Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part one, chapter 7

That same morning, at the very hour when Father Bonaventura went to the Duke of Motta, the painter Don Vincenzo Bongiovanni stood in his study, perched at the top of a portable wooden ladder, in front of a large canvas marked with coal, on which he stretched wide blue brushstrokes, which, judging by a sketch fixed on a axis next to the canvas, and representing the subject of the great canvas, were to become a sky here and there serene, obscured elsewhere by thick clouds salient from the earth.

Under the ladder, a pretty girl, with her head covered in a strange cap, waited to remove colors, inside jars, with the safety of those who have a long habit.

The study was vast, somewhat messy, like all the studies of the painters, with walls full of drawings, sketches, sketches, such as paintings, such as blood, such as marked with coal at large times, which sometimes overlapped, intersected, confused. Attacked with nails, standing on shelves, they whitened on the grey bottom of the walls plastered large and small; casts and reproductions of heads and ancient statues and of the Renaissance; and here and there weapons and pieces of fabrics and palettes smashed with colors, a mirror with a golden frame on a shelf with curved feet to great desires.

A table seemed to moan under the weight of folders, drawings and prints; and other folders on high chairs and stools and on the ground. In a corner, the most discreet of shadows and recollection, burned before a sacred image an oil bulb. Under the big window, from where the tempered light entered, on one of those stuffed canapÈs, from the painted backrest, a mature man was sitting, dry of limbs, with very lively eyes, which holding on the belly a guitar left you carelessly, now yes or no, flowing slightly the thumb drawing sweet and almost sighing vibrations like moans: and another older man sniffed tobacco, voluptuously, sucking his eyes.

They were also two well-known artists, even famous in Palermo, the first of whom, the one who pinched the guitar, had to climb, a few centuries later, to the splendour of glory; he was called Master Giacomo Serpotta, and at that time had juggled more churches and chapels than his wonderful and insuperable putti; the other was Don Antonio Grano, painter like the Bongiovanni.

"Today like today," he said sniffing, "I really don't want to pull a line. It's too hot. I would go to Maredolce or to the rock of Mustazzola..."

"To catch some freshness for the summer to come..."

"Everything else. St. Martin's this year even threw his cloak...! in my studio it's too hot."

A moment of silence happened. Giacomo Serpotta hinted at an arpeggio, then said to the Wheat: "And where is your picture?"

"Go ahead. In 15, we'll put it in 20 days, I can deliver it... I'm not happy with the head of the Duke of Savoy..."

"Say also of the king our lord" corrected not without a slight bit of irony the Bongiovanni.

"Uhm!" he made Wheat with unbelief.

"In the meantime," said Don Giacomo Serpotta, continuing to touch the ropes "after three hundred years we have our own king."

"Do you believe it?" retorted the Wheat. "I am afraid that the kingdom, and I say a kingdom like ours, will become a province of the Duchy of Savoy. You'll see. But meanwhile the head of the duke does not succeed me; it is little like..."

"Do you want the portrait I need as a model?" asked the Bongiovanni. "He doesn't need me anymore. I did a study for my painting, and that's it. I'll send it to you. They assure me it's similar."

"Thank you... If that's the case, it means I'll send for him." "And do you know if the Flemish is ahead with his canvas?"

"No; it is still behind to study;" said the Serpotta "these Flemish painters are excellent painters, there is nothing to say, and the Borremans is of those, but they are slow and meticulous..." "What is the subject of his canvas?" asked the Bongiovanni. "Duke Vittorio who vows to raise a temple to the Virgin."

He again became silent in which the arpeggios of the distinguished sculptor resonated. Then the Wheat rose and took goodbye. He seemed annoyed. The young lady continued to melt the tints in the jars, trying some over a piece. of paper. Giacomo Serpotta looked at her by sucking his eyes, following her lovely movements.

"But do you know," he said, "that I want to model my statue of Science for the Oratory of Santa Cita, on your daughter?"

The maiden turned blushing and smiling. The great artist in those times had begun the decoration of the Oratory of Santa Cita, that wonderful essay of his unique and inimitable fantasy and art. Giacomo Serpotta was not yet sixty years old, he was in the full brilliance of art, and had populated churches and speakers of those very original and playful putti, and of those symbolic figures elegant and full of grace, of which he himself did not know perhaps the highest value. Son of art - the father had been sculptor or marmorator, as was said - after producing some daring cast work, and provided drawings to other sculptors, he was dedicated to decoration with stucco, raising this art until then humble, to height never reached, neither before, nor after him. The movements of the maiden, graceful and at the same time composed and not without a certain nobility, suggested perhaps some reason for his statue.

Pellegra Bongiovanni then counted almost fourteen years and her body already had the sweet curves of a promising youth. The head, rich in brown hair, wrapped in a kind of headphone or cap, bowed a little 'on the right humerus, over the quick neck and of classic design. She had very vivid eyes, in which she was read the readiness and versatility of the ingenuity, which many years later would make her famous and courted in Rome. At the age of fourteen he painted: he was not yet able to act alone, but he helped his father, who was among other things a mediocre painter. She used to dress him up.

