The Giant, page 20
“How will this work, master?” Andrea Il Riccio asks.
Di Cosimo looks up from his drawing, his hair standing straight up on top of his head, as if he’s pulled a woolen blanket over his head in the wintertime. He grins at the young man with yellowed, crooked teeth. “How will it work? We do our paintings, and then we are paid. That is how it will work.”
Il Riccio pushes back. “But I mean, we have not done a fresco, at least as long as I have been here.”
Di Cosimo raises a finger. “No, you are correct. Fresco is not my favorite. And besides, few patrons want fresco anymore. They want the latest—oil on panel or canvas—things they can hang in their houses and show to their friends. And portraits! Portraits are the most lucrative of all. Across our city, the wealthiest men are having portraits of their wives painted right now, I assure you! But we will not turn down major projects such as this, and that is why I am assigning a team who has experience with the fresco medium.”
Di Cosimo makes a few more hatch marks on the underside of the dragon. “Painters on the project will be Stefano, Gianluca. The two boys from the orchard warehouse will serve as apprentices,” he gestures. “Finally, Jacopo Torni and his little brother.” He points to us with his chalk.
I nod. A paying job. Lucia will be thrilled. “I am grateful for the work, Master di Cosimo. From whom should I take direction for this project? Will you be overseeing it?”
Master di Cosimo looks at me for a moment with wild eyes, misunderstanding. He scoffs a bit under his breath and mumbles something again unintelligible. “I shall stay here in Florence. I have my workshop to oversee, plus I have commissions for Signor Rosso, for the Pugliese, for the brothers of the Annunziata.” He waves his hands as if sorting his commitments into invisible buckets. He scratches his head and mumbles again. Finally, he looks at me with his clear eyes and his words come back into focus. “I will come to see the job, of course, but my team will complete the work. And so as I was saying, my dear Jacopo, it is you who shall be in charge.”
Beyond the walls of our city, a bee sinks over a bank of abelia that has overgrown the ruins of an ancient farm. It joins others, all buzzing contentedly as they gorge themselves on golden-white flowers. Green terraces wind around the periphery of a hillside, covered with a bounty of olive trees and vines heavy with pale, green grapes. Here, the hills unfurl as if someone has spread a green blanket over a field of melons. The country homes of our prosperous merchants are enclosed behind high walls, where you can see the tops of trees—pears, peaches, plums. Beyond, there are fields of sunflowers turning their black faces to the light. Out here, beyond the walls of Florence, far from my friends and my demons, I feel I can finally breathe.
The church where our new frescoes will stand lies just beyond the view of our city walls and of the great tiled dome of Florence cathedral, yet it’s close enough that my brother and I can return home on muleback at the end of each day. Most nights, though, we sleep on wooden cots set up in a side chapel of the church, as we work until it is too dark to return home.
In total, there are six of us. I am the foreman. My brother, having worked on fresco projects in cities near and far, oversees the two primary painters. Di Cosimo has sent two younger apprentices to score the lines and boxes for our pigments, to mix plaster and paint, to clean brushes and tools, and to clean up after us.
Over several days, we have erected wooden scaffolding across the interior of the chapel, bracing long poles into holes carved into the walls. When we are done, our assistants will fill the holes with plaster so that no one will ever know they have been there. Our youngest boys rough the surfaces of the walls with small axes, making it ready for our pigments to stick. For days, their scraping fills the air with sound and dust. Behind them, our painters smear a layer of rough arriccio, a mixture of lime paste and sand.
As we begin our work, I think about the frescoes I worked on at San Pier Martire, a project again abandoned, and how the dampness from the Arno crept in and threatened to grow mold on the walls. I decide to try mixing different materials with our plaster—a bit of vinegar, a splash of white wine. Most days, it amounts to little more than a mess. But I keep experimenting.
Father Ormanno, the old priest who presides over the church, visits us each day. He seems eager to share a joke or a story, and to watch us work. He asks what I have tried mixing in the plaster today to prevent the green mold. His bulging midsection belies gluttonous habits; his bald head is speckled with sunspots the same color as his tattered robes. He must be lonely out here all by himself, I think.
Occasionally, our patron appears in the church with his wife and children, staying for a while to watch us work. I can’t help but stand in awe of his noble demeanor, his kindness toward us as he stands sweating inside an ever-changing rainbow of woolen caps, belted and pleated doublets, colorful hose. He shakes our hands, asks us questions, gives each of us an encouraging word. Signora moves along the chapel aisles as if floating, her layers of silk petticoats sliding noiselessly over the patterned marble. Her brocaded dress swells out like a giant tent, her breasts bound tightly with ribbon, pearls at her ears and entwined in her graying hair.
Finally, the day comes when the surfaces are prepared and we are ready to map out Master di Cosimo’s design on the walls. Di Cosimo himself appears for this part, dismounting from his mule with some difficulty, and waddling into the church bent over from the travails of the journey. Our men hold the cartoon square to the wall, pricking the design with a needle, then pouncing it with a sack of black carbon dust until an outline is made. Master di Cosimo carefully oversees this process, for it’s in the transfer of his Madonna surrounded by strange dragons and beasts that our images will spring to life. Squinting, he watches us transfer his preparatory cartoon from the paper to the wall, making small adjustments and mumbled comments as he goes. After two full days of work, he finally nods his approval and returns to the city.
