Scarpia

by Piers Paul Read

  ‘But my husband has not paid you a fat commission, though of course –’

  ‘That is not the point. I chose as my model not the Baroness Scarpia di Rubaso but a beautiful woman, and here I am painting a blue dress.’

  ‘But there is my face and, well, my arms,’ said Paola.

  ‘Let me show you something,’ said Ringel. He went to a table by the wall, shuffled through some papers and came back with what appeared to be several pencil sketches. He mounted the platform, brusquely told Paola to make room for him on the sofa, and sat down next to her. ‘When I was in Paris,’ he said, ‘I went to visit David. He is working on a most extraordinary painting – a subject from antiquity – the legend of the Sabine women. As you know, they were abducted by the Romans, who were short of women; their fathers came to avenge their rape, and the women placed themselves between the two armies.’

  ‘I know the legend,’ said Paola. ‘My brother would say we are descended from those Sabine women.’

  ‘David’s painting will be a masterpiece. I cannot begin to describe its splendour. And at the centre are three figures – two helmeted warriors, one with a raised spear, another a raised sword, both with shields, and between them a young woman, her arms outstretched to keep the antagonists apart. Now these –’ he showed Paola the papers he held in his hand – ‘are two discarded sketches of that woman which David gave to me and said I could keep. See the way, even in these sketches, the look of gentleness on her face, and the way that gentleness is expressed in her whole body, which we see lightly shrouded, falling over her thigh, clinging to her breasts.’

  Paola looked at the drawings. ‘He is a skilled draughtsman.’

  ‘Of course. But he is much more, because you see in this painting that the essence of a woman is as much in her body as in her face. And it is that essence that I want to capture in you, not in a portrait in which you might be the wife of a banker, but like a woman from antiquity – a vestal virgin perhaps, or even one of your ancestors, a Sabine woman.’

  Paola said nothing.

  ‘The great glory of art in our age,’ Ringel went on, ‘is to depict humanity in all its beauty and grandeur – including the beauty of women. Think not just of David but the marble statues of Venus by Canova –’

  ‘I will not pose naked as Venus,’ said Paola.

  Ringel smiled. ‘I am not asking you to pose naked,’ he said, ‘but to exchange this dull dress for a costume from antiquity – there are a number in the armoire.’

  ‘And what?’ asked Paola. ‘Sit in the same pose here on the sofa?’

  ‘If you have the strength and patience,’ said Ringel, ‘I would like you to stand by a column or a plinth.’

  Paola turned to look at Ringel, as if to assess the sincerity behind his words. He was looking not at her but at David’s sketches: he seemed genuinely enthralled by his master’s art.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if I can find something to wear.’

  They climbed down off the platform and went together into the room with the armoire and sofa.

  ‘Perhaps I could be the nymph Larunda,’ said Paola.

  ‘Who was Larunda?’

  ‘She is our household goddess. Our villa is built in the ruins of her temple.’

  Ringel opened the armoire and sifted through the costumes. ‘Was she beautiful?’

  ‘According to Ovid, she was beautiful, but talked too much. She told Juno that Jupiter was having an affair with Juturna, the wife of Janus. Jupiter cut out her tongue and ordered Mercury to take her to the gates of the underworld. But Mercury fell in love with her. They made love on the way and she gave birth to twins.’

  ‘Would this suit Larunda?’ Ringel took from the rack by the armoire a white muslin dress that, to judge from its pristine condition, had not been worn before.

  Paola took the hanger and held the diaphanous dress at arm’s length. ‘Yes. That will do.’

  Ringel left the room. Paola, with some difficulty, removed her blue dress, wondering how she would put it on again without Nunzi to help her. She then removed her underclothes, stockings and shoes and put on the muslin dress. There was a tape which she tied beneath her bosom; the skirts fell to below the knee. She looked at herself in the gilt-framed mirror. The shadow of her pubic hair could be seen through the muslin and her nipples made pinnacles in the white cloth. She could pass for a nymph.

  Paola walked barefoot into the studio. Ringel had pushed the sofa to the side of the platform, and replaced it with a column on which he had placed an urn. He looked at her with a professional eye. ‘That’s fine, don’t you think?’

