The Passion of Artemisia

by Susan Vreeland

  “This is very nice,” I said. “We’d like to move in this afternoon. May we?”

  He nodded. “What’s your name?”

  “Artemisia Lomi, and Palmira.”

  Palmira shot me a look of confusion. “Gentileschi,” she corrected.

  The man’s wrinkles showed the workings of his mind pulling out from the past a memory of the name. He looked down at my hands, and then with suspicion and disgust at Palmira. My stomach cramped.

  “No. Not for the likes of whores.” He closed the door in our faces.

  “Madre di Dio. Che villano. We didn’t want to live there anyway, did we?” I muttered to Palmira and hurried her down the stairs.

  “Why was he so mean, Mama? What’s a whore?”

  “I’ll tell you tonight. After we find a place.”

  As we waited for our belongings to be delivered to the rooms we finally found, I heated water over the corner wood stove and poured it in a basin and we soaked our feet and ate cheese and bread.

  “Those people talked funny, Mama.”

  “That’s because they’re trying to learn our language. They’re Dutch. I think the man decided to rent to us when he saw that I loved his paintings.”

  When our trunks were delivered from the station, we were too tired to unpack, but I did write a letter to the academy in Florence.

  If it please your honored gentlemen, is there any news of my husband, Pietro Antonio di Vincenzo Stiattesi? Is he alive? Is he painting? In memory of my former membership in your illustrious academy, would you grant me any information about his condition?

  I doubted that they would answer. I looked over at Palmira in her shift half asleep on the bed. “You were a good girl today. I know it wasn’t fun for you.”

  I took off my bodice and skirt and lay down next to her. She turned onto her back and opened her eyes. Together we watched the light in the window dim, and felt very close. There were the two of us, and there was the world. My eyes grew heavy. “I think we’ll be happy here,” I murmured.

  “You said you’d tell me,” Palmira said after a time.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Why that man called us whores.”

  “He said that because it was the worst thing he could think of, but since it isn’t true, it doesn’t have to bother you.”

  There in the darkening room, both of us looking up at the cracks in the ceiling, it would be easier to tell. Palmira would be having her first blood soon. It was time.

  “Do you remember in the Loggia della Signoria in Florence where I drew that statue of a man carrying that woman away? Remember I was drawing it on that rainy day when we ran home?”

  “No,” she said emphatically, as if the expectation were unreasonable.

  “When a man forces a woman to do what husbands and wives do when they love each other, and the woman doesn’t want to, that is rape. That sculpture showed it about to happen.”

  “So?”

  “So that did happen to me, here. I didn’t want anyone to know, but my father found out and accused that man in court. Then people thought I wanted it, but I didn’t. When a woman wants it with anyone, not just a husband, they call her a whore.”

  Palmira was quiet. Maybe she was trying to understand what men and women did together. That would have to come another night. So would the trial and the sibille. When she was older. When it would be no more to me than a story—like Lucrezia’s or Cleopatra’s, or someone else’s from a far-off time. I was almost there now, I thought, barely able to stay awake.

  Later, out of the darkness of exhaustion, came the timid question, “Was it Papa who raped you?”

  “Your papa? No, cara. He never hurt me that way. It was my father’s friend. Agostino was his name. They painted together. That’s why we left Genoa so quickly. Your grandfather invited him there.”

  “Did being raped hurt?”

  “Yes. For a time. Not forever.”

  “What husbands and wives do, does that hurt?”

  It was a crucial question. I did not want her to live a life of fear.

  “No. Think of Cesare and Bianca, how loving they were to each other. If the man is gentle, and if the woman wants it, it doesn’t hurt. That happens when they are in love.”

  “Will I ever want it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does every lady?”

  “Most every lady.”

  “Does Sister Graziela?”

  “She did once.” I rolled onto my side toward her and kissed her ear. “I’ll tell you about her some other time.”

