The Passion of Artemisia

by Susan Vreeland

  “When I failed at painting something, you’d say, ‘There’s always tomorrow. Start again in the morning.’ Sometimes I still tell myself that.” I touched the back of his hand. “But I always hear it in your voice.”

  A cloud passed and sunlight came again. Palmira splashed water in the fountain.

  “We have become friends again,” he said softly.

  “Yes, Papa. We have.”

  He looked alarmed. “I meant . . . Agostino and me.”

  A razor edge sliced me to the bone.

  “I have invited him for the summer. He’ll be here next week. He’s between commissions now and—”

  “Here? To Genoa?” My voice rose shrilly.

  He held up his open hands toward me as if to stop my reaction. “Yes.” He spoke quickly. “He has a keen sense of perspective and we did fine things together in Cardinal Borghese’s Casino of the Muses. You should see it someday. And in the Sala Regia of the Quirinale too.”

  “How could you? You invited him? He nearly ruined me!”

  Father could not look me in the face. He waved his hand dismissively. “A brief unpleasantness, Artemisia, between old friends.” Heat shot up to my head and made me reel. He cleared his throat. “I thought he and I might work together here for a while, and then go to France. He has letters of introduction in Paris.”

  “You still don’t understand, do you?”

  “I . . . I thought he and you might make amends.”

  “Father!” I stood up. “How could you even think that? My peace and happiness here mean nothing to you. My patron is more of a father to me than you are.”

  He grabbed my arm. I wrenched it away.

  “Artemisia, don’t—”

  “Bastard!”

  I called to Palmira and dragged her upstairs, ignoring both of their objections.

  I took out writing paper. I had to move on, and quickly too. If I had received just one letter from Pietro, I’d go back to Florence, but I hadn’t. So I wrote:

  Most High and Honored Lordship

  Don Giovanni de’ Medici,

  Please accept my deepest sorrow and condolence at the death of your illustrious father, Cosimo de’ Medici. I am ever grateful to him for his solicitous regard for my work, and now, in accordance with his wishes, I herewith put myself at your service in Venice. I will paint anything, work for any offering. I will arrive within a fortnight in the hopes of finding you well and happy. I kiss your hand.

  Your most humble and grateful servant,

  Artemisia Gentileschi

  Ridiculous to write that to a ten-year-old. His counselors would make the decision anyway. He probably wouldn’t even see this letter.

  I took my paintings in the studio out of the frames and rolled them.

  “Why are you doing that?” Palmira demanded.

  “Because the frames aren’t mine.”

  I tightened the lids on my amber varnish, turpentine, and linseed oil, and opened my painting trunk.

  “Mother! What are you doing?”

  “Help me. Put your clothes in your trunk.”

  “No!” she screamed. “Why?”

  “We’re leaving.”

  “Why?”

  “Your grandfather.” I wrapped Mother’s oil lamp in paint rags and laid it in my painting trunk.

  “No! I won’t go.” She stomped her way into the bedroom.

  Her cries brought Renata, Cesare, and Bianca rushing into the studio.

  “I’m dreadfully sorry. I’m afraid we have to leave.”

  Confusion spread over Cesare’s face. “Have we displeased you?”

  “No. Never.” My throat swelled. “You’ve been the kindest man I have ever known.”

  “We love you,” Bianca pleaded.

  “I know. I love all of you too.” I choked.

  “Then why?” Bianca asked.

  “My father is bringing the man who raped me to Genoa,” I said too softly for Palmira to hear. Bianca gasped. “He thinks I’d want to, to . . .”

  Renata screwed up her face as if piecing things together. Big, glistening tears spilled down her cheeks.

  Cesare folded me against his round, soft belly. “We can keep him from you,” he said in my ear. “There are ways.”

  I shook my head against his shoulder. “I wouldn’t put that obligation on you.”

  All of us stood for a long moment looking at each other, stunned and aching. Renata was the first to move. Weeping softly, she dropped to her knees before my trunk and began to pack my painting things, handling each item with reverence.

