Yet on that that day in October, you would have never known that Seville had once been a vast morgue. In the public markets, vendors were out in mass. Piles of oranges and lemons, jugs of olive oil, perfumed soaps, brightly painted dishes, embroidered shawls—wares for sale formed dizzying patterns of rich and vivid color. Clowns and jugglers and acrobats entertained the crowds, and dancing monkeys made the children laugh uproariously. Beggars loitered in front of churches, entreating passersby to spare a coin.
By the time the carriage rolled up to the gates of the Discalced Carmelite convent, Juana was feeling a bit faint.
“Ave María purísima,” said the extern by way of greeting.
“Sin pecado concebida,” answered Juana. “I am Pacheco’s daughter.”
“I’ll let Sister know you’re here, Doña Juana.”
Sister Inmaculada received them in the locutorium, where she sat in the shadows behind heavy iron bars studded with sharp spikes. Juana squinted, trying to make out the nun’s silhouette. It took her eyes a minute to adjust to the dimness.
“How is Don Francisco? How is the baby?” Sister Inmaculada’s voice was as raspy as a rusty hinge.
“Everyone is fine, Sister.”
“What about the paintings of Saint John and the Virgin? Is that husband of yours almost done with them?”
“I don’t know, Sister. I never go into the studio.”
“Yes, of course not.” Sister Inmaculada paused. “Still, it would be nice to have them by the feast of the Immaculate Conception.”
“Oh, I imagine they’ll be done by early December, Sister.”
“Tell Velázquez,” she pressed on, “that it would make the Virgin very happy to have them ready for her special day.”
Sister Inmaculada had an intense gaze and skin like crinkled paper. Four white hairs graced her chin. Alongside her nose ran minuscule red and purple rivulets with countless tributaries. Sister Inmaculada had been spiritual director to Juana’s mother, and she had been guiding Juana ever since Doña Leonor had died.
To Juana, it was clear that Sister Inmaculada was the most intelligent woman in the world. She was curious about everything, and she was always eager to know what news Juana had picked up from Pacheco and his friends; it didn’t matter if it was international intelligence or local gossip—any information was welcome. Mother Teresa, foundress of the order, had always forbidden chitchat in the locutorium, but in the forty years since her death, Seville’s nuns had relaxed her restrictions. They prayed and meditated regularly, of course, and they ate meat only on Thursdays, but they found nothing wrong with indulging in a bit of tittle-tattle once in a while.
Mother Teresa had been beatified a few years earlier, and would probably be canonized shortly. A large painting of her hung in the locutorium, her full, ruddy face framed by a wimple. Her penetrating eyes, stern yet tender, took in all that went on. But despite the founderess’s looming presence, Sister Inmaculada was convinced that she wouldn’t have objected to the feasts in which the nuns indulged on the anniversary of the convent’s founding. On these days, they spent their meager resources on festive decorations and succulent dishes—stuffed squid, fried anchovies, eggplant steamed with sherry—and invited special friends into the locutorium to share their joy. After all, reasoned Sister Inmaculada, the soon-to-be Saint Teresa wanted convent life to be pleasant, and she had always loved a good party.
Had Juana heard anything about an English ship called the Mayflower? Inmaculada wanted to know. It was apparently heading for the New World, but what was it? A cargo ship? A pirate ship? “May-flower—flor de mayo—Just like English pirates to give their ship an innocent-sounding name.”
Juana thought it carried settlers, not pirates, but she wasn’t sure. Anyway, local gossip was far more interesting. There were several juicy tidbits: Juana’s neighbor Doña Andrea Moreno was betrothed to Don Félix de Villaurrutia y Ponte, whose uncle was one of the richest men in Seville; and the husband of Doña María Delgado (always late for mass, noted the nun) was said to have lost a fortune in the gaming houses.
All at once, Juana felt the contours of the room go blurry. She reached toward the iron bars of the grill to steady herself, but the spikes prevented her from holding on. Julia, who had been embroidering in a corner, jumped up and slipped her arm across the young woman’s back to prevent her from falling. In a moment Juana had regained her balance, and the outlines of the walls and corners of the room came back into focus.
