The Passion of Artemisia

He leaned toward me in an amused, fatherly way, wagging his head back and forth. “He’s the only great-uncle I have who painted. He’ll have to do.”

  “It’s a treasure! I won’t ever use it.”

  “Oh yes. You must. Let this serve as a reminder that the blessing of God on genius is only given judiciously.” He shook a finger at me. “Talent is not to be hid under a bushel.” He looked back at my painting. “ ‘Every beauty which is seen here below by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we are all come.’ That’s from a poem he wrote.”

  “God?” I teased. “God wrote?”

  “No. Michelangelo.”

  “It amounts to the same thing.”

  At home I set out the thirty-four coins in rows for Pietro to see. I turned them so the lilies all faced up. I didn’t show him the paintbrush. I heard Sister Graziela’s voice. Be wise.

  While I waited I felt something unsettling, unsatisfying that I did not feel when I had finished Susanna or Judith. Inclinazione may have been beautiful. It may have looked real, but it was missing something. For me, the pleasure had been visual, in creating shape and applying color, and tactile, in smearing the thick creamy paint on my palette, but the pleasure was not of the mind. The painting did not have invenzione. It did not tell a story. I had gotten paid for craft, not for art.

  I would not write to Father about it.

  “I can’t believe it,” Pietro said when he came home and saw the coins. His mouth seemed unable to close as he was counting. “Other artists commissioned by Buonarroti for single-figure panels received only ten.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “One knows these things. It’s our business to know.”

  That night in bed he lay as still as stone.

  10

  The Academy

  I washed my hair, and used a twig to dig paint from under my nails. I wiped my old shoes with pork fat, and then I washed my good wine-colored dress. Sopping wet, the bodice didn’t look bad, but the skirt looked like a rag. In a cold sweat, I took both parts upstairs to Fina.

  “Bless you, child. You don’t dunk a dress this fine into water. You just scrub the area you want clean. Now we’ll have an awful time getting this to look decent again.”

  “Have I ruined it?”

  “Put more wood on the fire.”

  She showed me how to press it smooth by using two iron pieces in the shape of pointed arches which she heated on the hearth. When I kept making more creases instead of taking them out, she elbowed me out of the way. “Hold up the skirt so it won’t drag. My floor is none too clean.”

  It took most of the afternoon. “From now on, I’ll pay you to do all our washing.”

  “Tell me, what’s the occasion for such a dress?”

  “The Accademia del Disegno has summoned me. ‘Members ceremony and exhibition in commemoration of the feast day of Saint Luke,’ the invitation said.”

  “Oh?” She looked at me curiously.

  “Buonarroti, the man I did that painting for, showed it to members of the academy. I think I’ll be admitted.”

  “And Pierantonio?” She scowled at the skirt as she worked. “He’s invited too?”

  “No.”

  “What does he think?”

  “He hasn’t said.”

  “Just be careful is all I’ve got to say.”

  “Careful. How can I be any more careful than I already am? I had to show him the invitation.”

  His eyes had narrowed and his mouth made that tight sideways movement when he read it. I’d said, “That overblown steward whose face looks like risen dough better not have put my name on the list of models. Do you think that’s what this is for?”

  Pietro had given me a look a person would give to an annoying idiot in the street, and said, “How should I know?”

  I helped Fina turn the skirt. “I’ll be careful.”

  The exhibition hall of the academy was filled with men talking loudly in groups in front of paintings. Signor Buonarroti saw me at the door and came toward me holding out both hands.

  “You will be a favorite here someday, mark my words,” he whispered in my ear, and then he introduced me to the steward, the man who had tried to register me as a model.

  “I believe we’ve met,” I said. I couldn’t suppress a wry smile when I offered my hand.

  “Indeed.”

  Signor Bandinelli greeted me cordially, which surprised me, invited me to study the paintings, and moved on to greet others.

  Signor Buonarroti pointed out il granduca, Cosimo de’ Medici, dressed in a purple waistcoat with slashings showing emerald silk underneath, and matching green silk breeches and hose. Gold embroidery created a panel down the center of his waistcoat. He wore a narrow white ruff.

