Voices from the Past Part 75

I could not always arrange for a musician; when she posed during those silences I felt the bonds of our friends.h.i.+p...when we ate together, when she described her travels, it was another aspect of our friends.h.i.+p.

I was welcome at her home. Her distinguished husband bought fine pieces of art. They were happy to share.

At her home and in my studio we often talked about my Anghiari and she was eager to follow its progression.

October 29th

Masculine skies...feminine skies...at this season of the year they are mostly masculine, with snow falling, wind blowing. My feet are cold because of the weather, or is it because my fireplace chimney needs cleaning? Cold, I have moved to the library.

As I mull over my papers I observe the great books around me. I must concentrate. I must push on. There is so much to be done with the organization of my treatises.

So much.

Maturina rouses me.

"You are cold, Maestro...it is chilly in this room."

So, I am cold!

Perhaps I have cathedral sickness!

It is good to be writing again. My journal suffers when my hand is unsteady.

Francesco is away; that troubles me.

I wish I were young and could bend horseshoes instead of two sheets of paper.

Maturina has found a bird stricken by the cold; we hover over it. A dove. A flyer. Where are my sketches for the glider? The one Francesco and I tested. He must find it for me when he returns.

Interruptions...interruptions...

Francesco has adopted a stray cat, from among the dozens that haunt the chateau. The cat beds under his easel, among cleaning rags. He always stinks of turpentine and oil.

I have never seen a cat so eager to sleep; perhaps half of his life has gone into carousing. He is bone white, has one orange ear, a twisted nose, one orange foot, and a black-tipped tail. His greenish eyes glare out of skinniness.

Crabby.

Maturina hates him.

Francesco calls him "Michelangelo."

My four-poster must have been made for a cardinal or bishop, or someone's mistress. I am tempted to remove the garnet canopy and drapes. But it's a snug bed when it's cold. I often lie there and watch the fire playing about.

It's a chance to weigh the past-and plan ahead.

Sometimes, when I am very tired and have turned in early, Francesco rolls his easel into the room, and sits on the side of the bed and we talk brush strokes or ways of grinding the new pigments, how much overpainting is feasible, the dangers of black as an under pigment. Shop talk.

Cloux

ANDREA SALAINO-Why did I adopt him in the first place?

That's an easy answer: because I loved him!

What a waif Salai was! I took him into my household, my studio, twenty-some years ago. It can't be possible that so much time has lapsed.

He stole...stole s.h.i.+rts, shoes, brushes, gold leaf. He stole gold leaf and sold it. He took money. I was right to christen him "Salai." It took months to straighten him out...if I really did. Yellow-headed, curly-headed, tall, foolish, loveable... when he puts his arm around me...

He is a capable artist, incapable of continuous effort; perhaps time can change him but I doubt it.

Now that he is gone...I often think I hear his voice...

I think, ah, he has come back for a while...

The King and Queen have asked me how I had hoped to cast Il Cavallo, so I placed my drawings on tables in the salon, and we walked from one to another and I explained them.

"Mon Pere," Francis mumbled, as he examines drawings and sketches, "Mon Pere...these are workable."

I am silent.

"When did you begin actual casting?" the Queen asks. I try to disregard her obvious skepticism.

She is dressed in white and gold; he has on one of his dark cloaks lined with down; he has rings set with emeralds; she reeks of cologne and sweat. Her pinched face is regally ugly-somehow provincial.

"I began casting the horse in December...'93...casting it on its side. I placed the mould in a shallow cavity. I opened it on the left side. I could have completed the casting if there had been sufficient bronze. I am sure you know that cannons had priority at that time."

They knew, too, about the Gascon bowmen.

I understand they had watched the archers, as they used my clay model for target. Watched my Cavallo disintegrate.

I watched, hating, hating those bowmen. How they cheered as arrows pierced the model.

Now I watched the King and Queen.

"In Milan, in those days, the Sforza stables were at my disposal. I chose a magnificent horse-Cermonino-as my model. Alone, or with a groom, I would ride into the country, where it was pleasant and we were free of gapers. I would dismount and sketch my horse. Or the groom would lead him back and forth, while I sketched, to record a sense of motion.

"Other times I would ride Cermonino, race him, sweat him; then I'd draw his distended mouth, his swollen nostrils, his wild mane...

"Leaning forward in the saddle, baton in hand, the Duke was to symbolize leaders.h.i.+p and power...he was pleased...his baton would have been more than thirty feet above the ground."