Alex Connor - Isle of the Dead

And I waited too.

Aretino was talking of some dancer, some new whore, and paused, his sharp eyes startled. His hands, those bloodied hands, clutched for his throat as though some bone was stuck there. Titian turned, reached for his friend, but Aretino was already falling, dead before he found the floor. He never saw me tamper with his food. He never saw me pass a plate to him unlike my master’s own.

A single heartbeat took him from this world. May demons take him to the next.

The news went round Venice that Pietro Aretino was dead. Choked on his food. Died for his gluttony. A hundred victims revelled at his passing. Freed from his vicious pen, loosened from his lies and calumnies, out of reach of his thefts and plots and killings, the city is at peace. The Dog of Venice joins the Whore, and the Merchant also. The triumvirate of evil is now done.

And so he ends. And so the story ends.

Outside the sea is still, the moon red as a watermelon in the heated night. Fogs that have plagued us for months melt in the warm air while torches flicker on the canals and on the tide. Venice sleeps on, the sweet sea curled like a blanket around her. The church bells sleep also, as do the water rats. Behind locked doors, couples turn to each other and cling; somewhere a mother holds a child against her heart; and as the hours turn through the beating of the night, a clock chimes in the breaking dawn. The baker has now woken, and the priest rises and bows his head towards the cross.

And in his studio, Titian works on.

Epilogue

The Titian portrait of Angelico Vespucci was held by the UK police Art Squad at a secret location. It was kept with a number of another valuable retrieved works of art at a destination known to only a half-dozen select members of the police force. Hidden in a high-security building in the countryside, heavily alarmed and patrolled by dogs, impenetrable and secluded. Even the nearby villages had no idea of its whereabouts, or its purpose. Yet, on 4 November – on the anniversary of Larissa Vespucci’s murder, the Titian’s portrait of The Skin Hunter disappeared.

No one has ever recovered the painting of Angelico Vespucci.

But in Venice the rumour still holds.

When the portrait emerges, so will the man.

And they wait.

Bibliography

Titian – Ian G. Kennedy (Taschen)

Titian – Cecilia Gibellini (ed) (Rizzoli Art Classics)

Venetian Painting – John Steer (Thames and Hudson)

The World of Titian – Jay Williams (Time Life)

Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting. Exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington

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