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Authors: Guy Gavriel Kay
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rendered childrenâs faces as if they were adults done small. They werenât. Not if you
looked
.
That sketch was pinned to the wall in the Desanti familyâs crowded apartment next to his own, above where the baby slept in his basket. It wasnât framed. Frames were expensive. Theyâd insisted on paying him something, though.
His other commission, the real one, had never been framed either.
Heâd been hired to paint a contessa on the recommendation of Alviso Sano, Jad bless his kind soul. The bookseller knew people. He sold extravagant leather-bound books to merchants and aristocrats who wanted the sheen of elegance and success it gave them to have such objects in their homes.
Paintings, especially portraits of themselves, had the same status. You were commissioned by contract to use so much ultramarine blue, so much goldâthe most expensive colours. A painting was a sign, barely even coded, of how much you could afford. Sometimes the frames cost more than the art.
One of the Citrani family, the oldest brother, had commissioned the son of Viero Villani, said to be promising, to paint his wife. The wife, red-haired and green-eyed, was a celebrated beauty. She was older than Pero, much younger than her husband, elegant, and bored.
Sleeping with a young artist on winter afternoons, with a fire warming the small room where he was painting her, was a way to amuse oneself. Pero was young enough and she was easily compelling enough, in all ways, to make this an adventure for him. He was a little fearful, but that could add to excitement, of course. He wasnât the first artist, she wasnât the first wealthy woman . . .
His mistake was to bring his passion for his work into the affair: to paint her in oil on canvas, in his studio, the sketches pinned up around him, in a particular manner.
Heâd carried it back, wrapped in cloth, to show her in the room where sheâd posed, where theyâd undressed each other by the fire, where heâd looked, very closely, at her face as she slipped him inside her, when sheâd let him see she wasnât always bored.
As heâd leaned the finished canvas against the wall, sheâd worn a rapidly changing sequence of expressions. He didnât see anger, nothing like that. Later, he would decide that where sheâd ended up, sitting suddenly on the daybed, looking at herself as heâd painted her, was in regret, wistfulness.
He would have liked to have painted that expression, too.
âOh, dear,â was what Mara Citrani finally said. âOh, my dear. Did I really look like that?â
She was clothed in his painting, of course, entirely properly, in the contracted blue gown trimmed with gold. Her hair was under a cap (green-gold, done with azurite), a few red strands coming free. She sat before an arched window, with a quince tree in a garden behind her and the lagoon beyond that. You could see a ship (her husbandâsâthe family crest on the flag). She wore jewellery at her ears and throat, and a celebrated ring of her husbandâs family. All proper, conventional really (perhaps not the quince, which had its symbolism), but . . .
But her eyes as Pero had painted them were intense, and hungry. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, as was her throat. And hermouth . . . Mara Citraniâs mouth in that portrait was the best thing Pero had ever done in his life. It embodied the knowing, intimate, sensuous look of a woman revealing desire, or gratified desire, or both.
A deeply private expression. One he knew only because she had invited him to that daybed and carpet with her, before the fire, and let him see how she could be when unclothed, touched, then touched again, then entered, then riding above him, hair unbound, aroused, in needâwhen not the haughty wife of a powerful man.
And so: âOh, dear,â Mara Citrani said again, softly. Then, after a silence, âIt is wonderful,
looked
.
That sketch was pinned to the wall in the Desanti familyâs crowded apartment next to his own, above where the baby slept in his basket. It wasnât framed. Frames were expensive. Theyâd insisted on paying him something, though.
His other commission, the real one, had never been framed either.
Heâd been hired to paint a contessa on the recommendation of Alviso Sano, Jad bless his kind soul. The bookseller knew people. He sold extravagant leather-bound books to merchants and aristocrats who wanted the sheen of elegance and success it gave them to have such objects in their homes.
Paintings, especially portraits of themselves, had the same status. You were commissioned by contract to use so much ultramarine blue, so much goldâthe most expensive colours. A painting was a sign, barely even coded, of how much you could afford. Sometimes the frames cost more than the art.
One of the Citrani family, the oldest brother, had commissioned the son of Viero Villani, said to be promising, to paint his wife. The wife, red-haired and green-eyed, was a celebrated beauty. She was older than Pero, much younger than her husband, elegant, and bored.
Sleeping with a young artist on winter afternoons, with a fire warming the small room where he was painting her, was a way to amuse oneself. Pero was young enough and she was easily compelling enough, in all ways, to make this an adventure for him. He was a little fearful, but that could add to excitement, of course. He wasnât the first artist, she wasnât the first wealthy woman . . .
His mistake was to bring his passion for his work into the affair: to paint her in oil on canvas, in his studio, the sketches pinned up around him, in a particular manner.
Heâd carried it back, wrapped in cloth, to show her in the room where sheâd posed, where theyâd undressed each other by the fire, where heâd looked, very closely, at her face as she slipped him inside her, when sheâd let him see she wasnât always bored.
As heâd leaned the finished canvas against the wall, sheâd worn a rapidly changing sequence of expressions. He didnât see anger, nothing like that. Later, he would decide that where sheâd ended up, sitting suddenly on the daybed, looking at herself as heâd painted her, was in regret, wistfulness.
He would have liked to have painted that expression, too.
âOh, dear,â was what Mara Citrani finally said. âOh, my dear. Did I really look like that?â
She was clothed in his painting, of course, entirely properly, in the contracted blue gown trimmed with gold. Her hair was under a cap (green-gold, done with azurite), a few red strands coming free. She sat before an arched window, with a quince tree in a garden behind her and the lagoon beyond that. You could see a ship (her husbandâsâthe family crest on the flag). She wore jewellery at her ears and throat, and a celebrated ring of her husbandâs family. All proper, conventional really (perhaps not the quince, which had its symbolism), but . . .
But her eyes as Pero had painted them were intense, and hungry. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, as was her throat. And hermouth . . . Mara Citraniâs mouth in that portrait was the best thing Pero had ever done in his life. It embodied the knowing, intimate, sensuous look of a woman revealing desire, or gratified desire, or both.
A deeply private expression. One he knew only because she had invited him to that daybed and carpet with her, before the fire, and let him see how she could be when unclothed, touched, then touched again, then entered, then riding above him, hair unbound, aroused, in needâwhen not the haughty wife of a powerful man.
And so: âOh, dear,â Mara Citrani said again, softly. Then, after a silence, âIt is wonderful,
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