  ‘It is revealing,’ said Paola.

  ‘Which is as it should be,’ said Ringel. ‘Beauty should not be concealed.’

  She mounted the platform, and stood by the plinth.

  ‘Could you try looking at the urn? Imagine that it contains the ashes of your father?’

  ‘Do you want me to look sad?’

  ‘No. That was a bad idea.’ He followed her onto the platform. ‘Perhaps there should be a garland in your hair. But we can find that later.’ He took her arm and placed her elbow against the column. ‘And if you could just turn your head a little this way.’ His face was close to hers: again, the smell of sweat and paint. ‘Could you remain standing like that?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And the fall of the cloth. That is all-important.’ He pulled the muslin down over her left breast, his knuckle brushing against her nipple; then the same with the right. ‘If you could turn your leg a little . . .’ He went behind her and crouched to first raise and then drop the muslin so that it fell over her flank. He rearranged the creases and she felt his fingers trace their lines on her buttocks.

  ‘Surely,’ she said, embarrassed that she was breathless as she spoke, ‘you won’t portray me from behind.’

  ‘No, but the whole thing must look right. Of course the angle from the front matters more.’ He came round, not looking her in the eye, apparently intent on arranging the robe covering her body. He knelt once again to adjust the hem, his nose an inch from her thigh. She stood motionless, looking down at his curly locks. Her breathing quickened.

  ‘There,’ said Ringel. ‘I think that’s about right.’ He stood up, climbed down off the platform and returned to his easel. ‘You cannot imagine,’ he said, starting to sketch with charcoal on the blank canvas, ‘what a fine work this will be – equal, I hope, to anything by David or Canova.’

  Paola barely heard what he was saying. Words did not penetrate the trance. She stood without moving, her breathing now subsided, but her body still taut. Her mouth was set in a smile, her eyes looked at the back of the easel, at his three fingers clutching the charcoal, and at his nose – always the nose.

  After half an hour, Ringel stopped sketching. ‘That will do for now. We have made a fine start.’

  Her body relaxed. She stepped down from the platform in her bare feet.

  ‘Will you need help putting on your dress?’ asked Ringel in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

  ‘That would be kind,’ said Paola.

  They went into the side room. She stood facing the mirror. He came up behind her, reached round to untie the band beneath her breast, and lifted the dress up over her head. Naked, she turned and embraced him. He led her to the sofa. She lay back, looking not into his glowering eyes but at the point of his knobbly nose.

  *

  ‘Did the principessa change her dress this afternoon?’ asked Nunzi as she helped Paola change for dinner that evening.

  ‘No. Why?’ asked Paola.

  ‘Because someone very clumsy has buttoned up the back.’

  ‘Oh, that . . .’ said Paola. ‘Monsieur Ringel wanted to see how I would look in one of those costumes.’

  Nunzi understood that there was no need to say more.

  4

  The graphite drawing of Baroness Scarpia di Rubosa and her two children by Armand Ringel was completed by the beginning of October 1797, and deliv
ered, handsomely framed, to the Palazzo Marcisano. The parchment on which it had been drawn measured 30 x 40 centimetres. At the centre was Paola with her arms crossed, one to hold the hand of Francesca, the other to hold that of Pietro. The girl leaned against her mother, the boy sat erect. All faced the artist. Paola’s expression was gentle, Pietro’s impish, Francesca’s amused. The hair, the eyes, the features were all sketched in intricate detail. The children’s necks were lost in the ruffles of their clothes, while Paola’s neck and shoulders rose gracefully from the modest neckline of her dress. The lace and embroidery on the clothes were detailed only to the waist, after which they were subsumed into a cursory depiction of the folds of the mother’s dress.

  The prince and princess gave a small reception to show the drawing to their friends. Ringel was invited, but did not attend. All who saw it acknowledged the Frenchman’s genius. There were comparisons with Raphael, with Leonardo and, of course, with Ringel’s master, Jacques-Louis David. Paola moved among her guests with her husband and two children, at times taking Vitellio by the arm. Fulvia, Ludovico’s wife, came up to them. ‘Prince Spalato wants to commission Ringel,’ she said, ‘and asks how much you had to pay.’