  “Keep out that stack of drawings of Lucrezia. And an empty drawing album and some pencils. For you, cara.”

  21

  Palmira

  Almost a year later, Palmira and I climbed the Pin-cian hill to Santa Trinità, both of us out of breath. “Only a little more. You can make it,” I said.

  “Why don’t they make stairs here? If this were Venice, it would have stairs. And statues too.”

  “All the more reason that the sisters will be happy to meet you. They’ll know you climbed this to see them.”

  “What will I say to them?”

  “Anything you want. They know all about you. They even know about us floating them as paper dolls in our wooden bowls.”

  “Mother!”

  “It’s all right. They thought it was funny.”

  At the top, I looked up at the left bell tower. A large clock had been installed. I wondered what other changes I’d discover.

  “It will be Sister Paola who will answer the door. That’s part of her duties.”

  When Paola saw us, she let out a squeal that reached to Heaven. “Cara mia!” She pulled me through the doorway and hugged me. “Grazie a Dio, you’ve come.”

  “This is Palmira, my daughter.”

  “The blessing of saints!”

  Paola stretched her arms wide to hug Palmira and smothered her in her black habit. “Sister Graziela will be in ecstasy.”

  “Like Saint Teresa?” I said.

  “Oh, she’s been so despondent. The last year has been hard for her. Why didn’t you write us that you were coming?” Paola took a dozen quick steps, then stopped to look at us. “Ooh!” she squealed again, shaking her hands, unable to contain herself. Palmira giggled. Paola hurried us along to the workroom where Graziela was painting. “Graziela, look!” Paola cried.

  “Santa Maria! I don’t believe it,” Graziela murmured. She stood up, knocking over her stool, and came toward us with open arms. “I had a dream the other night about you.” Her face showed surprise, happiness, relief, gratitude, all in one fluid movement of lines. “You must be Palmira. You look just like your mother did when she first came to us.”

  Palmira performed a pretty little curtsey. “Mother told me all about you. Your name was the first word I ever wrote.”

  “My! I feel honored.”

  Graziela’s face looked a little thinner, a little more lined, but she was still a mature beauty worthy of any painter’s canvas. Paola was as plump as ever.

  “We thought you were in Venice,” Graziela said.

  “We were. For almost a year,” I said.

  “Why did you leave? You didn’t like it?” Paola asked.

  “I liked it,” Palmira said, still a bit defiant about the move.

  “What did you like about it?” Graziela touched Palmira’s cheek.

  “I liked the palace we lived in.”

  “Ooh, was it beautiful?” Paola asked.

  Palmira’s head bobbed enthusiastically. “And I liked the gondolas and the boat races.”

  “I think she began to love me again on our first gondola ride.” I smoothed back her hair. “You didn’t want to leave, did you?”

  Her eyes, so much like Pietro’s, flashed at me coldly. “I didn’t want to leave any of the places we lived.”

  “Allora, that must mean that you liked them all,” Paola said, clasping her hands together under her chin.

  “And what about the Commedia de
ll’ Arte?” I prodded.

  “It was funny.”

  “And the lace-making?”

  “I had lace before we went to Venice,” she said, a hint of braggadocio in her voice. “In Genoa, Signora Gentile bought me lace.” She lifted up her skirt to show the narrow lace edging on her petticoat.

  “Che meraviglia!” Paola said.

  “And she gave me her old clothes to play in,” Palmira continued.

  Anything frivolous or extravagant or exotic suited Palmira’s taste. Had we come to Rome directly from Genoa, or had we gone to any other city, she would have nursed her anger longer, but the dense beauties of Venice had softened and enchanted her.

  “What about you? Why did you leave?” Graziela asked me.

  “Venice will always be a gorgeous city, but to me it was a cold, damp, unfriendly disappointment.”

  “Why?” Graziela asked in astonishment.

