Passion Blue (17 page)

She stood a moment, gazing up at the balconied front, then shook her head as if shaking off a thought and stepped forward to bang the iron knocker. The door was opened by a stout elderly woman, her plain brown dress tied up at one side to reveal a bright scarlet underskirt.

Her look of suspicion vanished when she saw
Humilità. “Violetta!” she cried. “Oh, my pet! You’re home!”

She held out her arms. The two women embraced. Humilità pulled away and put a hand on Giulia’s shoulder.

“This is Giulia Borromeo, my pupil. Giulia, this is Lorenza, who raised my brothers and me after our mother died.”

“Welcome, Giulia.” Lorenza offered a gap-toothed smile. “We’re always glad to meet one of Violetta’s girls.”

“Lorenza refuses to use my religious name,” said Humilità with affection, “no matter how I rebuke her.”

“Well, my pet, it doesn’t suit you.”

“I see you still wear your red underskirt.”

“The day I
don’t
wear my red underskirt is the day you should remark upon it. Come in, come in. You’re just in time for lunch.”

Giulia glanced at her teacher as they entered.
Violetta?
Lorenza was right, Humilità didn’t suit her, for she was anything but humble. But Violetta fit her even less.

Lorenza led them down a central hallway and into the kitchen, its windows and doors thrown open against the heat. Several women were preparing food; they dropped their tasks and crowded around, exchanging greetings and kisses. Once Giulia had been introduced and Humilità’s basket unpacked, Lorenza led them through the kitchen door, into the courtyard beyond.

“I’ll just go tell the master you’re here.”

The courtyard was enormous. Flagstone paving sloped toward a drain at the center, where a trio of boys knelt at a washtub. By the wall that formed the left-hand boundary, two men worked at a carpenter’s table, surrounded by wood shavings and scraps. A single-story brick building rose on the right, with windows all along its front and huge openings cut into its peaked roof, their shutters flung back.

“My father’s workshop.” Humilità nodded toward the building. “When I was nine, he bought the house next to ours and knocked down the wall between the two courtyards so he could build the workshop onto the back.”

“Will we go inside?” Giulia could hear the sound of voices and hammering and see figures passing before the windows. Some of the excitement she had felt that morning began to return.

“Yes indeed. My father employs nearly twenty apprentices and journeymen. Some of them live in that house”—She gestured toward the house next door. “My brothers and their families live with my father in this one, where we all grew up.”

“Your brothers are painters too?”

“Gianfrancesco and Tiberio are. Fernando’s talents tend more to business.” Humilità smiled. “A good thing for my father. His fortunes have risen since Nando began to manage his affairs.”

There was a small commotion inside the workshop, and a man burst through the door. He was as big as a bear, with a broad, craggy face and iron-gray curls swept back from a high forehead. His clothes were
stained with paint, as were his hands, outstretched as he strode toward Humilità and Giulia.

“My favorite daughter!” he cried in a booming voice that seemed to fill the court. “Come to pay her old father a visit!”

He swept Humilità into his arms, lifting her off her feet like a child. Before that moment, Giulia could never have imagined anyone treating her strong-willed, dignified teacher so.

“Your
only
daughter, Papa.” Humilità laughed as he set her down.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t have a favorite.” He winked at Giulia. Humilità had his eyes—deep-set, dark as olive pits. “And I assume this lovely young lady is the new apprentice you wrote to me about.”

“Yes.” Humilità tugged at her wimple, which had been pulled askew. “Giulia Borromeo, this is my father, Matteo Moretti—artist, artisan, and chairman of the
Fraglia
, the Paduan painters’ guild.”

“I’m honored to meet you, sir.” Giulia curtsied.

“The honor is entirely mine!” He made a little bow and smiled, displaying a perfect set of teeth. Gray hair and all, he was a good-looking man—but also, in his bigness and his loudness and something else that Giulia could not quite put her finger on, intimidating. “Violetta has never apprenticed a novice before. She must believe you have promise.”

“Giulia has great talent, Papa. She’s farther along than I was at her age, even though she’s entirely self-trained.”

“Saints protect us.” Matteo cast his eyes heavenward.
“Another female genius. What is the world coming to?”

