Manual of Painting and Calligraphy (19 page)

It is so easy. The hand captures from afar what is in the face while one’s mind wanders. The painter takes another look, using his eyes in a different manner as they pass from the face to the canvas; he can see once more the currents of the lagoon, sluggish and turgid in the underlying mire, divided into greens and blues, with lighter veins breaking up the large strips of color, and several white boats resembling tiny lice in that realm which is more vegetal than aquatic. I run my brush over the canvas with the same slow movements as that of the lagoon’s currents; it is not the face I paint, but the lagoon in my mind’s eye. I wonder how this portrait will turn out.

At home, I paint the saint, I copy (from the postcard) the architecture of the prison and the tiled floor in Vitale da Bologna’s painting, and I am going to put on that floor and in the shadows of that grating my statue of Saint Antony, without any child, halo or book. I discover that the Bolognese painter long before me used the measure I defined in passing as the hundredth second. Otherwise he could never have achieved this particular effect of unreal perspective and time which successively recedes into space or this advance of space on time. But since I shall not use any of the figures from the original picture, I shall have to find some other way of putting the saint into my picture with the same distortion of space and time, the same fluid dimension, which subsequently makes everything as solid as the texture of tiles and the molecular consistency of iron. These are the daydreams of the solitary painter, devious means of approximation and discovery, weightless gymnastics, movements in slow motion, capable of being decomposed and repeated, the providence of those anxious people for whom this is one last chance of duplicating life. To turn everything back in time, not in order to repeat everything but to be able to choose and pause from time to time. To take Saint George’s horse as painted by Vitale da Bologna and lead it away, heading for Lisbon or coming from Bologna, through Spain and France, through France and Spain, to Paris, to the Latin Quarter, to the Rue des Grands-Augustins, and to say to Picasso, “I say, old man, here’s your model.” At that time in Lisbon, a child who knew nothing about Guernica and very little about Spain except for the Battle of Aljubarrota was clutching some soggy leaflets in his hands and unwittingly distributing the political manifesto of the Portuguese Popular Front, which for a time lived up to its name in word and deed.

Death and destruction. At a much later date, counted in years, I shall learn about the battle cry of the pro-Franco general Millán Astray. And even later, I shall finally come to know almost by heart the words of Unamuno: “There are circumstances in which to remain silent is to lie. I have just heard a languid cry devoid of any meaning: Long live death! This barbarous paradox revolts me. General Millán Astray is a cripple. I mean no discourtesy. Cervantes, too, was a cripple. Alas, in Spain today there are far too many cripples. But it appalls me to think that General Millán Astray could lay down the basis for mass psychology. A cripple without the spiritual qualities of Cervantes tends to take comfort in the mutilations which may inflict suffering on others.” And much later in life I would blush with shame when I read the words of the Spanish National Anthem for the first time: “I believe in Franco, all-powerful man, creator of a supreme Spain and of a well-organized army, crowned with the most glorious of laurels; the Liberator of a dying nation and the Architect of a Spain born under the protection of the strictest social justice. I believe in the Heritage and Glory of a Spain which will continue to uphold traditional values for all Spaniards to follow; I believe in pardon for the truly repentant, in the revival of the ancient Guilds for the organization of labor, and in lasting peace. Amen.”

I am now repeating this so that everything may be corroborated by the missing witness: me. Me, Portuguese, painter, alive in the year 1973, in this summer which is almost at an end, in this encroaching autumn. Me, alive, while men are dying in Africa, Portuguese men whom I sent to their deaths or consented should die, men so much younger than me, so much simpler, and with so much more to offer than me, a mere painter. The painter of this saint, this Lapa, this martyr, this crime and complicity. In 1485 Niccolò dell’Arca had already understood so much: from his
Lamentation of Christ,
which only appears to mourn the death of a god, one can remove Christ and replace him with other corpses: the white corpse blown up by a land mine with the entire lower part of the abdomen torn out (farewell, son never to be), the black corpse burned with napalm, the ears cut off and preserved somewhere in a jar of alcohol (farewell Angola, farewell Guinea, farewell Mozambique, farewell Africa). There is little point in removing the women: weeping is always the same.

