The Passion of Artemisia

by Susan Vreeland

  “Then how does anyone start doing anything different?”

  “By being a different sort of person. By not fitting in. By having strong likings all one’s own.”

  I worried for a moment what this period of more genteel employment would do to her when she went back to the vats. It might make what she hoped for out of life impossibly far from what she would get, and I would be responsible. And yet, the persistence of hope tapping us on our shoulders is a good thing because it reminds us of the larger picture, and keeps us breathing on our worst days.

  “How does someone know which one of you to ask to paint something?” Umiliana asked.

  “By looking at our work, I suppose.”

  “Where is his?”

  I waved my arm at the walls. “Here. All of these are his.”

  She looked at them as if for the first time. “Who’s better?”

  Palmira’s head popped up at the table.

  “Neither of us,” I said.

  “Don’t you have fights over who is better?”

  Watching us, Palmira let her porridge drip off her spoon.

  “No, not fights. Here, let’s get started.”

  “How do you know who’s better between any two painters?”

  I considered a moment. “Sometimes it’s impossible to tell. Different painters are good at different things.” I looked at a Holy Family that Pietro had done which had been on the wall since the day I arrived. Mary was lovely, with all the sensuousness in her downcast eyes and bare neck that a virgin shouldn’t have. I regretted that it had never moved me. She wasn’t an individual.

  “The line between defeat and immortality is sometimes as thin as thread. One never knows how close one stands. A person could be highly talented when viewed alone, but when placed next to brilliance, his work would appear mediocre. It’s all marvelously complicated.”

  That was probably more than she needed for an explanation, but I couldn’t resist her curious mind.

  In summer Umiliana brought fresh rosemary and marjoram from her mother’s garden. In the fall she brought fresh pecorino that shepherds from the mountains brought down to Giorgio’s cheese shop while it was still soft. In winter, pears, apples, and chestnuts for roasting.

  “Not much accomplished today,” Umiliana often said cheerily as she looked at the canvas at the end of the afternoon.

  On the last day, I inscribed Optimam Partem Elegit, Latin for “Choose the better way,” on the mirror’s frame in florid gold lettering.

  “There you are, as beautiful as Botticelli’s Venus,” I said when we finished.

  “Isn’t there something else you have to do to it tomorrow?”

  “Only to sign my name.”

  “May I watch that?”

  It suddenly occurred to me that in all these months, she’d been on the other side of the easel and had never actually seen me apply paint to canvas. Inadvertently, I had kept her out of the core of the process. “Of course.” I mixed a tiny bit more gold paint, turned the painting sideways, and wrote “Artemisia Lom” on the side support of the chair. “Artemisia Lom,” I said in case she couldn’t read.

  “Your name is Lom?”

  “Lomi. It’s my ancestral name. It needs one more letter. Stand here, right in front of me. Give me your hand.” I put the brush in her hand and clasped mine gently around hers to write the i together. “Now, all by yourself, put a little dot right above the last letter.”

  Heavy responsibility puckered her mouth while her hand, steadied at the wrist by her other hand, moved slowly through the air toward the canvas. She turned to me afterward, pulling in a long breath which closed her nostrils. Her eyes were moist. “Thank you.”

  That such a simple thing could mean so much. She had treasured this entire experience. I held her in my arms, and over her shoulder I saw Palmira watching us, uncomprehending.

  “Who’s that person you said?” Umiliana asked.

  “The painter Botticelli. His Venus is in the Uffizi. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been inside.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll write a note as an academy member explaining that you are my model, and you go in there and take a long look at everything. It’s a sin to live in this city all your life and not see its paintings and sculpture.”

  “I see statues all around. I don’t like them. Everybody’s always doing something mean. That man in the Loggia della Signoria holding up a woman’s head with snakes for hair, and all that ropey stuff hanging out her neck. Ugh! I look the other way every time I go by. Why is every one of them so cruel?”

  “That’s true, Mama. Why are they?” Palmira demanded.

  It surprised me that she would take notice. I didn’t realize she’d been listening.

  “I can’t answer that. Just what the sculptors chose, I suppose.” I was glad Umiliana had never seen my Judiths. “All right then. For-get the sculpture. Go to look at the paintings, and study how grace-ful the women are. Pay attention to how they’re standing and sitting. You may need to know someday. And after that, you can invite Giorgio. But be sure to go there first. I’m going to ask you what you saw.”

  The next day I went to the academy to see the steward. “Do you still have your list of models?” I asked. “I’d like to add a name.”

  He tipped his smug, round face to the side and allowed himself a pinched smile, as if he had won some kind of victory. “Certainly, signora.” The words dripped off his tongue like oily epithets of vindication.

  He reached up to get the sheaf of pages and handed me a quill. I wrote in big, clear letters, Umiliana Rossi, Corso dei Tintori, and turned it back for him to read. “She’s excellent. You see that she gets some work!”

  His smile fell into a straight line.

  15

  Pietro

  It was cold. It was February. It was already getting dark. I had run out of Roman umber and Naples yellow. I poured out onto the table all the coins from Father’s blue drawstring bag, replenished by three commissions from Cosimo after the Magdalen, for which he paid generously because it pleased the archduchess. Even so, the bag was depleted now.

