Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind

by Anne Charnock

  “Would she mind?”

  He throws open his hands. “Honestly? What do you think?”

  She puts her arms around her dad’s waist and hugs him tight. “Mum never really liked cycling.”

  He kisses the top of her head. “And I’ve taken some books out of the library, novels set in the war—All Quiet on the Western Front, Birdsong.”

  “So, you’re the official tour guide. That makes a change.”

  Dominic can sense that the time is fast approaching when, even on a school night, Toni will no longer go to bed before him. He’s looking forward to that particular change in their family dynamic. But at least for now, it’s easier to keep a secret. He stands at the bottom of the stairs and listens. She’s probably asleep. He goes out into the garden and, as quietly as he can, unlocks the padlock and slides the bolt on his shed door.

  In the storage area of the shed, he peers closely at three small oil paintings. They’re paintings of the bamboo graffiti that Toni photographed in the Master of the Nets Garden. They’re painted on wood panels, and each is the size of a hardback book. Dominic folds his arms, leans back and smiles. It’s a long time since he painted something for himself, or at least for someone who wasn’t paying. He found them refreshingly quick to paint, because he worked in thick impasto. He cut the graffiti with a palette knife, cutting through one layer of paint to a lower layer of a different hue, as though repeating the graffiti artist’s cuts. He gently finger-taps a glob of paint. He feels a slight plasticity below the paint’s surface skin, but he decides the paint is sufficiently dry to bring them into the house.

  In turn, he carries the paintings across the garden. He knows exactly where to place them. In fact, the bamboo paintings will solve the problem of what to do with Connie’s shelf by the kitchen table—the shelf that’s now bare. It was Connie’s shelf from the day they moved into the house; she piled it high with magazines and newspapers, articles she said she’d get around to reading. Dominic would have preferred to put their small collection of Johanne Gerber ceramics on the shelf—the Blue Forest design was his favourite among all the Royal Copenhagen range.

  He never actually explained to Connie that the Blue Forest design reminded him of his early days as a painter, when he learned to paint tonally using just two colours—French ultramarine and burnt umber. A small step from drawing towards painting, always a difficult transition. Connie said if she didn’t keep the articles handy, she’d never read them. And where better than by the kitchen table, where she could catch up on a bit of reading and relax with a cup of tea?

  Now that Dominic has recycled Connie’s magazines and newspapers, which he did one evening when Toni was in bed, he can’t bring himself to commandeer the shelf for his Blue Forest.

  He lifts each bamboo painting into position, sitting them directly on the shelf and leaning them against the wall. He won’t construct any frames for these paintings; that wouldn’t seem appropriate for the subject matter, for something as informal as graffiti. The middle painting is a close-up of the graffiti; the paint is lumpier. He stands back and decides it dominates too much, so he shifts it to the left. He stands the other two paintings, butted against one another, a few inches to the right. That works, he says to himself. He’ll ask Toni for her opinion in the morning. He feels warm because he knows that he and Toni will look at these paintings every morning over breakfast. Even when they’re too sleepy to talk to one another, the bamboo paintings will steer their thoughts. Or if not their conscious thoughts, the paintings will steer their feelings in a positive direction and remind them that the past is a safe place to visit.

  He goes to the fridge, takes out a bottle of beer and sits at the end of the kitchen table. He gazes at the paintings and sips the beer. An hour later, he goes to bed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Florence, 1469

  Gazing at the three portraits, which stand on the narrow table in her bedchamber, Antonia sees it instantly—her skills have improved since her first attempt at her mother’s portrait a month ago. She is mixing the pigment and egg binder more consistently, and her brushwork is far more assured; there’s less overworking. She sits cross-legged on her bed, her elbows on her knees, her fists planted in her cheeks. She wishes she had painted her mother’s portrait last of all, for this is the painting her father will attach to the dowry chest, and to her mind, she should have done a better job. The other two portraits on the table are of her mother’s friends, who, on seeing her mother’s half-finished portrait, pleaded to have their portraits painted, too. Her father agreed, saying there would be no fee for Antonia’s time—the practice would be welcome—as long as they paid for the materials. Neither woman had a portrait of herself; this was an opportunity they couldn’t resist.

