by Lynn Cullen
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 Papà bought in celebration, she will come trundling through the door, asking what is wrong with me. I told Papà 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 Papà 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 Papà’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,” Papà said. It was well after the midday meal; Papà was sitting placidly between Europa and Asdrubale in the shade of the arcade outside my little studio. Behind him, Papà’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 Papà 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, Papà 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 Papà notice my dependence on the maulstick since my return?
“No one knows when he is to be ill, Papà. 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 Papà’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 Papà, “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 Papà waved a benevolent hand. “Hurry up and go, Asdrubale.”
“Would you like me to keep working, Papà?” 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 Papà. “You’ll run straight back to the cook’s boy if I let you go.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Correct,” said Papà. “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 Papà 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 Papà’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 Papà 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?” Papà 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?”
Papà 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. “Papà, have you business with the King?”
“Where’s Asdrubale?” Papà said. “I want everyone to witness this. Asdrubale! Sofonisba—hand me one of your paint knives.”
My brother hopped outside, his codpiece askew. “Yes, Papà?”
Papà 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.”
ITEM: Of the three wives of King Felipe of Spain, his first, his cousin Princess Maria of Portugal, died at the age of seventeen from bearing him a son. His second, Queen Mary of England, died from heartbreak or a tumor in her womb, depending on who tells the tale. His third is young Elisabeth of Valois. King Felipe had asked Elizabeth of England to marry him when her half sister Queen Mary died. She refused.
ITEM:Remember when in Spain to address members of the Royal Family and grandees with Don or Doña before their given names. Distinguished persons of lesser rank may also be referred to as don or doña, but in the written form, the term is not capitalized.
ITEM: It is true, one may paint upon an unprepared canvas, but for permanent work it is a loss of effort and a waste of time.
31 JANUARY 1560
Mendoza Palace, Guadalajara
These terrible spots of ink. It is a bad quill, but if I wait for the wine to clear from my head to cut another nib, I shall never get this record started, and I want to write of my travels to Spain. I can hear Francesca over in the bed, muttering in her peasant’s Italian. She wishes I would come to sleep so that she can rest, but this chamber is so cold, how does one slumber? They have no fireplaces in this country, only braziers burning olive pits in the center of the room. I can see my breath.
I have made no entries in my notebook since I left home. Fifteen rainy days in a coach to Genoa, nine days below deck on a caravel whose very timbers, along with one’s guts, were nearly torn apart by the winter seas, eight days in Barcelona recovering from a fever in a lice-infested inn, twelve days on a teeth-rattling coach ride to Zaragoza, and sixteen days spent picking through snowy mountain passes and across high plains on a disgruntled mule are not conducive to putting pen to paper, especially in the watchful company of one’s two rich cousins from Milan and their silent young wives. And no sooner had said cousins delivered Francesca and me in Madrid, their duty duly discharged and their hopes of meeting the King dashed, than I was in a conveyance again. There was no time to write, but plenty of it to chastise myself for believing as I had readied for Spain that Tiberio’s betrothal letter would arrive to save me. I had never truly thought it would come to this. Fool. Now I am the King’s ward and, as such, His Majesty’s property to Utilize as he pleases. At least my sisters may have my dowry portion.
Meanwhile, as I was making my way across treacherous terrain, the new Queen of Spain was threading through frozen mountainous passages of her own. Her journey had begun in Paris, where she had been wed by proxy to the King. They were to meet for the first time in Guadalajara, where I was required to attend their Union, the beginning of my duties in my new role as one of Her Majesty’s ladies.
For this reason I suffered to trundle these last two days over stony Castilian roads from Madrid, in a coach jammed with eight chattering perfumed Spanish ladies clutching their shawls and their small-bladdered dogs, with Francesca cutting her eyes accusingly at the pups each time we hit a bump. After a night four-to-a-bed with these ladies and their female companions at an inn along the way, I can assure you that the lapdog’s ability to draw fleas away from its owner is highly overesteemed.
At last this morning my travels came to an end. I stood in a host of ladies lined Up farthingale to farthingale in the plaza before the palace of the Duke of Mendoza, all of Us straining to glimpse the new Queen. Under the four hundred blooming orange trees the duke had caused to be brought to Guadalajara from Valencia, deer and rabbits, prettily tethered to the trees for the Queen’s amusement, tugged at their satin collars while trumpets played, children sang, and women laughed with joy in spite of the cold wind tearing at their veils. For even if the new Queen turned out to be Ugly and dull, the people rejoiced to have her, thanks to the deal made between their King and her father, the King of France. Her marriage sealed the treaty between mortal enemies, and now war with France was lifted, and with it, crushing taxes. Isabel de la Paz—Elisabeth of the Peace—the Spanish call her.
Now this fourteen-year-old girl—a child Europa’s age—eighteen years younger than her powerful new husband, rode into the plaza on a white palfrey draped in cloth of silver that
was trimmed with tinkling silver bells. She looked this way and that, her dark eyes bright with excitement, the ends of her Undressed brown hair slapping against her saddle. Like Europa, she seemed ready to laugh, perhaps too ready to do so, with her lips curled on the verge of a chuckle. So this was the child for whom I put aside any hope of becoming a maestra because the King, Upon hearing about me from the Duke of Alba, thought his little bride might enjoy painting lessons.
My Lady’s steed jingled to a stop before the King’s dais. The silvery bells still pinging in the freezing wind, the Duke of Mendoza stepped forward and plucked the Queen from her horse, then, as unceremoniously as if she were a bag of gold, handed her to her husband. She pulled back her chin in a bashful smile.
“What are you looking at?” the King snapped. “The gray hairs in my beard?”
The musicians stopped playing. The King’s men looked Up from bended knees, the plumes in their hats fluttering above their frozen expressions. All of Us ladies who were close at hand held our breath—at least I did, there beneath one of the flowering orange trees. It became so quiet that all you could hear was the wine splashing in the fountain in the middle of the plaza, a child crying, and the deer and rabbits, trying to shake off their satin collars.
For while the King at two-and-thirty is fair-haired and almost delicate, with exquisitely shaped brows, a small straight nose, and pink-rimmed ears, there is something vaguely terrifying about him. Perhaps it is the way he stands so rigidly Upright. His thin figure nearly vibrates like a plucked guitar string from the effort. Or perhaps it is the manner in which he responds to those bold enough to address him. He pins the speaker with a coolly polite stare, not releasing the hapless creature Until he or she trails off in a muddle of doubt and dismay. It could be simply the disquieting contrast his lush red lips and generous jaw present next to the rest of his refined features. He has the sensuous mouth of a voluptuary, a passionate seducer of women, not a cold and silent king. Perhaps I make too much of these things, influenced by the knowledge that insanity runs through the Spanish Royal Family like rot through a luscious apple. Madness is as much a part of the King’s Hapsburg blood as his jaw and blond, now graying, hair.
