The good-natured Michael Spinoza nodded and replied, “But of course, whatever the gentleman wishes. He certainly knows best.”
Under the impression that Meester’s work was in great demand, he demonstrated his gratitude to the great painter for accepting the commission by allowing Meester to set the price. He did not bother to haggle.
“Each full-length figure costs two hundred,” Meester declared, mentally rubbing his hands together in anticipation, because he had never before received such a high fee.
With these calculations the price of the commission was set at one thousand gulden. The following day they met in Michael Spinoza’s office to sign the contract before witnesses. Half the sum was paid in advance. Execution of the portrait was expected to require three months of work, since Meester had no apprentices to paint in the background and the clothing.
THE HUGE QUANTITY of gulden now in the master’s hands amounted to exactly five times as much as his most recent fee for a commission. Extremely relieved, he went straight to his favorite tavern. He promptly informed the owner that his luck had changed and he had come to pay off his debts. He seated himself comfortably on a chair that the relieved tavern keeper had quickly pulled out for him, and he called for a round of brandy for everyone in the house. Surely new commissions would come flooding in now. He was certain there was money here for the taking. After a couple of snifters of spiced brandy, he got it into his head that he would be getting plenty of commissions from wealthy Jewish merchants, and soon he would be able to pay off the debts encumbering his expensive house. He thanked his Creator for providing him with a client so greatly respected by the Jews, a man whom they were likely to emulate.
The following day Meester sent Michael Spinoza the gift of an etching from Leiden as a token of his esteem. It depicted the city’s cathedral, surrounded by blooming linden trees, and the gleaming white private mansions along the Rapenburg Canal.
THE WORK BEGAN in early summer. Meester was suffering in the unusually hot weather, but he plunged into the task with great energy and creative force. His approach was meticulous; he made countless sketches. His workshop was excessively warm, and Meester discarded most of his clothing without bothering to ask permission of his client. His torso was bare, to Madame Spinoza’s evident annoyance, as he continued his sketches. He was lost in his own world and paid no attention to her. The floor was littered with piles of sketches in red chalk.
Michael Spinoza’s family spent long hours every day motionless and uncomplaining in the workshop where the peeling walls were hung with unsold paintings. Weeks went by and the heat never broke. It was especially unbearable next to the window where the artist had placed the family. To make things worse, the reek of Meester’s sweat was almost unendurable as he stood behind the easel every morning, shirtless and unwashed, dirty and disheveled. But no one complained. Not even as he mixed the various paints and an acrid, unpleasant odor rose from them.
Meester laid out the base coat with a palette knife and broad brushes that he wiped on his trousers. He spread the colors thickly with sweeping movements, layer by layer.
No one said a word, all day long. Only Madame Spinoza’s coughs broke the silence. Her lungs were weak, and the strong odors in the workshop made her gag and wheeze. This annoyed Meester a great deal, probably due in no small part to his instinctive dislike for her.
Even before they first met, Meester had an intuition that he would find it difficult to put up with Madame Spinoza. He remembered his friend Uriel saying that his sister-in-law had long nursed an implacable hatred for him and she had thrown herself into a rage, flinging horrible imprecations at him, when he tried to contact his half brother and young nephews.
Meester often made fun of her in the evenings as he sat there in his favorite tavern behind a couple of uncorked flasks of brandy. He sarcastically described her odd appearance, her fat hands, and her stark-white round cheeks.
ONE DAY SJOUKJE FOUND Meester’s favorite pet animal dead in the cellar. He had purchased the merry little chimpanzee for ten stiver one night on a binge while visiting a prostitute down near the harbor. This turned out to have been one of his more successful transactions, because the little creature—whom he dubbed Caravaggio, not without a certain touch of irony—often provoked him to hearty laughter. A few minutes in the company of his chimpanzee were always the perfect tonic for his gloomy moods.
Meester was depressed by his loss. Neither work nor brandy could lift his spirits from the melancholy that weighed upon him as he grieved for the little chimpanzee. He lost his powers of concentration and told Michael Spinoza that they would have to break off their work for a time.
THE DEATH OF CARAVAGGIO proved to be an omen that presaged even more painful events in Meester’s life. A few days later he was buffeted by yet more grief: His tiny little daughter, Cornelia, just baptized and only a couple of weeks old, died suddenly after heavy intestinal bleeding.
The house at 4 Jodenbreestraat was plunged into tears. No one spoke above a whisper and meals were consumed in total silence. The doors were opened to no one. Meester had ordered a period of deep mourning. He felt drained. Terrible anxiety kept him awake day and night. He could see Caravaggio’s features clearly before him, then it seemed that the darkness closed in around him and he was unable to recall the face of his daughter, Cornelia. During the nights—all those sleepless nights he spent trying to remember the details of his baby daughter’s face—he was wrapped in black despair. He sat week after week in his studio, alone and silent in his inexpressible pain and heart-searing grief, sunk deep in overpowering, bitter thoughts. He felt dead inside and believed he had lost his ability to paint.
