The Creation Of Eve (6 page)

Never have I been as proud as when the Maestro sent for me after seeing the drawing of Asdrubale's tearful encounter with the crab. Who was this virgin painter, he wrote, who captured so much truth in a simple sketch? He invited me to come study with him--something, I found out later from Tiberio, the Maestro does rarely for anyone, let alone for a woman. Once I was there, the Maestro seemed not to care if I were fish or fowl or female, as long as I asked intelligent questions. It was then I began to dream that I could become more than a virgin portrait painter--I could become a
maestra,
if only I pursued my art hard enough.

Now look at me. Once mildly famous as a virgin, I am about to be mildly famous as a whore if Tiberio does not come forward and maestro Michelangelo brings our act to light. Papa will be forced to press for a proposal. I cannot bear it. I would never wish to make Tiberio marry me. I want him to want me of his own accord. But I dream. Why would he wish to marry me? I have overstepped my place by pursuing a man's art, I am not of high birth, and I have not the beauty to make these things Unimportant.

I have read the treatise on art by the learned monk Fra Agnolo Firenzuola, in which he states in a nutshell what is desirable in a woman's looks: hair soft yellow turning brown; skin fair and clear but not pale; eyes dark brown and large, with whites a shimmering blue. No one need remind me how short I fall of that ideal. My hair is soft brown turning red; my skin pale and given to pink splotches; my eyes bright green and large, too large, Unnaturally large, with an excess of whites that are shot with red, more often than not, from too much reading or paint fumes. My sisters call me the Owl, not Unfairly. If forced to propose, why would Tiberio not simply laugh and point out what an eager participant I had been?

Please let Tiberio send for me. By all the saints and martyrs, I beg for him not to forget me, as Undeserving as I might be.

ITEM: The selection of the fabric of a canvas is of utmost importance. Roman linen makes for the best canvas, as it is strong, stretches well on the frame, and remains flat if a thread is broken. Cotton is the poorest choice. If a single thread is snapped, the ends will curl and split, destroying an entire picture.

2 JUNE 1559

Palazzo Anguissola, Cremona

So that is it, then. I am to leave this place. I should be glad. But I will miss Cremona. I will miss the bells clanging so solemnly out of pitch from the tower of San Giorgio across the piazza. I will miss the carts, loaded with wheat, creaking down the cobblestone streets, hens bobbing after them in a comical parade. I will miss the servants gathered around the well in our piazza, chatting as the bucket lowers once more from its squeaking pulley. I will miss, Unspeakably, my family.

Oh! See what my nerves make me do. Wretched wine--it is on my bodice, too. I thought I heard Francesca coming. She will be Up here, soon enough. The moment she finishes eating the cakes Papa bought in celebration, she will come trundling through the door, asking what is wrong with me. I told Papa I had a pain again in my eyes, and he let me leave before he had finished toasting my good fortune; but it is not my eyes that hurt, and Francesca knows it.

The second day after I had returned from Rome, I awakened to my sisters surrounding my bed, informing me that they had been good long enough--now they must hear stories of my travels. After many kisses, embraces, and my own quickly hidden tears, I told them, over the cup of watered wine and piece of bread they had brought me, the news for which they hungered. I told them how even though our cousins in Milan were so rich that servants ran in front of their carriage to clear their way on streets, and that the walls of their
palazzo
were lined with gilded Moroccan leather, their place still stank of piss. I told them how in Rome women teetered around on twelve-inch-high chopines, claiming the need to keep above the mud and refuse littering the cobblestones but in truth wishing to show off the jewels encrusted on their heels. I even told them, Unwisely, how I had seen a Roman woman consume at
cena
one of the world's most powerful aphrodisiacs, that strange fruit from the New World--a tomato
.

"What happened after she ate it?" Europa exclaimed.

"What's an aphrodisiac?" asked Anna Maria.

"A love potion," Minerva said quickly. "Sofi, did no one warn the woman of the effects of the fruit? How did she behave?"

"She seemed Unchanged." I rose. "Isn't it time we dressed for Mass?"

Lucia took my cup. "How can you tell if she was truly Unchanged? People do hide their thoughts. She could be seething with desire, but Unless you could see into her heart, you would have no idea."

I stared at her a moment, trying to discern if she was trying to tell me something, then dressed and fled to Mass and, afterward, my studio. There I found myself straining to listen for a messenger at the door or, please God, Tiberio's voice in the courtyard. When Papa came and saw me staring out the window, he asked if I might paint him, along with my younger sister Europa and my brother, Asdrubale, both of whom he hoped would be inspired by my talent.

It was difficult to concentrate on drawing studies for their portrait. For two days I sketched and resketched, my efforts frustratingly sophomoric and stiff. To give my composition more life, I thought of Michelangelo's trick of putting the greatest contrast between light and dark on the place where I wished the viewer's gaze to go first, though this was but a simple portrait, not a great work of art. I wanted Papa's face to be the focal point, but looking him in the eye to draw him was excruciating, especially in light of the new and terrible thought that had dawned Upon me: Were my courses overdue? This afternoon, by the time I commenced Upon the preliminary work on a primed canvas, I was half out of my mind.

"I cannot Understand it, Sofi," Papa said. It was well after the midday meal; Papa was sitting placidly between Europa and Asdrubale in the shade of the arcade outside my little studio. Behind him, Papa's old servant from when he was a boy, Bartolomeo, waved a fan as I painted in the gray-green tones of the Underpainting while calculating and recalculating the dates of my courses. "If Michelangelo was so Unwell, why did he not say so? If I had known he was failing, I would have never wanted to impose on him by letting you go there."

