The Miracles of Prato

by Laurie Albanese

  “Yes, Sister Spinetta, it’s God who transforms all things. Of course we know he transformed Adam’s rib into the beautiful figure of Eve when he saw that Adam was lonely. But He does not hide this magic from us.”

  At the mention of Adam and Eve, the agony of their faces in Masaccio’s fresco came into Lucrezia’s mind. She had no idea that, as a boy, Fra Filippo had watched the master painter executing that very scene in the Brancacci Chapel.

  “As Jesus turned water into wine, so we turn the raw skin of the silkworm into skeins of beautiful fabric,” Fra Filippo continued. “We take the elements of the earth and make them into colors to adorn our churches. From the garden in the convent, to the walls of the church, beauty isn’t lost, only transformed. This is the way of the world.”

  Fra Filippo went to a basin and washed his hands, then dried them on a rag. From one of his worktables he unfolded a small parchment with the preliminary sketches of the triptych in brown ink.

  “Now, let me show you what we shall do,” he said.

  He described his plans for the triptych and, as he’d done for Ser Francesco, Fra Filippo brought out the panels of Saints Anthony Abbot and Michael for the sisters to admire. He described the Adoration scene in detail, his vision of the Madonna kneeling in the fertile woods surrounded by verdant flowers and trees, the Christ child shining like a votive candle against the dark night.

  “There are many lemon trees in the land of Naples, and cypress grow along the river that runs beside Prato,” the monk said. “I’ll include these, a deer, and also an Apennine wolf that roams the hills, docile at the feet of the Christ child.”

  Outside, the bells tolled from the campanile of Santo Stefano.

  “The day is moving on,” Spinetta said softly. “I should allow you to begin.”

  Fra Filippo and Lucrezia watched her return to the antechamber.

  “We can start now, Sister Lucrezia.” The monk indicated the heavy chair he’d placed before the window. “Please, sit.”

  “But didn’t you say you’d paint the Blessed Mother kneeling on the ground?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I won’t ask you to kneel, not here on the floor of my workshop.”

  “But the Madonna knelt,” she said, thinking of the Virgin’s humble sacrifice, and her absence of pride. “She knelt in humility.”

  Fra Filippo couldn’t help himself. He reached out and gently placed two fingers under her chin, tilting Lucrezia’s face upward. She felt the warmth of his touch spread to her cheeks.

  “You are humble as the Virgin is humble,” he said, staring. “Humble in your glory. Certainly, if you wish, Sister Lucrezia, you may kneel.”

  He stepped back and she fell to her knees. She folded her hands in prayer, assuming the pose of the Madonna that she well knew. After that, the only sound she heard was the scratch of Fra Filippo’s silverpoint, filling the parchment.

  Chapter Eight

  Tuesday, the Twelfth Week After Pentecost, the Year of Our Lord 1456

  When Fra Filippo saw the sun shine into his workshop window, he rejoiced. Lucrezia would soon be arriving.

  Since Thursday he’d spent many hours sketching her face, imagining the novitiate’s small body layered in rich robes, and carefully contemplating the colors the Madonna would wear in his painting. Of course he’d settled on a costume that would best complement Lucrezia’s flawless skin, selecting a rich morello purple for her outer garment, white silk for the trim against her throat, a benda sewn with delicate pearls to ornament her hair. After deciding on these garments he’d gone back and forth to the convent only to fulfill his duties and secretly study Lucrezia as she bent in prayer or worked in the giardino under Sister Pureza’s watchful eye. He’d gone out of his way to ingratiate himself to craggy Mother Bartolommea, reminding her that God readily welcomed into His Kingdom those who had offered Him glory through art, and promising that as soon as the Medici triptych was finished, the altarpiece with her kneeling at the feet of the Virgin with Saints Margaret and Thomas would be his next undertaking.

  “I’m more concerned that there be no impropriety, Fratello, than I am with my own portrait,” Prioress Bartolommea had said, narrowing her small eyes. She’d reminded him that many people had surely noticed the two sisters visiting his workshop twice during the prior week, and that their reputation was her chief responsibility.