MICHAEL SPINOZA had heard that work in Meester’s studio had stopped, which meant that the family portrait would not be ready for his birthday. He waited patiently until the middle of September and then decided to call on Meester in an effort to help him through his difficult hours.
Life had taught Michael Spinoza that sorrow was perpetual. Scarcely a year before this, he and his wife had lost a newborn child. He knew the only way to put Meester back on his feet again was to persuade him to return to his work.
A DISAGREEABLE ODOR permeated the workshop and all the paintings had been turned to face the wall. Meester sat there clad in a nightshirt with a worn dressing gown hanging about him, carelessly unknotted. Michael Spinoza scarcely recognized him. The painter seemed to have shriveled; he was thin and yellow in the face and had great circles under his eyes. It was obvious that he had not bathed for a long time. Michael Spinoza presented his condolences. He said he understood Meester’s difficult predicament, because he himself had suffered a similar loss. He saw immediately that the painter’s self-pity had turned into a crippling bitterness.
“Death has haunted my house,” Michael Spinoza said. “Unfortunately, there is nothing to be done about it. Last year when we lost an infant I raged and wanted to run through the streets screaming out my grief and telling everyone how badly I had been treated by my Lord, even though I have always obeyed his law. Believe me, I understand how it feels to lose someone you love. But life goes on, and fortunately, time heals all wounds.”
Meester seemed distracted. He sat there for a long time without a word. Then suddenly he began to speak. He muttered rapidly and most of what he said was incoherent. He asked questions and answered them himself. His words gushed through the studio like a stream of water. He reckoned sums, proclaimed his righteousness before the fates, mumbled, and complained. Everything he had been holding inside him, even his most secret thoughts, surged forth. He did not look to see if his visitor was listening. He did not even seem aware of the words spilling from him.
Michael Spinoza waved his hand before Meester’s face from time to time, but nothing distracted the painter from his delirium. Finally Spinoza rose and went to the door.
“I have to go now,” he managed to say as Meester took another breath. “I have an important meeting at the synagogue.”
Mee
ster forgot himself for a moment. A smile suddenly lit his face. He tried to hold it back, but it spread and took possession of his features.
“You have a divine gift,” Michael Spinoza told him in his gentlest voice. “Using it in your time of deepest grief can alleviate your pains. With your unwavering discipline you have achieved the very highest summit of artistic expression. My advice to you is to go back to your easel immediately.”
LATER THAT AFTERNOON Meester applied a brush to his canvas. He had not succeeded in calling forth from his memory the features of that delicate creature who had been his daughter for only a couple of weeks. But he could see Caravaggio clearly. He decided to paint a portrait of the little animal that had amused him so. Since he had no blank canvas available, he painted the chimpanzee’s head on the body of one of the Spinoza children.
SUCH AN INSULT would have enraged even the gentlest soul. Michael Spinoza felt betrayed when he discovered that Meester had placed the head of a monkey on Bento’s body. His wife could scarcely hold back her tears; in a venomous voice she exclaimed that Meester had absolutely no understanding of true art. The children laughed and teased Bento, who got terribly angry.
Meester had been exhilarated when he went to Michael Spinoza’s residence to display his creation. At their reaction, his humor changed abruptly, and he refused to submit to any correction from Madame Spinoza or to allow them to treat him like any idiot off the street. He told her in a voice quivering with rage that he particularly refused to be accused of failing to understand art. The moment had arrived, he declared, to say exactly what he had felt in his heart for so many years but for various reasons had never put into words. There was no one anywhere, no one in all the world, who was his equal in the art of painting.
“It is not our intention to offend the artist or to call his art into question,” quickly intervened Michael Spinoza, who wanted to avoid making things worse. He feared that his wife was about to let fly with several fierce insults. “We have the highest respect for the artist’s genius. For many years we have marveled at his works and his masterful talent. That was why I turned to the master. But portraying my son as a chimpanzee must be one of the most absurd ideas ever to have crossed his artistic mind.”
“The client promised me full freedom of artistic expression!” answered Meester in his towering rage. He felt insulted, and his voice was full of sudden, blazing hatred. “If the clients do not care for the portrait, they can paint one for themselves. But they should not delude themselves with the idea that they could be capable of doing so.”
He picked up his painting and departed without a word of farewell.
A FEW DAYS LATER Michael Spinoza addressed to Meester a letter describing his disappointment with the painting with a candor and dismay more suited to confiding in a friend. He stressed that he wanted at any cost to avoid further misunderstandings. At the same time, he wrote, he earnestly requested Meester to consider the possibility of replacing the chimpanzee head with that of Bento.
Meester was adamant. He had been humiliated by the audacious liberty taken by the Jewish couple in criticizing his art, and he deeply regretted that he had wasted so much time with the Spinoza family. In addition, he was convinced that it had been intelligent of him to paint Caravaggio into the canvas, for he had created a different and invaluable masterpiece, a work to be contemplated with the ethereal selfless gaze of an artist, not with the egotistical, unfeeling eyes of a merchant. For these reasons he stubbornly insisted that the chimpanzee’s head would remain exactly where it was. He demanded immediate payment of the remaining five hundred gulden owed him by Michael Spinoza. He threatened to take legal action if he did not have the money in hand within a week.
