Despite the jailer’s entreaties, Simone cannot, will not be rushed; such a remarkable subject demands his full attention and best work. The corpse—an older man, but robust, or a ravaged, ruined version of robust—lies faceup on the stone floor. He is nude, but Simone has modestly crossed the hands above the genitals. The artist is fascinated and horrified by the wounds, the very stigmata of Christ. The punctures in the wrists and feet are fringed by ragged flesh and crusty blood; the knife wound in the side is sharply edged, but the blood and serum from it are smeared down the torso, hip, and leg. A crude wooden cross leans against the back wall of the cell and it, too, bears bloody stigmata.
Simone never expected such an opportunity when he arrived in Avignon. He came simply to test the patronage waters at the papal court—to see if French clerics might consider loosening their purse strings for an Italian painter. But a painter can kiss the hands of prospective patrons only so many times before his lips and his spirit grow chafed. Once that happens, he needs to work, whether there’s money in it or not. So having had his fill of Avignon’s splendor, Simone sought out its squalor, making the rounds of its prisons, hospitals, and cemeteries, concluding each polite inquiry by pressing a florin discreetly into the welcoming palm of a jailer or nurse or gravedigger.
It’s not that Simone is morbid; far from it—no one loves life more than Simone of Siena! But it’s always a good idea to study and sketch a corpse or two, if opportunity presents itself. In a religious painter’s line of work, the quick outnumber the dead, but not by so wide a margin as one might suppose. There’s a steady market for martyr paintings, of course, but the real money is in dead and dying Christs: A painter who’s quick with his brush and smooth with his tongue can feed a family of ten solely with commissions for crucifixion paintings. It’s crucial, therefore, to master death and dying, but where to find the examples? Living models—thieves and prostitutes and beggars, who’ll pose for a pittance or a porridge—are far easier to come by than dead ones. Far more troublesome, too, though: the living wheedle and whine and fidget, while the dead demand no fee or food. Corpses hold stock-still, no matter how many hours the sitting lasts. On the other hand, if the sitting stretches too long, the stench becomes distracting, especially in summer. Ripeness is a virtue in fruits, women, and opportunities, Simone has learned, but not in corpses. This corpse, though—freshly dead, laid out on a cold stone floor in late fall—this corpse is a godsend.
The trip to Avignon came up unexpectedly in the midst of a chapel commission in Tuscany. Simone had spent months drawing the sinopia studies on the rough walls; finally every scene was sketched, and all that was needed was the duke’s final approval. That would surely be a mere formality—after all, each scene featured at least one family member in a prominent position, a flattering light. The Virgin Mary bore a striking resemblance to milady the duchess; Joseph, to the duke himself; the baby Jesus, to the duke’s squalling brat and heir; John the Baptist, to the duke’s younger brother; and so on and so on, down to the final feebleminded cousin, portrayed as a simple shepherd. The sketches done, Simone had ground his pigments, made new brushes, set up his worktable, and asked permission to mix plaster and proceed. But fate had intervened: His honor the duke had galloped off into the night, narrowly escaping an assassination, and was now rumored to be hiding in Rome, or perhaps Naples, or possibly Venice by now. The chapel project had ground to a halt for god knows how long.
So when the invitation came to accompany a musician friend to Avignon—Avignon, which Master Giotto claimed would be the new promised land for artists—only a fool would have refused, and Simone was no fool. He and the musician, a mischievous flute-player, set off through the Susa Valley, paying a larcenous toll at the Savoy Gate, the monumental arch guarding access to the Alps. They’d followed, in reverse, the tortuous route taken by Charlemagne’s troops five centuries before, and by Hannibal’s lumbering war elephants ten centuries before that.
The ancient alpine route was well traveled but not easy. Winding along foaming rivers, skirting the faces of looming glaciers, the road was often blocked by rock or ice, occasionally cut by landslides; the June weather alternated between mild sunshine, fierce rainstorms, and occasional brief blizzards. If not for the help of a band of monks crossing from Turin to Grenoble, Simone and his friend might never have completed the crossing. But complete it they did, and as they followed the Rh?ne down to the arches of the beautiful bridge and the bustling papal city on the hill, Provence had wrapped her warm arms around Simone like a sweet lover, and he’d found Avignon to be quite fetching.