In the evenings, our little team of painters rests along an ancient stone wall. We bask in the glow of the longer summer days, peacefully regarding the rolling red earth, skinny cypress trees, gnarled oaks, and sapphire skies. I watch the wispy clouds roll by as I peel off small bits of ham I have picked up at the market or sweets made especially for the celebration of a local patron saint. As the sun sets and the air cools, I feel my body let go of the knots around my neck and shoulders.
By candlelight, I open my sketchbook and work on the drawings Michelangelo has assigned to me, those that might fool a cardinal in Siena. I do my best to mimic my friend’s style—large, ponderous thighs, backs, and shoulders. Writhing men in the image of our divine maker. Men in the guise of God.
But as I flop on my cot at night and close my eyes to the colors barely visible in the flickering candlelight, doubt creeps in. What right do I have to be in charge of this project? Why did Master di Cosimo put me here? I do not have my own workshop. Even after the years of tutelage under Master Ghirlandaio, my profession has amounted to little more than a bedchamber littered with crude wall paintings, abandoned projects, a stifling, impotent loneliness. What right do I have to be here among these painters?
I awake in the morning thinking that I must be intelligent, that I must have something to contribute as I watch the squares fill with color, day by day, but by noon, I think that I must be the stupidest one of di Cosimo’s assistants. Surely it won’t be long before they discover I am only here because of my father’s reputation and di Cosimo’s mindless assignment of me as their leader. That I myself am not a real artist. By nightfall, I live in terror that one of the other assistants will look over my shoulder and say, “What are you doing there? Have you ever painted a fresco before?” Worse yet, someone might laugh not at something I have said, but at me.
As I lie on my back on the scaffold, paint and dust falling on my face, in my hair, on my clothes, I think that one day, Master di Cosimo will realize his mistake in putting the likes of me in charge of a whole church fresco. Surely it was an error on his part. I am terrified that someone will call me out, tell me that I am not really qualified to do this job, to be in charge of this project. Someone is going to find something wrong with my work. For who am I to be in charge of anything?
On the feast of John the Baptist, my brother and I return to the city, and to news of Michelangelo and his sculpture. Considering the peace of the countryside, I am reviled by the smell of rotting food, the press of sweating bodies, the filth of the simmering street. In the alleys, the markets, the windows, and doorways, the news is upon everyone’s lips: the city fathers have ordered one of the wooden walls of the box surrounding the David to be removed. Soon, everyone in this moldering city will—at last—be able to view the giant in progress.
Master di Cosimo has called us to prepare the new decorations he has designed for the feast day of our city’s patron, a three-day extravaganza that will extoll the power, the grandeur, the invincibility of Florence. But after the disaster of the gilded boy, the very symbol of our city, I wonder if anyone in this city still believes in it.
In addition to overseeing the fireworks, di Cosimo has prepared themed carretti for each neighborhood, covered in garlands of papier-mâché flowers, each in the color of each neighborhood—green for San Giovanni, blue for Santa Croce, white for Santo Spirito, and red for Santa Maria Novella. The city has commissioned his workshop to create elaborate staging for the candles that each man fifteen years of age and older is obliged to offer at the altar of the Baptistery for the feast. Di Cosimo has designed a fabric ceiling for the streets surrounding the cathedral and Baptistery. It is little more than an oversized awning hung on cords, but it has magically transformed the area into a stage for our procession. We are covered by a vast, ornamented firmament of gilded stars that sparkle in the light of thousands of candles. In addition to di Cosimo’s commissions for public spectacles and decoration, private houses, palaces, and workshops across the city are adorned with flags, banners, flowers, and colored awnings.
It must be one of Master di Cosimo’s most ambitious programs for the Feast of San Giovanni but none of his assistants is paying attention. They can only speak of the gigante, can only speculate what will appear when one side of the old box I helped create with my own hands finally falls to the dust of the cathedral workyard. In their minds, they already foresee a spectacle more impressive than the one taking shape in our workshop and on the streets outside.
The clamor around the new David is enough to bring me to Michelangelo’s door. To my great surprise, his brother tells me my friend has holed himself up in his room and will not come out. And now, it is my turn to lure him from his bedchamber again, rather than the other way around.
He must have known I hesitated outside the door of his bedchamber, for I only rap my knuckles against the wood one time before he opens the door.
“It has been a long spell since I have seen you, my friend,” I say, entering his bedchamber with a tentative step.
He grunts but otherwise says nothing, only heaves himself to the floor at the end of his bed. He grasps the hairs on the top of his head as if he might pull them out from their roots. Around him, myriad drawings and pages of looping script lie scattered.
“What’s that?” I take a deep inhale. “Smells like sour grapes in here.”
He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t even offer one of his crooked grins.
