staring at the crowded altar. “It’s almost time for lunch.” He didn’t move.

  “I had a huge breakfast,” I said.

  He said, “I have to meet with the volunteers during lunch.”

  We shared a talent for fending off invitations that hadn’t been issued. We let a couple of silent seconds pass before we went our separate ways. I think we both registered the awkward intimacy of that long last moment.

  BY THE TIME I FOUND THE DESIGNATED LUNCHROOM, THE unappetizing spread of tiny pressed sandwiches, cookies, and a tub of ice with a few little splits of wine and sparkling fruit drinks was littered with rejected scraps and empties. I assembled two towers of panini, or panino, or tramezzi-somethings on a plastic plate and stuck a yellow can of fizzy lemonade in the pocket of my dress. Most of the empty chairs I spotted were hung with blazers or purses, or else they were located at tables where the conversation was too convivial for my taste.

  I headed for the exit, and just before I got away, a woman said, “This food you are eating is not able to leave the room.” It was Sara, who had apparently been demoted from translator to hall monitor. She was seated next to another woman, and their respective lunch plates were balanced on a chair between them, one untouched sandwich and one cookie on each plate. Sara was wearing an unusually demure navy blue turtleneck dress.

  “You can join us, if you like.” The other woman turned my way and flounced her blonde hair, as if I might want to photograph her.

  “I think you are Cheryl,” I said.

  “Now, how did you know that?” She turned to me briefly
and then turned away and checked to be sure her purse was still below her chair.

  “I know your husband,” I said.

  “You do not!” She looked at Sara and shrugged.

  “And I saw you yesterday at the Arena Hotel with your daughter,” I said. It was her daughter who thought my wrinkly dress was a nightgown.

  Sara stood up for no apparent reason, though she did stifle all conversation at nearby tables. Her dress fit her like a tattoo.

  Cheryl also stood, and she stared at me intently. “No, I would remember if we met,” she said.

  I said, “It doesn’t matter.”

  Cheryl said, “I never forget a face,” as if I didn’t have one. “It’s one of the things about me, I’d say. Anyway, take our chairs. Don’t tell my husband, but Sara and I are going to skip out this afternoon for a little shopping.”

  Very loudly, and very slowly, Sara said, “Shoe shopping—shopping for shoes,” as if I didn’t speak English.

  Cheryl said, “Did you just say you know the captain? No way!”

  I said, “I must have been mistaken.”

  Cheryl said, “Well, maybe so, but thanks for stopping by anyway,” as if we were standing in the foyer of her home and I was a confused delivery person.

  I did take their chairs, and I was pleasantly surprised by my selection of little sandwiches, especially the melon and prosciutto, and a combo of an unfamiliar soft white cheese and thin slices of fennel. The lemonade tasted tinny. Evidently, you didn’t get a glass or a little cup for your beverages unless you pledged $25,000.

  I joined the first wave out of the lunchroom. My next lecture started in the dehumidifying chamber, and I wanted a good seat. The topic was moneybags. I split off from the crowd and ended up alone on a bench, forced to wait for the rest of my cohort before the guard would open the airtight chamber. The delay was just long enough for the heat of the day to bring my back to a boil again, and my scratching effectively spread the problem from my shoulders right down my spine. Eventually, I was admitted to the cool dehumidifier, along with three elderly priests.