Passion Blue (9 page)

Yet here, as real as life, were women painters—six of them, a whole workshop full. How had that come about? Who had established the workshop, who had taught them? She tried to imagine living as these artists did—forever prisoned within convent walls, yet following pursuits few worldly women could aspire to.

What had Suor Humilità said?
Women can be many things, if only in the convent
.

She remembered how the workshop mistress had seized her hands and smiled, and felt a stir of guilt. She knew the offer of apprenticeship hadn’t really been an offer, in the sense of something that could be refused. Novices didn’t choose, they only obeyed—she could not have said no even if she had wanted to. And she hadn’t wanted to. Still, she felt uncomfortable. For of course she could never really be Suor Humilità’s apprentice. She was leaving Santa Marta.

I’ll work hard
, she promised herself.
While I’m here, however long or short a time that is, I’ll strive each day to do my best
.

Her presence might be false. But her work would be true.

She shifted around on her bed so she could lean
her elbows on the windowsill. Moonlight silvered the clipped grass of the garden court, and the sky was thick with stars. She gazed up at them, twinkling jewel-points against the blackness of the farthest celestial sphere, moving in their slow dance around the Earth. Had she really overlooked the
cortile
drawing when she removed the others from the cedar box? Or had it been something more than her own carelessness that put the drawing in Madre Damiana’s hands? She felt the talisman, heavy at her throat. Could this astonishing stroke of luck be the spirit’s doing? Was the workshop of women, somehow, the way to escape Santa Marta?

She caught her breath. From the bed nearby, Bice glanced up, then returned to her game.

The bell rang for Compline, the final service of the day. Elsewhere in Santa Marta, the choir nuns were filing toward the nuns’ chapel, partitioned from the larger church so that their singing could be heard, but no profane eye could spy them at their worship. The
conversae
were completing their final chores—hanging the last sheets in the laundry, laying the last tables in the refectory. In a little while, the Great Silence would begin, the quiet that forbade any but the most essential words, and lasted until dawn.

As for the novices, it was bedtime. Suor Margarita paused in the doorway after the candles were blown out, making sure all was in order, her white habit gleaming in the dimness; then she turned and was gone.

That night, Giulia dreamed she was running on an endless plain, her hair loose, her feet bare. Ahead of
her danced a small blue flame—the luminous blue of Santa Barbara’s dress, the shimmering blue of Jesus’ cloak, the drowning blue of the sorcerer’s robe, the unyielding blue of the talisman. On and on it led her, farther and farther, until she left the Earth entirely and began to rise through the planetary spheres. They were as clear as crystal and as permeable as water, and they sang as she passed through them, the flame drawing her on and on—never out of sight, yet never within reach.

When the bells woke her in the morning, she found, for the first time since her arrival, that she did not dread the day ahead.

Suor Angela was waiting again outside the refectory. She smiled when Giulia emerged, the shy smile Giulia remembered from yesterday, then limped off down the hall.

“You don’t have to walk behind me,” she said after a moment, glancing over her shoulder, the one that dipped. “Nun or novice, it doesn’t matter in our workshop. Apprentice and artist are the only ranks that count there, and you and I are both apprentices.”

“You’re an apprentice?” Giulia said, forgetting the Little Silence. She’d assumed, perhaps because of the black veil, that Suor Angela was a journeyman, like
the two nuns at the table yesterday.

“Yes. I’ve been with the Maestra for three years now.”

The Maestra. Suor Humilità, of course. It made Giulia think of Maestro and his untidy study, where she might be heading at this time of morning if she were still in Milan. Swallowing a surge of homesickness, she hurried to catch up.

The smell of the workshop greeted them at the threshold—a blend of familiar and unfamiliar scents, the mysterious odors of the painter’s craft. Giulia breathed deeply as she entered.
Today, I’ll sketch again
. The thrill of it ran through her like light.

Suor Domenica was already there, standing under one of the arches that opened onto the courtyard and removing the cloth that draped her lectern.

“Good morning, Domenica,” Suor Angela said.

Suor Domenica glanced up. She was rod-straight and rake-thin, her ivory skin pulled tight over the bones of her face. Her brows were creased in what looked like a habitual frown.

“I’ll need vermilion today. A good quantity, mind you.”