I finger an array of brown ink drawings on the table, quick but expert sketches of legs, feet, hands. Muscular. Powerful. The hooded face of a woman, turning her head as if she has just been startled by a visitor at her door. I run my finger down the edge of the table to another stack of folios, these completely covered in his looping script. Words and lines are scratched out, rewritten. On another table, a slab of clay has been half-molded into the head of a man.
I don’t look at him directly, but I am watching from the corner of my eye. “Your name is being spoken across the city.”
“I don’t want to know,” he says, raising his hand as if deflecting his face from a blow. “The sculpture is not finished.”
“Did they ask you if they could show it?”
He nods.
“And you agreed.”
He stands, pressing the front of his shift with his palms as if the gesture might improve his haggard appearance. “It was not my wish, but my protestations were ignored. After all, they paid for it. What can I do?”
I am certain he is unhappy about having his work shown before it is finished; I know he has been working hard to push it as far as possible. I imagine he has been working for weeks in order to do as much as one man could do before today.
“But these public exhibitions,” I say, “people want them. Not long before you came back to Florence, there was a public showing of Master da Vinci’s cartoon of the Holy Family and Saint Anne at Santissima Annunziata… Even now, I hear that Master da Vinci will show a portrait of Francesco del Giocondo’s wife, Lisa, even though it is not yet finished.” But I stop myself; it is clear that mentioning da Vinci’s name is the wrong choice of subjects. He is pulling at his curls again. I try something different. “I am going to see your David when they unveil it tomorrow morning. Will you be there?”
Silence.
I should have known better than to ask. He begins pacing around the room, idly arranging papers and testing the squeak of a shutter.
“You and the rest of the idiots in town. Little more than sheep following the latest fashion.”
But I don’t let his comments define me anymore.
“What, are you afraid they will only speak of the small pisello?”
“Ha!” A small, sarcastic huff. He shakes his head. “Not that. Soderini has said that the nose is too big.”
“What? Too big?” I approach him, wagging my hands. “What does Soderini know about sculpture? About noses? He is a politician,” I insist.
“One with a big nose himself,” he offers, and now it is my turn to laugh.
“So fix it,” I say, shrugging.
His eyes widen. “Fix it? Fix it! What is there to fix? The nose is fine just as it is. I would like to see Soderini do better himself.”
“Of course you are right. So, you don’t want to go to the unveiling.” I shrug. “Your choice. But, Little Angel,” I grasp his forearms, “listen. Gonfaloniere Soderini is your patron, no?”
“No. The cathedral committee is.”
“And who is their superior?”
He nods in recognition.
“Well then, what do we do with our patrons? We please them.”
He scoffs. “I’m not going. And, L’Indaco, there is nothing wrong with the nose!”
“That may be true, but…”
“Of course it’s true!” his voice booms through the chamber.
“Our patrons,” I repeat myself quietly. “We give them what they want. You said so yourself.” I watch his face, slowly considering my words. “Just be grateful that Soderini didn’t say anything about the pisello.” His expression softens. “Hey,” I say, giving his cheek a soft slap, “if we can make a cardinal in Rome believe a brand new sculpture is centuries old, then surely you can figure out a way to ‘fix’ a nose on a face that’s way up there above our heads.”
“What do you mean?”
“An idea!” I say, and it’s my turn to pace the room. “You keep a fistful of marble dust in your pocket.” I walk back and forth quickly, filled with a vision. “While Soderini is watching, you pretend to chisel a little away from the nose, then let the marble dust fall from your hand, grain by grain. He will never know the difference.”
“L’Indaco,” he says, “I am never sure if you are an idiot or a genius.”
But I can see that he will be considering my idea long after the great orange ball of sunlight sets over the Arno.
The next morning, Michelangelo stays home. Undeterred, Francesco, Lucia, and I walk together to see the unveiling of the giant. I love nothing more than to walk shoulder to shoulder with my brother and sister through the streets of our city. Despite the gaps in our age, the gaps in our understanding of one another, since Francesco’s return, we have become a team.
As we approach the area surrounding the cathedral, the crowd thickens and boisterous chanting fills the air, echoing under di Cosimo’s painted tarps that shelter the streets. I watch di Cosimo’s gilded stars shimmer in the morning light as we work our way to the gates surrounding the cathedral workyard. We press through clusters of bakers, housewives, nobles. Along the raised sidewalks, opportunists hawk everything from apple cakes to small wooden slings—children’s toys in the guise of the sling David used to slay his giant.
There is already a great swell of people pressing up against the wrought-iron gates. I cannot see over their heads, but from my vantage point, I perceive that one of the four sides of the wooden enclosure has been removed. I can see the great, marble boy-king from the waist up, still protected by three sides of the box, still kept from hungry onlookers rattling the locked iron gates.
Even still half-hidden, the sculpture takes my breath away. Everyone presses forward to catch a glimpse of a young man larger than life, with no armor, taking on a goliath that no adult man was brave enough to face. My friend has captured the moment just as the youth has caught sight of his enemy. His body has just begun to tense. His right hand is beginning to curl, fingering the stone that will be loaded into the sling. He stares into the distance with an intense expression, as if he is contemplating taking the sling from his shoulder and loading it with the stone just a moment from now. It’s a sculpture about potential, about being brave. It is unspeakably beautiful.