“Are you alright, child?” Sister Inmaculada peered at Juana through the grill.
The young woman caught her breath and nodded.
Before Juana left the convent, Sister Inmaculada handed her a note for Pacheco. Ever since Doña Leonor’s death, the nun had been offering him spiritual support. Sometimes she sent an inspirational thought or a prayer, sometimes an image to contemplate. Pacheco never wrote back, but he appreciated the gesture.
Juana and Julia climbed back into the carriage just as the sky took on an indigo cast and the air began to rumble. Within moments, drops like ripe, juicy grapes were splattering on the cobblestones, and a fierce wind battered the panes. Juana pulled her cape around her. Unshielded from the blustery weather, the coachman snapped the reins to hurry the horses, but the slippery, wet stones slowed their pace. Leaves, twigs, pebbles, and scraps of garbage pelted the sides of the carriage, and mud pummeled the dash. The coachman spat curses into the wind.
When at last they arrived home, Juana threw her muddy cape to Julia and hurried to the nursery to give the breast to Paquita. When the baby had had her fill and slipped into a hushed slumber, Juana dashed off to find her father and give him Sister Inmaculada’s note. He wasn’t in his study, so, she assumed, he had to be with his students. On her way to the studio, she noticed a black clump on the ground near the patio—something shapeless and wet from the rain. She approached gingerly and knelt over what appeared to be a cluster of glistening feathers. She shuddered. It was a dead bird, a young one. Apparently the storm had knocked it from its nest, and it had fallen to the ground, smashing its little head. Most of its blood had washed away, but its exposed brain still oozed red.
Juana felt a sudden frisson. She ran back into the house toward the nursery, calling to a servant boy to clean up the mess in the patio. Then she scuttled through the corridor and threw open the door to the baby’s room, where Arabela was embroidering a cradle sheet with tiny pink flowers.
“Is Paquita alright?” panted Juana.
Arabela blinked at her, disconcerted. “What do you mean? You just nursed her. Why wouldn’t she be alright?”
Juana walked over to the cradle and peered at her little girl. Paquita was dreaming peacefully, smiling in her sleep, her breathing steady and quiet. Juana started to cry.
“What’s the matter, niña?” asked Arabela, her voice mellifluous and comforting.
“I don’t know … I’m not sure.” Juana looked down at her hands. They were trembling. Between her thumb and index finger, she still held Sister Inmaculada’s note.
“I think I do,” whispered Arabela, but Juana was already out the door.
Juana wavered at the door of the studio. The workspace, she knew, was unwelcoming to women, a male domain where boys learned skills essential to their craft and men produced art, a product vital to the well-being of society. The paintings created here would inspire awe in God’s infinite power and yearning for His grace in everyone who would see them.
Inexplicably, Juana felt a fierce urgency to deliver Sister Inmaculada’s note to her father. Perhaps, she thought, the simple act of handing it to him would calm her nerves. As she pushed open the door and peered across the room, she felt a surge of excitement. She was trespassing, she knew, but her father’s rules suddenly seemed crazy to her. Why shouldn’t a woman breach the threshold of the workplace? Why was it so sacrosanct?
In one corner of the studio, young boys copied studies of limbs from a sketchbook—tensed arms and dangling arms, arms bent at the elbow, arms turned
upward in blessing, outstretched hands and hands grasping sticks or plumes, praying hands and fists. On the table lay books of feet, knees, noses, and ears. This was the visual vocabulary students had to learn in order to create original paintings. Although Spaniards did not usually paint from life as the Italians did, Pacheco recognized the value of live models when used judiciously. Velázquez, who at twenty-two already had a mind of his own, used models regularly. Not only that, he liked to paint ordinary people, not just biblical heroes. He painted singers and musicians, drunkards and nuns. He even painted an old woman cooking eggs! And if you could see those eggs, how they glistened and sizzled! Nobody else in Seville painted those kinds of scenes, but Velázquez saw beauty everywhere.
