Voices from the Past Part 65

Memory...it gives you what you want and supplies absurdities as well, like the dream that I had in Florence, recurrent: I was lying on my cot... I was dead... I was carried to a morgue and dumped there, among cadavers...blood and mould saturated my drawings and my writings...my canvases were being eaten by termites...

how well I remember that dream.

I remember a fat Milanese who used to haunt me while I was decorating the walls and ceiling of the Sala delle a.s.se: he was a pompous member of the Sforza household, a great nose-picker, who had done nothing at all through his long life. While I worked, he sat, hunched in a princely brocade chair, in elegant clothes, sometimes asleep in spite of my a.s.sistants, ladders, and scaffolding.

That Sala delle a.s.se work was boring. Like many a commission it was compulsory. To arrange ma.s.ses of foliage on walls and ceiling seemed absurd. Designs were refused, at the outset. The employment of immense tree trunks satisfied. As I painted, I mingled knotted cords with the foliage, intermingled branches, established a rhythm. I kept my greens from becoming monotonous. I achieved a kind of helmeted bark on the tree trunks.

Before I finished, the Sala's canopy, the forest umbrella, became more meaningful.

My fat friend slept on and on.

How much did I earn? I have forgotten. Was I ever paid?

I would like to return to the castle and walk through that Sala; I would like to be alone; I would like to try to think as I thought in those days; I would like to sense my aspirations; I would sit on a bench under that deluge of foliage: I would list geology, hydraulics, painting, sculpture, geometry, anatomy, medicine...

Cloux

When Michelangelo showed me his cartoon for his mural in the Consejo, I complained that a scene of idling nude bathers was not the best way to depict war. He was critical of my cartoon, saying "you are more concerned with horses than men."

My objective was to show war's anguish: pain was to be sixty feet long by twenty feet wide. Twelve hundred square feet of pain. All of my draughtsmans.h.i.+p went into this Anghiari conflict: I painted rage, rage against war, the rage of dying men, the rage of the wounded, my hate, my affirmation.

All of 1503 and 1504 went into my preliminary sketches.

I often rode about the countryside to sketch horses, sketch riders; I sketched in the Sforza stables; the stablemen posed for me; my apprentices posed. Friends had their chance to exhibit their horses in action. Gamin posed. The militia.

So, I did not paint a wall: I painted the smash of steel against steel, the plunge of steel into flesh, the grunting of frightened horse against frightened horse, men stumbling, men falling, dying, their helmets of fear, helmets of pain...yellows, blues, greys, reds.

On Friday, June 6, 1505, I began to paint the Anghiari battle. It was my greatest challenge. Here I could render something more meaningful than the madonnas. Not Christ on the cross, but man on the cross. Pigment and light were to come together in harmony. The day that I began to paint was beautiful but the weather changed quickly for the worst. Some of my a.s.sistants were called away-they were ordered to attend a trial.

The wind caught me unprepared and ripped the cartoon.

In a few minutes the storm took over in earnest. I laid aside my brushes and pigments and dismissed the remaining apprentices. Half of Florence was inundated that night.

PAZZIA b.e.s.t.i.a.lISSIMA!

That is man's disease: he can not refrain from political madness. Again and again he is willing to be duped.

The central group in my Anghiari mural is the struggle for a military flag: I painted life-size horses, life- size men, life-size hatred: the central struggle fans out across the mural, expressing this futility.

I seldom eat at the King's table although I am always welcome. Sometimes it seems like a long walk to the chateau, sometimes it is raining. In the evening fifteen courses are certainly gourmet adventures, but a little late at night.

The King often sends me three or four trays-a retinue of pages brings them to my studio, laughter and ribaldry, and then decorum as they file into the studio. Souffles, artichokes in cream and b.u.t.ter sauce, crepes, pastries, glaces, Vouvray. I am partial to grapes and someone on the royal staff hunts them up for me.

Sometimes I find five or six silver dishes with as many kinds of nuts. Francis claims that he could not survive for a month on my vegetarian diet.

Maturina fusses over almost everything the King sends:

"Now, let me see, let me see," she mutters. "You should eat this first...it's better for you that way...and these pastries, why they're much too rich for you!"

She arranges the dishes on the dining table (you must not eat in the studio); she places my chair, lights the candles, unfolds my napkin and spreads it across my lap.

What a splendid old ragam.u.f.fin she is! Too bad she has lost most of her teeth; her features are leaden, her hair is twisted under a net in lumps, her arms dangle crookedly. She is bones hooked together with shrunken gut. She has been working as a servant for thirty-five years, she tells me. I've had her for fifteen years.

Cloux

The French call this place Le Clos-Luce, and it is a bright enclosure. I think of the royalty who have lived here through the years, the many mistresses who came and went. As I look across the lawn of the manor house I can see the little chapel of St. Hubert and the rooftops of the chateau; it often seems to me that I have been here before! With Francesco, Salai and Giovanni busy in the adjoining studio, I try to believe I am a young man...time is of no importance!

Salai rushed in as I worked at my easel.

"Look, look at this..."

He had found a sketch among my sketches, a sketch he made in Florence long ago, when he was about ten. It shows a bicycle. There it is on a sc.r.a.p of paper, among p.o.r.nographic scribbles and graffiti.

"You did pretty well, riding that thing...at first," I reminded.

"There weren't any brakes, remember?"

"Well, when I connected the chain drive to the pedals and adjusted the handlebars you rode it into the Arno."

"Some splas.h.!.+" said Francesco, coming in with Giovanni.

"You could have gotten the bicycle out of the river...it floated," reminded Giovanni.

"I couldn't get hold of it...the current was too fast!"

"It should have been made of steel, to last." I said.

"Let's make a bicycle for the King," suggested Salai.

"I'll show him my drawing...no, you make one for him. I can see the courtiers riding about...we can improve on the one we made in Florence."