  22

  Graziela

  Most Reverend Eminence Cardinal Scipione Borghese,

  In the hopes that my father, Orazio Gentileschi, pleased Your Eminence in painting the ceiling fresco in Your Eminence’s Casino of the Muses, I, Artemisia Gentileschi, likewise a painter, having been under his tutelage and having been graced by the patronage of His Lordship Cosimo de’ Medici, offer Your Eminence my services.

  If it please Your Eminence to grant me permission to see my father’s work, I would be most grateful, as I have never had the opportunity to do so. Respecting your privacy and your holiness, I patiently await your reply.

  Embracing the purple of Your Most Reverend Eminence, I am Your Eminence’s humble and obedient servant,

  Artemisia Gentileschi

  I sealed it with candle wax, pressed in my bracelet cartouche of the figure of Artemis to leave an impression, and started on another letter while Palmira continued the unpacking. By the end of the day, I had finished letters to five cardinals and three noblemen recommended by the apothecary and my Dutch landlord.

  A short time later, I received two responses. A secretary from the household of Cardinal Borghese wrote back, giving me permission “for a brief time to look at the work of Orazio Gentileschi, but do not assume,” he said, “that this is to be an audience with His Eminence. His Eminence is not available.” And a nobleman wanted “as soon as can be accomplished one of your monumental Judiths like those at the Palazzo Pitti.”

  I was grateful. I needed the security and joy of being in the next painting. Right away I tried out compositions on little scraps of paper while Palmira watched the soup for me hanging in a pot over the fire. Living here, she’ll do some growing up, I thought.

  “Who’s this going to be?” she asked.

  “Another Judith.”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of making Judiths?”

  “Not if they’re all different. I haven’t painted one in, let me see, five years. I’m different now, so the painting will be too.”

  “Does it have to be a bloody one?”

  Her voice sounded so earnest, and she was taking an interest, for once. Maybe it was the fault of the gruesome subjects I’d been doing—the head, the hacking, the snake, the dagger—that made her not attracted to painting.

  “No. Just for you, cara, it won’t be.”

  Maybe it wasn’t just for her. Going back to displaying that violent act seemed retrograde. It held no interest for me now.

  I let my mind imagine as I sketched. This Judith ought to be a heavier, middle-aged woman, made wiser by experience—not a mere temptress and killer, but a more reasoning individual. Here in Rome where Caravaggist technique was appreciated, I could indulge my love for dramatic chiaroscuro of light and shadow, even on her face. Judith could be holding out her hand to block light coming through the tent opening so she could concentrate on hearing noises. The body of Holofernes wouldn’t even be in the composition, only his head in deep shadow, hardly noticeable in Abra’s sack. No blood. No gore. But just outside the tent, out of sight, Judith could hear rumblings. There would always be danger. She must be intensely vigilant.

  “There,” I said after I worked awhile. I handed Palmira a rough sketch of a possible composition. “No blood.”

  She looked at it and then at me. “None streaming out of the sack?”

  “None.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes, good.” I patted her
hand. “I’ll tell you what. Because you’ve been so helpful in unpacking, tomorrow we’ll go to a beautiful building owned by a cardinal. Scipione Borghese. A very powerful man. Your grandpa’s work is there. We’ll go take a look.”

  I wasn’t sure where Cardinal Borghese’s Palazzo Pallavicini was, somewhere near the Quirinale, so we had to ask three people before a coachman told us it was set back a long way from the street by a carriage courtyard and stables. With my letter from Cardinal Borghese’s clerk, the porter admitted us into a lush garden of hedges, arbors of fragrant flowering vines, sprawling oleander, pines, and plane trees.

  At the door of the palace an orderly lowered his staff in front of us. “What is your business?” he asked.

  What did he think—that a woman and a girl were going to storm the cardinal’s residence?

  “I am Artemisia Gentileschi. My father, Orazio Gentileschi, painted the ceiling fresco in His Eminence’s Casino of the Muses. Is this the right building?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish to see it, I and my daughter.”