  Attracted by the noise, Palmira came over from the fireplace and helped me stack coins of each type to count them—six Venetian zecchini, five piastre, one giulio, one scudo which was seven lire, and four lire. Four lire could feed one person for a week.

  Palmira’s index finger pressed on the shiny silver giulio and drew it to her edge of the table. “Can I have it, Mama?”

  “No. I need it.”

  Her little fist closed around it and disappeared under the table.

  “Give it to me,” I commanded.

  She put her hand behind her back and shook her head.

  “Palmira, let me have it.”

  She ran from me and I followed her, out the door onto the balcony.

  “Naughty child. Give it to me.” I grabbed her by the shoulder and struck her on her backside. She screamed, squirmed out of my grasp, and flung the coin far over the balcony.

  “You’re mean,” she said with a hateful look and stomped back inside, hooked her foot on my easel and tipped it over. My unfinished Saint Catherine fell to the floor. Palmira stood over it, half smirking, half fearful.

  “That was a spiteful thing to do! You ought to be ashamed. Go to bed.”

  “I don’t have to. I’m eight now.”

  “No, you’re not! Not yet. You’re seven and a half! I don’t even want to see you. Go to bed!”

  She raised her foot as though she would step on the painting.

  “No!” I screamed, and lunged for her. She ran into the bedroom and flung herself on the bed. I slammed the door closed after her and leaned up against the wall.

  Was this the end? Was this what it all led up to? A foolish argument with a child? I set Catherine back on the easel—the saint who painted and who bought paintings by women for her convent in Bologna. If only she were living now.

  Maybe I truly wasn’t good enough to live by painting. Maybe Father h
ad filled me with the wrong ambitions. Maybe I was living a fool’s dream.

  I put the coins back into the little bag and tried to think calmly. I shouldn’t spend for anything other than food until I had a new commission, but Cosimo didn’t want any paintings now that he was intent upon enlarging the Pitti. I’d been without a commission for half a year. Still, I had to keep painting in order to have work to show. I’d buy only a quarter cube of Naples yellow.

  Seeking a new patron in the same city might be considered disloyalty or lack of appreciation, but working for a church wouldn’t. The next day I left Palmira with Fina, glad to have some time without her, wrapped my unfinished Saint Catherine in a cloth, and took it to Santa Maria del Carmine, where there might be space to hang a painting in the cloisters.

  I asked a young priest if I could speak to the monsignor, and waited in the Brancacci Chapel, my favorite because of Masaccio’s Adam and Eve. Now, as if it had never been there before, his fresco of Jesus sending Peter to find tax money in the mouth of a fish touched me to the quick. The face of Christ was untroubled and assured even though his disciples looked at him in alarm and puzzlement. Jesus was calmly pointing to the lake, and Peter echoed the gesture, but his face was saying, incredulously, “There?”

  What depth of faith Christ had to look in such an unexpected place as a fish’s mouth. No shred of doubt. No self-pity that he was poor, that he had to pay the tax, that he didn’t know where his disciples would get their next meal. Oh, for that utter trust in a Heavenly Father. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to feel His guidance. When I opened them and saw that trust painted on the wall, I realized that for once in my life, I was using a church and its art for what it was intended. Regardless of Galileo’s logic, the highest of arts, I realized, is to uplift the spirit, whatever means one uses.

  The monsignor approached me looking concerned. Even that comforted me. I introduced myself and offered him my painting, explaining that it was Saint Catherine.

  “It doesn’t look finished.”

  “No, it isn’t. I just thought . . . I love Masaccio’s frescoes. It would please me to think that a painting of mine could be nearby . . . when it is finished.”

  “Aren’t you the wife of Pierantonio Stiattesi, the painter who worked on the frescoes in Monte Uliveto?” the monsignor asked.

  “Yes.”

  His lips pinched in judgment. “The wife who is a painter.”

  What did he want? For me to stay home to pluck geese and shine silver spoons?

  “Stiatessi is a member of the academy now.”

  “Yes. We both are.”

  “I understand he has been ill-used.”

  “By whom?”

  “By you, of course, if you are in fact his wife in the eyes of the church.”

  “I am. I’ve done nothing against him.”

  “Nonetheless, we have no space here for your painting. I’m sorry.”

  “Monsignor, I have painted for the Medicis.”

  “The Medicis are not the church.” He put his hands up his sleeves, as if to signal the end of the conversation.

  I was bewildered. Hesitating, I glanced at the fresco again. Anything I could say would sound self-pitying. I acquiesced with a nod, picked up my painting, and left.

  Who did I have to turn to? It should naturally be Pietro, but ever since he was admitted to the academy, he spent less time at home. Without knowing what that meant, I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t know what my appeal would uncover. Father would help me, but in his last letter he said he was leaving Rome to live in Genoa. I had no way to reach him there. I was too embarrassed to ask Buonarroti for another loan. I never knew whether Pietro had repaid his share of the last one. Galileo was my only hope.

