The Woman in the Painting

‘I-I-I-I c-c-c-can’t. It’s t-t-t-too late.’ Her hand tightened. She pulled me after her; she said nothing. She was taking me to the tavern. I ran my fingers through my hair, straightened my clothes. The sun disappeared, taking the warmth of the day with it. I was soon wide awake.

The tavern was down one of the streets where I’d met Luca. I shuddered at the memory of the sinister figure who had crouched over him. ‘Not far now,’ Margarita said, her voice reassuring. Her hand squeezed mine.

When we got inside, groups of men were playing cards and dice, roaring with every round and roll, while wine sloshed over jugs transported by big-armed men and round-cheeked women. A small band of musicians played in the corner, while lovers, the worse for wear, groped each other greedily, not caring who saw them. Laughter and loud voices filled the air while fat-stinking candles and flickering oil lamps kept the darkness at bay. I thought of the cloaked figure, of Luca, of Death. All outside. Life spilt over all around me. I gave Margarita a little smile.

‘Pietro! Over here!’ There in the corner stood Federico, waving at me. Luigi at his side.

Margarita pushed me towards them.

‘It was hell tracking you down,’ he said. ‘Spoke to your father.’ The background noise in the tavern masked my silence.

‘You’ve found him now,’ Margarita said. ‘When can he start?’ I was surprised at her audacious intervention and when Federico opened up to her, his mouth as round and red as a poppy in the morning sun, I was grateful too. And she continued to fire questions at the two apprentices in rapid succession, which revealed more to me than I’d ever thought possible about Raphael and his studio. ‘What is he like?’

He was talented, courteous, just, and good-natured.

‘What of the education you receive?’

The training both boys received was appropriate and thorough. They glowed like disciples as they regaled us with tales of the care Raphael took in teaching them. Margarita made sounds of appreciation.

‘This artist sounds perfect indeed,’ she mused. ‘There must be some catch.’ She laughed. ‘Don’t tell me that he’s hideously ugly with the body of a barrel and the jowly face of an old cockerel?’ This time the boys laughed. Luigi dug deep into his pocket and pulled out his own miniature portrait of Raphael – a copy of a copy, no doubt. Seemed to be a lot of them about. He presented it to Margarita. I watched her, knowing that she’d seen something similar before. She said nothing and raised her eyebrows in mock delight. But what she had seen had wiped the smile off her face.

‘Portraits tend to embellish,’ she added. ‘They often improve on nature.’

‘L-l-like Sebastiano’s of you?’ I’d found my tongue at last.

She laughed and struck me playfully about the ear.

‘He’s beautiful,’ Luigi added with a blush. ‘The most beautiful man you’ll ever see. And though this portrait is beautiful, the person is yet more so.’

‘We think that’s he’s perfection,’ Federico whispered. I had seen the artist and knew the words of his apprentices to be true. I sipped my wine, deep in thought. But the notion of perfection was too much for Margarita.

‘Please, boys. Stop this nonsense. You had me going there for a while with this fairy story. But you’ve gone too far. Perfection, indeed! Here, let me look at that likeness of him again.’

Luigi held it out to her. She studied it carefully.

‘He’s probably a vain, ridiculous creature, like all artists.’

Federico and Luigi looked crestfallen.

‘Sorry, I’m not talking about you,’ she said. ‘But you know what I mean.’ They didn’t.

At that moment a handsome young man, well-built and with thick, dark hair, caught my eye.

‘Margarita?’ He knew her. His eyes flicked from her to the rest of our group. Anger thrust him towards us.

‘Oh no,’ she whispered. ‘Come. Let us talk,’ she said, addressing the attractive fellow. She led him away. His large, manly hand caught her elbow. She pulled away. Her eyes flashed a warning. ‘I’ve never pretended,’ I heard her say to him, ‘I’ve never deceived you.’ Honesty. She unleashed it upon this would-be suitor and it wounded him. I looked on for a while but I soon lost interest.

‘Raphael …’ It was Luigi. ‘His only weakness is women.’

The two apprentices poured lively talk into my ears as keenly as I poured red wine down my throat. By the time the candles had burned to their bases I was happy, and completely intoxicated. Fear had released my soul from its ugly claws. I would soon be resuming my artistic training at the most exciting workshop in Rome.

I looked around. Margarita’s young man had long gone. ‘It’s time I got you home,’ she said to me, her arm now holding me upright.

‘Fortune favours the brave,’ I slurred, satisfied with myself.

‘Yes. It takes a man of exceptional valour to put away more wine than he can handle, and seize an opportunity when it’s handed to him on a platter,’ she said.

*

During the following days my skin tingled and my breath quickened every time I thought of Raphael. I would be there in his workshop soon. Luigi and Federico had told such marvellous tales about him. While I believed them, Margarita did not. She sniffed around like a hungry hound seeking to tear the meat from the bones of the apprentices’ extravagant claims. She was in a strange mood. Jealous, I told myself, of my good fortune.

She hunted around. Though she knew few people who mixed in artistic circles she knew a few who loitered around the edges. A servant friend of hers who worked for Cardinal Bibbiena was one of them. ‘She says there’s not a woman who hasn’t desired him,’ Margarita reported back to me, ‘nor, if she’s been lucky enough to get it, who hasn’t been satisfied more than by any other man before.’ This news seemed to appal her, though it thrilled me. ‘He’s a philanderer! Woe betide any woman who trusts him,’ she added, waving her finger up and down in my face.