"Since she is a woman," Fr. Vincenzo Bongiovanni joked, "it is his business to make clothes."

But Pellegra had other attitudes that the good father had cultivated for her, and she continued to cultivate them. He had a great inclination for music, and had already composed some madrigal with several voices: and he tasted poets, especially the Petrarch; which is why Don Vincenzo had her taught by a teat father, who had, according to the use, trained in Latin letters; so that Pellegra could already translate to the Virgilio imprint. Pellegra was therefore a pretty educated girl; today it seems intellectual. Her spirit was expressed in the three arts that became familiar to her: painting, poetry and music, and with a ease and security that made her dear and appreciated and that, in that environment of artists, not too cultured in truth, sometimes put awe. Don Vincenzo, when there was some discussion of history or literature (artists sometimes love to discuss what they don't know), interrupted the matter by requesting the decision of the "Sibilla."

"Let's hear what Pellegra says."

Giacomo Serpotta, this humble son of art, and so high a connoisseur of elegance and feminine grace, had a special preference for the girl, who had, you can say, seen being born. Now, in seeing her so serious and so intent, and perhaps thoughtful, she had suddenly seen in her the form of her dark concept, and had delighted in it.

"How come," said the Bongiovanni, without detaching your eyes from the canvas, "how come they have not entrusted you with the direction of the apparatuses? It's something that still doesn't convince me, an arch of triumph!..." Giacomo Serpotta raised his shoulders with carelessness.

"There are so many sculptors and architects;" he said, "do you want them to think of a stuccoer?"

Then Pellegra turned round, and, coming before the great artist, exclaimed: "And where do they find him in all Sicily a sculptor who is equal to you?"

James smiled.

"Oh, there's the Vigliano..."

"Ah! yes, the Vigliano, who gives you the drawings of his statues... and sometimes also the models!... ah! ah!..."

"No, but no!" exclaimed Giacomo Serpotta.

The speech fell on the triumphal arches that by commission of the Senate and the various guilds and "nations" were to be built and decorated for the official entrance of Vittorio Amedeo II, which would take place in the last year.

It was known that the Duke of Savoy had left his states and sailed to Sicily, where he would arrive in those days to take possession of the kingdom, where preparations for decoration were being made. The defense of the kingdom, the Senate, the guilds, the "nations" - as the colonies of countries beyond the kingdom were then called - were therefore put to work, so that the festivities for the crowning of the king were as magnificent and solemn as ever.

From the coming of Charles V, in 1535, until then none of the kings who had succeeded had ever set foot on the island; no one had been crowned in the ancient and noble cathedral, with the crown of Ruggero and Frederick II: the kingdom had felt almost mortified by the neglect of its distant monarchs, to whom it sent wide and generous gifts.

Instead, Vittorio Amedeo renewed the ancient splendors. He came to be crowned by the Metropolitan of Palermo, in the ancient seat of the most glorious monarchy in Italy; he came to restore lustre to the ancient palace where Frederick II had welcomed the flower of all kindness and from where he had almost imposed his will on Europe. There was enough to arouse palpitations and hopes in all, and to excite the pride of the city of ancient capital.

All of Palermo was partying! The whole of Palermo was set.

A genius and kind thought had spiritualized an act of courtesy; the Senate had in fact thought to adorn the cathedral for the ceremony of the coronation with a series of great paintings of opportunity, in tempera, representing the splendour of the life and reign of Vittorio Amedeo, entrusting them to the most famous painters who were then in Palermo. The Bongiovanni, the Flemish Borremans, Don Antonio Grano were among them.

The talk fell on the political events of those years. They remembered the long series of supplications followed after 1708: friar Ignazio Vulture who dreamed of the republic, Fr Prospero Fialdi, who wanted to drive away French and Irish; Fr Antonino Guerrieri, judge of the Consistory, because he had given shelter to a supposed rebel, the hermit of St. Matthew who partied, in his sermons, for the imperials, and the painter Ganguzzo with his sons and with his decapitated, valiant people, conspirators, and master Agatino Quaranta, consul of the "chiattiers," and others: such as hanged, as decapitated and corpses exposed to librarians, with infamous signs. They were the last victims that the dying Spanish rule sacrificed to itself.

The two artists spoke in shots wishing themselves a period of peace, against the skeptical predictions of Don Antonio Grano. But at this point he was knocked on the door. Pellegra went to open.

"Can you see the master?"

"Enter, enter," answered Pellegra, who recognized the visitor.

A mature man entered, followed by a young man.

"Good day, master; I have brought you my nephew whom I have spoken to you about..."

"Oh, good!" said the Bongiovanni from the top of his wooden throne giving a look of satisfaction to the young man.