Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  They walk into the sunlit part of Piazza Santa Maria. ‘Isn’t this a sight?’ comments Gideon, suddenly drenched with contentment at what he sees: the light on the upper part of the church and all of its bell tower; a young woman cycling slowly over the cobbles, with carrier bags dangling from the handlebars; a sky as blue as an Italian football shirt; a cat prowling out of the shadows, advancing towards a pigeon. Two teenaged girls are walking side by side, talking. Gideon observes them, and emits a soft snort of affectionate amusement.

  ‘What?’ Claire obligingly enquires.

  ‘They’re cousins,’ he tells her, pointing to the girls. ‘The one on the right is a year older than the one on the left, but if you watch the way they talk to each other you’ll notice that the older one glances at the younger more often than vice versa. It’s a kind of deference. The younger one is subtly dominant. And the reason for that is that the younger one is prettier. Much prettier. We instinctively defer to the beautiful,’ states Gideon, ending with a pursing of the lips that might be taken to signify that he wishes this were not so, but facts are facts.

  Claire is fighting the urge to tell him that she knows about Ilaria, and she is on the point of losing the fight when Gideon, in the bright tone of a man snapping out of a daydream, asks her what she’ll be doing today.

  ‘I thought I’d take a look at San Gimignano,’ she answers.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he groans, ‘don’t go there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s awful. Like a department store in the January sales. You can’t look at anything because there’ll be six coach parties in the way. A terrible place. Leave it to another visit.’

  ‘I don’t know when there’ll be another visit.’

  This makes him pause. ‘Your choice,’ he says. ‘If you’re going, you can take my car.’

  ‘That’s kind. But I’m borrowing Robert’s.’

  ‘Mine’s more comfortable.’

  ‘It is. But I already have Robert’s keys.’

  ‘OK,’ Gideon concedes, and he raises a hand to beckon the director of the museum, who is crossing the square.

  ‘Signore Lanese,’ says Gideon, with something like obsequiousness, ‘I’d like you to meet my niece.’

  ‘We have met,’ says Mr Lanese, ‘but I am pleased to meet you again,’ he says, pressing a super-soft hand into hers.

  ‘Robert introduced us,’ she explains.

  As if referring to the caprice of an incorrigible child, Gideon tells Mr Lanese that Claire intends to go to San Gimignano today.

  ‘It is beautiful,’ Mr Lanese says to Claire.

  ‘But on a day like this, hell,’ says Gideon.

  ‘Purgatory, perhaps,’ says Mr Lanese, fiddling with a cuff.

  ‘But you must go, I know,’ says Gideon. ‘You’ll be at the concert?’

  ‘Of course. And you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Until later, then,’ says Mr Lanese, and with a handshake for each he departs.

  ‘And you must be going too,’ says Gideon to Claire. ‘The later you leave it, the worse it will be. Farewell, and have fun.’

  On Corso Diaz she looks back; she sees Gideon standing in the middle of the square, face to the sun, eyes closed, grinning, as if standing under a shower head.

  10.2

  Giuliano Lanese, director of the Museo Civico of Castelluccio, is Italy’s leading authority on the life and work of Giovanni di Paolo d’Agnolo (1409–1480), and the author of the only monograph on the artist to have been published to date. He has published papers on other fifteenth-century painters from Siena and the Sienese hinterland, notably Sano di Pietro and Sassetta, as well as essays on individual works, such as Domenico di Bartolo’s Madonna delle Nevi (Our Lady of the Snows) and Vecchietta’s Arliquiera, the painted wooden reliquary that was created for the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala in 1445. He has also curated a number of exhibitions, the most ambitious of which was Ex-Voti: arte e devozione popolare, held in Volterra in 2008.

  In addition to running the town museum, Mr Lanese plays one other significant part in the civic life of Castelluccio: for the last three years he has been the chairman of the committee that organises the celebrations for the Festa di San Zeno. It was Giuliano Lanese, in his capacity as chairman of the committee, who proposed to Gideon that he take the part of Domenico Vielmi in this year’s parade. After some consideration, Gideon consented, a decision not uninfluenced by his hope that Castelluccio’s museum will one day have a room dedicated to his work – just as Mr Lanese’s proposal was at least in part a consequence of the artist’s suggestion, first made a year ago, that the Museo Civico might gain some allure by having a room devoted to the work of a living and, in some quarters, celebrated painter.

