The Woman in the Painting. Kerry Postle

queuing up to be painted. They had bags of money with which to pay, while la fornarina clearly paid in other ways. As I peered over my impressive mounds of ground pigment, I observed Sebastiano. His eyes smouldered like hot coals sparking angrily to life every time they caught an apprentice chatting, smiling, looking up from his work. I slumped further down behind my pigment piles. I could only imagine that the girl in the unfinished painting was late with her payment.

      A common baker’s daughter, immortalised in paint by one of the finest painters in all Europe. At least, that was the reputation Sebastiano had. She did not realise her good fortune.

      I looked on while the nobility of Rome jostled with each other to enjoy the same privilege, bombarding the maestro with questions.

      ‘Who have you painted?’

      ‘Him? Have you really?’

      ‘Her? Well I never.’

      ‘Them? How marvellous.’

      ‘Could I possibly see them?’

      ‘When can you start?’

      ‘When can you finish?’

      ‘How long must I wait?’

      Interest was overwhelming. Portraits were easier and evidently more profitable than painting an elaborate fresco cycle for a church or a monastery, they needed less planning and were relatively quick to complete. Sebastiano must have been pleased when he’d turned his hand to them. But as I noticed the colour in Sebastiano’s face rising, caught the flames flickering in his eyes, it was clear portraits were not uppermost in his mind this Tuesday. I kept my head down. He could go off at any second.

      ‘Have you seen her?’ He drew close to Giulio, his eyes pulled to the door by invisible strings.

      I clapped a pigment-covered hand over my mouth as I watched an interested patron reach out to touch a just-finished portrait left to dry on an easel in the corner. ‘The hair, it looks so real,’ he trilled with enthusiasm.

      Sebastiano turned. The invisible strings snapped.

      ‘DON’T TOUCH!’

      The nobleman jumped back. When the shock had subsided he glared at the artist.

      ‘Signore, it’s best you don’t touch it … per favore!’ Sebastiano added quickly, his good sense returning. It was one thing to shout at one’s apprentices and quite something else to shout at one’s patrons.

      ‘One drawback with portraits,’ he explained, his tone somewhere between apologetic and grovelling, ‘is the drying time of the oil paint … signore … and it’s a devil to get off one’s fingers.’

      Still, portraits were durable (when ready), and easy to display. And fashionable. That made them desirable at any price. That’s why, shouted at or otherwise, this nobleman couldn’t hand his ducats over fast enough in order to seal the deal.

      For the next few hours Sebastiano occupied himself with business matters. He needed to simmer down. He sat in a quiet corner with interested patrons, and in a special book he recorded names, measurements, family mottoes, interests, estimated completion times, costs.

      But when the business had been settled, and the last of the noblemen had been shown out, it was clear that the maestro still had that girl on his mind.

      ‘Is she here yet?’

      He stood before his painting of her and shouted. ‘Taddeo! I need— Fetch me— Don’t forget— Give me that—’

      Sebastiano’s demands spread out across the studio like molten lava and not even my mountains of ground colour could stem the flow.

      ‘Here, boy. Pietro!’ Taddeo had found me. ‘The maestro needs lamp black.’

      ‘But I don’t know how to m-m-m …’

      With consummate care and attention Taddeo trained me dutifully in the preparation of lamp black by considerately pointing to Cennini’s handbook, il libro dell’arte. Every artist’s workshop had a copy as it told you how to make pens, paper, brushes, work on frescoes, grind pigments – you name it, Cennini’s handbook could tell you how to do it.

      ‘Chapter th-th-thirty-seven,’ he yelled at me, with the stammer a cruel and unnecessary addition, I thought. There was no need to make fun of me. ‘Everything you n-n-n-need to know is in there.’

      Sebastiano mixed lamp black with lead white to form the imprimatura for his paintings, the base for his portrait work. And so he needed it. Lots of it, as portraits were fast becoming his stock in trade. In itself lamp black was comparatively simple to make. And it was quick. The easiest way, according to Cennini, was to burn linseed oil in a lamp and collect the soot created by the process. It needed no grinding, and, once burned, the soot was as fine as powder. Even a fool could make it. ‘Lamp black. Sebastiano needs more lamp black!’ Taddeo shouted at me.

      ‘Is she here yet?’ the maestro’s plaintive cry reverberated around the studio like an echo. Giulio raised an eyebrow.

      *

      The following Tuesday the atmosphere in the workshop was even more tense.

      ‘The takings are down,’ Giulio whispered in my ear as he passed by.

      ‘B-b-but the p-p-portraits—’

      ‘I know,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘If he would only allow me to do them.’

      I sniffed at Giulio’s arrogance. But he had a point. All Sebastiano had to do was work on the designs, start the drawings. The more experienced apprentices – Giulio among them – could do the rest. But the maestro would not entertain the possibility. Unfortunate, as he was experiencing artistic paralysis, the cure for which was that common girl. I willed her to appear.

      ‘That commission, the one from Pope Julius,’ Sebastiano barked at Taddeo, ‘is it here yet?’ That a papal commission Sebastiano had been promised had yet to turn up also did nothing to lighten the mood. ‘It should be here by now,’ the maestro muttered. Though apprentices nodded, they kept their eyes on their work, afraid to look up. Still, we all expected instructions from the Vatican to arrive at any moment.

      ‘Is she here yet?’ Sebastiano paced the studio. ‘Is she not here yet?’

      A red velvet curtain divided the workshop in two: one area, closest to the entrance, for the apprentices; and the other, at the far end, for the maestro and his baker’s daughter. He had already pulled it up in anticipation of her arrival, ready to let it fall dramatically the instant she crossed from one side to the other. He had yet to finish his painting of her. Tongues had, initially, wagged with wanton excitement as to why that was. The maestro, it was said, was too busy fornicating with the fornarina during their sessions together to find the time to plunge his paintbrush in his paints and get the work done. But that wasn’t it, even though many of the younger apprentices held on to this illusion and even though, I suspected, the maestro would have wanted it so.

      No, the reason he hadn’t finished his painting of her was down to the fact that she rarely turned up. And many of the apprentices were now beginning to lose interest in the girl, the maestro, their supposed relationship, and the painting.

      Giulio was taking a break from grinding lapis lazuli to make pens, some fine, some broad. He’d been instructed to make six of each. I was tempted then to ask why he had twenty quills ready instead of twelve. But I already knew the answer. He was stealing them. Out of defiance. But also because he needed them. I’d seen him slip charcoal into his pockets before, that he’d used to pursue his sideline in unsavoury drawings. I wondered that his pockets weren’t bulging. I looked at them and saw that they were.

      ‘Where is she?’ Meanwhile Sebastiano’s frustration spread out over the studio like a barbed net, causing apprentices to jump and writhe and pray that the girl would arrive soon and put them all out of their misery.

      Giulio breathed in deeply. Both eyebrows rose.