The Passion of Artemisia

by Susan Vreeland

  “Everything seems brushed with a sheen that saturates the colors.”

  “That’s the painter in you speaking.”

  Then he did remember me. “Where does this path lead?” I asked.

  “To many delights, I hope. Specifically to several hedge labyrinths.”

  “Oh, you’ll like that, Palmira.” In the meantime, there were plenty of people strolling so she would be content looking at their clothing.

  “You were about to ask me something the last time we saw one another,” he said.

  “Yes, what you knew about the paintings in the palace, but now I need to know something else.”

  “What might that be?”

  Palmira spotted a black and raw sienna butterfly and we stopped to let her watch it until it fluttered away.

  “What do you know about the archduchess?” I asked.

  “She’s from Austria. Uncompromisingly religious. Fond of somber masses and endless vespers. Contrarily, she’s a woman who feeds on the dramatic moments of Christian history, who loves its excesses and extremes. She would have followed Saint Francis if she’d been alive in his time.”

  “Or the example of Mary Magdalene? That is, if she had found herself in other circumstances.”

  “Even without those circumstances. There are women who take on the world’s sins and make a practice of continual repentance.”

  “Renouncing the world and praying like a penitent while wearing their jewels?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Thank you. That may prove helpful.”

  With his open palm Galilei directed us to take a narrower path between white flowering hedges. The sweet scent of jasmine was heady in the heat of the afternoon.

  “Helpful for a painting?” he asked.

  “Yes, a Mary Magdalene that the archduke has commissioned. I want to discover and display another side than the conventional belief of a sinner struck by unpremeditated conversion or spontaneous repentance. I think it must have been deep, prolonged, painful reflection that caused her great personal upheaval. Have you seen Masaccio’s Adam and Eve in the Brancacci Chapel?”

  “Of course.”

  “All of Eve’s body is thinking and feeling. In the same way that Eve’s body thought in Masaccio’s hands, I want my Magdalen’s body to think, too. I don’t know yet what I want her to think, but I know it has to be more complex than anguish at her vision of herself.”

  “Might I suggest you see Donatello’s carving in wood of the Magdalen in the Baptistry? It has an excessiveness the archduchess would appreciate.”

  “How can I, this time of year? I’d have to wait until March, the yearly baptism.”

  He stopped in the pathway to think. “With a little authorization from His Serene Highness, I’m certain you will be given admittance. I can easily obtain it and shall feel honored to accompany you today. You and your pretty daughter.”

  “Today? Won’t that seem ungracious?”

  “No. People will be leaving soon for the evening calcio.”

  We cut short our walk, and he spoke privately to Cosimo. When we noticed some people leaving, we said our respectful goodbyes, and rode across the Arno in an open carriage, another delight for Palmira. She’d never been in one. Galilei reached into his pouch and pulled out his fist. “Palmira, open your hand, if you please,” he said.

  She glanced up at me for permission and then did so. He dropped into her palm a hard, yellow-green candy, irregularly shaped. He offered one to me too.

  “Citron. I have several citron trees at my villa.”

  Palmira pulled in her cheeks and made sucking sounds. “Why don’t we have candies like this, Mama?”

  “If we did, then these wouldn’t be so special. Rarity increases the value of something.”

  Galilei looked at me for a long moment before he popped one into his mouth.

  The river, less murky and more blue than usual, was crowded with every kind of boat surrounding a barge with musicians playing under gold banners. The remaioli had stopped their work of dredging sand from the riverbed and building up the banks. Today every sand gatherer used his slim boat as a floating house of revelry. On the far bank, we heard trumpets from the calcio procession. Palmira was beside herself with excitement.

  At the Baptistry, we stopped and Signor Galilei stepped out. “I won’t be long. I am somewhat acquainted with the sacristan.” He went into a building on the piazza.

