Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  After this incident, we have no trace of Daniele until 1452, when Giovanni di Paolo d’Agnolo and his assistants were at work on the frescoes of the Loggia del Mercato in Castelluccio. By this time, it seems, Daniele had become proficient in the depiction of architecture and furniture, and accordingly he was entrusted with substantial parts of the scene in which St Nicholas appears to the prefect Ablavius. However, his employment on the loggia did not last long: only a small portion of the frescoes had been completed when Daniele was dismissed for ‘drunkenness and brawling’. We have no details of his misdemeanours on this occasion, but this episode might mark the origin of his reputation as a man whose temper was as short as his capacity for wine was long.

  Despite his ejection from the workshop of Giovanni di Paolo d’Agnolo, Daniele evidently decided that he could make a living for himself as a painter. He acquired rooms on Castelluccio’s Piazza San Lorenzo, and found employment here and in the surrounding towns, albeit painting houses more often than pictures. But he did receive commissions for works of art, notably from the church of Santissimo Redentore, for which, in 1453, he painted an image of the sufferings of Job. Amid the foliage of this picture one can see a small bird, a species of warbler known as a beccafico. In most of his paintings he included a beccafico: in effect, it was his signature. Il Beccafico – ‘the fig-eater’ – became the artist’s nickname, but the nickname seems to have preceded his use of this motif. There are various explanations for it: he had an inordinate appetite for the fruit; there were times when his poverty was such that he ate nothing except what could be scavenged from the fields and orchards around Castelluccio; when he had money, he would treat himself to a dish of songbirds; or he kept a warbler, caged, in his studio, in tribute to Saint Francis, to whom he professed a particular devotion.

  Images of Saint Francis became something of a speciality for him, as were battle scenes and depictions of courtly life, based on fables and poetry. By the end of the 1450s, though still living amid squalor in his rooms on Piazza San Lorenzo, Il Beccafico was successful enough to employ an assistant of his own, a boy called Luca, whose mother was a slave in the household of Domenico Vielmi – grandson of the more famous Domenico Vielmi – and whose father, everyone knew, was his mother’s master. Luca’s testimony to the magistrates of Castelluccio is a principal source for the life of Daniele da Montieri. The boy reports that his employer is capable of kindness, has never struck him and is often in a good humour, particularly after two or three measures of wine. But two or three measures, it seems, were rarely enough for Il Beccafico, who would regularly drink so much that he would collapse in the street. When he had money for good food he would eat until his stomach threw out what it had been forced to consume, whereupon the glutton would immediately commence to refill it. He had fits, during which he would froth at the mouth and break whatever objects were to hand. It was only for money that he painted religious pictures, he told Luca more than once. He despised the people who bought his work, both for their ignorance and their miserliness. To earn a crust he had to paint the walls and doors of rich men’s houses, and this lowly labour caused him much bitterness.

  In the winter of 1460, Il Beccafico became embroiled in a dispute with a merchant in Grosseto, who had ordered from him a painting of a marvel that he had seen in the town: a mermaid displayed on a bed of ice and seaweed. Il Beccafico had seen the mermaid too, in Massa Maríttima, where he had made a drawing of it. He painted an image that matched precisely in colour and in form what he had seen, but when the painting was delivered the Grosseto merchant said that it was not a true image, and would pay nothing for it. Eventually he paid half of what had been agreed, which was insufficient, as Daniele complained to Luca, to recompense him for the cost of the pigments.