‘And what’s worse is that Cardinal Bibbiena is one of the artist’s patrons.’

She paused to cough. She found the information unpalatable. ‘There. Your artist’s a bought man,’ she persisted with the finger wagging. ‘And when you’re a bought man you’re trapped. Only as good as the man who pays you. And believe me, Bibbiena is not a good man.’

Her words confused me. One minute she had a hand on my back pushing me towards him, the next she was doing all she could to keep me away from him. Raphael aroused strong passions. Even in Margarita. I hardened myself to her words. Her desire to besmirch Raphael’s reputation was starting to look a lot like need. ‘According to Sebastiano, he copies,’ she said, quoting the words of a man she despised, ‘… has no ideas of his own … is not serious …’ To be on the side of someone who bleated like a jealous rival did not sit comfortably on Margarita’s shoulders but she said it anyway. I decided she was desperate to keep hold of me and feared she would use any means possible to do so.

But I was wrong about that.

When the day came to go to Raphael’s workshop, she called for me at the boarding house, as she’d promised she would.

‘You look magnificent.’ She laughed as I opened the door. My hair was clean and neat, thanks to Margarita’s barber friend; my green jacket was fresh and stain-free, after she’d soaked it, scrubbed it, then scented it with lavender; and my shirt looked like new, whiter than when I’d first bought it, with the tears in the sleeves invisible after she’d spent hours sewing them up. I was wearing yellow hose. She cast her eyes over them quickly but looked away before I could see what she thought.

‘Now stand up straight and walk tall.’

I shuffled, my stomach churned, my head felt heavy. As I set off on the journey that would change the course of my life faces queued up within my head to torment me: Michelangelo’s, Sebastiano’s, my father’s. They tried to hold me back, but it was Margarita who pushed me forward. If she did not want me to go, she did not show it. Pilgrims, priests and monks flowed around us, buffeting us this way and that. I was all at sea within and without. But Margarita kept going, taking me with her.

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘Oh yes you do.’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘I’ve had a week of you telling me what an opportunity this is going to be. It was me, can’t you remember, who spoke against it.’

Margarita was right. I’d been the one overjoyed at the prospect, determined to succeed. But now my resolve had gone. My fear of failure had returned. I couldn’t face it. Not again.

‘I don’t understand why it means so much to you, to work there. But I know that it does. And I cannot deny that this Raphael sounds better than any other artist I’ve come across.’

I still resisted.

‘Now come on, Pietro. I’m not going to let your weakness cripple you.’

I was weak; I knew it. The scapular accuracy of her words left me exposed and wounded. I could say nothing back. I seethed.

‘Artists in my experience – granted it’s not wide – are parasites. They flatter the rich and powerful and are prepared to sway in any direction for the right price in the hope that one day they too will become rich.’ She stopped to apologise to a Dominican dressed in white whom she’d bumped into. ‘That’s not to say there’s no talent involved,’ she continued, ‘but I’ve not come across one who I think worthy of my respect.’

I felt nauseous. Did she know what she was saying? I lurched to the side; she dragged me on.

‘Want to buy a relic?’ A wizened old man placed his bony fingers on me, thrusting a red cross into my face. He sensed my despair. ‘I have no money,’ I told him as Margarita steered me out of his path. He came at me a second time.

‘A relic? Where is it from, this relic? Genuine, is it? Along with the tens of copies you have of it in that basket of yours?’ she challenged him. He did not try to sell me one a third time.

‘Come on, Pietro,’ she said, not to be put off. ‘You have to do what your heart tells you to do and I accept that you’re resisting it at the moment but that’s because you’re decent. You’re not like them. That’s what’s good about you. And who knows, when you’re a famous artist, you can be the first one I respect.’

The baker’s daughter from Trastevere gave my hand a sudden pull.

‘I think we’re nearly there.’

We were at the end of the street. The sight of apprentices filing into the workshop made my feet feel like blocks of marble. We watched, waited.

‘Look! Look! There’s Giulio. Giulio Romano.’ Margarita hit me in the arm at the sight of him. Joy and trepidation enveloped me. I had no idea why he was at Raphael’s but I was glad to see him. The power of a familiar face, no doubt.

‘Now go. Oh, and my father says there’s always a job for you at the bakery if this doesn’t work out. And come and let me know how you get on either way. As soon as you can.’

She shoved me in the back and I started to walk. She was calling after me, her voice loud and encouraging, but I no longer heard what she was saying. What she’d said earlier about weakness came to mind; it was a weakness that I should want to give in to the urge to return to her. I would conquer this feeling. I would need her no more. My back was now turned on this girl from Trastevere and although I felt sick at the thought of it I had my ambitions set on the glamorous world of art again. There I would envelop myself in the folds of its power, and power, I well knew, brought with it its own immunity.

I’d not been born into good fortune; the only way for me, and men like me, to climb high in the world, was to be prepared to sever ties with those who by association would tether me to the ground. If that meant doing bad things then so be it. All Margarita’s kindness, much like the kind words she was hurling after me, would soon become as insubstantial as a windswept cloud trailing across a clear sky. There. Then gone. Forgotten forever.

As I stood outside the workshop door I imagined my future. I was about to re-create myself.

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