Voices from the Past Part 89

Cloux

March 5

Fifty years ago...fifty!

Whether it was chiaroscuro, sfumoto, encaustic, or other technique, I was sincere. Few days were long enough.

Florence, fifty years ago...it was my town. I fitted in. The place is no longer the same. The guilds are different. The workshops are different. Most of my friends are dead or gone. There is another kind of politics.

A half century ago life was adventure: life was new: friends were new, work was new: there was love. When I was accused of h.o.m.os.e.xuality some of that libel pervaded my thinking for years. A personal plague. How easy it was to brand a man in those days: the "telltale" box hung on the church door. You wrote your accusation and dropped it in the slot and scurried off.

So much of life is focused on s.e.x, is wasted on s.e.x. I have been a masturbation man. For long my body has nothing to share with any woman or man. I am immersed in thought. In my bed I have loneliness as mate. I patronize no one.

One of the chateau gardeners, a Venetian, who has been very friendly with me, has presented me with a caged oriole. In a woven reed cage, painted black.

Black!

I carried the cage outdoors, into the morning mist; I set it down. The bird fluttered, trembled. How long had it been captive? I knelt. I could see where he had chipped off black paint with his beak.

Black!

I opened the door.

A male, he battered the reeds with all his strength, found the opening, and hurtled into the sky.

I have forgotten more than I can recall: perhaps this is true of most of us who have lived a long life. Many of the things I have forgotten I have wished to forget. I find it hard to live and harbor grudges, but it is also lack of wisdom to erase the mind; then it may be necessary to experience our mistakes again: that's being trapped twice; a fox avoids that.

As for survival, I have survived because I found something to discover: discovery is the key: new sinew, new mineral, new color, new face, new ca.n.a.l, new lamp.

In Andrea's studio I discovered perspective. There is so much about perspective that eludes one-a continual challenge.

Perspective may be the most important of all the art disciplines. In this branch of science, the beam of light is best explained by mathematics and physics. Since the axioms are long I will abridge them now:

There are three branches of perspective: 1 - The first deals with the reasons for the diminution of objects as they recede, and is known as diminishing perspective. 2 - The second deals with the way colors vary as they recede.

3 - The third is concerned with the way objects in a picture must be finished in relation to their proximity.

I amplify these three in my treatise on perspective.

I have admired hands, respected them for their capabilities. As I dissected, I marveled at their intricacy and perfection... I admire all cla.s.ses: the feminine, the masculine, children's hands. I made drawings of my own hands, in the days I could squeeze the crabp.r.o.ngs of a horseshoe with ease. I remember Mother's loving hands, Caterina's sensual hands, Andrea's clever, slender fingers. There have been clay and bronze and marble hands. The hands of beautiful women have appeared in my dreams. I can perceive, as I write, the hands of Christ and those of His disciples.

Perhaps there will be a few, reading this journal, who may care to know some of my thoughts about painting:

a - All colors, when placed in the shade, seem of equal degree of darkness. b - All colors, when placed in full light, seldom vary from their essential hue. c - The eyes, out-of-doors, in a illuminated atmosphere, perceive darkness behind the windows of houses which nevertheless are light. d - The eyes perceive and recognize objects with greater intensity in proportion as the pupil is dilated.

Sleep is a curious thing-resembling death.

Sometimes it is totally blank, as death must be; sometimes we see destruction. Flames rise. Buildings collapse. Sometimes we hear animals talk. Without moving, they run away from us. Sometimes we fall from great heights-without harm. Sometimes we talk to those who are unseen. Sometimes we meet those who can't speak. If we do not sense death in our sleep we may sense confusion.

Confusion in black and white. Or grey. We dream of bucolic scenes in grey, a grey stream, a grey tree, grey boulders. We stroll through grey air, grey birds in the sky.

Now, in color, a great hawk threatens us. Angels appear. There is a cave with a ragged mouth. It wants to swallow us. Now cadavers threaten. Enemies besiege us.

Now, a friend appears-a childhood friend, unchanged by time.

Christ descends from the refectory wall-leaving a terrible hole.

Cloux

March 4, 1519

I am writing very slowly now.

While painting The Last Supper I lived at the Santa Maria delle Grazie some of the time, working day after day, often sleeping on the floor, on a bench. I painted by day and at night, with the help of lamps and candles, placing lights on benches, on tables, on my scaffolding.

I was altering forms, changing colors, imparting greater age to a face, lessening the impact of a gesture.

I might stay an hour, or remain for days: Ai, Matthew's eyes might move; Luke might raise his arm; John might turn his head-or so it seemed. I was always there when the light was good; during inclement weather I might shove my key into the lock, and shut the door. A few grapes, some nuts, bread and wine... I didn't need much food. With a basket or a bowl beside me on the scaf- folding I would go on painting.

I was forty-three.

When Christ's model became ill and finally died, I retouched His face, imparting what I had learned while observing the dying man. I remember: to soften the shading I retouched with a lamp in my hand, holding it close to His face.

As I painted there were two dead men watching me.

I discovered Judas when he was drunk. I found him in a borghetto, slumped at a table, a big table sticky with spilled food and wine. Flies. Sipping wine at another table, I sketched him. So it was: I would not have to hunt any longer. That night, although he was drunk and unsteady, I got him to my studio and put a robe over his rags. We talked, we ate. His name: Carlo Macchini.

Carlo came and went. He never accepted a soldi.

Came and went, usually a little drunk. Kindly.

He was an a.s.sistant baker. Hated his boss, hated his job. Hated.

When I had completed his face in the fresco, he contemplated it for a while, shrugged, patted me on the shoulder, walked away...not a word... I never saw him again.

Before I finished the fresco, Luke had died. The last I heard about Peter was the news that he had added another child to his big family. Ninth. As for Mark...he was living with a prost.i.tute. Sick. No job.