Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [122]
It seemed a cruel use of Botticelli’s talent! It seemed a ghastly thing. Oh, it was expertly done, yes, but how merciless it seemed.
Only now did I know that in The Lamentation I had seen a perfect balance of light and dark forces. For I did not see that balance here. On the contrary, it was astonishing that Botticelli could have done something as wholly dark as this. It was a harsh thing. Had I seen it elsewhere I would not have thought it was his work.
And it seemed a profound judgment on me that I had thought for one moment of giving Botticelli the Dark Blood! Did the Christian God really live? Could he deter me? Could he judge me? Is that why I had come face to face with this painting with Botticelli standing beside it looking into my eyes?
Botticelli was waiting for me to speak to him on account of this painting. He was waiting patiently to be wounded by what I meant to say. And deep inside me there was a love of Botticelli’s talent which had nothing to do with God or the Devil or my own evil or power. That love of Botticelli’s talent respected Botticelli and nothing mattered just now but that.
I looked up again at the painting.
“Where is the innocence, Sandro?” I asked him, making my tone as kind as I could.
Again I fought the blood hunger. Look how old he is. If you don’t do it Sandro Botticelli will die.
“Where is the tenderness in the painting?” I asked. “Where is the sublime sweetness that makes us forget everything? I see it only a little perhaps in the face of God the Father, but the rest—it’s dark, Sandro. It’s so unlike you, this darkness. I don’t understand why you do it when you can do so much else.”
The blood hunger was raging but I had control of it. I was pushing it deep inside me. I loved him too much to do it. I could not do it. I could not endure the result if it were to be done.
As for my remarks, he nodded. He was miserable. A man divided wanting to paint his goddesses on the one hand, and the sacred paintings as well.
“Marius,” he said. “I don’t want to do what’s sinful. I don’t want to do what’s evil, or what will make another person, simply by looking at a painting, commit a sin.”
“You’re very far from ever doing that, Sandro,” I said. “That’s my view of it—that your goddesses are glorious as are your gods. In Rome, your frescoes of Christ were filled with light and beauty. Why journey into the darkness as you have done here?”
I took out the purse and put it on the table. I would leave now, and he would never know what true evil had come close to him. He would never dream of what I was and what I had meant, perhaps, perhaps to do.
He came to me and picked up the purse and tried to give it back.
“No, you keep it,” I said. “You deserve it. You do what you believe you should do.”
“Marius, I have to do what is right,” he said simply. “Now look at this, I want to show you.” He took me to another part of the workshop away from the large paintings.
Here was a table and on it were several pages of parchment covered with tiny drawings.
“These are illustrations for Dante’s Inferno,” he told me. “Surely you’ve read it. I want to do an illustrated version of the entire book.”
My heart sank when I heard this, but what could I say? I looked down at the drawings of the twisted and suffering bodies! How could one defend such an enterprise on the part of the painter who had rendered Venus and the Virgin with miraculous skill?
Dante’s Inferno. How I had despised the work while recognizing its brilliance.
“Sandro, how can you want to do this?” I asked. I was shaking. I didn’t want him to see my face. “I find glory,” I said, “in those paintings that are filled with the light of paradise, whether it is Christian or pagan. I find no delight in the illustrations