Read Online The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland - Free Book Online Page B

slabs glistened in the pale light, and the square tower seemed like a God-size reliquary made of precious stones. “Rome has nothing like this,” I said to the sky.
    â€œGiotto designed it,” Pietro said. “It was finished long before the dome.”
    In the narrower streets off the cathedral square, throngs of people splashed through mud puddles and shouted to get through. The choking smell of horse manure was everywhere. Was I not supposed to notice that because of his obvious pride in his city?
    â€œDon’t ever walk on this street,” he said as we rode through foul odors from butcher shops. “The paving stones are so slick with offal that women are always falling and breaking their hips. Go around. Later I’ll show you my friend’s macelleria on another street so you don’t have to come here.”
    The street of the cheese shops, though pungent, wasn’t so bad, and by the time we passed the spice shops, I was breathing normally again. Every shade of yellow ochre, sienna, orange, cinnamon, and dull green powders spilled out of large muslin bags onto the street. The colors of my new city. In every piazza a sculpture, in every niche the patron saint of some guild. Everywhere I looked, art! A new life was opening for me.
    Pietro directed the coachman to follow Corso dei Tintori, the avenue of the cloth dyers. Long lengths of wool and silk hung from every window and roofline. “The street is decorated for your arrival,” he said.
    â€œLike pageant banners.” Women were buying and selling lengths of silk in a rainbow of brilliant colors. “Their clothes may be more elaborate and colorful, in finer fabrics, but the women here aren’t any more beautiful than Rome’s women,” I said with what I hoped he’d take as a teasing smile. I screwed up my nose at the ammonia issuing from steaming vats in order to make him laugh.
    Along the river, women and girls were rinsing heavy wool fleece in the greenish brown Arno. Just beyond this the coach stopped at a cream-colored stone building with a tile roof and faded olive green shutters.
    â€œMy house,” Pietro said.
    He opened the gate to a small courtyard with one fig tree,a few scraggly geraniums, and a square well that was surrounded by mossy green paving stones. The pail and rope told me what I’d be doing every day.
    â€œI live on the third story,” he said.
    My. I . Maybe someday he’d say we .
    More well-off families lived on the ground floor and first and second stories, I assumed, just as in Rome. “An old woman named Fina who lives on the fourth used to keep house for me,” he said. I guess that meant it would not continue.
    While Pietro and the coachman carried up my cassone and our other bags, I looked around the three rooms that would be my new home. The large main room for painting and living had three sizes of easels and a wide bench which he probably used for posing since it was stacked with pillows, spreads, and draping fabric. Several straw-bottomed chairs were placed around a long rustic trestle table where his drawing and painting things were spread out. Not wanting to disturb them, I moved an iron lantern with oiled parchment sides to set down my bag and immediately got a splinter from the table.
    Where would I store my painting things? On the windowsill, maybe, unless I wanted to mix them in with his on the table. In the years ahead, would we ever get to a state of no longer knowing whose brushes we were using?
    The kitchen had a stone sink and an enclosed water bucket mounted behind it with a faucet. I assumed that was what I’d have to use to carry water up three flights of stairs from the well. Or would he do it?
    The third room had a low, sloped ceiling so that we had to bend over halfway into the room. There was a bed with a straw mattress, two low chests, and a basin stand. The floors were terra-cotta brick in a herringbone pattern. On the side of the