“Of all my brothers,” Humilità said to Giulia, “none is my father’s equal. He has long wondered what sin he committed, that God should give the greatest ability to his daughter.”

She was smiling, but Giulia heard the edge in her voice. Her father laughed.

“You’ve made the best of it, haven’t you, Violetta?”

“What of my brothers, Papa? Are they not with you?”

“Nando is away—”

“Oh, no!”

“Yes, my dear, I’m sorry, he was meant to be home but there was some difficulty with the delivery schedules and he had to extend his stay. But you’ll see Gianfrancesco and Tiberio when they return later this afternoon. Come, ladies.” Matteo Moretti gestured toward the stairway that rose from the side of the court to the second floor. “We’ll lunch in my study.”

The study was a big room with a low ceiling and several windows looking down onto the street below. There was a large worktable strewn with drawing and writing materials, at least a dozen chests and cabinets crammed with books and papers, and, at the windows, a dais for posing, with several lecterns set up nearby. Giulia was reminded of Maestro—not because this room was similar to Maestro’s study, but because it spoke so clearly of a man completely dedicated to his craft.

Humilità’s father directed them to a small table
laid for a meal. Lorenza and one of the women from the kitchen brought in bread, cheese, olives, a salad of artichokes, and the fruit Humilità had purchased at the market. Humilità and her father talked of family matters—the recent illness of her oldest brother, Tiberio; the engagement of her youngest, Gianfrancesco; her middle brother Fernando’s spendthrift wife. Matteo Moretti spoke of the major commission he had recently received, to furnish and fresco the newly renovated chapel of a noble family, and Humilità described the completion of the Santa Barbara panels.

Giulia ate and listened. It was odd to see the confident workshop mistress flush as her father teased her, and even odder to hear him interrogate her about her work as if she were a journeyman, rather than a master painter. Was it hard for her to come home this way, Giulia wondered—to return to the world she had renounced, and then renounce it all over again when it was time to go? Despite the frustration with the convent’s limitations that Humilità occasionally revealed, she had never said anything to suggest that her vocation had been anything but willing. Still, Giulia remembered her words, in the market, about sacrifice. She remembered how Humilità had stood looking up at her childhood home when they arrived.

Was Santa Marta really the only way she could paint? Couldn’t her father have kept her with him?

“You should have seen it in its original form.” The conversation had shifted to the San Giustina commission,
and the unusually detailed contract the monastery had insisted on. “They wanted to specify the exact composition of the central panel, can you believe it?”

Matteo Moretti was frowning. “Why did you not write to me, Violetta? I could have advised you.”

“I’ve been running a workshop for some years, Papa. I am quite capable of doing my own negotiating. I admit I made more concessions than I ordinarily would, but San Giustina is a prestigious monastery, and this will advance my workshop’s reputation. A balance of interests. Didn’t you teach me that?”

“I did, I did.” Matteo leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “What sort of concessions, if I may ask?”

“They want it complete by the middle of October so that it may be dedicated at the feast of All Saints in November. The requirements for the framing and gilding are extremely detailed—that’s one of the things I want to talk to you about today. I must also use a large amount of Passion blue. The abbot wants to give glory to God with a magnificent altarpiece—but he also wants everyone to know how expensive it was.”

“Naturally,” Matteo said.

“And I’ll be painting every figure in the central panel myself, and the thieves in the side panels as well.”

“
Every
figure? Violetta, Violetta. That’s why you have journeymen—to spare you that kind of labor. Particularly with such a close deadline.”

“Never fear, Papa, the fee I demanded would please even you. Although my expenses will be higher than I
anticipated. The cost for one of my blue’s ingredients has gone up.”

Her father raised his eyebrows. “Lapis lazuli? It’s been some time since I purchased any. What’s the increase?”

“Ah, Papa.” Humilità shook her finger at him. “Did you really think you would catch me that way?” She turned to Giulia. “My father never tires of trying to trick me into telling him what’s in Passion blue. He wants the recipe for himself, you see.”

“And why not?” Matteo spread his arms. “Imagine the fame and fortune my workshop could command if I had the formula for that most mysterious of colors!”

“Your workshop already commands fame and fortune, Papa.”

“Ah, but it could command so much more! Your blue wouldn’t lose its secrecy, my dear—it would just become a
family
secret.” He set his hands on his knees and leaned toward her over the table. “A good daughter would obey her father and share the recipe.”