  “The art, the whole city, is self-consciously extravagant. Tintoretto’s enormous oil painting of Paradise shows Christ and Mary surrounded by five hundred saints. A sea of saints. It’s just too much. There was no place for me there. The Venetian School is played out anyway except in its crafts.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I don’t blame the city. Any city would have difficulty winning my affection after Genoa and Florence.”

  “Who did you paint for?”

  “Giovanni de’ Medici, Cosimo’s son. Imagine, a duke at ten years old. His counselors made the decisions, and they weren’t particularly receptive to me. And then Giovanni died too. The fall of the Medici.”

  “Are you here to stay?” Graziela asked.

  “I hope so. I heard in Venice that Scipione Borghese and several other cardinals are buying more art to decorate their villas here.”

  “Pope Urban has many new projects too,” Graziela said.

  “Where will you live?” Paola asked.

  “In the artists’ neighborhood where I used to live. I need to find a place tomorrow. We stayed at an inn last night, but I don’t want to pay for it any longer than I have to. Our things are still at the coach house.” I felt them wanting a longer visit, but I had to pull away. “We’ll come back after we get settled. I just wanted Palmira to meet you right away.”

  They both walked us to the door, hugged us each again, and we set out to see Porzia Stiattesi.

  Nothing had changed on Via del Babuino. Still the same apothecary shop where we had bought pigments, and the same vinaio on the corner of Via della Croce, my street. I straightened my back. I wanted to walk down my street dry-eyed and dignified, as pure and confident as a child, loving every remembered paving stone I’d hopped upon. I took Palmira’s hand. “This is where we lived,” I told her. Children playing in the narrow street were singing in French. It was a tune I knew, so I sang it with them in Italian. They looked up at me in wonder, and then giggled.

  “I was born right here in this house,” I said softly to Palmira in front of our arched doorway. The stucco had broken off in places making the wall patchy.

  “It’s not very nice.” She touched a loose flake of stucco and it fell off.

  I yanked her away. “One has to be born somewhere.” The left shutter was missing and the right was hanging sadly by one hinge. “Things happened in that house. Things that changed my life.”

  “Kind of small too.”

  “Were you expecting a palace like Cesare’s or Giovanni de’ Medici’s? We’re on our own now so you’d better get used to it.”

  I pushed her ahead of me and pulled the bell thong next door.

  “We had a bell just like this,” I said, sorry already that I’d been sharp with her. “My mother kept it polished because she thought a shiny bell tinkled more happily. This is your aunt and uncle’s house. Your papa’s brother.”

  Porzia came to the door and threw up her hands. “Mamma mia! Artemisia! I—Dio mio.”

  I laughed. “Don’t be that surprised. I’m not a ghost.”

  “No. No. You look the same!”

  “So do you,” I said, but we both knew it wasn’t true. I was heavier and she was worn and one shoulder was higher than the other. I’d never noticed it before.

  “This is Palmira. My daughter.”

  “By Pierantonio?” she questioned in a low voice.

  “Of course.” What did she think—that I’d bring a love child to her doorstep?

  “Che bellina. You have your father’s curls and dark eyes and your mother’s skin.”

  Porzia opened the street door wider and we crossed the small courtyard into her house. She limped so badly now that it pained me to watch her walk. She spooned out three bowls of polenta from an iron pot hanging over the fire, poured two small tumblers of wine, and held up a smaller glass. “A taste for her? With water?”

  “A little.”

  “Are you going to stay in Rome?”

  “As long as there’s work. We have to accept the fact that painting is an itinerant occupation, don’t we, Palmira?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Traveling about. Just think. Not very many grown-ups get to live in three cities.”

  “Does Rome have boats?” Palmira asked Porzia.

  “No, but it has other things you’ll like. Things from a long time ago.”

  Palmira screwed up one side of her face and swung her legs. I’d be glad when she would be too tall to do that incessant leg swinging. It wouldn’t be long.

  “It’s a good time for any artist to be here,” Porzia said. “No one can believe the money the pope is pouring out.”