  Antonia can’t look at anything in her mother’s portrait other than her mother’s hand, which rests on the prayer book. It’s so frustrating. She painted the prayer book so well, but her mother’s fingers look like sausages. For a moment, she considers asking her father for a new wood panel so she might start again, but she knows there isn’t time. Instead, she decides she’ll block out her mother’s hand and repaint it.

  Antonia hasn’t felt bored for a single moment since she began these paintings. Her aunt’s words are even beginning to make sense; maybe she won’t notice the simple food if her talent is put to work. In fact, she has already learned that a day spent painting is a day that flies as fast as a sparrow chased by a hawk.

  She is keeping the three paintings in her bedchamber, on her father’s instruction, until she leaves for the convent in August. She should study the paintings, he said, and learn to be critical of her endeavours; her mother’s friends could wait for their portraits. “If they grow impatient, your mother must tell them you’re still making subtle adjustments.” That, he explained, was another piece of artistic trickery; artists should hold on to their work as long as possible.

  When her father listed the necessary materials and quantities—and neither of the women dared to question his estimates—he included a new set of paintbrushes for Antonia. One of the brushes is so fine—with two or three hairs at most—that she can now adjust the hues and tones with great subtlety. Areas of flat colour are brought alive by tiny, thin strokes of paint. From a distance, the strokes are invisible. And much to Antonia’s delight, she has pigments to spare. Her father told her to keep them, that she needed to practise with good-quality materials before entering the scriptorium.

  Antonia stands up and drags the blanket off her bed. She folds it in half—one, two, three, four times—and places the folded blanket on the floor. She looks up to assess the width of her mother’s portrait, which will form the end panel of her dowry chest. How many blankets will the dowry chest take?

  Last night in her dreams, she packed and unpacked the chest, time and time again. She woke sweating in the middle of the night with a throbbing head. She struggled to shake off the dream: Jacopa grabbing her arm and shouting, “Where’s my blanket?”

  The smell of beef basted in orange juice and rose-water pervades the house, yet Antonia thumps her growling stomach in annoyance; she wants no distraction. The three portraits now lie on her bed. She moved them from her table so she wouldn’t accidentally splash them. Arranged around her on the table are mussel shells containing her ground pigments, a small bowl of egg yolk, two bowls of water, a cloth and a paintbrush. She has set herself a task: to paint each of the colours, as well as she can recall them, from Sister Battista’s Book of Hours. Specifically, the colours in her painting of Saint Anthony tortured by devils. Two days ago, Antonia found a poplar panel—no bigger than a prayer book—seemingly discarded in the study. When she asked her father if she could take it, he handed it to her, saying the panel, being so small, was useless to him.

  So Antonia prepared the panel with gesso, scraping it back after each coat dried, and this morning, she drew a grid on the beautifully smooth white surface. Each of the squares is about twice the size of her thumbnail. The question is
whether she can match the intensity of Sister Battista’s colours with the materials at hand. Or does the scriptorium have its own secret methods? She dips her brush in the egg yolk and then in the azurite blue. She mixes them on her palette with a touch of water, then strokes the four sides of a square and infills. In the heat of summer, the paint dries quicker than ever. One perfect square of blue to match the blue bodies of Sister Battista’s demons.

  Before the pigment dries on her brush, she fills another square. And she repeats this once more to use up the egg and pigment mixture, at which point she washes the brush and moves on to verdigris and malachite for the trees, lead-tin yellow and yellow ochre for Saint Anthony’s bell and the demon’s clubs, burnt sienna earth for Saint Anthony’s robes and vermilion for the demons’ wings. Though the paint dries quickly, she paints random squares to avoid two wet squares coming into contact.