  ‘It was not a commission,’ said Paola. ‘He wanted to draw Roman children with their mother and we were fortunate in that he chose these.’ She looked down at Pietro and Francesca at her side.

  Fulvia returned to the Prince Spalato and repeated what Paola had said.

  ‘Your sister-in-law is being modest,’ said Domenica Attavanti, who was standing next to the prince. ‘Monsieur Ringel said he wanted to draw the most beautiful woman in Rome.’

  ‘In the eyes of a Frenchman,’ said Prince Spalato, who thought his wife had a right to that claim.

  ‘In the eyes of a man, at any rate,’ said the marchesa with a smirk.

  Scarpia, who had imagined that the drawing would hang on a wall in his home, the Villa Larunda, was persuaded by Paola that it should remain at the Palazzo Marcisano to fill a gap left by one of the works taken by the French. ‘The Lord gives, the Lord takes away,’ said Scarpia acidly as he acquiesced.

  ‘The truth is,’ said Paola, ‘that we have been treated leniently by the commissioners. The Dorias, the Colonnas, the Orsinis and, of course, the Holy Father, have had to part with much more.’

  Was that leniency thanks to the influence of Armand Ringel? Scarpia did not ask. He remembered how Paola had wrinkled her nose in disgust when describing the physical appearance of the French painter, and felt confident that if Paola entertained thoughts of a lover, it was still of the inaccessible Bonaparte. A more observant man might have noticed that when on occasions he proposed joining her at night, though she never refused him, the look she gave him had subtly changed from ‘why not?’ to ‘if I must’.

  Paola continued to go out in the barouche on odd afternoons accompanied by Nunzi, supposedly to pay calls on her friends. The coachman, Arturo, came from her father’s stables and could be trusted not to let it be known that his mistress alighted at a house close to the Palazzo Mancini. This had been taken by Ringel to continue his study of Paola – a study with the eye but also with the fingers, the lips and the tongue – a study that transposed the beauty of the goddess Larunda onto canvas, but also the body of the beautiful Roman into an instrument of mutual pleasure.

  The sittings continued throughout October and November, and only became less frequent when Paola found, among the few costumes that were draped over the arm of a sofa, a waistband she had admired beneath the bust of her friend Graziella di Pozzo. There could be no doubt but that it was the same waistband: it was embroidered with beads of coloured Venetian glass, three or four of which Paola had once noticed were missing from one of the strands. ‘You are painting a portrait of the Marchesa di Pozzo?’ she asked at one sitting in a nonchalant tone of voice.

  ‘She told you?’ asked Ringel. ‘She said that she would rather you did not know.’

  ‘You find her beautiful?’

  ‘No. Not, at any rate, in comparison to you. But she has a voluptuous figure and is prepared to pose as Venus.’

  ‘Who is a greater goddess than Larunda.’

  ‘A greater goddess, but not a greater beauty,’ said Ringel.

  ‘And . . . in other ways, how does she compare?’

  Ringel frowned. ‘Does one compare a peach with an orange? They are simply different fruits, and one appreciates the variety.’

  ‘Of course.’ Her tone was ironic.

  ‘You are surely not jealous?’ said Ringel.

  Paola did not reply.

  ‘You presumably continue to perform your conjugal duties with your husband.’

  ‘I have no choice.’

  ‘You could feign illness.’

  ‘He would smell a rat.’

  ‘There is always a way,’ said Ringel, ‘but I don’t either demand or expect it. One does not own a lover. We are free. Possessiveness is an odious remnant of feudalism, when women were bought and sold.’

  Paola did not argue, and when they made love after the sitting the thought of her rival somehow enhanced her enjoyment, so the session ended with them both sated and exhausted.

  On leaving the studio, Paola took the waistband, and when she was next alone with Graziella, she handed it to her, saying: ‘You left this at Monsieur Ringel’s studio.’

  Graziella’s face went a deep red. ‘What? No. That isn’t mine.’

  ‘Yes, look, where the beads are missing,’ said Paola.

  ‘He must . . . I must . . .’

  ‘You are posing as Venus, so I understand.’