  “The question is, will any of it pour in my direction. Maybe not if my reputation is still stained. Have people forgotten here?”

  “The trial? Yes. Life goes on, and new misfortunes claim people’s attentions. You coming back might remind them, though.”

  “Agostino isn’t in Rome, is he?”

  “The last we heard, he’d gone to Genoa, and eventually Paris.”

  “With my father, probably. You don’t have to hide it from me. I know.”

  She scraped with her fingernail at some hardened candle wax on the table. “It made me sick to see them together, arm in arm, weaving down the street. My heart ached for you each time—”

  I held up my hand. I didn’t want to hear it.

  “Do you know where we can rent two rooms, cheaply? Near here.”

  “There are always people moving in and out between here and the Piazza del Popolo.”

  “We’ll have to walk the streets tomorrow.” I leaned back in the chair, trying to feel comfortable here again.

  “The plague has threatened Florence, you know,” Porzia said, her eyes searching for my reaction.

  “No, I didn’t know. We came south on the coast. I thought it was only in Milan.”

  “Processions of flagellants have been going from church to church. They even cancelled the calcio for fear of contagion.”

  “Is Pietro . . . ? Have you heard from him?”

  “That’s how we learned this, but that was a month ago.”

  I drank the wine, wondering.

  “We were sorry to learn that you left him.”

  “Not by choice. I loved him as much as he let me.”

  “Then why did you leave?”

  I tried to discern if there was accusation in her question, but I couldn’t tell. “To find work. What did he tell you?”

  “The same.” She tore off a hunk of bread and brushed the crumbs off her lap primly. “We just thought it might be something else.”

  Either she knew about Vanna and was sympathetic, or she believed some justifying story from Pietro. I could find out if he was still with her, but I didn’t want to in front of Palmira, so I hesitated. Porzia hesitated too, probably for the same reason. It would have to wait for another time, we told each other with our eyes.

  The next morning Palmira and I set out to walk every street between Piazza del Popolo and Via della Croce, the artists’ section. We asked the apothecary for sug
gestions, pulled bell ropes, and followed where people pointed. One landlady on Via dei Greci scrutinized me and said, “I don’t rent to lone women with children.”

  “Just one child?”

  “One is one too many.”

  After that, Palmira trailed behind me sullenly kicking a stone on the ground.

  “Don’t do that. You’ll scuff your shoes.” It was a constant effort to keep her in presentable shoes.

  She sent one more stone flying and then walked silently by my side.

  “The world will pinch you if you let it, so don’t let it.”

  Lone women. I thought of Pietro. If he was still making his living as a painter, it was no easier for him than for me. But for us together, I wondered.

  On Via Laurina, I asked a woman, “Do you have two rooms to rent? I am a painter, and this is my daughter.” I stood straight and dignified and held Palmira’s hand.

  “Sì, two rooms. Third floor. Other painters live there too. You go and look. First door to the left at the top of the stairs.”

  Each flight up, the smell of turpentine grew stronger and the heat more oppressive. There were no curtains in the room. Shabby bed linen covered a sunken mattress.

  “This is awful, Mama.”

  “Stai zitta!” I yanked her arm.

  The afternoon was wearing on and my feet hurt. We went back down.

  “I’ll take it. May I move in now?”

  “Sì. Your name?”

  “Artemisia Gentileschi,” I said. “And my daughter Palmira.”

  Immediately one side of her upper lip twitched, fighting whether or not to form a sneer. “Wait here,” she commanded, and turned back into another room. When she came back, she said, “No. It’s not available. My husband rented it to someone else this morning.” She held open the door for us to leave.

  I had realized that returning to Rome might be revisiting old griefs, but I had hoped I wouldn’t have to face scorn.

  A building on Via Margutta near where I used to live had a room I could afford. A whiskered, wizened man whom I thought I recognized took us up two flights of stairs to a spacious room with large windows on two sides.