  An hour later, she cleans her paintbrush, sits back and admires the panel with its twenty-one squares of bright, unmuddied colours. She feels proud that, like her father with his perspective drawings, she has performed her own first experiment.

  She hears a familiar sound from the sala. Clara is ringing the triangle with its metal beater—the meal is ready.

  “Is this a special occasion, Mother?” says Antonia when she enters the sala. Her mother is already seated. Her father is stood at the head of the table, ready to carve the joint of beef, which Clara has dusted with sugar and herbs.

  “It’s your father’s idea. He sent a message to the workshop telling Donato to eat with us today. He shouldn’t be long.”

  “So, what . . . ?”

  “Wait and see,” says her father.

  Clara brings a steaming bowl of pasta to the table and a platter of boiled capon.

  Antonia has noticed over the past two weeks that Clara is making at least one extra dish for each meal. Although Antonia assumes this is for Donato’s sake, it now dawns on her that her mother may have another motive—she may be fattening her up before she begins convent life. Her life as a novice will be harder than as a boarder. She’ll have more duties, and she’ll have to wake for matins in the middle of the night.

  She says, tentatively, “Mother, have you decided what you’ll pack in my dowry chest? Will there be room for an extra blanket?”

  “I’ve discussed the matter with my aunt—she knows best.”

  “And I’ve been thinking, Father. Could you order some poplar panels? I could prepare them and wrap them up carefully in the chest.”

  He doesn’t look up from the carving. “I’m putting a few things aside for you.”

  Considering that her father has planned this family gathering—assuming Donato turns up—he seems subdued. Antonia looks from her mother to her father, but neither seems eager to have a conversation. So she tries again to engage them. “I’ve decided to repaint Mother’s hand. It’s not very good. It spoils the painting.”

  “Well, you’d better hurry up with it,” he says.

  It’s a curt response, and she blinks away reflexive tears. She wonders if her parents have argued. Silence settles between the three of them, relieved by Clara banging around in the kitchen, and then footsteps on the stairs.

  Donato rushes in. “Am I late? What have I missed?” He drags back a chair and sits. He looks ready to arm-wrestle, his legs wide apart, one hand on his hip and an arm resting across the table.

  “Antonia is saying she needs to change her mother’s portrait,” says her father. “I suspect you haven’t even started your painting. So, you’d better hurry up, or you’ll be racing up the road to Pistoia with your painting as she enters the cloister.”

  Donato winks at Antonia, but she can’t bring herself to smile. Her brother has been in high spirits since his return from Urbino. He has taken on two new assistants, and just last week, he secured a commission from Maria degli Albizzi’s husband. It’s a fine commission for a set of decorated bedchamber furniture.

  He stabs some capon with a fork and looks up, almost triumphant. “I’ve been thinking, Father. Would you like to visit Urbino with me at the end of summer? You could manage the journey in cooler weather, if we took it slowly.”

  He replies with a grumbling sound. It comes from deep in his chest. He wipes his hands on his cloth and stares at Donato. He takes several moments to reply. “I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll be ready for a change of scene come the autumn.”

  Antonia looks down into her lap, and the tears well up again.

  At the end of their meal, her father stands up from the table and tells them all to follow him to the study. He has something to show them.

  His study is tidier than usual. There appears to be a painting on his easel over by the window, covered by a clean sheet. It’s clear from the shape of the painting that this is the large panel for the dowry chest. Antonia’s heart races. Her father has never unveiled his work to the family before. She glances across to her mother and wills her to smile, but her mother’s face appears drained.

  Her father walks over to the easel, leans on his walking stick and announces, “This will be my last painting. From now on, I’m devoting all my time to my studies and my drawings. Antonia will take this painting away with her, and I hope she will regard it as my final instruction. Close observation, remember, is the best teacher.”

  He pulls the cloth to the floor to reveal his hunting scene, and Antonia’s first impressions are of colours—bright, shimmering colours that catch the midday light. The flashing red of the riders’ fashionable tunics, the yellow-white of the hounds and the exquisite ultramarine of a summer sky.