  Oh, to do a painting with such exquisite detail and that brilliant green, to build up the sheen with layers of glaze between paint no thicker than the silk itself, with brush hairs so fine their trailings would look like silk thread. But it was impossible. The only green that bright was made from Macedonian malachite, and could only remain that bright by leaving it coarse ground. That wouldn’t do for silk because it would leave fine particles on the canvas. A shame. It was a spectacular portrait, but only in my mind.

  Unfortunately for him, although Cosimo was young, still in his twenties, he was unattractive. His bulb-shaped nose cast a shadow on his mouth, and a rather silly looking miniature triangle of beard was tucked under his lower, pouty, rouged lip.

  “Give him your most reverent curtsey,” Buonarroti murmured. “Here we go.” He took me by the arm. Hardly believing what was about to happen, I stepped forward, and il granduca took notice, but before Buonarroti could introduce me, the steward rapped his staff for attention.

  The academy members arranged themselves in two rows facing each other with Signor Bandinelli at one end. I stood next to Buonarroti. Opposite us, a bearded, full-cheeked man dressed in scholar’s brown smiled at me.

  Signor Bandinelli cleared his throat. “Il granduca Cosimo de’ Medici, members of the Accademia dell’ Arte del Disegno, and guests. We are pleased to announce, on this feast day of Saint Luke, patron saint of artists and craftsmen, the new admissions to membership for 1615.”

  A fluttering in my stomach made me push my hand against my bodice.

  “Members of the academy are held in the highest regard among the artists of the city of Florence, and are accorded the following privileges: instruction in drawing, painting, sculpting, architectural design, rhetoric, and mathematics; admittance to all occasional lectures, to the Uffizi, and, upon application, to other private collections; and the use of studio space, academy library, costumes, props, and registered models. The following individuals, please step forward to receive their matriculation papers and sign our registry.

  “Antonello Ignazio Barducci.

  “Jacopo d’Arcibaldo Daviolo.”

  The steward handed out documents. At each name, the members tapped their staffs against the floor in approval, and said, “Bravo!” My toes cramped and I took only quick, shallow breaths.

  “Antonio Guido da Fiorentino.

  “Gianlorenzo Frapelli.”

  I held my breath.

  “Francesco Alfonso Grepini.”

  My heart thudded to the pit of my stomach.

  “Giacomo Luigi Romano.”

  I wanted to sink into the floor.

  “And Artemisia d’Orazio Gentileschi Lomi.”

  For an instant, the sound of my name echoed in the room. Then the racket of staffs against stone, and the shouted word, “Brava!” My wild heart flew out of my chest and engulfed everyone. I stepped forward and signed with a big A, G, and L. I turned back to the men and met their smiles all around, from il granduca too, and especially the warm, proud face of Signor Buonarroti, looking like il divino himself. I wanted to hug them all.

  No one mentioned that I was the first woman to be admitted. There was only that one word—Brava.

  Was
that resentment I saw in that man’s stiffened back at the side of the room? In the arch of the brow of the man next to him? Was there anyone who did not tap his staff? Who was it I would have to win over with my words and not just my brush? Later. I’d watch for it later. Right now I was being congratulated.

  “It is time for you to be one of us,” Signor Bandinelli said. “The achievement of your Inclinazione alone makes you worthy of admission.”

  “That alone?” Apparently, he still didn’t appreciate my Susanna and Judith. “I am most humbly grateful, signore.”

  Wine and sweetmeats were served and Buonarroti ushered me around the room and made sure everyone knew it was I who painted Inclinazione. Would I eventually find the entire membership to be more impressed by craft than by hard-won, thoughtful invenzione?

  Just when we were about to approach il granduca, the steward stepped in our way. “Come with me, signora, for a tour.” An oily command. With his palm out directing me, he gathered three other new members and took us upstairs to the library and studios and showed us the cabinets of drawings, the skeleton, the sculptural casts, and then iterated a long, detailed description of classes. None of that had to be done now. As quickly as I could, I paid my matriculation fee and registered for a class in writing and rhetoric. When I came downstairs, the gathering had dispersed. Il granduca was gone. It was over, just like that—a dream.