“I ground it yesterday,” the younger nun replied. “It’s ready whenever you want it.”

“Hmph. Well, prepare some tempera then. Perhaps now that we have an extra pair of hands, there will be more doing and less waiting.”

Suor Domenica turned back to her lectern, folding
the cloth that had covered it with precise, tight motions.

“You mustn’t mind the way she talks,” Suor Angela whispered. “She wears a prickly hair shirt under her habit, and it makes her awfully cross. Now, let’s put on aprons and get to work.”

Along the side wall, shelves stretched from floor to ceiling, holding a vast collection of jars, bowls, boxes, and other containers, many marked with neatly written labels. Nearby, bibbed aprons hung on pegs.

The two girls tied aprons over their habits. Suor Angela moved to the shelves, taking down a large flask, a big bowl, a smaller one, several palm-sized squares of fabric, a pair of spoons, and a metal pin. She led the way over to the preparation table. Its clutter had been cleared away, except for a clay jug of water and, strangely, a basket of speckled eggs.

“I’m going to show you how to mix tempera,” Angela said, putting down what she carried. “I’ll be showing you how to do a lot of things. If there’s anything you don’t understand, just ask. Questions are good. The Maestra says they’re one of the best ways to learn.”

“It’s all right for me to talk?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Suor Margarita says that novices must keep the Little Silence during the day, unless they are spoken to first.”

“Oh my goodness!” Suor Angela laughed. “That wouldn’t be at all practical, with everything we have to do and learn! Some of the other workshops keep the
Little Silence, but we don’t.”

“There are other painting workshops?”

“No, no. The other workshops are for other things, embroidered altar cloths and linens for brides’ trousseaux and ointments from our herb gardens. We’re known for our herbals—people send all the way from Venice to buy them. Don’t look so surprised!” The young nun laughed again. “Nuns aren’t supposed to be worldly, but we must exist within the world, we must eat and be clothed and maintain our buildings and beautify our church. Santa Marta has an endowment, the same as all the big convents, but we need more than that to make ends meet.”

“Oh,” Giulia said, trying to grasp the idea of nuns as merchants.

“All our workshops do well, by God’s grace, but Suor Humilità’s workshop most of all. It’s the only one of its kind, you know, perhaps in all the world. It was founded by Suor Catarina Altichieri more than fifty years ago. She had painting lessons as a child, and when she took vows at Santa Marta she was permitted to continue, and to train other sisters. Suor Catarina’s paintings were only for Santa Marta, but when Suor Anna Sovato became the next Maestra, her work was so fine that other convents began to commission her. By the time Suor Anna retired, the workshop was known throughout Padua. Now, under our Maestra, our fame has spread even farther.”

“I was wondering…” Giulia hesitated.

“What? You can ask me anything.”

“Well, I was wondering how a
conversa
could
become the mistress of a workshop. I thought only the noble nuns could do that.”

“Ah.” Suor Angela nodded. “Yes, that is unusual. But it’s not easy to find women who can be trained to be good painters. We can’t afford to overlook talent, whether it is held by a noblewoman or a commoner. As for Suor Humilità…commoner or not, no one else could have become Maestra. She is a genius. Do you know there’s a color named after her?”

“The blue,” Giulia guessed.

“That’s right. Well, it’s not actually named after her, but after the altarpiece where she first used it, for the cloak of our Lord Jesus Christ, as he endured His Passion in the Garden of Gethsemane. Passion blue, they call it, the most beautiful blue in Padua, maybe in the whole of the Veneto.”

Passion blue
. It seemed instantly right, as if there could be no other name for a color so profound, so luminously alive. In her mind’s eye, Giulia saw the small blue flame that had danced through her dream last night.

“How old are you, Giulia?”

“I’m seventeen.”

“And I’m nineteen!” Suor Angela clapped her hands. “We’re almost of an age. How lovely!”

She sounded genuinely delighted, for all the world as if she were not a choir nun and Giulia merely a
conversa
. Giulia thought of Alessia and her contempt, of the servant nuns at their separate tables in the refectory. Could this workshop really be
so different from the rest of Santa Marta?

