“The arm of the Virgin’s mother today, Ysabella, but, by the feast of the Birth of the Virgin, Anna in her entirety.” Gabriele’s face lit briefly with a smile, and Ysabella smiled back, looking at Gabriele for clues to his mood. Since his wife had died a few years before, Gabriele had become impenetrable. He looked like a Lorenzetti painting himself, with his still features. He was unlike anyone else in the family, tall where they were small, and with an unhurried long-limbed grace. Gabriele’s uncle, Ysabella’s father Martellino, was a baker with a round, cheerful face, and the spherical motif persisted throughout. His protuberant belly strained against his tunic, his short legs bowed out in an arch. Ysabella had inherited her share of roundness; she reminded Gabriele of a nesting wren, bright-eyed and quick. But Gabriele had the look of a falcon. Gray had come to his hair early, and it gave him an otherworldly quality, striking against his olive skin. His arched brows remained dark, in contrast to his prematurely silver hair. Gabriele and his cousin walked next to each other through the lightening streets.
“Your paintings see more of you than we do,” Ysabella jested, taking his arm. “If you can make your way home for supper, we would welcome your paint-spattered self. I’m making mutton tonight—perhaps that will entice you?” Gabriele nodded absently, in his mind already climbing his scaffolding. He saw his cousin to the door.
“Gabriele.” Ysabella hesitated. Gabriele could see her reluctance to let him leave. Her cheerful presence was a pleasant distraction from his preoccupations. She was eminently practical, talkative where he was quiet, and she made him smile, even when he did not intend to. “I wish I could go with you.”
“Ysabella,” Gabriele said, smiling at her broad, open face, “my painter’s life is not as thrilling as it might appear.”
“It is thrilling compared to mine, assisting father in the bakery all day and trying to put off his suggestions of marriageable young men. He worries that no one will want a wife past her twenty-fifth year. As if I had any interest in marriage at all.” Ysabella laughed. “All the girls ask me whether you might marry again.”
“Your companions should turn their attention to more worthy targets of affection,” Gabriele said. “The life of a painter’s wife is not an easy one.” He wondered, looking at Ysabella’s bright, intelligent face, whether she would ever marry. Her father had only half tried to find her a match, no doubt welcoming his daughter’s presence too much to imagine losing her, now that her mother was gone.
“But will you ever marry again, Gabriele?”
“Truly, I cannot arrive late to work for one of my few dedicated patrons. My reputation is at stake, and my imagined future brides can wait.” Gabriele patted Ysabella’s hand gently and started down the narrow street that led to the private chapel in the Signoretti palazzo. His performance on this commission might determine a future of more important work. Martellino’s generosity was welcome, but Gabriele wished he could take less and offer more to the upkeep of the household. As he walked, practical concerns faded and he turned his thoughts to the patterns of light and shadow and the wings of angels beating at the edges of his vision.
Gabriele passed the Ospedale, which loomed above him, bright with the four painted scenes from the life of the Virgin. One empty space remained over the entrance, its blank stone beckoning. For a moment Gabriele lost his hold on the present, and he was high again on the scaffold next to his former teacher, working to finish the last of the four Ospedale frescoes before nightfall. The depiction of four-year-old Maria taking leave of her family always evoked powerful emotion in him. Maria’s mother and father, blessed with the conception of a child long after it should have been possible, dedicated the unborn baby to God’s service, and this promise was fulfilled when the time came. Maestro Simone Martini had sat down with him the night before Gabriele began to paint the Virgin’s face.
“Her innocence is held in tenuous balance against the powerful future foretold for her. If you cannot feel the gravity of this moment, do not climb the scaffolding tomorrow.”
Gabriele had stayed up long into the night imagining the state of the child Maria’s heart. In that fresco, under Martini’s tutelage, he had reached the pinnacle of his career to date, but since the Maestro’s departure for Avignon and his death there, Gabriele’s reputation had been slow to build. He was well regarded—“the silver-haired pupil of Martini”—but not yet renowned.
At the far edge of the piazza, he looked back toward the Ospedale. “I will find myself on scaffolding before you again, I swear to it,” he said, under his breath. He smiled, imagining how Ysabella would poke fun at him for talking to a building. Maria Santissima Annunziata should fill that space, Gabriele thought, and I should like to be the author of that prayer in paint.
*
When Umiltà and I reached the entrance of the Ospedale, I stared up at the wall. In my memory I could see the blank brick of the facade, but in front of me the entry was painted with the scenes depicting the life of the Virgin that Donata had told me about. The fifth space over the doorway was still empty; Umiltà had only just petitioned the Nine for money to commission it. Umiltà peered up at me, squinting.
“I will show you to a room where you can rest and seek solace in contemplation. Have you need of food?” I started salivating when she said food. She eyed me speculatively. “Fasting may bring us closer to God, but at a price. I will have a meal brought to you this evening, rather than have you brave company in the refectory.” Umiltà turned and led me through the doorway, under the stretch of blank wall.
As we stepped into the pellegrinaio—the pilgrim’s hall of the Ospedale—I saw why Messer Stozzi had found my story hard to believe. Most of the pilgrims in the hall wore rough sackcloth, looking far more penitent than I did. Exhausted families huddled together while robed friars examined lone travelers. Part of the room was organized into curtained beds from which a few faces and hands appeared to accept bowls of food.
Umiltà narrated for me as we walked. “The physically infirm pilgrims stay here in the pellegrinaio. That young man is on a barefoot pilgrimage from Roma to Venezia to visit the brachium of San Magnus in the reliquary—his feet have required a great deal of our attention over the past few days.” She pointed discreetly.
“He’s walking barefoot across Italy to see the arm of a saint?”
“Ee-tah-lee?” Umiltà looked at me strangely. “I have not heard that word before. Is it Luccan dialect?” Neither the word Italy nor the unified country existed yet. I covered up as quickly as possible.
“Yes, we use it to mean . . . a great distance.”
Umiltà accepted my explanation and went on. “His wife is ailing in childbed, swollen and full of ill humors. His parish priest advised he embark upon this journey for the sake of his wife and unborn child.” This was probably pre-eclampsia—she needed medical attention to keep her blood pressure under control, not prayers.
“And that man is a knight from Orvieto on his way to Roma, seeking absolution for the blood he has shed on the battlefield.” I stared at my first real knight, but he just looked like an ordinary, if muscular, individual. I suppose if you are on a pilgrimage to repent violent acts of warfare, you leave your armor at home.
“There don’t seem to be many women in here.” I hesitated, not sure whether I might be making another mistake.