  Within a matter of weeks he was at odds with his former master, Giovanni di Paolo d’Agnolo. According to Luca, what happened was as follows. One morning a servant from the Rocca came to Il Beccafico’s studio to inform him that the lord of Castelluccio, Muzio Bonvalori, having spent several days in the company of a friar who had followed Saint Bernardino all over Italy and heard many of his sermons, was minded to have a portrait of the preaching saint, and also a depiction of the martyrdom of Saint Zeno. The servant had been ordered to establish how soon the artist would be able to start work on these paintings. ‘Immediately,’ replied Daniele, who had long desired, more than anything else, to produce a picture for the Rocca. The servant departed, telling Daniele to await instructions. Daniele waited, and waited, until one day he saw, riding up to the gates of the castle, none other than Giovanni di Paolo d’Agnolo. He ran up to him. Giovanni made it clear that he did not wish to talk, but Daniele would not be refused, and thus learned that Giovanni had come to Castelluccio to paint for the lord a scene showing Saint Bernardino preaching in Siena. Furious, Daniele threw a stone that struck Giovanni on the thigh as he went through the gate. A guard seized him, and he was taken into an ante-room of the Rocca, where he railed at length against Giovanni di Paolo d’Agnolo, before being expelled with a warning, delivered on behalf of Muzio Bonvalori, that if he were ever to repeat abroad his complaints against the honourable Giovanni, or to offer him violence, his punishment would be swift and severe.

  His final disagreement was with Domenico Vielmi, who in 1463 commissioned Il Beccafico to decorate a pair of walnut cassoni with scenes from the tales of Boccaccio. It was agreed that he should complete the decoration of the first cassone before commencing work on the second, and the subject of the first should be the story of Griselda. In October the panels were finished, and the cassone was sent to the Vielmi house. It came back later the same day, with a letter from Vielmi, in which he stated that if Daniele wished to be paid the work would have to be redone. The client complained that it was not possible to read these scenes as the tale of Griselda, because the lady looked quite different from one scene to the next. Not only that, it was impossible to tell which woman was the queen and which were her maids, and they all looked more like upright corpses than living women. Daniele repainted the panels. Again his work was rejected: his colours, Vielmi complained, were of inferior quality, and appeared to have been mixed with mud. Griselda’s expression, furthermore, was that of a half-wit. The commission was withdrawn.

  Daniele immediately dismissed Luca, accusing him of conspiring with Vielmi to ruin him. Three days later, before morning Mass, he was apprehended in the act of removing from Santissimo Redentore the picture of Job that he had painted for the church. He had been promised, he complained vociferously, that he would be given more work for the Redentore, and this promise had been broken by the very men who set themselves up as exemplars of God’s law. And those dishonest men were fat and sleek, as Domenico Vielmi was fat and sleek, whereas he was enfeebled by hunger, and he would surely die soon, because there was nobody in this town who would pay him fairly for his labours, which was all he asked of them.

  He was imprisoned in the Palazzo del Podestà, where he claimed to have visions. The Virgin appeared to him, he told his gaoler. She had appeared to him before, which was why he had taken his picture from the church. She had told him to bring his painting to her: he was to place it in the trunk of a particular oak tree near Gerfalco; he would recognise the tree because it was as wide as a horse’s body is long, and had leaves the colour of emeralds. Some days he would lament for hours on end that he had never been able to afford azzurro trasmarino, and that if only he had been able to use azzurro trasmarino his life would have been different. His face decayed into a mask of pustules: Job had been in his cell many times, he said, and he had caught the disease from him. One morning he said that he had passed the night in conversation with Saint Francis; he asked for paper and quills and ink, then spent all of that day writing. He died some time before the following dawn. Most of what he had written was illegible, but what could be read was an indictment of his fraudulent and hypocritical patrons: he cursed Domenico Vielmi and Giovanni di Paolo d’Agnolo and the man from Grosseto and all the l
iars who had blighted his life. They deserved, he wrote, to ‘die like pigs, and be forgotten as soon as they are in the ground.’ For five years afterwards, it was said, the voice of Daniele da Montieri could be heard crying out from the prisons of the Palazzo del Podestà.

  4.8

  Gideon shuffles into the room, heavy as an insomniac at four in the morning. He doesn’t speak; standing at his shoulder, he watches as Robert works a cotton bud on the E of MERDA.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ says Robert, having tolerated a full minute’s surveillance.

  ‘Sorry,’ says Gideon, stepping back to the doorway.

  Robert dips a fresh cotton bud; he brings the lamp closer to the surface of the picture, and swivels the magnifying glass.

  ‘How is she?’ Gideon asks.