I had just told Papa why he must not bother Michelangelo now by sending him a study I had done of Asdrubale for this new portrait. Although I was displeased with it, Papa was quite charmed by the little drawing and wished to give it to the Maestro immediately, since the Maestro had thought so highly of my earlier drawing of Asdrubale getting bitten by a crab. I could think of nothing worse than reminding the Maestro of me at this time. I silently thanked the maulstick on which I leaned for keeping my hand still. I usually do not need one, certainly not in the Underpainting stage, which is meant only to establish the depth of the shading and to provide a base for the actual colors. Did Papa notice my dependence on the maulstick since my return?

"No one knows when he is to be ill, Papa. The Maestro was well when I first arrived. Things--he--took a turn for the worse."

Glad for a distraction, I shook my head at Asdrubale, who was wiggling even more than was his custom by Papa's side. Europa's lips were curled, ready as usual to laugh at her little brother's weaknesses.

"Well, I am very sorry to have burdened him," said Papa, "though I trust,
cara mia,
you behaved with your usual consideration. If you think I should not send him your work just now, I won't. But I must send him my thanks, after the great kindness he has shown to our family, inviting you to visit him not just once, but twice."

Sick with guilt, I dabbed my brush into the paint on my palette. I noticed my little brother bucking like a cat in a bag. "Asdrubale, are you well?"

"I have to make water!" he wailed. He danced in place, his little white dog nipping at his ankles in excitement.

"Buffone!"
Europa exclaimed. "Sofi, paint him just as he is! Make people looking at this picture in a hundred years from now think he has the most terrible case of fleas."

"I do have fleas!" he moaned.

Europa whooped with laughter as Papa waved a benevolent hand. "Hurry up and go, Asdrubale."

"Would you like me to keep working, Papa?" I asked pleasantly.
Sweetest Holy Mary, false monster that I am, please let me go hide my head under a pillow.

"Of course. Bartolomeo, could you please keep fanning? Sofi looks warm."

"Must I stay?" said Europa.

"Yes," said Papa. "You'll run straight back to the cook's boy if I let you go."

"No, I won't."

"Correct," said Papa. "You will not. You are fourteen, old enough to study Latin or draw or apply yourself to some other useful exercise. Surely you do not want to waste your mind."

Europa cast down her gaze, but not before flashing him a look that announced that she would go her own way.

I drew in a deep breath. "Europa, please get back behind Papa as you were. That's right--keep your arm in alignment with his. We're trying to create a pattern of movement." I sniffed my sprig of rosemary. Let it bring me the concentration needed to keep my countenance free from incriminating looks of terror.

"I'm tired of standing so twisted," said Europa. "Do I have to?"

"Would you prefer to line Up like blackbirds on a clothesline?" My light tone belied the heavy knot coiling in my belly.

She waved the posy of jasmine she was holding with the Utmost boredom. "Yes."

I inhaled deeply of the rosemary. Outside, the bells of San Giorgio began their off-key clanging, marking the hour. "You remember what I told you about how the great artists give their paintings drama by having their subjects sit with their faces turned in one direction and their bodies in another, yes? And this device is called--"

She drew out each syllable with all the tragic weariness of a thwarted fourteen-year-old.
"Contrapposto.
"

"And that word means--?"

She heaved her martyr's sigh, then assumed her position of looking over Papa's shoulder while facing away from him. " 'Set against.' Truly, Sofi, I don't know why you make me stay. You've already done a study of me and you're not even doing the real painting now, just the Ugly gray shadows."

Her eye caught on something behind me. Before I could move, she darted inside my studio and snatched Up the oval miniature portrait drying on the table.

"What's this?" She squinted at it, then yelped as I lunged at her.

"Put it down!"

She held it behind her, out of my reach. "What do these letters mean?" Heat poured into my face. No one was meant to see this. In a moment of foolishness, I had added the emblem Tiberio and I had devised to my own self-portrait. A grown woman of seven-and-twenty, acting like a l ovesick girl.

At that moment, Francesca stumped down the arcade, a letter tied with a cream-colored ribbon raised from her man-sized hand. "Signore Amilcare! A man come, he bring you this." She gave Papa the letter, exposing the black ring of sweat Under her arm, then stepped back and eagerly wiped her hands on her apron, even as old Ottavio the doorman stormed out, his sword teetering on his hip in its rusty scabbard.

"She stole it from my hands,
signore
!" Ottavio cried. "Messages, they are to be delivered by me!"

"Whose seal is this?" Papa turned the thick folded paper in his hands. "Look how large--it must be someone important."

I sagged onto the stool behind me.

Mamma sailed out onto the arcade, gripping the striped skirt of her overgown. "
Signore!
Count Broccardo was here with a band of attendants, delivering this letter. Something terrible must have happened! Have you broken the law?"

Papa distractedly lifted Up Mamma, who had sunk to her knees to pray. He wagged his finger at the letter. "I know this seal. It is the King of Spain's."

"The King of Spain wrote to you?" Mamma's voice was rich with wonder.

I struggled for breath. The King of Spain? Yes, he rules this state in Italy, as he does much of Europe and the New World, but he was seldom heard from in Cremona. As rich and important as Tiberio's family is, could they have involved the King in a marriage proposal?

My other sisters ran out to Us, Minerva's hands bound before her in red embroidery silks, little Anna Maria connected to her by the ball of silk that she had been winding around Minerva's hands, and Lucia holding the shears.

Minerva's fresh complexion was splotched with excitement. "Papa, have you business with the King?"

"Where's Asdrubale?" Papa said. "I want everyone to witness this. Asdrubale! Sofonisba--hand me one of your paint knives."

My brother hopped outside, his codpiece askew. "Yes, Papa?"

Papa ran my paint knife Under the disc of crimson wax. The weighty paper crackled as he Unfolded the letter. "Pay attention, everyone. You are about to witness a moment of great import. Not every day does a family hear from their King."