  “Then you may be assured that the honor of your novitiates is well guarded,” he’d said. “Because I’ve invited the venerable Fra Piero d’Antonio di ser Vannozzi to visit with the sisters this Tuesday, while I work.”

  “The procurator of the convent?” The prioress had raised her eyes in surprise, for she’d believed the administrator was still visiting a new convent in Montepulciano.

  “Yes, he’s returned home for the festa and promised me the honor of his company. If you have no objections, Madre.” Naturally, the prioress had offered none, for the procurator was of a rank and power above her own.

  After this exchange, Fra Filippo had returned to his studio in the dimming light and retraced the curve of Lucrezia’s cheeks, the fine bones around the eyes. He’d worked until the girl’s beauty seemed to breathe on the vellum, and then he’d drawn the fields in which the Virgin would kneel, using silverpoint to convey the textured grass, the abundant flowers, and the graceful cypress trees.

  He’d worked as if in a trance, his intuition ignited and his talents in full force. Fra Filippo had known the embrace of more than a few women: Magdalena di Rosetta Ciopri had taken him as a lover in the hills outside of Padua, and a wool merchant’s wife in Florence had invited him into her bed many times. These women, and others whom he’d paid, had given the painter great pleasure. But they hadn’t changed the very colors of the world to him, they hadn’t turned even simple tasks into moments of heady satisfaction. Only Lucrezia had done this, and her power over him was evident in the confidence that guided his hand.

  The bells of Santo Stefano tolled, and the sisters and their escort arrived. The young women entered modestly, as always, bringing the fresh scent of the convent gardens with them.

  “Bellissima,” Spinetta pronounced when she saw the new sketches. “You’ve captured something in my sister that lives beneath the surface of her skin.”

  The monk stared at the sketch for the triptych, which was propped next to the large central panel. He looked from his own handiwork to God’s: from the vellum to Lucrezia’s face. And he was pleased.

  “It’s difficult to look at my own face as you’ve drawn it, Fratello,” Lucrezia said, turning her eyes from the drawing. Although she’d been curious about her reflection many times, the desire to see herself in a mirror or in the water of a riverbed had been tempered by her mother’s sharp words against vanity.

  “It’s a true likeness, Lucrezia,” Spinetta said warmly, looking from the monk to her sister. “I can promise you that.”

  Lucrezia put a hand to her wimple and adjusted the way it sat on her forehead. She looked again at the drawing of her own face, graced by a halo.

  “But it’s not meant to be me,” she said. “The painting depicts the Blessed Mother.”

  “So it does,” the monk agreed quickly. “You’ve only lent your beauty, so we might glorify the Holy Mother together.”

  The monk studied their faces as the sisters examined his work, and reveled in Spinetta’s thoughtful observations about the details he’d drawn into the Madonna’s lush surroundings.

  “Last month, even before I knew where the face of my Madonna might be found, I walked along the Bisenzio River to study the cypress trees and clouds I saw under God’s eye,” he said quietly.

  God’s eye. Lucrezia looked at the monk and wondered if he mocked her. Was he warning her that God’s eye was upon them, even now? Could he know how she felt in his presence?

  She coughed, and turned away.

  “You aren’t ailing, are you?” the monk asked.

  “No, praise God.” Lucrezia crossed herself at the mention of illness, as
she had been taught. She didn’t look at him. “I only need a sip of water.”

  He handed her a ladle of water, and saw her face was strained.

  “Perhaps you need to rest, Sister?”

  “Perhaps,” she agreed, but still she wouldn’t look at him. “But when I sit for you, I’ll be at my ease.”

  A knock at the door broke what passed between them, and a spry man in a cape swept into the room.

  “Piero!” Fra Filippo rushed to embrace his friend, kissing him on each cheek.

  Piero di Antonio di ser Vannozzi, procurator of a dozen convents in Tuscany, took an artful look around the painter’s hastily tidied workshop, glanced at the young, lovely faces of the Florentine novitiates, and smiled warmly.

  “Fra Filippo, God has been good to you,” the procurator exclaimed. He let his eyes rest first on Spinetta, and then on Lucrezia. The novitiates averted their eyes until they’d been introduced, which Fra Filippo did with great formality.