  The idea, in its original form, as put to the director over lunch in the Caffè del Corso, was that the museum might like to acquire a number of studies plus a painting or two at a greatly reduced price – for a nominal fee, in fact. Mr Lanese, though grateful for the offer, felt obliged to decline, with regret: any fee, however generous the discount, would be beyond the resources of the Museo Civico, an institution so under-funded that its very survival is a cause for constant concern. Gideon sympathised; he wondered, then, if they should discuss the feasibility of a bequest of some sort. In return for a guarantee that a room would be set aside for the purpose, he might be prepared to donate a number of his works on his decease: a selection of pieces, in various media and genres, from the beginning of his career to the present. What he had in mind was something akin to the Severini room in Cortona’s main museum – not, of course, that he was a huge admirer of Severini. Touched deeply by the gesture, Giuliano Lanese said that he would discuss this extraordinary offer with the people who would have to be involved in any decision on the matter – there were colleagues in the town hall, for example, and others higher up, as he was sure the maestro would understand. Gideon of course understood.

  Eventually, after many consultations in the town hall, Giuliano Lanese reported to Gideon that the consensus was that the museum would be greatly enhanced if it were able to offer to the public an exhibition in which were displayed not solely works by maestro Westfall but also the creations of other eminent artists of, as the director expressed it, ‘the same tendency’. It had been suggested, for instance, that Lanese might approach Gunther Diedrich or Vassily Bartnev or Pierre Medina (to name but three of the most celebrated practitioners of ‘the new classicism’ or whatever one may like to term it) about the possibility of their making bequests to such a collection. This counter-proposal was not well received by Gideon. Leaving aside the fact that he was highly surprised to hear that anyone in the town hall had ever heard of Pierre Medina, let alone Diedrich and Bartnev, Gideon was little short of amazed that anyone should seriously consider hanging his work alongside the productions of any of that trio. Mr Lanese was at pains to clarify that it was not being suggested that the works of Medina, Diedrich and Bartnev were of a merit comparable to that of his own, and indeed believed that most people would share Gideon’s distaste for much of what they did, but he would argue nevertheless that there was some value – a great deal of value, perhaps – in endeavouring to represent the global scope of ‘the phenomenon’ of anti-modernism, a phenomenon to which he was by no means entirely antipathetic, sharing as he did many of Gideon’s misgivings about certain aspects of contemporary art – not all aspects, of course, but many. And he reiterated that he was simply representing the collective opinion of his colleagues, as he had an obligation to do. Gideon, mollified, agreed that such a project would be worthwhile – but not, please not, with the involvement of that trinity of hacks. Further discussions would be held, promised Mr Lanese; and there the matter rests.

  There is no doubt that Giuliano Lanese is well inclined towards Gideon: he admires his dedication; he is impressed by the force of his personality; he has immeasurable respect for his expertise in the matter of painting, as he has told Robert on a number of occasions.
Precisely what he thinks of Gideon’s work, however, is a matter of speculation. He is a man of great delicacy; he never raises his voice, and speaks spontaneously in sentences as perfect as a sixth draft; Gideon finds him evasive and prolix. ‘Talking to Mr Lanese,’ he once remarked, ‘is like walking through perfumed fog’. Works of art, for Giuliano Lanese, are ‘interesting’ or ‘rewarding’ or ‘of significance’. Nothing is good or bad. The ‘phenomenon’ of Gideon Westfall and others of his ‘tendency’ is, says Mr Lanese, ‘worthy of study’. Asked directly by Robert if he actually likes the paintings that the maestro produces, he replied that he was not a critic, and had no desire to be a critic, because the assignment of value, in his opinion, is the work of a whole culture, not of any individual. This was said gently, but with a light finality; to press the question further would have been discourteous.