  I showed him the letter from Cardinal Borghese’s secretary. He glanced at it and let us in. “Ask the clerk.” He pointed to an old man sitting at a carved and inlaid writing table.

  The clerk was reading a document, squinting, head down. He did not look up, even when we stopped right in front of him. His face was so long and narrow it looked as though it had been pressed between boards when he was an infant. It made him look like a weasel. I placed the letter, open, on his writing table. He read it with no expression. He didn’t move his head, but his eyes looked to the right and then left.

  “Gentileschi, eh? I know about you. I was here when your father and Tassi were. You’ve come back to Rome to ask for more rape, have you?”

  Palmira blew out her breath.

  “I’ve come back to Rome because it is my home. And I’ve come back to paint. I am a painter too. As such, I wish to study the work on the ceiling.”

  “You didn’t learn enough from Signor Tassi himself and now you want to learn from his paintings?”

  “From my father’s.” I steeled myself against what he might say next.

  “A painter, eh? You paint pretty pictures of whores, then, I suppose?”

  “I paint heroines.”

  “You paint out of your own whoredom.” Spoken under his breath, but like spit in the face.

  “That’s not true!” Palmira blurted. “She does not!” I squeezed her hand so she wouldn’t say any more. She looked up at me to retaliate. The man smirked, enjoying the flash of her outrage.

  “I paint out of honor and pride and rapture and grief and doubt and love and yearning.” I spoke evenly, but quickly so he wouldn’t interrupt me. “I hope I may live so long as to paint out of every emotion felt by humankind.”

  He snorted and went back to his reading.

  “It is customary to let painters study the works of other painters, even if they are held privately by the Holy Mother Church,” I said. “If this is an inconvenient time, I will come again. Just tell me—”

  “Go on up. Go on.” He waved his hand toward the stairway, bored with baiting us. He’d already done what he wanted.

  We walked upstairs, and I put my hand on Palmira’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to hear such rudeness.”

  “Rome is awful. I hate it.”

  “It’s not all awful. Just think what we’re about to see.”

  A fat woman whose upper arms hung over her elbows was mopping the floor in shiny wet arcs. I asked for the Casino of the Muses. She waddled across the anteroom and opened one of a pair of doors.

  I took Palmira’s hand as we entered. An enormous, vaulted ceiling rose over a grand entertainment hall. Above the actual cornice molding where the ribs of the vaulting curved into the arched ceiling, an elaborate illusionary stone cornice was painted with many consoles supporting a painted overhanging balcony. Behind the balustrade of the balcony, there were painted columns and a loggia of arches.

  “It’s so real.” Palmira stretched out the last word.

  Under the arches and in some places along the balustrade, handsome men and buxom women were playing lutes, violins, bass viols, tambourines, drums. Others were singing or listening, an arm resting on the balustrade here, a shawl flowing over it there. Above the delicate shades of pink, green, and yellow of their clothing, a blue sky was patched with clouds, making it seem as though the phantom balcony were ascending to Heaven. All the complex parts—the pillars, capitals, arches, the rosettes in coffers, the consoles supporting the balcony, the chins, elbows, noses, torsos, the bass viols and other instruments positioned as if seen from below—all were correctly proportioned to make a unified whole. The effect was dazzling.

  “How can it look so real?” Palmira asked.

  “This is what they call illusionist architecture painting,” I explained. “You can’t quite trust what you’re seeing, what parts are the real building and what is the painted illusion. It seems real because the shapes and the figures are foreshortened. They’re painted with shorter proportions than they really have and from a viewpoint below. It’s very, very difficult.”

  “Have you ever done it?”

  “No.”

  She dropped my hand to turn in a circle and count. “Nineteen people!”

  “Creating such a complex work, with all parts working harmoniously together, must have taken constant, absorbing thought.”