Michael Spinoza declined to pay. After every possible effort to persuade Meester to change his arrogant stance, he went to court and had the contract declared null and void. Even with this verdict, he did not have the heart to demand that the debt-ridden Meester return the down payment of five hundred gulden.
The painting was left bundled up in plain wrapping paper in the studio until Meester’s death. It was titled Caravaggio Accompanied by the Spinoza Family.
MY GREAT-UNCLE never had the opportunity to view that painting where it was hanging in an Amsterdam museum, but he knew every detail of it.
He told us that Bernard Berenson, the American who was perhaps the most prominent art historian of the early twentieth century, felt tears fill his eyes the first time he saw the painting and exclaimed, “Miracles happen for those who believe in them!”
Later, in his book Seeing and Knowing—which I have never read and am simply quoting according to my great-uncle’s account—Berenson wrote: “This was nothing more or less than the first modern painting in the history of art. Here was an epoch-changing work that with intentional explosive artistic force broke open the way for a new approach to European art.”
URIEL SPINOZA wandered about the narrow streets, stumbling from time to time over the piles of garbage. A stifling anxiety dogged his heels. Oppressed by the heat, he fanned himself with the document that he had received earlier that morning from the Mahamad, the Jewish council.
He glanced sidelong at the unknown faces around him, seeking a friendly look, searching for eyes that were not filled with fear or squinted in disdain. He was well known in the Jewish quarter. People there regarded him with suspicion. Some openly mocked him; some even spat upon him. Everyone knew who he was: a renegade, a blasphemer who according to vague rumors had once been a highly placed official of the Catholic Church in Oporto.
Uriel’s thoughts were in a whirl. Who knows anything at all about any other human being? Who can perceive what is hidden in the depths of a pair of eyes or behind a face? Who knows what is hidden in the soul or what lies deeper still, even more concealed, hidden even from the person who carries it within him?
OUTSIDE THE ESNOGA, the principal synagogue, he passed five boys who were playing together. As he heard their shouts, it occurred to him that their lives were far different from his own reality. He seemed always to have been an adult. He could not recall his childhood. The images and memories had vanished.
The boys recognized him and they froze. His reputation was known to even the youngest inhabitants of the Jewish quarter. All the children knew who he was.
Uriel Spinoza was a Jew who had lived the life of a devout Catholic in Oporto. His subsequent conversion to Orthodox Judaism meant he had to flee to the Calvinist Netherlands where refuge was offered to religious minorities. Jews in Amsterdam regarded Uriel as an apostate for criticizing the rabbis and questioning the tenets of Jewish faith. He was a rootless Marrano with no home anywhere.
The stern Rabbi Orobio had explained to the boys in the Talmudic school that of all the Marranos, Uriel Spinoza was the first who allowed himself to be exploited by the Catholics. Orobio asserted that Uriel was still a Catholic, his aberrant lifestyle was a scandal to all Jewish customs and traditions, and his avowed purpose in life was to undermine the authority of the rabbis. He was dangerous and a serious threat to the Jews of Amsterdam.
“No one should ever speak to that man,” Orobio said in a threatening tone. “His is the voice of chaos, children. His evil teachings can ruin you for the rest of your lives.”
The boys watched Uriel from a distance. He was tall, thin, and wiry, with a nose as crooked as a bird’s beak and tiny dark eyes that peered out at the world as if they already knew everything. He had an odd gait and dragged his feet, not because he was elderly but because he was self-absorbed.
The boys trailed after him, jeering loudly. Uriel halted when he heard the children insulting him with words so horrid that he had never heard them before. He turned around. At that moment one of the boys threw a large rock that struck him on the temple. He felt the blood beginning to run down his left cheek. He gasped and then sighed, for he recognized his own nephew Bento as the one who had thrown the rock.
ONCE URIEL GOT HOME he sat by the table. The sparsely furnished room was shr
ouded in silence. He took out the document he had received from the Jewish council and read through it slowly several times.
The decision was unanimous. Uriel Spinoza was excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam because he espoused views that questioned fundamental teachings of the Jewish faith. Banishment was for life, effective immediately. The signature on the document was that of Michael Spinoza, his own half brother.
Uriel’s hands began trembling uncontrollably. He had lived in isolation for years, deep in poverty with no one close to him, with no woman in his bed. But never before had he experienced such a feeling of isolation. He was frightened to find himself banished by the very people with whom he most wished to share his thoughts. All of his efforts had been motivated by the deep desire to offer his Jewish community a glimpse of truth. This obsession had given purpose to his existence and had driven him to devote himself to the time-consuming process of writing, in the effort to identify the principles that ruled human existence.
The Elixir of Immortality Page 26