  A little under a year from now, a week after his forty-second birthday, Giuliano Lanese will leave Castelluccio to take up a new post at the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena; not a single painting by Gideon Westfall will be on show in the Museo Civico of Castelluccio when he leaves, nor anything by any artists of his tendency.

  10.3

  Yesterday, Gideon now discloses, he’d had the most powerful sense of déjà vu as he was crossing Piazza del Mercato: a woman’s bag slipped from her shoulder at exactly the same moment as a crate of empty bottles crashed onto the floor of a van outside Alle Torre, and the feeling that precisely this combination of events had happened before was so strong that he’d known, a split second before it occurred, what was going to happen next: a yellow car would drive in front of him, with a dog on the front seat – which was in fact what happened.

  ‘You’d already seen the car in the corner of your eye,’ suggests Robert.

  ‘No,’ states Gideon. ‘It suddenly appeared, on cue. And there’s another thing,’ he goes on. ‘This morning, on Piazza Maggiore, after Claire had gone, I saw Martin Calloway.’ Sitting on a stool, with the self-portrait on the easel, he turns to show a face of bewilderment and dread.

  Robert, opening the morning’s post, answers without looking up: ‘And what exactly do you mean by that, Gideon?’

  ‘I saw him.’

  ‘Could you be more precise? Given that the person in question is deceased, in what manner did you see him?’

  ‘I saw someone walking onto the piazza and it was Martin Calloway. His face, his build, his walk—’

  ‘You mistook a man for Martin Calloway.’

  ‘He was his double.’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘But then, a few seconds later, he wasn’t like him at all. Hardly any resemblance.’

  ‘OK. So, your brain misfired.’

  ‘It was a perfectly lucid moment: for several seconds, he was there, as clearly as everything around him.’

  ‘Can’t see what imagining Martin Calloway has got to do with a woman dropping her handbag,’ says Robert, moving to the door of his work room.

  Focusing his gaze on the face on the easel, Gideon answers: ‘Signs. They were signs.’

  ‘Of what? That you’re losing your marbles?’

  ‘Not funny, Robert.’ He tilts his head as he looks at the painting, and sorrow comes into his face, as though he were at the bedside of an ailing parent. ‘I’m not far short of the age at which my father died,’ he says. ‘And my brother.’

  ‘You’ll live to be ninety.’

  ‘I’m overweight. The Westfall men have a track record. And I get breathless. Frequently.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s nothing seriously wrong.’

  ‘Not yet, maybe. But I feel tired.’

  ‘Take a few days off.’

  ‘No,’ says Gideon, drawing his hands down his face, then blinking like a man waking up. ‘It’s not that kind of tiredness.’

  ‘But you could give it a go anyway. Allow yourself a rest.’

  ‘Another year, two at most, and you’ll be free.’

  ‘Free already, Gideon. Free already,’ Robert sings, going into his room.

  A few minutes later, Gideon appears in the doorway. ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’ he asks.

  ‘Not especially,’ Robert answers from the computer.

  ‘I detect something. An undercurrent. Trouble with Teresa?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  Gideon knits his fingers across his midriff; he bows his head, as discreet as a priest. ‘I see,’ he says. He waits while Robert attends to an email, then asks, when it becomes apparent that no more information will be offered: ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nothing comes to mind, no.’

  After a slow exhalation, which may be intended to be expressive of sympathy but sounds more like relief, Gideon says: ‘I can’t pretend to be greatly surprised.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Robert replies, setting papers in order.

  ‘Never did see the attraction of that one. Apart from the obvious.’

  ‘I know you didn’t.’

  ‘What’s the story? Another man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s disappointing.’

  ‘I was the other man.’ Robert glances up, to see Gideon awaiting elucidation. ‘I have things to do,’ Robert tells him, gesturing at the computer.

  ‘You can do a lot better,’ remarks Gideon, leaving. ‘That Agnese was an impressive young woman.’

  ‘She was.’

  ‘I liked her. Not many of her calibre around here.’

  ‘Indeed. Perhaps I need to fish in a bigger pond.’

