Kerry Postle - The Woman in the Painting

Sebastiano noticed. His already cloud-eaten face turned blacker still. He tugged on the curtain repeatedly. It resisted his pull.

‘Damn! Damn!’

The atmosphere in the studio cranked up to thunderous; in an instant the velvet curtain had crashed to the floor.

‘Take it to the side, for heaven’s sake!’ At the flick of his wrist he conjured up two apprentices. They scuttled over and made the curtain disappear.

The girl was still waiting. Still amused. Still unperturbed.

‘It’s too warm to be wearing this,’ she said, as she picked up the fur-lined cape hanging over the back of her chair. She draped it over her left shoulder nevertheless, while stooping over to pick up a laurel wreath from her basket. She wore it on her head like a green crown. I watched her, grateful for the patches of light and pockets of calm she had brought in with her. The maestro’s bad temper, like a poison-tipped arrow, breached the walls of almost every other person in the studio, while she remained inviolate.

We had never observed Sebastiano paint this model before, though we’d occasionally heard them behind the velvet. We liked to imagine the scene, full of lust and desire. But today, with no curtain to shield our eyes, nor fuel our imaginations, we would get the opportunity to see Sebastiano and his model in the flesh. There was a sufficient whiff of excitement at the prospect to cut through the dark clouds of the morning.

We buried our heads in cleaning, grinding, planning, sketching. Every apprentice made the workshop seem busy. The noises of wooden brushes dropping on floors, paper tearing, knives cutting, chair legs scraping, had the space filled with life so that Sebastiano and his model would soon believe that no one was interested in what they were doing or saying.

But we were.

Whenever we looked something up in the Cennini, or asked a fellow apprentice for some help, we watched out of the corners of our eyes. Our maestro performed his role much as we’d envisaged, with the wandering hands of an attentive paramour. Yet his model seemed to have forgotten the yielding lines our heads had written for her, replacing them with some feisty ones of her own. She sat, her back straight, on a chair on a raised platform, bathed in the light that flooded in through the window.

Sebastiano went to hang a pearl drop from her ear.

‘Please don’t. I can do this myself,’ she told him, with a shrug. No, Sebastiano’s model was not responding in the way we’d expected at all. Sebastiano’s fingers dropped from her ear to stroke her face; she reeled her head back like an untamed horse. The maestro attempted to smooth down her dress; she brushed his hand away. He caught her hand in his; she withdrew it, a delicate hand from a coarse, ill-fitting glove.

‘I am the great Sebastiano!’ he said, smoothing his own dark hair back with disappointed fingers. His widow’s peak and pointed beard made his face look, in that moment, like a heart. Vulnerable, he cast his eye around the studio. Had we witnessed his humiliation as the girl rejected him? Overheard the girl’s insolence as she refused his help? Our studied concentration on the jobs in front of us, and our louder-than-usual discussions regarding work-related matters, reassured him. ‘The great Sebastiano!’ he repeated, as he returned to the task in hand: the painting of the girl.

‘Your hand needs to be pointing towards your heart,’ he said. Afraid to touch her now, he modelled the pose for this lowborn girl himself.

I stole a glance at Giulio. His eyes twinkled with tears of mirth. To see the power this model wielded over the maestro entertained him.

‘Now turn to the left and look at me. Look at me. Yes, that’s right.’

I too was amused.

Yet something niggled at the back of my mind. Who was this worthless girl to treat the ‘great Sebastiano’ so? And how could he let her?

There was no money in it. And, from appearances today, no profit of the sort Sebastiano was interested in either. Whatever he was hoping to get from her it was apparent that he wasn’t getting it. Nor ever would. I did not know whether to applaud or curse her but one thing was clear – she was not the girl we’d all assumed she was.

‘When can you come again?’ The sitting had come to an end and the maestro’s voice was little, beseeching.

‘I don’t want to sit for you again. You’ve finished.’

‘I haven’t. The hand, pointing to your heart. It’s not quite right.’

‘You are the great Sebastiano ,’ she said, her voice mocking, ‘you don’t need me to finish your painting.’

‘You can’t stop coming. I forbid—’

The girl raised her hand. She looked around the workshop. It was silent. Conspicuously so.

‘Sebastiano!’ Her voice rang out like a warning bell. If she’d intended to bring the maestro to his senses, she hadn’t succeeded.

Lust and pride, a heady concoction, had got the better of Sebastiano the great. And it made for the most unedifying of sights.

‘You WILL come back … Powerful Romans pay a lot for a portrait by Sebastiano Luciani …’ Bitterness twisted itself around his words. ‘I have noble families queuing up for the privilege … yes, it’s a privilege … I paint you and receive nothing in return. Girls like you …’

She threw her head back and lifted her shoulders. She’d heard enough. ‘Remember, I did not ask to be painted.’ She was strong, proud.

‘I have an agreement with your father. I have paid him …’

‘To PAINT me,’ she said, giving way momentarily to exasperation. ‘And now you have. But as for—’ She broke off, aware that she had an audience. ‘As for all the rest, believe me when I say that I will not be bought.’

We silent apprentices listened on. Excitement crackled in the air.

‘Besides, my father needs me. There’s a grain shortage going on. It might not affect you, but times are hard for ordinary working Romans.’ She paused. ‘And you made a promise you’d be finished by now. A promise.’

‘Margarita. I can gi—’

‘Ssh!’ she hissed, trying to silence him. ‘It’s not about the money. All right, I will stay, for a little while longer, if you need to paint my hand. But trust me when I say I am deaf to all other entreaties.’ We waited.

But as maestro painted model, they said nothing more to each other. Pockets of chat and the sounds of work built up again. The show was over. For the moment.

Giulio was the first to retake the floor. He had finished with the quills and was now back on the lapis lazuli. His eyes twinkled with mischief. ‘They found another body in the Tiber this morning, wearing nothing but a pendant of St Stefano.’ He waited for the gasp. Instead, just when Giulio thought it was over, the disagreement between Sebastiano and his feisty model bubbled up again. Apprentices’ eyes shot to the warring pair but Giulio drew them back again. He would not be outdone. He’d found the maestro’s humiliation as amusing as the rest of us, but what was a lovers’ tiff compared to the gruesome tale he had to tell? Lovers’ tiff? It wasn’t even that. No, Giulio had had his fill of listening to the desperate bleating of a lovesick fool chasing some girl the like of which he could pick up easily in one of Rome’s many brothels.