“My friend, I am happy to call you master,” said Daddi.
Giotto smiled and chewed on another olive.
“I am happy to be called master by a friend such as you. You are wise beyond your years. Do not take what I say as the truth. Take it as an idea, a perspective. We are scholars, men who see the world and try to understand it. Our gift is the ability to capture what we see and translate it into something spectacular.” Giotto drained his cup and refilled his and Daddi’s from the silver carafe on the table. He cut off a chunk of cheese and stuffed it in his mouth before continuing.
“Keep in mind, my young friend,” he said, aggressively chewing the cheese, “while we are of course artists, we are also businessmen. Fortunately for us, our trade doesn’t involve anything as mundane as peddling linen or fava beans, but nonetheless, we do not exist on an island. If I thought that painting in the Byzantine style was the road to fame and fortune I would take it up tomorrow. But it is not. Those days have passed. Luckily for me, the way I prefer to paint is currently in vogue and therefore I am richly rewarded for what comes naturally to me. You need to find a style that works for you while also being attractive to those with money to pay for it. Otherwise, you will find yourself wasting your time painting things that no one wants.”
Daddi looked at the ceiling and smiled. He’d heard those exact words years earlier, although at the time he was the dispenser of that advice and not the recipient. Giotto was definitely opinionated, he thought, and incredibly arrogant as well. Be he was also right more often than not, which made the first two qualities tolerable.
Chapter 12
Avuncular, that would be a good description, thought Mackenzie. So would crusty, and perhaps even thorny. She had been working with Charles van Arden on restoring a reliquary cross for the past week and found him to be all of those things, usually in some type of predictable pattern. Simon’s description and advice had been spot on. Deep down, under that thick leather exterior was a sensitive, warmhearted man. On the outside, especially at first, was a man who preferred to work and keep to himself. She couldn’t help but think of Walter Matthau’s character in The Bad News Bears, sans the ever-present beer can. Actually, she had more than twenty years of dealing with someone like Charles because he was essentially a slightly gruffer version of her father. The fact that she had grown up a Yankee fan and had been to the stadium numerous times to watch games with her father was a plus in working with Charles.
A season ticket holder for almost a quarter century, Charles had seen the very tail end of “The Mick’s” career, as a boy, and had watched them struggle through the early seventies, reach the top again during the Reggie and Billy Martin period and then fall off again for almost twenty years before Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Paul O’Neil and the rest of the new-look Yankees started winning titles in bunches. Fortunately for Mackenzie, she had been there for the down years as well as the newfound success. Charles was quick to dismiss the “bandwagon brokers” who found it stylish to buy front row seats for a ridiculous price earned by speculating with other people’s money, and wear Yankee caps with their Armani suits. “Hell, they don’t even show up for a lot of games, and if they do, they come late and leave early,” he was quick to point out.
But more than anything, he was a dedicated restorer. He handled the jewel encrusted twelfth century cross with the tenderness of a father with his child. The cross itself was not particularly large, fifteen feet high and ten feet across, however, every inch of the gold plated cross was encrusted with precious and semi-precious jewels, as well as a piece of the “true cross,” held in place in a golden wire webbing. It wasn’t uncommon to find pieces of the true cross embedded in such a relic. In fact, the term reliquary meant that the artifact contained a relic, whether that be the bone of a saint or a piece of the true cross. In theory, the “true cross” was the cross upon which Jesus himself was crucified. As Charles pointed out, proving that it was actually the true cross was far from a scientific endeavor.
“Imagine, if you will,” he said, as they peered under the large round magnifying glass at the grayish brown piece of wood that he held with tweezers, “communication between villages in the Middle Ages was slow and subject as much to rumor as fact. If you were an enterprising purveyor of religious artifacts, you could sell the same saint’s finger about a hundred times before anyone started questioning its veracity. Then, even if you did start questioning whether what you had purchased was the real thing or not, the salesman would have been long gone, perhaps even in another country.”
Mackenzie piped in. “And if you had just paid dearly for what you thought was a relic, then you were certainly not going to admit that you had been duped and were now holding onto some dead guy’s finger.”
“Exactly,” agreed Charles. “Based on what I’ve read and seen over the years, if you just do some simple extrapolation, then there are probably enough pieces of the ‘true cross’ floating around the world to do a pretty good job framing Notre Dame Cathedral.”
They both laughed at that image. Charles set the piece of wood into a small plastic box for safe keeping until he was ready to reattach it to the cross. He turned off the light from the magnifying glass and turned to Mackenzie.
“But, you know, whether or not this is actually a piece of the true cross or not isn’t as important as believing that it is. Faith is important. It guides people. It gives them something to aspire to. I’m a fact based person and a realist, but I don’t underestimate the power and value of faith. If you believed that this little piece of wood somehow made this beautiful cross even more powerful and that helped you believe that you were part of something greater than yourself, then perhaps you would push yourself to achieve something greater than you thought was possible.”
She wasn’t sure what prompted her, but for some reason she was suddenly interested in learning more about Charles. “Charles,” said Mackenzie, “why did you become a restorer?”