  ‘Coming along nicely. Four or five hours should do it.’

  ‘Excellent. Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  Gideon stays by the door. A sigh is emitted, then he says: ‘She was a strange one, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our French girl,’ says Gideon. ‘The philosophy student. What was her name?’

  ‘Laure,’ Robert answers, teasing the ink from Laure’s shoulder.

  ‘That’s it. My God, she was a strange one.’

  ‘She was.’

  ‘Don’t think I understood a word she said,’ says Gideon. ‘Lovely neck, though.’

  ‘Indeed,’ says Robert, waiting for the question he knows is coming next.

  ‘What do you make of our guest?’

  ‘Nice enough,’ he answers.

  A pause precedes the second inevitable question: ‘When you went for your walk up the hill, did she talk about me?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. She’s not a talker.’

  ‘But she must have said something.’

  ‘Gideon, I’m trying to work.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry,’ he says. He doesn’t leave.

  Robert rotates the cotton bud, to lift another small smear of ink from the pale body of Laure.

  ‘Very like her father,’ says Gideon. ‘Same cast of mind,’ he says, with chopping gestures of the hand: six chops, as if hewing a cube out of solid air. ‘Lacks poetry.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Looks more like her mother, though. A plainer version. The eyes are very similar.’

  Robert, lowering the lens to inspect the surface, responds with a vague hum to signify that he has heard.

  And Gideon proceeds to tell him that Lorraine had been a physiotherapist; that she’d once had dreams of being a dancer, but injury had put paid to that – though he’d always doubted that she would have been prepared for the sacrifices that an artist has to make.

  Robert murmurs another non-word.

  ‘Good-looking woman,’ he goes on. ‘Lorraine, I mean. But more of a sense of humour wouldn’t have gone amiss. Rather like her daughter in that respect as well. But decent people, both of them. Somewhat pedestrian, but decent. Very decent.’

  ‘Indeed,’ says Robert.

  Gideon approaches the table; he halts at arm’s length from Robert’s back. ‘It’s extremely good of you to give up your time like this.’

  ‘Cometh the hour …’

  ‘I do appreciate it. Take a day off in lieu, won’t you?’

  ‘I shall. Don’t you worry.’

  Gideon leans over his shoulder. ‘Fine job,’ he says.

  ‘I try my best,’ says Robert. ‘Now sod off.’

  And Gideon tells him, yet again, that he can imagine him, ‘once I’ve gone’, working as a restorer, back in London; which is indeed what will happen. ‘A lot of demand for a chap with your skills and knowledge,’ he says.

  ‘If you use that phrase once more between now and Christmas, I shall be obliged to harm you,’ says Robert.

  ‘Which phrase?’ says Gideon, affecting innocence.

  ‘“Once I’ve gone”.’

  ‘Oh. I—’

  ‘Back to work, Gideon.’

  4.9

  Torquato Tasso at Sant’Onofrio

  Oil on canvas; 30cm x 17cm

  1996

  Private Collection, London

  In November, 1594, Torquato Tasso arrived in Rome, at the invitation of Pope Clement VIII and his nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, in order to be crowned on the Capitol with a garland of laurels, as Petrarch had been crowned. He was exhausted and his health was poor; at the age of fifty, he was an old man. Eight years earlier he had been released from the madhouse of St Anna in Ferrara, where he had been imprisoned since 1579; after his release he had wandered all over Italy, to Mantua, Bologna, Loreto, Naples, Rome, Florence, back to Rome, Mantua again, Florence again, Rome again, Naples, Rome, Naples. The great poet was querulous, melancholic, argumentative, vain, suspicious, violent. He had patrons, or potential patrons, in every city, and all found him insupportable. With his coronation on the Capitol, however, and with a pension bestowed by Pope Clement, it appeared that Tasso’s final years would be a period of acclaim and comfort.