In those days the goal of a painting was to tell a story. A viewer had to understand the narrative—Jesus being tempted by the Devil, Saint Sebastian being martyred, Paul falling from his horse—and the narratives had to inspire. There were conventional ways of telling these stories visually, and the apprentices had to learn them. That’s why Pacheco kept hundreds of prints and drawings in his archives.
In another part of the studio, a teacher was helping students stretch and prime a canvas, while an assistant explained how to mix pigments. Some boys were grinding glass to create bright blue smalt. Others pulverized dried madder root for red or pink hues, while still others crushed cochineals for carmine.
Juana looked around the studio for her father. She was fully prepared to walk right in on his lecture and hand him Sister Inmaculada’s note. He would be stunned, but before he could explode, she would be gone. There would be consequences later in the day, of course, but she would argue her point forcefully, just as she had made the case to nurse her baby.
But where was Pacheco? He was not with the younger boys or with the ones already working with easels. She spied Velázquez at the far end of the room and moved gingerly toward him. Next to him, his slave and assistant—Diego Melgar, a boy of thirteen or fourteen years old—was mixing colors. Velázquez had already developed a technique. After outlining the figures, he filled in each one, giving it volume and depth. He achieved luminosity by mixing pigment with linseed oil and then applying it over a flat brown background. I loved to watch him work. It seemed a miracle the way he could bring an ancient biblical character to life with such a tiny range of colors. In those days he used only blue, red and yellow ochre, white lead, and blacks made of charcoal, bone, or vegetable dye. Of course, when he painted me, he had already developed a palate. He had broken with Pacheco’s cold, conventional method of figure drawing. For example, his Saint John was so vibrant, so real, so raw and virile, with his stony cheeks and his scruffy eyebrows. Not at all like Pacheco’s stiff, perfect saints.
Velázquez seemed not to notice that Juana had come in. She approached with a determined gait, striding past boys without so much as glancing at their sketches. What had caught her eye was the silky robe of the model posing for her husband. A woman! A female model in the studio! From the rear the girl looked formless and indistinct under the draping, and yet there was something about the way she was standing that Juana found familiar—and disturbing.
It was not until Juana positioned herself almost directly behind the model that Velázquez looked up from his canvas.
“I’m working,” he said calmly.
“I see.”
“The Virgin. A companion piece for my Saint John the Evangelist.”
Juana walked around the model and turned to face her. The girl’s head was tilted slightly forward, eyes lowered modestly, her hands joined in prayer. She stood firmly on both feet on a small platform used for posing.
“In the final version she’ll be standing on a crescent moon.”
Juana knew the story from the Book of Revelation and understood the reference, but she said nothing.
“What are you doing here?” Velázquez asked finally. He didn’t look glad to see her, but he didn’t seem angry.
“What is she doing here?”
“Lidia? She’s my model.”
“She’s supposed to be the housemaid. Why isn’t she cleaning?”
“I only need her for a few hours, to put the final touches on this. It’s not easy to find a female model. Pacheco said I could use her.”
Juana felt her jaws and shoulders tense. She bit her lip. She was not going to cry. What was to be gained by making a scene? It would only give Lidia something to snicker about in the servants’ quarters. She had to maintain her dignity. She was the señora, and Lidia was nothing but a criada. Anyhow, this was a battle she couldn’t win. If Pacheco had given permission for the girl to pose, what did her opinion matter?
She stared at Lidia with a calculating eye. She ran her gaze from the girl’s feet to her hair. Lidia’s silken cheeks were speckled with freckles like tiny, translucent copper coins. Her face came to a soft dip beneath her mouth. Her reddish brown hair hung loosely under the Virgin’s veil. Juana thought she saw a tiny, defiant smile flicker on her lips.
Juana had to hold her ground. Seville was full of bastards sired by noblemen with their housemaids, and she did not want this little schemer spending time with her husband. Doña Juana Pacheco de Velázquez would not become the laughingstock of Seville.
