Cardinal Orsini, whose portrait Simone painted seven years ago, during the excitement of his arrival at the papal city, has been almost the only one able to pry any work out of him, and that’s only because Simone’s survival—his, and Giovanna’s, and her talentless brother’s, and the brother’s family, too—depends on Cardinal Orsini’s continued generosity. Simone is now putting the final fatigued flourishes on an altar polyptych, a folding wooden screen with eight hinged panels, each the size of a prayer book. Simone has sold the polyptych to Orsini as if it were a new commission, but the truth is, he painted the scenes themselves years ago—ten years ago; how can so much sand have slipped through the glass?—back in Siena, back when he was at his peak, he now realizes. Now Orsini is ill, probably dying, and the urgency of finishing the panels’ decorative borders quickly, before the cardinal’s purse is buried with him, is the only thing driving Simone to take up his brushes, punches, and gold leaf.
There is one other painting on his easel, also sold but not quite finished: a small Holy Family, not even two feet high, showing Mary, Joseph, and a boyish Christ—but such a Christ as has never been painted before. The scene portrays the parents reunited with Jesus after the boy has been missing for three days—days he has spent at the Temple, debating theology with the elders. Joseph scowls, and Mary, her cheeks splotchy with anger, scolds the boy—imagine, scolding the Son of God—while the young Christ stands defiant, arms folded coldly across his chest, a look of stubborn scorn directed at the Blessed Virgin. Simone can’t quite say what has prompted him to paint such an irreverent scene. All he knows is that he feels an odd kinship with the stony-faced boy; having endured endless cajoling and scolding from people who want him to paint this or sketch that, Simone feels the urge to fold his arms across his chest and set his jaw just so.
Giovanna has forgiven his infidelity, perhaps because she sees that he scourges himself more savagely than she ever could. She understands self-inflicted wounds. Her deepest sadness in life is her inability to bear Simone a child, and knowing that another woman has done so is a bitter reminder of her own failure.
Simone still goes to his studio day after day, but he spends most of his hours staring at the ghost portrait on fabric, The Death of Innocence. He’s lengthened his worktable to accommodate most of the strip of linen—nearly fifteen feet of it—and has applied a flat, smooth coat of plaster. Normally at this point he begins to paint, working swiftly so the paint bonds with the damp plaster. Not this time; this time, he needs a surface as dry and smooth as marble. Stopping often to consult the drawings he made by lamplight years before, he sketches the dead man lightly with a charcoal pencil—front and back, joining the images at the top of the head. Once he’s satisfied with the faint sketch, he swaps the pencil for a thick piece of reddish-brown sinopia chalk and begins shading the features—heavily for the prominent ones, lightly for the hollows and recesses. It takes him three days to complete the figure itself, and another day to add the wounds. Finally, carefully, even tenderly—as tenderly as if he were undressing a beautiful woman—he unrolls the linen onto the image he has created. Once again using the rounded end of the wooden pestle, he rubs softly, stroking the linen from every direction to transfer a whisper of pigment from the tabletop to the fabric. The final step is to add the bloodstains—a watery tempera of red vermilion, brighter than the man’s ochre image—to highlight the wounds.
He has just completed the trail of blood on the forehead—a meandering trickle that hints at furrows; a brilliant touch!—when someone knocks at the studio’s door. He ignores it, as he ignores all knocks but Giovanna’s distinctive, birdlike pecking at the wood, but it continues, growing more forceful with each thump-thump-thump. “Simone Martini, open the door,” commands a voice that sounds accustomed to swift and unquestioning obedience.
“Leave me in peace,” he calls out. “I’m working. I must not be disturbed.”
“Open the door, Master Simone, or we will break it down.”
Simone considers ignoring the command, but he lacks the energy to repair the door, so he pulls the bolt and opens it a crack. The commanding voice belongs to one of the papal guards, who pushes his way into the room, sees it empty except for Simone, and makes a beckoning gesture toward the open door. Half a dozen clerics file noiselessly into the room—two canons, a bishop, a pair of red-hatted cardinals, and lastly a monk. The monk is a large, white-robed Cistercian; it is, Simone gradually realizes, none other than Pope Benedict himself: an older, more dour version of the man he saw hiding the bones in the palace wall. Simone nods slightly in acknowledgment; he should, of course, kneel and kiss the pontiff’s ring, but he continues to feel as petulant as the scowling young Christ on his easel.
“Master Simone, you are too stingy with your companionship and with your paints,” says one of the cardinals, whom Simone does not recognize. “Cardinal Orsini—may God restore his health or ease his death—speaks so highly of your polyptych that we must see it.”
“My friend and patron is very kind,” says Simone, “but it is not yet finished, and I would be ashamed to show it.”