  I held the document to my breast as I left the building, wanting to dance my way home. I’d write to Father. And Graziela and Paola too. But my excitement fought with the cold dread of telling Pietro.

  I hurried back on narrow streets, weaving between two beggars in a piazza. In front of Pietro’s friend’s macelleria, still-feathered chickens and geese hung from iron hooks, and the blood dripped into a trough that emptied onto the street. I stepped across it and went in and bought some boar sausage, something unusual for us, Pietro’s favorite. Then, I walked on to a vinaio.

  “A bottle of your finest wine. For a celebration.” My voice wakened the sleeping dog lying on the steps down to the wine cellar.

  I picked my way past children playing in the street, past black-clad brethren of the Misericordia bearing a bier to Santa Croce. I crossed the large piazza diagonally. Because that wild-haired penitent was whipping herself and wailing by the church door, I didn’t even stop at Michelangelo’s tomb just a few steps inside the church as I usually did. He’d understand my excitement. “Brava,” they’d said.

  What could I tell Pietro to soften it?

  The lengths of colored silk on Corso dei Tintori seemed to be waving in my honor. I hurried down the Lungarno a short way, up the stairs, three flights, two, breathing hard, only one more, and heard Palmira crying. I opened the door. Huddled on the floor in a corner clutching my dressing gown around her, Palmira was hysterical. I ran to her.

  “Oh, Palmira, tesoro. Where’s your papa?”

  My heart stopped. He wasn’t here. God knows how long he had left her alone. He could have taken her to Fina.

  I gathered her in my arms and kissed her reddened cheeks, her forehead, her ears, her little fists. Her tears salted my lips. “My little lonely one. Poverina. Don’t cry.” I felt her little body wracked with sobs. I held her close and rocked her. “Mama’s here now.”

  She quieted, and her wet hand stroked the embroidery on my bodice. She walked her fingers up the braid at my neckline, but she wasn’t willing to let go of her anger yet. Knowing she had my full attention, she sucked in a gulp of air and her bottom lip protruded. “I want a dress like this.”

  “You will have many. I promise you. Mama’s in the academy now. Maybe someday you will be too.”

  I fed her half a hard-boiled egg and broth with zucchini in her favorite blue faience bowl, and when she was finished she squirmed off my lap and put my dressing gown over her shoulders and pranced around the room dragging it behind her. Any other time, I wouldn’t have let her do that, and she knew it.

  I laid out the boar sausage for Pietro in thin slices like dark old coins touching each other around the edge of a pewter plate. In the middle I arranged pear wedges around the other half of the egg. “See how pretty? Like a star.” Another plate for olive oil. And bread. How would I tell him? I couldn’t allow my voice to sound exultant. I practiced saying it—“I’ve been admitted”—flat, like saying “It’s going to rain,” but I couldn’t trust my voice. I sprinkled ground oregano on the surface of the oil, trailing shapes of an A and D for Accademia and Disegno. I put the document of admission with its large A and D next to the plate, and poured two glasses of grappa and waited.

  “Hold still,” I said to Palmira, and drew a humorous, exaggerated sketch of her with my dressing gown trailing off the page behind her.

  “Is that me, Mama?” Her eyes sparkled with pleasure a moment before she remembered that she was sulking.

  “It’s my darling treasure. What is she called?”

  “Tesoro.”

  “What else?”

  “Palmira,” she said in a voice sweet as honey, and I knew I was forgiven.

  I slid out one sausage slice and rearranged the others to fill in. I ate with tiny, delicious bites. I tried occupying myself by tidying my painting cabinet, but I kept taking one more slice of sausage, repositioning the remaining ones, and with every missing slice from the plate, the reason for Pietro’s absence was clearer. He must have learned the news himself by now. I stirred the oil with a piece of bread so he wouldn’t see the letters, pushed aside the plate, and took out writing paper.

  Father,

  I have news which should make you very happy. I have been admitted to the Accademia dell’ Arte del Disegno, its first woman.