On reflection, I have achieved very little.

Fourth exercise in autobiography in the form of the chapter of a book. Title: The Two Hearts of the World.

Florence is a hundred kilometers away from Bologna. Leaving the flat fields on the eastern side of the province of Emilia, the autostrada goes up as far as the Pass of Monte Citerna, and, after passing through tunnels lit up like Christmas trees and across viaducts resting on giant legs, it bridges valleys and deep gorges, then descends for what seems an eternity before finally reaching Florence. And when I write “for what seems an eternity,” this is no mere rhetorical flourish. Entering Florence, as that Frenchman I met in the
tavola calda
told me, is a traumatic experience: the poor road signs, the apparent confusion of innumerable one-way streets, so that trying to find the city center or the Piazza della Signoria, for example, is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Florence must have a great deal of confidence in herself to play such havoc with any traveler who ventures there without the assistance of a guide.

And now that I have arrived, I am living in the Via Osteria del Guanto, two paces away from the Via del Corno, where I am not certain that Vasco Pratolini was born, but where most of the action takes place in his
Cronica dei Poveri Amanti,
and also very close to the Uffizi and the Palazzo Vecchio, the Loggia dell’Orcagna and the Museo Bargello (the National Sculpture Museum), which has works by Michelangelo, Donatello, not to mention Della Robbia, that admirable Luca who “reinvented” the art of ceramics so that it might become at once sculpture and painting.

As I sleep, this silent gathering of statues and paintings, this surviving parallel humanity, continues to keep vigil over the world which I renounce when asleep. So that I, older and more fragile, encounter it once more on walking down the street, for, after all, statues and paintings last longer than this frail flesh.

Florence for two days, two weeks, two months? Florence for the duration of a sigh? But this city is as vast as some inexhaustible continent or universe. There is a certain air of remoteness which does not simply stem from the reserved and condescending manner of the Florentines, perhaps weary of tourists or, even more likely, because they know they will never again have the city to themselves. The traveler leaving Florence goes away feeling frustrated, unless he is just an ordinary tourist. However much he may have seen and heard, he knows that the inner core of the city has escaped him, that place where a common blood pulsates and which, if discovered, could make the city his, too. Florence is the heart of the world, but closed and inaccessible.

I take another stroll through the Uffizi, a gallery which has succeeded in retaining a human dimension and, for this very reason, one of my favorite museums. What could I possibly write about those hundreds of paintings? List their names and titles? Copy out the catalogue word for word? I would never finish. Suffice it to say that the collection includes the magnificent portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and his wife, Battista Sforza, painted by Piero della Francesca. In their presence I lose all sense of time, and I much prefer them to the
Venus
and
Primavera
of Sandro Botticelli, whose work I am probably not mature enough to appreciate, for I concocted a whole episode of science fiction while contemplating the
Adoration of the Shepherds
by Hugo van der Goes (the Child Jesus lying on the ground was obviously put there by some celestial being from the planet Mars or Venus); I gaze once more with reverence at another
Adoration,
this time painted with religious aggression by Mantegna. In contrast, Rubens leaves me weary and bored. And if Rembrandt’s paintings do not bring tears to my eyes, that is simply because I have never had the opportunity to study them on my own.

I decide to forgo a second visit to the Pitti Palace, a prodigy of museological teratology which never fails to irritate me (waste is always irritating), for there the paintings and sculptures are treated simply as decorative objects gathered within a sumptuous setting which only stops short of repelling the visitor because he finds himself constantly submerged amid a seething multitude. I prefer simply to wander along this embankment, and I shall only cross the Ponte Vecchio one evening to watch the Arno flow between the city walls and to recall that these gentle waters turned into a horizontal flood six years ago: they burst their banks and, erupting like a groundswell, inundated streets, houses and churches, leaving havoc and pollution in their wake and bringing Florence to its knees as if the end of the world were nigh.