  “I’d received word that two new souls had joined us at Santa Margherita,” Fra Piero said. “But since you only arrived after Pentecost, I hadn’t expected the bond between you and our esteemed chaplain would be so strong, so quickly.”

  Lucrezia flushed.

  “I don’t mean to offend you, good sisters,” the procurator said. “We’re blessed to have Fra Filippo with us in Prato, and anything we can do to help his work is an honor.”

  The procurator was a man of the world, as kind and forgiving of the sins of others as he was indulgent of his own weaknesses of the flesh. He’d long admired Fra Filippo’s work and had made the painter’s stay in Prato very comfortable, introducing him to the city’s wealthiest men and helping him obtain their commissions. The monk had counted on this friend to bless his friendship with the novitiates.

  “I wish I could visit longer, but I have important business today,” Fra Piero said after he’d taken a glass of wine. “In addition to the preparations for the Festa della Sacra Cintola, I’ve been asked to say a blessing over the newborn son of Massimo di Corona.” The procurator’s face dimmed. “The child is safe now but the mother is clinging to her life.”

  “Poor woman!” Spinetta said. “I shall pray for her.”

  “Per piacere, Sister Spinetta.” The procurator smiled when he spoke, and his crooked teeth gave him a slightly impish look. “If you would be kind enough to accompany me on my visit, your prayers and simpatico nature might do much good for the child and his ailing mother.”

  Spinetta’s glance wavered across the sketches Fra Filippo had spread open on the table.

  “Surely Fra Filippo can spare you for a short time,” the procurator pressed on. “We won’t be gone long.”

  Spinetta gave a questioning look to her sister, who nodded slightly.

  “It’s true, sister,” said Lucrezia, hoping the others couldn’t see how she felt at that moment. “No harm will come to me while Fra Filippo is working.”

  “If it won’t be an imposition, I’d like to go,” Spinetta said to the painter. “And I’ve already made fine progress with my copying of the Rule.”

  The monk looked at Spinetta, her brown eyes rounder versions of Lucrezia’s blue ones, and said a silent prayer of thanks.

  “That’s fine, my child,” Fra Filippo said. “Please, Sister Spinetta, go with my blessings.”

  As the door closed, Lucrezia tensed. She and the painter were alone.

  “Is there something you’d like to see, Sister Lucrezia, something I might offer you?”

  “No, Brother,” she answered so quickly that her tone startled him, and he responded at once.

  “Sister Lucrezia, are you all right? Does something displease you?”

  “Oh, no, Fratello.” She was glad to be alone with the monk, even though she was nervous. “Truly, I enjoy being here and being part of your work. It is only…” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t want to offend him, but if he was guilty of the crimes Spinetta said he’d been accused of, Lucrezia needed to know. She swallowed, and continued.

  “I’ve heard many things about you, and I’m confused. Please don’t think me rude, Fra Filippo. I have so much fondness for you.”

  Fra Filippo looked into her troubled eyes.

  “Many things are said about me, and you have a right to know what is true. There’s no shame in seeking knowledge, especially if it’s done without malice. Sit, Sister Lucrezia, and I’ll tell you whatever you ask.”

  The monk indicated the chair by the window, and found another for himself. They sat with the sun behind them, illuminating Lucrezia’s features and shedding a soft light on the monk’s brow. The window was high enough so that they could not be seen by passersby on the street.

  “If you’ve been told that I’ve broken God’s laws, then it is true,” Fra Filippo said. He spread his knees under his robe and leaned forward, palms on his legs. He sat so close, Lucrezia could smell the soap he’d used to shave his face that morning. “But I’ve been poor and in desperate circumstance, and only in those moments did I succumb to the temptation of dishonesty.”

  In faltering words, Fra Filippo described the months after his father’s death when he’d been forced to scrounge for food scraps in the Florentine streets, and how those lonely childhood nights haunted him still.

  “The Carmelites raised me, and in return I took the vow. You understand, Sister Lucrezia, how the cloth came to me, and I to God?”

  “I understand, Fra Filippo,” she said quietly.