  Gideon ambles away, and that’s the end of their conversation for the morning. In the hours before lunchtime, it appears, Gideon does nothing but make some desultory alterations to the background of the self-portrait; in the afternoon, whenever Robert leaves his room, he sees Gideon leafing through the sketchbooks of the past few months, as though in the hope that an idea will rise from the pages. A sheet is torn out of one of the books, as Robert is passing; what’s destroyed is barely a sketch – half a dozen lines of charcoal that had failed to become a figure. Robert makes no comment, and neither does Gideon. Later, he’s gazing on a drawing of Ilaria that’s been placed on the floor in front of the stool, so that he’s peering down onto it as if onto the deep-lying water of a well. ‘Perhaps Mr Guldager’s music will cheer us up,’ he remarks.

  10.4

  Nude 126

  Oil-tempera on canvas; 105cm x 75cm

  2010

  Private collection, Krákow

  The naked female form is a subject that recurs frequently in the work of Gideon Westfall: from the mid-1970s onwards he produced several paintings of this type every year, as well as scores of studies in pencil, charcoal, ink and oil-tempera. Each of the finished paintings bears a number, a sequence that begins with Nude 1, from 1975; Nude 1 was not his first such work, but all examples preceding it were destroyed in that year, including several for which the model was Lorraine Daventry, later Lorraine Westfall. The series ends with Nude 126, which shows Ilaria Senesi, seated on a plain wooden chair against a white wall, gazing – ‘with something like the fascination of Narcissus at the first encounter with his own reflection’ – at a small black oval which she holds loosely in her right hand, upon her thigh. The oval is a Claude mirror, manufactured in 1856 and bought in New York by Milton Jeremies, as a gift for the artist; it was in its original packaging, complete with explanatory text – Claude Black Glass Mirrors: These are very useful for the young artist, as they condense or diminish the view into the size desired for the intended picture, and all objects bear their relative proportions. The model’s expression is not wholly a simulation: she was as intrigued by the black mirror as a child might have been. It was like looking into the underworld, she said; when she looked at it, she saw herself as a vampire or the queen of the night. Peering into the dark depths of the glass, she could hold her pose without strain for an hour or more.

  Nude 126 was bought at auction in 2011 by a Polish film producer, to augment a collection that contains, in addition to
pieces by Balthus and Delvaux, the most extensive array of Kitagawa Utamaro shunga prints in Poland. The sum paid for Nude 126 has to date been exceeded by only one other Westfall work of this genre: Nude 115 (2007), the last of six paintings produced during the ten months in which he worked with Laura Ottaviano.

  In one sense Laura Ottaviano was Gideon Westfall’s most successful model: every painting of Laura sold immediately, as did many of the drawings that came out of his sessions with her. She was, furthermore (and unlike some), always patient, punctual and uncomplaining. Silence for her was not – as it was for many others – an ordeal. Only on the first afternoon was there anything like friction between artist and model: she had ideas as to how her body could be best presented, ideas that owed everything to the aesthetics of calendar photography; she believed that these alluring contortions and provocative half-coverings and head-tiltings not only accentuated the virtues of her form – they projected most powerfully her personality too. Of this misconception she was quickly disabused. Her form needed no accentuation, she was told. She should simply be herself, Gideon told her, and leave it to him to show what she was. After a brief discussion, she acquiesced.

  In the body of Laura Ottaviano, to paraphrase the artist, the tenets of classical form were made flesh. She was a young woman of ‘exemplary beauty’. But the form of Laura Ottaviano was also, as he remarked after their collaboration had ended, rather more eloquent than her speech. At the start of a session, to relax, she would talk while he made ready; she rarely said anything that it was thought worthwhile to report. Often she would complain that she was cursed: she was burdened by her own appearance, she wanted him to believe, though it appeared that the burden was light. It seemed, she said, that she attracted only men who saw the skin and nothing else; most men are idiots, experience had taught her. But if an idiot was what she was going to have to settle for, she was at least going to make sure she landed herself an idiot with some money and decent looks: a footballer, maybe, though nearly all footballers are really thick and you don’t get many of the good ones in this part of the world – you need to be in Milano or Torino or Roma to catch the best of them, so that’s what she might do one day, though it would be hard to leave Siena because that’s where she was born and grew up, and all her family were there, et cetera, et cetera.