Charles sat down on the round swivel stool next to the worktable and motioned to Mackenzie to sit on the adjacent stool. He folded his large hands into his lap and began speaking.
“Many years before you were born, I was an altar boy in our local Catholic church, Immaculate Conception. I was captivated by all of it, the ceremony, the robes, everything. I used to serve at the 7 a.m. mass three days a week. I’d ride my bike there before school, even in the winter when it was pitch dark, and there was snow and slush on the road. There was something special about it because I got to go behind the scenes, where normal people couldn’t go. I remember putting on my cassock with the other altar boys and watching the priest prepare the wine and the hosts and put on his cassock and alb. Then we came out and everyone stood. It was like being on stage. Of course the priest was the main character, but we served our roles as well. Without a doubt, at that point in time I thought I was going to grow up and become a priest.”
Mackenzie noticed that he had an interesting habit of switching his hands every thirty seconds or so. He started with his right over his left, then switched to left over right, and so forth. She imagined that he could have cracked walnuts in those massive yet gentle hands, had he wanted to.
“But I remember one Easter we were preparing for mass and someone dropped one of the special chalices that we only brought out for high mass, for special occasions like Christmas, Easter, communions, and stuff like that that. Well, I don’t remember who actually dropped it, but this beautiful chalice that had been with the church for decades fell on the marble floor and cracked in five places. I remember everyone just staring at this golden cracked cup that lay on the floor and was just ruined. You could have heard wax dripping from the candles. It was like all the air was sucked right out of the entire church. I remember instinctively kneeling down on the ground and picking up the chalice. Everyone else still hadn’t moved. I held the chalice in my hands and asked the priest if it was all right if I tried to fix it. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he looked at me warmly and s
aid that yes, I could, but it wasn’t likely that anything could be done.”
Mackenzie listened intently. She couldn’t even imagine how to begin repairing a cracked metal chalice, especially as a young boy, with no formal training. “What did you do?” was all that she could think to ask.
“Looking back, I’m sure that I didn’t do a very good job of it. Certainly not to the standard of what we would now call professional restoration. But I took it back to my dad’s workshop in the basement. I carefully hammered out the dents and I soldered the cracks. Then I heated the gold coating with a torch he had and started polishing the warm gold covering as best I could to even out and cover the solder marks. I got it to look pretty good, I have to admit.
“The day before Easter Mass, I brought the chalice to the priest and asked him what he thought. He held it up to the light and turned it around and looked closely from all angles.” Charles mimicked the priest as he turned his head to and fro looking up at the imaginary chalice he was holding in his enormous hands.
“He set the chalice down and turned to me, and I’ll never forget what he said. ‘Charles, this is the closest thing that I’ve personally seen to a miracle. The Lord has worked his wonders through you to restore this chalice. We will use this for Easter Mass. Thank you for what you have done. You have made the church proud.’”
Charles leaned back a bit and let out a warm, full laugh. “I’m not sure how much of a miracle it was, but I know, as a ten-year-old boy, I had never felt more important. It was then that I knew that I had a gift for fixing things. Not just everyday things, but sacred objects. Crosses, chalices, patens, ciborium, statues and things like that. That was my calling. I didn’t know what a restorer was at that point, but I knew I wanted to do something where I could help bring back the beauty of objects that had been damaged.”
For a moment Mackenzie forgot where she was. In front of her was this bear of a man with the tenderest of hearts who had ultimately found his true calling. He was an artist, a true artist in his own right, and he had found his niche in the world. Tears welled up in her eyes while she listened to Charles’s story and she turned away and dabbed her eyes with her sleeves. She turned back to Charles with red cheeks and puffy eyes. “It sounds like you made the right career choice,” she choked out.
“Yeah, I think so,” Charles nodded calmly, his big hands resting on his knees. “This is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
How lucky he is, thought Mackenzie. So few people get to live out their dreams. She wondered what it was that she had always longed to do.
Chapter 13
Anthony knelt in one of the small side chapels inside the spaciousness of St. Patrick’s cathedral. He loved the gothic grandeur of St. Patrick’s. It reminded him of the awe-inspiring European cathedrals he remembered from his youth. While he enjoyed the coziness of smaller churches, there was something that drew him to the majesty of these architectural wonders. During Sunday mass it was easy to get lost in the enormous congregation. For someone who did not like drawing attention to himself, it was perfect.
He liked these quiet moments. He often came to St. Patrick’s early in the morning right when it opened to the public. There were a few early risers who had come to worship quietly, pray for loved ones or just to spend some moments in contemplation before starting their day.
He felt comforted by his relationship with the Catholic Church. It had always been there for him, through good times and bad, a steady beacon on a distant shore that provided solace on stormy seas. He was not devoutly religious, but he did go to mass every week. For him there was something very soothing about the rituals and traditions of the church. He was not always pleased with the church, nor did he agree with all of its teachings—like most believers in most faiths, he took the teachings that applied most to his life and made them his own and tried to live by them. To him the church was very much like a parent with an alcohol problem. It could break your heart, disappoint and embarrass you, but most of the time you felt loved and were proud to be a part of it.