“I am
your
daughter,” Humilità said. “Whom you taught to know her worth, and also how to hold her counsel.”

Their dark eyes, so much alike, were locked. Giulia felt a change, like a breath of cold air sweeping through the stuffy room. Then Matteo threw back his head and laughed.

“Ah, Violetta, I never could make you do a thing you didn’t want. But you can’t blame me for trying.”

“Can’t I, Papa?” The edge was there again in Humilità’s voice.

“You must pass it on to someone, you know.”

“Why? Perhaps I would rather that it die with me.”

Matteo shook his head. “You’ve a God-given gift, the equal of any man’s. But only a woman could be so stubborn and capricious.” He surveyed their empty plates. “I think we’re finished here. Giulia, have you had enough?”

“Yes, sir. It was a delicious lunch.”

“Good. I’ll just go fetch my recipe book so we can discuss the gilding and anything else you might need. Excuse me a moment.”

He disappeared through a door in the left-hand wall of the study, closing it behind him. There were scuffling sounds, then a muffled thump.

“He keeps his recipe book hidden under a loose floorboard under the window in his bedroom,” Humilità said, her eyes on the door. “He thinks no one knows, but my brother Gianfrancesco found out when we were children. All four of us know what’s in that book. We all know his secrets.”

The words carried a strange bitterness. Giulia said nothing.

The door opened and Matteo came out again, holding a leather-bound ledger in his arms—very much like Humilità’s own recipe book, but without a brass clasp.

“I doubt Giulia will find our discussions interesting,” he said. “Perhaps she’d like to sit on the balcony and observe, as you used to do, my dear.”

“That’s a good idea, Papa.” Humilità turned to Giulia. “When I was a child we all trained together, me alongside my brothers and the apprentices, as if I were a boy. As I grew older, though, that was no longer proper. So when my father built the workshop, he made a special place for me, so I could draw from life and yet be separate. You’ll be able to see everything from there.”

“Yes, Maestra.” Giulia felt a thrill of anticipation. “May I draw too?”

“Of course.”

The workshop was an enormous rectangular space, entirely open. From her stool on the balcony, which jutted out like the prow of a boat from one end, Giulia could indeed see everything, but was herself concealed from view unless someone looked up.

Much was familiar—the drafting tables, the shelves of pigment materials, the preparation area where apprentices were grinding colors, the mixed smells of smoke, wood, glue, and exotic materials. But much was strange, for as Angela had said, Matteo Moretti made not just paintings, but furniture and gold and silver goods—a full range of luxury items for the nobles and monasteries that were his patrons. The workshop was a chaotic hive of activity, with men and boys laboring at various tasks and rushing back and forth. Equipment and materials were everywhere, scattered on surfaces, tossed on the floor, pushed carelessly into corners along with piles of trash and debris. Despite the open doors and windows, dust opaqued
the air. The din of tools and voices reminded Giulia of the clamor of the market.

In the center, where light streamed down through the roof openings, several painters worked on a large panel set up in front of a meticulously composed live tableau. A man knelt in prayer, clad only in a loincloth, his face raised as if in pain or ecstasy. Near him lay a woman, wrapped in a red robe that left her arms bare. Above them, suspended from a harness, a long-haired boy in flowing garments stretched down his arms, a huge pair of feathered wings bound to his back. Humilità used models and costumes too—there had been a procession of them lately, as she prepared for the San Giustina commission—but never anything so elaborate.

Obeying the familiar tingling in her fingers, Giulia took up the charcoal Humilità had left and began to sketch. At first she tried to draw the tableau as if she were standing on the floor below, but not only was that difficult, it didn’t capture what she found interesting about the scene. She crumpled the paper and started again. She would draw exactly what she saw: not a man and a woman and an angel, but models posing and artists at their work.

It was stifling under the roof. Giulia’s hands were sticky, and she had to pause to wipe sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. The talisman absorbed her body heat. She could feel the chain, a warmth at the back of her neck, and the stone, hot where it lay on the skin of her chest, just below the little pouch that held her horoscope fragment. Too hot, now she thought of
it—hot enough to be uncomfortable. She put down the charcoal and curled her fingers around it—