  The coronation did not happen. Cardinal Aldobrandini fell ill, and the ceremony was postponed until the end of April, 1595. On the night of April 1st, in a storm, Tasso presented himself to the prior of the convent of Sant’Onofrio al Gianicolo, and announced that he had come to die there. He died on April 25th. The work for which he is chiefly remembered, Gerusalemme Liberata, had been completed twenty years earlier; during the intervening two decades he had written Gerusalemme Conquistata, a revision of his masterpiece, in which the fantastical elements of his original poem were suppressed in the interests of Catholic orthodoxy; he had also written Le sette giornate del mondo creato, an equally lifeless blank-verse retelling of Genesis.

  Torquato Tasso at Sant’Onofrio was painted as a preparation for a larger picture, which was commissioned by Stanley Pavel, a property developer and client of Milton Jeremies, who intended to donate the finished work to the Museo Tassiano, the small collection of Tasso manuscripts and editions now housed in the cloister of Sant’Onofrio. Pavel’s wife, Meriel, had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1991; a period of remission followed surgery and chemotherapy, but in 1994 a tumour appeared in a lymph node, and further surgery was necessary; the following year, in February, an aggressive tumour was found, and this time the prognosis was hopeless. Meriel Pavel rapidly declined: it was expected that she would die in June. But then, inexplicably, the tumour ceased to grow; it shrank; by October it had disappeared. Every day, since the February diagnosis, Mrs Pavel’s brother, a friar of the American order of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, had prayed for the restitution of his sister’s health, and to Meriel Pavel it now appeared that there might be some connection between her remarkable recovery and her brother’s prayers. Her husband accordingly decided that he would make a donation to the Friars of the Atonement; her brother – a student of Italian literature before entering the monastery – proposed a gift for the Sant’Onofrio convent, his order’s only community in Europe. Gideon Westfall was commissioned to deliver a picture of Tasso by the end of 1996, but in August of that year Meriel Pavel died of cancer; the planned picture was cancelled.

  Torquato Tasso at Sant’Onofrio should be regarded as a highly finished sketch. It shows the poet reading, seated on the bare stone floor, dressed in a Franciscan habit; in the doorway stands a young friar, bearing a loaf and glass of water, but Tasso, immersed in the study of a book, seems oblivious of him. The cell is dark, lit only by a thin shaft of light into which the poet turns the book; the light falls from a small high window, with blossom visible beyond it. The model for the poet was a homeless man whom the artist had encountered by the ruined Badìa in Volterra; he had served a sentence for manslaughter in Volterra prison, and had remained in the town ever since his release. The attendant friar is Robert Bancourt.

  Robert Bancourt appears in a number of other pictures by Gideon Westfall, notably: The Travellers (1999), in w
hich he is one of five passengers in a train compartment, looking out at a deserted country station and the scorched grassland beyond it; Porta di Siena, May, 2001, in which he is the man seated on the bench, reading a newspaper; and The Last Supper (2003), where he provides the figure of Thaddeus. In addition to scores of pencil sketches, there is also an oil-tempera portrait of Robert Bancourt, painted by Gideon Westfall in 2007 and given to his assistant’s parents to mark their fortieth wedding anniversary, and to provide a means of supplementing their pensions, should necessity arise. It shows him under a skylight, at a workbench on which are ranged various pigments in jars, along with some of the implements of his craft: a set of scales, a mixer, a glass cylinder, a slab of marble, a half-filled bottle of white wine. In one hand he is holding an egg, which he is about to break into a porcelain dish. Though the picture would fetch a considerable sum, and the money would be useful, the Bancourts still own the painting.

  ‘It’s exactly how we see him,’ said Mrs Bancourt, when the artist handed the painting to her, by which she meant not only that the features of his face had been caught as precisely as any photo could have caught them, but that they were imbued with the affection of a parent’s gaze. ‘But a family,’ replied Gideon, ‘is one of the many things – perhaps the most important thing – that the artist must deny himself if he is to achieve everything of which he is capable.’ And he proceeded to list for her the childless greats: Raphael, Ingres, Michelangelo, Titian, et cetera, et cetera. ‘What about Picasso? He had children, didn’t he?’ asked Mr Bancourt. ‘Precisely,’ answered Gideon.