  I walked home along the river, slowly in spite of the drizzle. Galileo had his own troubles. I hated to disturb him. When he had come back from Rome several years earlier and we had taken a walk in the gardens of the Pitti, he said he had bowed to Cardinal Bellarmino’s command. He was made to promise not to defend Copernican theory. His cheeks had lost their fullness, and he spoke more softly than before.

  “It grieves me to think that the church is hounding you,” I’d said.

  “I’m told you have had your own unfortunate experience with a papal court,” he had said.

  “I hope you learned more valuable things than that in Rome.”

  “Yes. I learned that Rome respects a scientist only if his ideas do not raise one speck of doubt about entrenched beliefs.”

  What could I have said to cheer him? I understood only too well the bite of wrong judgment.

  “Pope Paul has assured me of my protection.”

  “Still, this is not the end.”

  “No. It is not the end.”

  At home I set my unfinished Saint Catherine back on the easel and took out Galileo’s last letter from my memento box.

  My Dear Artemisia,

  The frigid tramontana blows so fiercely that I fear to go out at night even to look through my telescope for an hour. I missed seeing the comets because of the clutch of illness. The invitation I extended to you so long ago languishes. Know that I keep it folded in my mind, and that some day you shall be a welcome guest at my villa in Bellosguardo where there is an unobstructed panorama of the skies. In the meantime, I am studying the tides, and I am reasonably happy.

  Your admiring friend,

  Galileo

  I had tried to give him encouragement in my letters, telling him not to worry about explaining everything to us. It might not be a bad thing for us to have some mystery left to ignite the imagination with.

  Now I wrote:

  My Most Illustrious Friend and Scholar,

  I think of you often and trust that the pursuit of your many interests has brought you joy.

  At the risk of you thinking that I write only when I need something, might I ask you for one favor? I believe it to be within your power and I hope in the light of our friendship that it might be your pleasure and not too great a trouble to give me this aid.

  The first Judith I painted for Cosimo—you may remember it, the one in which she is slaying Holofernes—Cosimo said he would pay for, but he has not. He is young, and all his passion goes into building now, so he has forgotten. You have influence with him. A private word, as his former tutor, might do much to remind him of his promise. I wouldn’t ask, but I find that I am in need.

  I have been searching my mind for many months to remember what I had heard of Cardinal Bellarmino. I know now. He’s called “the hammer of heretics.” A nun in Rome told me that. Take great care, my friend.

  I kiss your hand and shall live in gratitude to you—

  Always,

  Artemisia

  It wasn’t long before a nice sum was delivered, but after I paid my debts to the joiner, the tailor, and the apothecary, and bought staples for us to eat for a good while, I had to be frugal again. I didn’t know the future.

  It had rained some every day for a week, and I spent the time teaching Palmira to read and write more than the sisters’ names. I wrote silly notes to her—Look in the mirror. There is a chicken in your hair—and hid them in the house for her to find. Then she wrote back to me—A horse is under your skirt—and made me stop what I was doing to search for her note. It entertained her at first, but soon she became peevish and impossible trapped in the house.

  Nothing was further from my desire than to go out in the rain, but I bundled her up and let her take her straw doll and small rubber ball. We hurried through rain-darkened streets to the Loggia della Signoria where there would be a roof over us, room for her to run figure eights around the statues and bounce her ball against the wall, and sculptures for me to draw. We arrived wet but exhilarated.

  I had already drawn the three intertwining figures of Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Woman from the piazza. Now I circled the statue, the first sculpture designed to be viewed from all sides, to see what new thing I could discover from another angle.

  The man abd
ucting her was clearly in motion, stepping over all obstacles, even a fallen old man from whom he had probably taken her. One muscular arm was trying to control her at her shoulder, the other around her hip and thigh. I had never noticed before how his fingers pressed so deeply into the flesh of her thigh. This hugely muscular man had to use all his strength to contain her mighty struggles. It wasn’t just her open mouth, frightened eyes, and her frantic gesture for help, but that grip on her thigh that showed she was being taken against her will. That iron grip would be the focus of this drawing. I would call it my Pietà.

  “What are they doing, Mama?”

  “The men are capturing her. They want her to do something she doesn’t want to do.”

  “She looks scared.”

  “She is.”

  I sat down on the cold stone floor and began to work, musing that the sculpture I chose was one depicting rape. When had my own rape ceased to hurt me so that I would choose this to draw? I suppose it was when Pietro and Palmira came to teach me how to love. I could study this Sabine woman who lived nineteen centuries ago and feel empathy for her, but now her struggle did not devastate me, did not make me wince as I had the first time I’d seen her. I had walked by this sculpture a thousand times on my way to the vegetable market and I had not become rigid with anger. Those atrocities against women had not ceased to exist in the world, but life marches on. Onions and white beans must still be bought.

  Palmira watched me through round, fearful eyes. “Why don’t you paint anymore?”

  “Oh, I’d rather just draw.”

  “That’s not the reason.” It came as an accusation.

  “No? How do you know, my little worrier?” I pinched her nose and she backed away. “Here, let me teach you something.”

  She shook her head, and ran out into the piazza in the rain.

  “Palmira, come back.”

  She did, but not before she got drenched.