For all its shortcomings, the church was something very familiar to him. As the world changed around him there was always one touchstone, a place whose edifices and rituals remained essentially unchanged since he was a boy, and that was the Catholic Church. For all its warts, it was his church, and he still felt a kinship, a sense of belonging.
He lit a votive candle and knelt in front of the altar deep in thought. No matter where he was in the world, he had lit a candle on March 4th for as long as he could remember. It was a day that made him reflect and think back longingly of happier times, but also to reminisce over his greatest mistakes.
Regret is an insidious emotion, he thought. It lies dormant for years, never coming to the surface, and then one memory, a dream, a single event would awaken the sleeping monster and rekindle the flame of remorse inside him. Once relit, that flame built upon itself, a self-sustaining, perpetual occupier of his thoughts and emotions. He knew that everyone had regrets. Things that we wish we could go back and do over in a different way. But those deeds were long gone. Maybe that was the problem with regret, he thought. He could not change the past, nor could he forget his missteps. They were part of who he was.
Anthony recalled what it was like to be truly in love. He still remembered how his only true love looked when she slept, how her hair smelled and what it felt like to hold her closely in his arms. He had never loved anyone so completely before or since. Their life together ended all too suddenly, leaving him with a void he had never been able to fill. But the vast majority of his memories with her were of the happiest times of his life. The excruciating pain of her loss was worth enduring to have shared his life, even a small part of it, with her. He looked at the flickering flame of the candle and imagined her here with him, kneeling beside him like they had done countless times in church. He longed to hear her voice one more time, to kiss her soft lips and to see her eyes light up like stars on a summer night when he made her laugh.
He reflected quietly on her memory and on his life. He wondered if he was happy with the life he had chosen. Was this what he was meant to do? Did he regret the choices he made? Was it time to make a change, to head down a different path, not knowing where it might lead? Did he have the courage to do it? He was not sure. He had asked himself these questions many times over the past several years and there were still no clear answers. Or maybe there were and he was not willing to hear them. He prayed for not only forgiveness for his mistakes but also for clarity and strength to choose the right path moving forward.
Chapter 14
Mackenzie was carefully recording the current state of her most recent project with Anthony. Daddi’s 1334 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels and Saints, a tempera on wood painting in a beautifully carved steepled wooden frame. The Ufizzi in Florence sent it the previous week for Anthony to work on even though they had a team of restorers who could have handled the project locally. Mackenzie was chronicling every aspect of the painting, using the grid approach that Anthony preferred. It was slow, painstaking work, but it was the type of focused, detailed, and clearly delineated task that she relished.
As the name implied, the central characters of the painting were Mary with the baby Jesus, seated on a large altar chair in the center of the painting. On either side of them were four female angels, two with brown robes and red albs, and another four with bluish green robes and matching capes. In the very front of the painting at Mary’s feet stood Peter and Paul. As was common of such paintings in the fourteenth century, Mary and the baby Jesus were almost twice the size of the other characters. This was both to demonstrate their importance as well as an early attempt to denote perspective and depth, more than a century before Brunelleschi laid out the standards for perspective that are still used today.
Mackenzie had chronicled and photographed, both in standard and UV light, a little over two thirds of the painting. She was focused now on the upper right hand corner of the painting and the two angels with the
brown robes. The first angel had her hands held together in prayer with the tips of her fingers directly below her chin at her neckline. The second angel had her hands crossed in front of her with her hands gently pressed against her left and right chest. As Mackenzie focused the magnifying glass in more closely, she noticed something that caught her attention, mostly because it was odd. She hadn’t noticed it under normal magnification, but now it was very clear. The right hand of this second angel, which rested over her heart, was clearly out of proportion. More specifically, the little finger was abnormally long, almost as long as the index finger. It was hard to see the fingers of the other hand clearly, partly because of the way that it was positioned and also because of the fading that had occurred over time, but it looked as if the fingers on that hand were normal.
Pre-Renaissance painters weren’t known for their keen attention to detail when it came to fingers and proportion, but this still seemed odd to her. She went back and looked at all of the other hands in the painting, a total of twenty five hands, because three hands were hidden, either underneath robes or behind the altar seat, and while some of them were difficult to make out, they all seemed to be relatively consistent. In no case other than the upper right angel’s right hand was the little finger significantly longer than what one would expect it to be. Clearly, it was never as long as the index finger, except for this one angel. She made a note of this peculiarity in her log and continued her analysis of the painting.
It took her another full week to finalize her analysis and cataloging. She and Anthony sat next to each other at the worktable and reviewed her analysis. There were a number of areas that showed significant deterioration and would require restoration. Her ultraviolet photos demonstrated that most of these areas were actually places where the painting had been restored previously, most likely in the nineteenth century, although supporting documentation was inconclusive about the exact time or who the restorer might have been. It was clear, however, that these areas had been painted over. Under the UV light, the more recent paint showed up slightly darker than the original. Anthony speculated that they would likely find that these areas had been painted in oil on top of the original tempera base and the difference in the materials was creating the problem.
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