I shall form a clearer impression of the damage when I later pay a visit to an exhibition about the restoration of Florence. There I shall examine a diagram showing the scale of the disaster, see photographs of the damaged paintings, wooden sculptures saturated with water and greasy mud, the interior of the Church of Santa Croce like a cavern invaded by every imaginable wind and tide. I shall see, to my dismay, what remains of Cimabue’s
Crucifixion,
and will finally come face-to-face, after so many frustrated attempts, with Donatello’s
Mary Magdalene,
now stripped of the many layers of gesso and dirt which had been covering the original paint.

Once again I shall see Fra Angelico’s frescoes in the Basilica di San Marco, the Church of Santa Maria Novella and the Cappellone degli Spagnoli with its exquisite frescoes painted by Andrea di Bonaiuto; I shall stroll at my leisure through the Duomo, storing up memories to cherish after my departure; I shall seek out the sculptures of Donatello in the Bargello Museum like someone putting his lips to a glass of cool water; I shall discover (never having been there before) the Archeological Museum and, after making a return visit to the Medici Chapel, indulge my admiration for Michelangelo in the Biblioteca Lorenziana, where architecture achieved a perfection which has never been surpassed.

Time to leave. Evening is drawing in. I gaze upon the Tuscan landscape, countryside beyond description, because to speak of “hills, shades of blue and green, hedgerows, cypresses, peace, infinite horizons” would be meaningless. Better to contemplate this stretch of landscape which appears in Botticelli’s
tondo,
entitled
La Madonna del Magnificat:
this is Tuscany.

And now Siena, the beloved, the city which truly fills my heart with joy. Such a friendly place, where everyone appears to have drunk the milk of human kindness. Siena, I shall always prefer you to Florence. Built on three hills, the city has no two streets alike and not one of them observes any geometrical pattern. And then there is this wonderful color in Siena, the bronzed tones of bodies exposed to the sun, of the crust on a loaf of bread. This wonderful coloring which can be found on stones and rooftops softens the light of the sun and erases all anxiety and fear from our faces. Nothing could be more captivating than this city.

Since this itinerary of mine also (or, above all) takes in famous museums and monuments (I shall never distinguish between men and their works), I look at the Duomo, built where there was once a temple dedicated to Minerva. Who was the first person to invent this blending of pink and dark green stone which covers the entire cathedral with horizontal bands and forces us to look closely at the architecture? Who was courageous enough to choose colored stones and arrange them as if working on canvas?

Inside, the floor is like an enormous book of illustrations. There are forty-nine squares made of embedded or engraved stones,
sgraffiate
or inlaid with detailed designs which distract the visitor’s attention from anything overhead. One travels within an art at once robust and delicate, and this aptly defines the spirit of Siena.

In the Museo del Duomo I take another look at Duccio di Buoninsegna’s
Maestà
and the scenes of
Christ’s Passion
displayed, illuminated and protected with overwhelming affection. Impossible to enter this room in the museum without lowering one’s voice to a whisper, as if the Delphic Sybil were present, alive and prophetic.

From here I go to the Pinacoteca. There Sienese paintings from the twelfth to the sixteenth century await me, the best work produced by this school over five hundred years. Numerous pictures by Guido da Siena, an entire room dedicated to Duccio di Buoninsegna and his pupils, and paintings by the Lorenzetti brothers (Pietro and Ambrogio), by Sassetta and many others. In my opinion, the two landscapes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti are “the most beautiful in the world,” two miraculous pictures painted at a time when landscapes were not yet seen as themes exclusively for painters and were treated as something one associated with dreams: a castle, a city, an anchored boat resembling an olive branch, the odd tree here and there, in shades of gray, cool blues and greens, all bathed in a luminosity which comes from the eyes of the artist, overwhelmed by what confronts him.