  Palmira grew restless in the carriage so I let her get out. “Stay close,” I cautioned. Immediately she ran behind three pigeons. She could scurry away and get lost in the crowd just while I blinked. I followed her to keep her in view among the musicians, fruit vendors, and gamblers dicing at small tables. She was attracted by a porchetta wagon with the pig’s head cut off like Holofernes’s and looking at its roasted body. I didn’t tell her the pig was stuffed with its own cut-up ears and entrails.

  The ragged penitent sat moaning on the cathedral steps. Her anguish didn’t seem false to me, as it did to Pietro. No woman would choose to live out her days that way and look so unkempt unless compelled to by something stronger than her will. Palmira’s curiosity outweighed her timidity, and she approached the woman. The pathetic creature wailed louder and Palmira ran back to me crying. The louder Palmira cried, the louder the woman did also. I had to shake Palmira to get her to stop. “That’s not kind. She’s a sad old woman and you’re not to pay her any attention.”

  “Look how dirty she is. Her feet are black, Mama.”

  “Yours would be too if we couldn’t afford shoes. Now behave. Here comes Signor Galilei. He’s doing us a favor so don’t be contrary.” I took out a handkerchief and wiped her face. “We’re going to see where you were baptized as a little baby.”

  We followed Signor Galilei and the sacristan to the Baptistry and together the two men slowly pulled open one of the massive bronze doors just far enough for us to slide through sideways. We stood in the dim light coming in from the high windows until our eyes adjusted and I noticed features I hadn’t at Palmira’s baptism—the walls of green and white stone set in a geometric pattern, and the flat, fluted pillars. An enormous, ornate silver cross on the altar held Palmira’s attention.

  I left her there and crossed the open space with Galilei. Between two rose-colored marble columns stood Donatello’s wooden Magdalen in old age. In one shocking moment I saw it all. An emaciated figure with wild, hollow eyes in deep eye sockets, and sunken cheeks, ravaged by time in the wilderness, her hands close together, praying. She was barefoot, standing with thin legs widely placed, naked, not artfully nude, clothed only in tangled hair that reached to her knees. Only two teeth stood like tiny headstones in her gaping mouth. Her shriveled legs so far apart and her clenching toes rooted her to earth while she longed for Heaven. I shuddered.

  “It’s that lady outside!” Palmira shrieked behind me. She buried her face in my skirt and a burst of crying echoed in the empty stone chamber. Palmira would not be calmed no matter what I said. The only solution was to get her out of there quickly.

  I looked at Signor Galilei helplessly, petrified with shame. “I’m sorry, signore. I think we must leave.”

  I grasped Palmira’s hand and hurried her out, but I turned back for another look at the Magdalen. Pathetic woman, still driven mad by her sin seventeen centuries old.

  “No need to take us home, Signor Galilei. We don’t live far. I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you.”

  13

  Venus

  The next afternoon a messenger delivered a letter.

  Honored Signorina,

  I most humbly regret the trouble I caused you and your daughter yesterday. It was thoughtless of me not to foresee the reaction of a child to such a haunting figure, though I’m sure the presence of the unfortunate woman outside the Baptistry contributed to your daughter’s distress.

  Might I try to redeem my good intentions by inviting you to supper at the Palazzo Pitti on the occasion of the birthday of Cosimo’s son Giovanni a week
from Saturday? Cosimo has empowered me to send a carriage for you, and he asked that I tell you he would be equally delighted by your company. I cordially kiss your hand; and, pray, continue to favor me with your good nature and brilliant mind, as well as with yourpresence to participate in our observations of the planet Venus that evening if the weather is clear.

  Most humbly,

  Galileo Galilei

  The wax seal displayed an animal surrounded by laurel branches underneath a crown. The Lyncean Academy of Science, it said.

  Observations of the planet Venus? Why that particular planet? What would Pietro think? What did I think? I wasn’t sure. His interest in me must surely be only fatherly. After all, he was old enough to be my father. I had inconvenienced him, and I didn’t want to appear ungrateful. And there were definite advantages to being in the presence of Cosimo’s court. Every gentleman there would be a potential patron, including the young sons Ferdinando and Giovanni when they came of age. I answered yes.