  “I tell you, honestly, Sister Lucrezia, that I didn’t wish to cheat my assistant, Giovanni di Francesco. I had nothing to pay him with, but as soon as I did, I planned to give him all I owed.” He shook his head. “I brought a mark of vergogna upon my name. I did not act like a man of honor. Or a man of God.”

  She’d broached the subject, and Lucrezia felt responsible for the regret that dogged his features.

  “Even the best men are sometimes accused of falsehoods, and their good names blemished,” she said. Her eyes filled at the thought of her proud father. “The silk guild accused mi padre of producing strazze de seda filada, silk of inferior quality, but it wasn’t true. My father’s silks were always seta leale, of the finest quality.”

  She leaned forward. The monk reached out and touched her hands. She didn’t move, but she remembered the prioress’s warnings.

  “It must have given your father great joy to see you in his shops and to have you by his side,” Fra Filippo said gently. “And his silks must have been very beautiful.”

  “So beautiful,” she said. His compassion gave her the courage to continue.

  “It was by my father’s side that I learned to appreciate beauty,” she said wistfully.

  “Yes.” The monk’s answer was pregnant with meaning. “The beauty of this world, that mirrors God’s heavens.”

  They looked at each other, and she pulled away her hand. But what had passed between them opened something inside of her, and Lucrezia’s words came pouring out.

  “My father had so many words for blue.” She shook her head. “Azzurro. Celeste. Blu scuro. No two pieces of silk ever looked exactly the same to him.”

  She spoke of the flowered appicciolata and the rich red baldacchino, the beche with gold laces which her father had commissioned for her sister Isabella’s trousseau.

  “It was so beautiful,” she said. “It was so beautiful, I ache when I think of it.”

  As she described the fine weaves of her dresses with their bredoni sleeves, and her first summer dress of white damaschino brocaded with gold flowers, the monk imagined a young Lucrezia dancing in her garden like an angel in white.

  “And now,” she said, looking down at her plain black garment. “There’s only this robe.”

  Fra Filippo began to smile.

  “Dear Sister Lucrezia,” he said, barely able to conceal his delight. He was almost as pleased with himself as he was with her. “I cannot create a Virgin in a simple black robe for the illustrious Alfonso of Naples. He’s expecting si
lk and pearls and velvet.”

  Lucrezia looked at him cautiously.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asked.

  “If it pleases you and doesn’t offend your sense of modesty, I would like to have you model in fine clothing, proper for the Queen of Heaven. How much easier it will be for me to copy the folds of silk and the shimmer of real pearls, rather than only to imagine them.”

  “But it’s impossible,” she exclaimed. “I’ve given away all of my clothes.”

  “It’s not impossible. I have fine clothes here in my workshop, courtesy of my great patron, Cosimo de’ Medici.”

  The monk saw Lucrezia blanch.

  “It is the custom, of course,” he said gravely, checking his enthusiasm. “Models who sit for the great masters costume themselves in the appropriate garments.”

  “What garments would the Virgin wear? And how can you trust I’ll do them justice?”

  Lucrezia felt a heady excitement as Fra Filippo crossed to a small trunk in the rear of his bottega and began to remove delicate garments fit for a Florentine noblewoman. She saw him lift a cotta of morello purple, its sleeves decorated with small flowers and lined in silk, a benda sewn with pearls, and a thin gossamer veil.

  “It’s wonderful,” she cried, thrilled at the thought of once more feeling the rush of silk against her arms, the gentle weight of a frenello winding through her hair.

  The monk didn’t trust himself to look at her face.

  “If you will wear them, Sister Lucrezia, it will be of great help to me.”

  She carefully took the cotta from the monk and draped it over her folded arm. Gingerly she held the benda in the flat of her hand.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have a finer dressing room.” Fra Filippo indicated the curtain he’d hung around the clutter in the back room of his workshop. “You may change there.”

  Quickly, before she lost her nerve, Lucrezia stepped behind the curtain and slipped off her robe. Standing in her panni di gamba, she felt the gentle weight of the silver medallion of Saint John the Baptist sewn into the hem, and a wave of doubt washed over her. Beyond the curtain, she could hear Fra Filippo moving something across the floor of his workshop, and an image of her father came into Lucrezia’s mind. He was looking down at her, his dark eyes steely with disapproval.