“She’s needed in the house.”
“Juana, go back to your baby,” said her husband. He didn’t raise his voice, but spoke firmly, with the demeanor of a mature man. After a moment he added, “The archbishop commissioned this painting for the San José Convent, and he is not a man to be trifled with. I need … we need to be in his good graces. Our fortune could depend on it.”
“It’s unseemly for you to be painting our housemaid,” Juana replied. Anger had tinged her face with radish-colored splotches.
Velázquez put down his brush. His gaze was steady and penetrating.
“I could pose for you!” Juana blurted out. The moment she said it she realized how absurd she sounded. A jealous hag. A resentful fishwife.
“A decent woman posing for a painting? How do you think it would make me feel to have my own wife as a model? I’d be dishonored before the whole city!” He said this matter-of-factly, and he still hadn’t raised his voice. He also didn’t mention that she was far too homely.
Juana was dizzy with rage. She started to cough uncontrollably. Velázquez sized up the situation and saw what he had to do.
“Juana … Juana,” he said gently. “What do you think? That I’m going to fall in love with the Virgin Mary? No, my Juanita. You know that I love only you.”
Juana had the distinct feeling that she was being manipulated, but it didn’t matter. She had won. He had said he loved her, only her, and he had said it in front of the housemaid. Her position was secure—or, at least, apparent. She looked down and saw the note from Sister Inmaculada still in her hand.
“Where is my father?” she asked dryly.
“Probably in his study, writing. This afternoon the academicians are going to critique a segment of his book.”
She turned and left. “Adiós,” he called after her. Both of them were pretending that nothing had happened, and yet they both knew that something had.
3
BEYOND THE MOON
1619
IF VELÁZQUEZ WAS ANGRY ABOUT HIS WIFE’S INTRUSION, HE didn’t show it. A few minutes after she left the studio, he put away his paints and joined his father-in-law for their usual midday meal, during which Pacheco told him that a special visitor would be attending the academy meeting later in the day. After his siesta, Velázquez put on his best velvet doublet and lace ruche.
The gathering was more animated than usual. It began with a poetry reading. Francisco de Rioja, wearing a fashionable Arab-style turban, took his place before the academicians and cleared his throat. Then, rather too dramatically, he looked out the window at some invisible garden and began:
Lánguida flor de Venus, que escondida
yaces, y en triste sombra y tenebrosa
ver te impiden la faz al sol hermosa
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hojas y espinas de que estás ceñida;
Y ellas, el puro lustre y la vistosa
púrpura en que apuntar te vi teñida
te arrebatan, y a par la dulce vida,
del verdor que descubre ardiente rosa.
Igual es, mustia flor, tu mal al mío;
que si nieve tu frente descolora
por no sentir el vivo rayo ardiente,
A mí en profunda oscuridad y frío
hielo también de muerte me colora
la ausencia de mi luz resplandeciente.
Languid flower of Venus, you lie hidden in sad, dark shadows that prevent you from seeing the glorious face of the sun, for leaves and thorns surround you,
And rob you of the pure radiance and dazzling purple I saw beginning to tinge your petals, and at the same time, of the sweet vitality of the verdure, through which peeks an ardent rose.
Your woe, withering flower, is the same as mine, for if snow fades your forehead, depriving you of the sun’s ardent rays,
The absence of the resplendent Light of my life colors me with profound darkness, with bitter ice, and finally, with death.
“Just as the rose wilts, so do we,” murmured Pacheco mournfully.
“And who is the Light who robs you of your vitality?” snickered Juan de Pineda, Pacheco’s irrepressible Jesuit friend. Father Pineda had been responsible for the Index Prohibitorum Librorum, the 1612 inventory of forbidden books, but his position didn’t prevent him from making a suggestive comment once in a while. The men laughed like schoolboys and heartily praised the poem. Rioja was on his way to becoming a famous poet, and love sonnets like this one would soon be passed around among courtiers.
I am Venus Page 3