“Oh dear. Domenica is glaring at us. We’d better get started.” Suor Angela turned toward the table and took an egg from the basket. “Now, to make paint, you need something to bind the pigment—not just so you can paint with it, but so it will dry hard and won’t fade. You can use oil, or”—she held up the egg—“you can use egg yolk mixed with water.”

“
Egg yolk
?”

“Yes. It’s called egg tempera. The Maestra doesn’t use it very much these days, but she still prefers it for smaller panels like the Santa Barbara paintings. But regular egg tempera dries very fast. We are adding oil as well as water, so the artists will have more time to work.”

Suor Angela cracked the egg on the edge of the big bowl. “You drain the white through your fingers, like this. Then you dry off the yolk.” With a delicate, practiced motion, she rolled the yolk onto one of the fabric squares. “The yolk has a membrane, which must be broken with a pin—” She pierced the yolk and let it drain into the smaller bowl. “Now a spoon of water from the jug—and stir—and the same amount of oil.” Taking a fresh spoon, she poured from the flask. “This is walnut oil. The Maestra likes it best. It must be added slowly, stirring all the time. Here. You try.”

With her left hand Giulia tipped the spoon as Suor Angela had done, spinning a thread-thin stream of oil into the bowl, while with her right hand she stirred. It was harder than it looked to coordinate both actions.
But soon the yolk smoothed and thickened.

“There. That’s finished. You can take it to Domenica.”

“How does it turn into paint?”

“The painter has her pigments ready in jars, and she mixes them with the yolk. Even with oil added to the egg, it can be done only a little at a time, or it will dry up.”

Domenica accepted the bowl without thanks, setting it down on a table that also held brushes, a paint-caked rectangle of wood with a hole at one end, and several stoppered jars. “Get along,” she snapped, when Giulia didn’t move away at once. “You’ve too much to do to be standing idly about.”

Disappointed, for she had hoped to see the paint being mixed, Giulia rejoined Suor Angela, who, despite her limp, had managed to drag a large wooden washtub into the courtyard and was tipping in buckets of water drawn from the fountain. “There’s always washing up to do, so I keep this ready,” she said. When the tub was full, they fetched brooms and began to sweep the floor, a task interrupted twice as the other artists arrived and called for materials—egg tempera for Suor Benedicta at her lectern, ink for Suor Perpetua at the drafting table. Suor Benedicta was elderly, with a face like a wizened apple; she smiled when Giulia handed her the egg mixture, revealing gums almost empty of teeth. Suor Perpetua, middle-aged and homely, her skin pitted with smallpox scars, greeted Giulia kindly. “We are all very happy you’ve
joined us, my dear.”

Suor Lucida was the last to appear, breezing into the workshop well after Terce, the midmorning Office. Suor Domenica’s head came up like a hawk’s.

“Oh dear,” Angela whispered to Giulia over her broom. “There will be words now.”

“How kind of you to grace us with your presence, Lucida.” Suor Domenica’s tone was icy.

“Good morning to you too, Domenica,” Suor Lucida replied sweetly, settling herself on a stool at the drafting table.

“What excuse do you offer for your lateness?”

“I do not need to excuse myself, Domenica, but since you ask, I had preparations to attend to.”

“And those preparations were more important than the work that waits for you here? Your frivolity is a disgrace.”

Suor Lucida rolled her eyes. “Your censoriousness is a bore.”

“The Maestra will know of this.” Suor Domenica was rigid with anger. Beside her, Suor Benedicta painted on, as serenely as if she were alone. “I shall see to it.”

“Please yourself.” Suor Lucida shrugged. “Oh! I haven’t said hello to our new apprentice yet!”

She jumped off her stool in a swirl of white robes.

“Welcome, Giulia!” Within the severe frame of her black veil, her face was lovely, her smile full of secret joy, as if she knew something wonderful and was just about to reveal it. Her habit was made not of wool or linen, but of lustrous silk, and
instead of a cloth belt she wore a tooled leather girdle, cinched tight under her breasts, giving her robe more the look of a court gown than a nun’s habit. “Don’t mind Domenica, she lives to find fault. The rest of us are much more easygoing, I promise. Oh! You must come to my dinner party on Thursday! Everyone else is coming, except Domenica of course, she’d never do anything so
frivolous
. Say you’ll come!”