  At first when I took the Judith and Susanna to the academy, they scoffed at me, saying women shouldn’t paint any new invenzione. Then I took the paintings to Signor Buonarroti. Thank you for writing to him. He’s a gracious, kindhearted man. He commissioned me for a large nude as part of a ceiling in a memorial gallery for Michelangelo. Apparently members of the academy saw it and they changed their minds. I must not be too exultant. The future is still precarious.

  Palmira Prudenzia is almost three now, and is never still. She has Pietro’s dark eyes and brown curls. She’s full of questions. “How can I grow up faster?” she asked the other day. So here I am, an academy artist and a mother. I can hardly believe it. My only worry is how Pietro will take my academy admission.

  Ever your daughter,

  Artemisia

  Dusk came and dimmed the outside world colorless. I lit a candle as well as my mother’s oil lamp, to make it a cheery place to come home to. Many times Mother had Father’s supper ready and he wouldn’t come home until after it got cold. She’d sing a song softly about the dancing lamplight to make herself feel better, but to me, it always sounded melancholy. The pears were turning brown at the edges. I couldn’t stand to see them look so pitiful. I ate all but two wedges. This was my celebration, after all. The first woman in the history of the academy deserved something.

  I was giving Palmira the rest of the pear when Pietro burst in the doorway, yanking off his doublet. A bolt of anger flashed across his fine, small features.

  “You could have waited,” he said.

  “Why did you leave her? She was crying when I came home. What do you mean, I could have waited? For what?”

  “Until I was admitted.” Flinging his doublet over his shoulder, he brushed past the table without looking at the document. The candle flame fluttered. I heard the door to our bedchamber close and latch.

  “Pietro, what are you doing?” I pounded on the door. “Per amor di Dio, what does this mean? Don’t do this to me.” Palmira ran to me and hooked her arms around my legs. “You ought to be pleased. It will mean more commissions, for both of us.” A muffled sob came through the narrow opening between doorframe and door. “What do you want?” I said to the door. “That I stop painting? Stop being what I was meant to be? Stop breathing?” I picked up Palmira, and paced from the main room to
the kitchen and back.

  Palmira nestled her head against my neck, as if she knew. I sat her on the sink counter and stroked her face with one hand, while I washed the dishes in the stone sink with the other. I made up Palmira’s bed in the main room and gently laid her down. She tucked her curled fingers under her chin like a squirrel. I drew the quilt around her and whispered, “I swear, my precious, I will never allow you to be forced into a loveless marriage. You’ll never have to marry out of convenience, never need to make the best of what circumstances give you.”

  I leaned against the wall. But wasn’t that just life—making do with what circumstances give you? If it weren’t for Agostino, if it weren’t for Father, I might have been able to marry someone who loved me and would have been proud of me. Yet if I married for love, I might still be in Rome, might not have even been known to the academy. I thought of Graziela. Love marriages had no assurances either. The two things I wanted most in life—painting and love—and one had killed any chance at the other. Why was life so perverse that it couldn’t or wouldn’t give me one shred of good without an equal amount of bad?

  I threw the dirty dishwater in the drip basin out the window with a great heave.

  11

  Judith

  That dough-faced steward was not going to thwart my way to Cosimo de’ Medici, and neither was Pietro. I began working on another Judith Slaying Holofernes, essentially the same composition but with different faces and richer dresses. This time, Judith’s would be deep gold, which seemed to be a Florentine preference, and would have fuller sleeves pushed up in order to do her work. And because Florentines loved jewelry and decorative touches, I put gold braid on Abra’s headscarf and gave Judith a bracelet with figures of Artemis in carved green stone framed in gold filigree. Since the making of fine cloth was one of the city’s main industries, I used a wider picture plane allowing Holofernes’s red velvet bedclothes to be more voluminous. I edged them with gold stitching. And for sensual appeal, I added the tiniest speck of blood on the warm flesh of Judith’s full breast, and more specks on her Florentine gold dress—all of this calculated to appeal to His Serene Highness Cosimo de’ Medici.