  “Father, it’s better than a dream,” she says.

  Donato folds his arms and grins. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible . . . It’s better than your night-time hunting scene. And I see you haven’t stinted on materials.”

  For once, her father seems to ignore Donato. “Antonia, tell your mother and Donato how to read this painting, as I’ve taught you.”

  She takes a step closer to the painting. She closes her eyes and reminds herself of the elements she must consider. When she opens her eyes, a full minute elapses before she speaks.

  “This painting is very wide, and first of all, I notice the hunter on the white horse near the left-hand edge of the painting. And I follow the same white colour across the picture because most of the hounds are also painted in this yellowy white. It’s a colour you like, isn’t it, Father?” She doesn’t wait for an answer.

  “A white bird on the right-hand edge is flying up into the oak trees, which form a backdrop to the hunting scene. All these trees have white berries.” She takes a deep breath. “The horses and the hounds are much smaller at the far end of the forest than the ones in the foreground. And I feel I am standing in the woodland next to you, Father, with your easel and paints.” She peers closely at the foreground. “There are little flecks of blue in the flowers that match the colour of the sky.”

  “So, in other words, Antonia, I have used colour to unify the painting. In a painting of this shape, it’s important to establish order.”

  She steps back and reassesses the whole. “And now I see—you placed the biggest horses at the edges of the painting.” She looks at him, unsure. “Like bookends?”

  “Well spotted,” says Donato.

  Her mother steps forward and points to a figure in the midst of the hunters, who is riding side-saddle. She laughs softly. “It’s Clara.”

  Paolo checks through the items spread across his desk. A walnut palette, a mahlstick, a divider, a pestle and mortar—Paolo’s second largest, since the largest would be too heavy for Antonia—a porphyry grinding slab with a flat-ended muller, three bowls and a handful of mussel and clam shells for holding pigment, an inkpot, and the ivory rack on which he has rested his paintbrushes for all the major commissions of his career. He has selected what he regards as essential equipment; barring breakages, the collection should last Antonia through her time at the convent of San Donato in Polverosa.

  The
everyday materials she’ll need—enough for a year or two’s work, he guesses—are piled at the end of his desk: charcoal, chalks, quills, reed pens, ink, lumps of pigment, a selection of papers—mostly undyed—and a sponge for spreading varnish. He adds the small rag cloth he used when painting the hunting scene. It’s the cloth he kept for wiping his brushes, now washed, dried and ready to be used again. He turns it over in his fingers, brings it to his mouth and kisses it. And, finally, a small piece of soft leather for erasing chalk and charcoal, though he prefers to use pellets of soft bread, himself. He takes a length of old cloth to wrap up five small poplar panels, coated in gesso, scraped smooth. He feels an ache in his chest, a weariness caused by weeks of stiffened resolve.

  Antonia trips into his study. “What’s all this? What are you doing, Father?”

  “With luck, your mother will make room for all this in your dowry chest. If need be, we can carry it separately to the convent. I’ve already written to the abbess, and she knows you’ll be bringing some items from my workshop. So I don’t anticipate any arguments at the gatehouse.”

  “So will I be allowed to draw and paint whenever—?”

  “Antonia, it’s a condition attached to the dowry. So don’t be apologetic about the time you spend painting. The convent will own your dowry chest one day. I’ve explained to the abbess that for an artist, the act of painting is a form of meditation. I believe she accepts that notion. Anyway, show me what you’ve been working on.”

  “I think it’s an experiment.” She holds out the painting. “I’ve painted the colours, from memory, of Sister Battista’s Book of Hours.”

  He takes the painting. His face is a blank. “You should have used a scrap of paper for this.”

  “I just wanted to paint the colours. Didn’t you say I should forget the subject?”

  He sighs. He feels deflated. “It was a faulty panel, so there’s nothing wasted. But, less of this playtime. Go and work on your mother’s portrait, and bring it to me when you’re happy with it.”