  By evening, I thought better of it. I didn’t know Signor Galilei’s intentions. If Pietro were with me, that wouldn’t raise any suspicions. When he came home from painting, I told him about the invitation casually, as I was slicing onions.

  “Would you like to go?”

  “Let me see the invitation.”

  The knife slipped off the onion round. “No invitation. A messenger came in Medici’s livery and recited it in verse. Quite clever.”

  I looked only at the onion and cut more carefully.

  “When is it?”

  “Saturday after next. Late afternoon and evening. To look through a telescope.”

  “No. I’m going to the horse races.”

  Horse races. That meant he’d either come back elated and generous with his money, or morose and tight-fisted.

  The whole city was a cloudy oven on the afternoon of Giovanni de’ Medici’s birthday. Sultry heat waved up from the paving stones and bounced off stone walls. The air was so heavy it would weigh down a moth’s wings.

  In the Sala Bianca a steward directed me to sit next to Galilei at the end of the U-shaped arrangement of tables. As soon as he saw me, he stood up and bowed and drew back the chair for me.

  “Have you forgiven me for abandoning you to the mercy of the sacristan?” I asked. “I am afraid both my daughter and I behaved badly.”

  “And I am afraid I have failed you again, signorina.”

  “How can that be?” I asked.

  “The clouds.” He glanced out the open window. “Venus won’t show herself tonight.”

  “Perhaps they will blow away,” I said.

  Moving only one finger, he pointed to a banner hanging limp and unmoving from the opposite wing of the palace.

  Nothing he said gave me any indication as to his intentions. More than once I found him not following the conversation at the table while absently scraping his thumbnail across the pads of his fingers. His mind was in the stars, just as those women had said.

  Waiters served the antipasti of anchovies in olive oil and lemon, and fried zucchini flowers. People ate slowly, talked slowly, moved as little as possible. Even the laughter was slow and listless. No air entered through the open windows. Rivulets ran down the waiters’ necks. Guests dabbed at their foreheads with napkins. Signor Galilei wet his handkerchief and laid it over my wrist to cool me.

  We ate the prima portata, a savory pork pie with onions, dates, almonds, and saffron, while singers performed a rousing song composed by Lorenzo de’ Medici. Chi vuol esser lieto, sia di doman non c’è certezza, they sang. Be happy now since the future is uncertain. What a song for a birthday. Others laughed and set down their painted paper fans to clap, but to me it seemed a grim augury. I thought of Pietro at the races, gambling. Signor Galilei, too, seemed to have dark thoughts at that moment, though I couldn’t guess what they might be. His thumb worked rapidly against his fingers.

  Cosimo escorted his son Giovanni along the tables, introducing him as if he were a little man, though he couldn’t be more than seven or eight. When they came to me, Cosimo said, “This is Donna Artemisia Gentileschi, a great painter. She is working on a painting for your mother right now.”

  I quailed a little because I hadn’t started it and feared he would ask about its progress.

  “You will want paintings by her in your collection someday.”

  “Someday I shall be happy to paint for you,” I said, and they moved on.

  From where I sat I could see the dour Archduchess Maria Maddalena. She bore herself with pride, but she made no sweet gestures toward her boys that Cosimo’s mother, the Grand Duchess Cristina, made freely. The mother’s manner lacked the engagement and lively spirit the grandmother showed in honoring her grandson by reciting a poem dedicated to him.

  I leaned toward Signor Galilei and whispered, “This archduchess of the egg-shaped face who queens the table with such gravity would not be flattered by emaciation and wildness of the kind Donatello’s sculpture portrays.”

  “But what are you painting for, to flatter a patron or to express an idea?”

