“Nonsense, Master Simone,” the cardinal counters. “You are much too modest.” His voice is cheerful on the surface, but there is an undertone of malice: a verbal dagger enfolded within the voice of silk and velvet. His eyes fix upon the drape that covers the altar screen, and there is a sharp glitter in them. “Is this the piece?”
“Your Grace,” Simone begins, but it is too late. With surprising quickness, the cardinal has stepped forward and flung aside the cloth that covers the panels. Simone hears “ahs” and words of admiration. The one cleric who does not seem to be impressed is the pope, but His Holiness is not known for his love of art—a shame, given that his palace has acres of barren walls still crying out for frescoes and tapestries to warm and soften them. Perhaps the next pope, Avignon’s artists pray, will elevate art to its rightful place in the palace.
The pope turns aside from the screen and directs his gaze toward the Holy Family, propped on the easel. Walking closer, his sausage-fingers clasped behind his back, he leans close, studying the face of the young Jesus. The chatter in the room ceases as his entourage notices his frown. Finally he turns and faces Simone, his eyes narrow and cold. Without speaking, he approaches the painter, circles him, and then stands and stares. Finally he speaks. “Master Simone, how is your soul?”
“My soul? I am more accustomed to being asked about my paintings.”
“I don’t care about your paintings, except for what they illuminate about your soul, Simone Martini. I see a troubled soul in this picture.”
The air in the studio crackles with tension now. “There is much trouble in this world, Your Holiness,” Simone slowly replies.
“But there is none in our Lord,” the pope counters. “This painting is blasphemous. Possibly heretical.” The papal entourage now murmurs its disapproval.
“I mean no blasphemy, Your Holiness. The scriptures teach us that God became flesh and dwelt among us.”
“His Holiness needs no schooling on the scriptures from a painter,” the officious cardinal exclaims.
“No, of course not,” Simone replies. “But surely a mother’s distress would show in Our Lady’s face when her beloved son has been missing for three days? And surely our blameless Lord—even as a youth—would take offense at being chided?”
The pope trains inquisitorial eyes on Martini’s face, gauging whether the artist is mocking him, then turns away. “What other blasphemies are you painting in here, Martini?” Simone makes no answer. The pope peers behind the large wooden screen at the long table, then squeezes through the opening for a closer look. The room falls silent. Suddenly the silence is broken by a gasp and a sharp cry. The pope staggers out from behind the screen, his face ashen, clutching his chest. He tries to speak, but he cannot. He stares at Simone in terror, as if he has seen a ghost: the ghost of a man he tortured and killed years before.
Half carried, half dragged, he is taken to the street and placed in a hastily commandeered cart that clatters to the palace. Three days later, the Inquisitor-turned-pontiff is dead, and a new pope—a great lover of art, a man who will open the papal purse strings like no one before him—is elected, taking the name Clement VI. He hosts a sumptuous coronation banquet to which he invites three thousand high-ranking clerics and nobles. “My predecessors,” he tells his guests, “did not know how to be pope,” and they agree. Avignon’s greatest artistic and cultural boom is about to begin.
But it will begin and end with no further works by Simone Martini. His final sale, the day after Clement’s banquet, is to an eager young cleric from Lirey who is the private chaplain to one of France’s most illustrious knights, Lord Geoffroi de Charny.
The chaplain—part of the pope’s entourage the day His Holiness was stricken—has returned to Simone’s studio, curious to see the work that affected the pope so strongly. Far from being disturbed by the work, the chaplain finds the faint, haunting image quite intriguing…and most promising. Properly presented—not as a new work of art, but as an ancient relic, the actual winding-sheet of our Lord!—the image could inspire profound reverence, attract throngs of pilgrims…and unleash a torrent of donations from the devout.
The shrewd young priest from Lirey buys the shroud from Simone for thirty florins. Thirty pieces of gold.
Prices have gone up since the last time Christ was sold.
CHAPTER 39
Avignon
The Present