  Father’s mind had to be in the work, in its problems, searching for solutions as he was walking home, eating, getting dressed, grinding pigments, sitting in court. The postures of the figures had to be with him as his thoughts took shape upon waking every morning. My dilemma must have been only on the periphery of his mind, even on the morning of the sibille.

  “This was painted by Grandpa and that man?” Palmira asked.

  “Yes. They worked well together, didn’t they? Grandpa painted the people and musical instruments and sky, and Agostino painted the structures.”

  Where Orazio was weakest, in architectural perspective, Agostino determined the correct angles, the vanishing points, the shadings. Agostino structured the space as a showcase for Orazio’s figures, each one an individual, ardent in his performance, or enraptured by the music. Orazio knew his weakness. Agostino knew his. Separate, their art and reputations would be forever limited. Together, they were magnificent.

  “It must have been profoundly exciting for him to have seen it take shape,” I murmured.

  I understood now, with perfect clarity, why Father wanted the trial over. It had nothing to do with me.

  I understood, but understanding was not forgiveness.

  “Look, Mama!” Palmira pointed over my right shoulder. “It’s you!”

  I whirled around. “No.”

  “It is. It is. You always stand that way, with your hand on your hip.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. When you’re angry with me.”

  “Maybe it’s your grandmother.” Just as I said it, I noticed in the painting that untamable lock of hair spiraling wildly at my right temple. It had given me grief ever since I had learned to comb my own hair. My mother’s hair was smooth and straight, pulled back into a knot like Spanish women.

  “No, it isn’t. It’s you. Look at that fan in your hand. You’re always complaining about the heat.”

  There I am, looking down on me, the same age as I am right now, but painted thirteen years ago. How had he known how to age me? An eerie sight to see myself as a matron annoyed by something, distracted, looking down over the balcony instead of watching the musicians, unable to relax into an easy enjoyment of the music. Unable to relax. Yes. How had he known?

  I was dizzy and my neck hurt, yet I couldn’t stop looking up. I had posed for Father many times, but I never knew he was going to use one of the drawings here. Then I was on his mind in those afternoons after court adjourned. And furthermore, he had imagined what the trial and the years ahead would do to me. I reached for Palmira an
d held her against me.

  “You’re right. It is me,” I murmured.

  After Palmira went to sleep that night, I sat sipping wine and wondering if Father thought of me often. If he ever talked about me. To Agostino, or to anyone. If he were ever lonesome. If he were lonesome right now. If he ever thought of Mother. I hoped he was happy, or at least was painting well . . . even with Agostino. I leaned out the window to feel the night’s deep blue, the same dark air that surrounded him in Genoa or Paris or wherever he was. I would give a great deal to know what he was thinking right at this moment. If a person could know for certain what the other person was thinking or doing, then loneliness might cease to exist in the world.

  I thought of Pietro and tried to imagine what he was doing right now. Was he with Vanna? Had he given himself completely to her now that I was gone? Could he? Did he ever think of me?

  Had I done something similar to what Father had done, sacrificed a person for my art? I was filled with a longing to apologize to Pietro. To apologize to Palmira. Had I hurt people out of selfish impulsiveness? I yearned to apologize to Cesare and Bianca and Renata, and put our lives back the way they were, but that was impossible. Love is so easily bruised by the necessity of making choices.

  I’d heard once that an English queen had denied herself suitors in order to wed England, and I understood at what cost.

  A moon of startling brightness rose over the rooftops, lifted on a divine, invisible thread, like a paper circle held before a cat. What I had seen at the Borghese casino made it impossible to sleep. I took out writing paper but I didn’t know where Father lived now. Instead I wrote:

  My Most Illustrious Friend, Galileo,

  The sky tonight has a clarity that I have not known for many years. The moon is a perla barocca, a trifle God flung in our direction to tease mortals with unanswerable questions. I can see its hills and valleys, as you described. I never see it without thinking of you, never see stars without wondering which one is your Venus.