  “My own idea, which is not of a woman crippled for life by exaggerated penitence. I had hoped to make her a heroine, but a penitent is not a woman doing a bold act for which she would later be proud.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  I took a long, slow breath. “I don’t know.”

  Next to me a lady waved her fan, and then thought better of the exertion and simply gazed out the window.

  “The best paintings depict a specific narrative moment,” I said, thinking out loud. “I had thought of depicting the moment of anxiety outside Simon’s house when she was holding in her hand the alabaster box of costly oil, waiting for an opportunity to enter in order to wash and anoint the Master’s feet, but now I’m not sure.”

  “You have read the Scriptures?” His thumb stopped moving.

  “No. I just imagined that moment outside the house.”

  “But you have knowledge of the Bible.”

  “When my mother died, I was raised by the Sisters of Santa Trinità dei Monti in Rome.”

  “Is that to say that you take the Bible as literal truth?”

  “I am not a theologian. I’m a painter. The Bible is a rich source of stories to depict dramatically in painting and sculpture”—I smiled here—“and in song, which you say is the higher art. As to the absolute truth of these stories, that is not my purview. I deal with the imagination.”

  “Bene.” He leaned back comfortably.

  “I may not have it right, but my imagination tells me that Mary Magdalene had a closer relationship with Jesus than her sister Martha had, bustling about serving food. He said to Martha that Mary had chosen the better way.” I looked at the archduchess’s hands weighted down with enormous rings. “That’s what I’d like to show in some way, that Martha’s active life with her concerns about propriety and things of this world was less important, at the moment the Master was teaching, than Mary’s meditative life. The Magdalen was the sister who had the nature to dwell in a thinking plane occupied mostly by men.”

  He lifted his wine goblet but did not drink. “By men only?”

  “Virtually so. Look at the disciples. Anyone who expressed a reasoned thought, even just an inquiring thought—all men. Biblical women display acts of faith and spirituality, but where have you seen them engage in speech or inquiry like Mary Magdalene did with the Master?”

  “What about the Virgin?”

  “What has she ever said from a spiritual consciousness? What evidence do we have of an inquiring, vibrant mind? Do we have a Virgin’s Prayer like we have a Lord’s Prayer? The Magnificat is the closest there is.”

  “Such an assessment would not gladden the Holy Fathers.”

  “It’s not that she is undeserving of sanctity, but you have to admit, she has come down through the centuries in near silence. At least Mary Magdalene spoke with a mind aware of another perspective and capable of reasoning.”

  “If I might say
so, you are like your Magdalen in that respect, which makes you an extraordinary woman, by your own argument.”

  “How’s that?”

  “A meditative mind. Looking at things from another perspective.”

  I nodded an acknowledgment at the compliment. “But it’s difficult to convey any of that in a painting. And those not willing to reflect on a painting miss such suggestions.”

  After an interlude performed by players on stilts, waiters served the seconda portata—roasted pigeons wrapped in bacon, and after that, figs stuffed with musky black grapes. No one felt like eating. It still had not begun to cool.

  “Signorina, or may I call you Artemisia?”

  “Signora, but please, use Artemisia.”

  “Yes. I was much impressed by your participation in our debate over painting and sculpture.”

  “An interesting discussion, though not my usual fare.” When had I had such a discussion with Pietro? I couldn’t remember.

  “Do you realize the magnitude of your success—the first woman in the academy? A woman kicking against the pricks of narrowness and tradition. A woman with a vision for herself. Very admirable.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at such remarks. If it were cooler, I could have thought of a demure reply.

  Guests strolled out to the terrace and garden in search of shade and a breeze. Galilei made no move to leave the table. He pulled out from his pouch a handkerchief full of the citron candies. “An old man’s indulgence.” With the handkerchief draped over his hand, he offered them to me.

  “They’re lovely. Each one is a different shape. Like molten glass.” I picked one out. “Or raw jewels.”

  “The citron has done well this year. I grow them in terra-cotta pots at my villa. Oranges and lemons too.”