  ‘I never thought . . . I never meant . . .’

  ‘To offend me? But I have no rights over Monsieur Ringel,’ said Paola. ‘He explained the position. I am a peach. You are an orange. Or perhaps it is the other way around. He likes variety. Il est comme ça.’

  These last words seemed to satisfy both women: a genius like Ringel was not to be judged as other men. Both continued to visit him and, if anything, became closer friends.

  5

  Armand Ringel had never worried much about the reputations of the women he seduced. Even under the old feudal order, kings had their mistresses, cardinals their catamites and, where a lover was powerful or distinguished and a mistress a well-known beauty, affairs were something to boast about, not hide from the world. Reputations might have been important among the bourgeoisie, but since 1789 the revolutionaries had appropriated not just the property but the sexual freedom of the nobility. Ringel did not boast about his conquests, but it was taken for granted that the women who sat for him would also sleep with him if he so chose. It was therefore clear to those who visited Ringel’s studio, and were shown his work in progress, that the model for his painting of the nymph Larunda was unlikely to be an exception to the rule; and while many of those visitors were French, and so did not identify the model, some were Romans who did. As a result, however inconspicuous the visits paid by Paola to Ringel’s studio, and however much was spent on paying servants for their discretion, it soon became common knowledge that Paola was not just sitting for another painting by Ringel but also, as the Chevalier Spinelli put it, ‘lying recumbent for him as well’.

  Scarpia no longer moved in the same circles as the Chevalier Spinelli but, so porous was the skin of Roman society – so eager were masters and mistresses to share gossip with their servants and their servants with the servants of different households – that small rumours quickly became large certainties, confirmed by the pursed lips of Nunzi and the coachman. The fall of the Princess di Marcisano delighted the servants, because it showed that their masters and mistresses were no better than they were, and it thrilled their masters and mistresses because it had been so long awaited and watched for. No woman of such beauty and distinction had hitherto gone for so long without a cavaliere servente.

  The frisson was spiced, of course, by the fact that the cuckolded husband, Baron Scarpia, was a Sicilian with the unsophisticated, perhaps even barbar
ic passions that the Romans associated with the mongrel inhabitants of that island. Wagers were taken on whether he would be able to sustain the stoical sangfroid expected of the Roman husband when deceived by his wife. Letizia di Comastri said she knew from experience that Scarpia was quite capable of using his sword. Prince Paducci, fingering the scar on his cheek, concurred. Perhaps, the Chevalier Spinelli suggested, Ambassador Bonaparte should station a grenadier outside Ringel’s studio and escort him when he went out and about.

  Impatient as all were for the inevitable next act of the drama, no one dared to inform Scarpia of his new status, either with an anonymous letter or even a pasquinade. The Marchesa Attavanti, who had heard Letizia di Comastri’s remark about Scarpia and his sword, took it upon herself obliquely to warn Paola. ‘People seem to think,’ she said, ‘that you are still paying visits to Monsieur Ringel, and that if the baron, your husband, should find out –’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ said Paola sharply. ‘It is the cavaliere Sodano who should look to his laurels.’ The cavaliere Sodano was the cicisbeo of Graziella di Pozzo.

  The marchesa sighed. ‘As you please.’

  If Paola deceived herself about what others knew, so, too, Scarpia deceived himself about what was going on. He noticed, vaguely, his wife’s reluctance to sleep with him and her growing passivity in the conjugal bed. He noticed, too, her flushed complexion and the furtive glances when she returned from those afternoon calls on her friends. He no longer went to receptions or conversazioni, and when he occasionally noticed a smirk on the face of a servant or an embarrassed look on the face of a friend, he ascribed it to the derision directed since Faenza at all the officers of the pontifical army.

  More difficult to interpret were the anxious looks that Paola’s parents directed at him and their daughter when the family gathered at the Palazzo Marcisano, and the gentle but uneasy manner in which his brother-in-law, Ludovico, talked to him about life’s vicissitudes – quoting Horace and the Stoics to the effect that they must be borne with patience and equanimity; that human feelings are as ephemeral as mist; that a marriage is built on common interests, not fickle emotions; that honour lies in courage and endurance.