Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [117]
I tried to speak and I stammered. For the first time in all my memory I stammered. Finally I managed to make myself plain:
“Let me come into your workshop tonight,” I said. “Let me see your paintings. That’s all I want.”
“You can see them by day.” He shrugged. “My workshop’s always open. Or you can go to the churches in which I’ve painted. My work is all over Florence. You don’t have to pay me for such a thing.” What a sublime voice; what an honest voice. There was something patient and tender in it.
I gazed upon him as I had gazed on his paintings. But he was waiting for an answer. I had to pull myself together.
“I have my reasons,” I said. “I have my passions. I want to see your work now, if you’ll let me. I offer the gold.”
He smiled and he gave a little even laugh. “Well, you come like one of the Magi,” he said. “For I can certainly use the payment. Come inside.”
That was the second time in my long years that I had been compared to the Magi of Scripture and I loved it.
I entered the house which was by no means luxurious, and as he took the lamp from the other man, I followed him through a side door into his workshop where he put the lamp on a table full of paints and brushes and rags.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him. This was the man who had done the great paintings in the Sistine Chapel, this ordinary man.
The light flared up and filled the place. Sandro, as he had called himself, gestured to his left, and as I turned to my right, I thought I was losing my mind.
A giant canvas covered the wall, and though I had expected to see a religious painting, no matter how sensual, there was something else there, altogether different, which rendered me speechless once more.
The painting was enormous as I’ve indicated, and it was composed of several figures, but whereas the Roman paintings had confused me in the question of their subject matter, I knew very well the subject matter of this.
For these were not saints and angels, or Christs and prophets—no, far from it.
There loomed before me a great painting of the goddess Venus in all her glorious nudity, feet poised upon a seashell, her golden hair torn by faint breezes, her dreamy gaze steady, her faithful attendants the god Zephyr who blew the breezes which guided her landward, and a nymph as beautiful as the goddess herself who welcomed her to the shore.
I drew in my breath and put my hands over my face, and then when I uncovered my eyes I found the painting there again.
A slight impatient sigh came from Sandro Botticelli. What in the name of the gods could I say to him about the brilliance of this work? What could I say to him to reveal the adulation I felt?
Then came his voice, low and resigned. “If you’re going to tell me it’s shocking and evil, let me tell you, I have heard it a thousand times. I’ll give you back your gold if you want. I’ve heard it a thousand times.”
I turned and went down on my knees, and I took his hands and I kissed them with my lips as closely as I dared. Then I rose slowly like an old man on one knee before the other and I stood back to gaze at the panel for a long time.
I looked at the perfect figure of Venus again, covering her most intimate secret with locks of her abundant hair. I looked on the nymph with her outstretched hand and her voluminous garments. I looked on the god Zephyr and the goddess with him, and all of the tiny details of the painting came to reside in my mind.
“How has it come about?” I asked. “After so long a time of Christs and Virgins, that such a thing could be painted at last?”
From the quiet figure of the uncomplaining man there came another little laugh.
“It’s up to my patron,” he said. “My Latin is not so good. They read the poetry to me. I painted what they said to paint.” He paused. He looked troubled. “Do you think it’s