Black Glaze: A Silvio Lanza Novel, excerpt
Rome, Italy, present day
Principe Silvio Lanza pushed open his balcony doors to let the morning light shine on the Arshile Gorky painting he'd just restored. He allowed his eye to skim the canvas, letting the sunlight reveal any imperfection. Cleaned and repaired, the colors laid down decades before glowed as if newly painted. A coat of varnish would complete the job. Che bello! Though he said it himself, this was his best work yet, and he felt a deep sense of contentment fill his chest. For too long after Joanna he’d let melancholy overtake him, until he’d begun to doubt his hand and eye, turning away commissions for fear he’d lost his touch. No more! He’d completed the difficult restoration with time to spare, and the result was frankly glorious. Why should he not enjoy the feeling, embrace the mastery of his craft?
With a grin, he stretched his arms over his head to push the kinks out of his fingers in preparation for the day’s work. A hint of summer breeze caressed his cheek, wafting scents of exhaust and roasting coffee. He stepped out on the balcony, where a chorus of squawking horns and half-meant curses told him Rome was awake and going about its business. As he watched, a parade of figures appeared like extras in a much-beloved opera, ready to fill the stage to the opening notes of the overture. Silvio lifted an imaginary baton and pointed, stage left, lá! Signora Carolina came rolling through the crowd like a travel-worn sailor, her sensible black shoes laced tight, gripping the uneven pavement as if it were a deck heaving in a storm. Her scarf furled under her chin like a well-trimmed spinnaker, with one hand she pressed a battered handbag to her bosom. With the other, she clutched the handle of a shopping cart that bumped along the cobblestones like a dinghy behind a barge. E lá, stage right! Here came Deputato Michelini, always late to his desk at the ministry—The General, off to defend the realm from enemies real and imagined. As he pushed past the signora, he shot his cuff to show off a sparkling watch and motioned to the aid who trailed him, passing him papers and carrying his umbrella. At center stage, the Forces of Order. Lá! Sargente Finazzo stepped to his post, a raised block from which he directed traffic. His brass buttons shining, and his blue and red uniform pressed in knife-like creases, he blew his whistle and raised his white-gloved hands to give direction. Everyone ignored him.
Silvio had turned an inherited building fronting Piazza della Minerva into an apartment and studio, and the square served as a fitting backdrop for the scene of daily life below. For Silvio, it also encapsulated Rome’s layered and checkered past. Directly across from his balcony, the round windows of Santa Minerva Sopra Minerva gave a glimpse of splendor belied by its stark facade, as though the Church could not decide whether opulence or mendacity was the more appropriate position. Well, it was true, they never could. Dominican friars built the church over an ancient temple to Minerva—thus the “sopra”—goddess of wisdom and strategy in warfare, who had burst from her father Jupiter’s head, arrayed in full armor. Her clanging had given the king of gods an unbearable headache, and he’d called for Vulcan to split open his head with a hammer, thus birthing his daughter. Following the theme, the church housed the headless remains of Saint Catherine of Siena, who protected people ridiculed for their piety. Silvio snorted—he had no need of her assistance on that count. Stories told that her supporters had carried her head back to Siena in a sack, where it was now encased in a gilded bust. Silvio imagined the furtive escape, then fully three day's ride to Siena, the terrible burden thumping against a saddle, oozing and stinking. In the same church they'd tried Galileo—twice—when he dared to suggest that the earth was not the center of the universe. Next door, a convent that had once welcomed reformed prostitutes now held the library of the Italian Senate. Now that was a den of iniquity!
Silvio’s favorite icon sat in the center of the square. When a 1635 excavation unearthed an Egyptian obelisk, the pope had asked Giovanni Bellini to find a way to display it. Bellini set the obelisk on an elephant’s back like a victor’s prize born home from foreign triumphs. Draped in regal trappings, the elephant stood with his trunk stretched back as if he’d like to snatch the wedge of marble down and fling it in the Tiber. The artist had turned the elephant’s rear toward the home of a rival, so that when the man stepped out on his balcony, he got a view of wrinkled bottom and lifted tail—and a reminder of what discharge might emerge. Silvio chuckled. Like the elephant, the Romans were eloquent complainers, and like Bellini, creative with their insults.
The windows shivered as church bells rang to call the faithful to mass— 9 a.m., time for Lauds. Isis, Minerva, and St. Catherine—religion endured in Rome. Its rituals marked the passing of hours, decades, and eons, and its strictures were no less potent for being ignored. Silvio would have liked to fix himself another coffee and watch the spectacle below unfold, for the sights and sounds of his adopted city were as soothing as a lullaby. But not this day—he had much to accomplish if he were to deliver the finished painting to his client tomorrow.
He padded down the hall to his bedroom, shed his pajamas, and folded them neatly under his pillow. Pulling on faded jeans, he considered a stack of freshly laundered shirts. He chose a blue one and buttoned it up. The soft fabric felt loose around his ribs—Merda! He’d lost weight. Glancing at himself in the mirror, he saw a somewhat haggard face, his tan beginning to fade. A mop of black hair stood up in several directions—he ran his fingers through it and vowed to make himself more presentable after work. Slinging his feet into crepe-soled desert boots, he took a lab coat from his dresser and put it on, smiling as it crinkled from the starch. He removed his signet ring and placed it in a saucer left there for the purpose. Jewelry and belts might scratch a valuable painting.
Ready now to work, he returned to the studio where the painting awaited its varnish. Arshile Gorky, master among twentieth-century luminaries, had work hung in major museums and sold for millions. Known as a handsome renegade, he’d aped Picasso, claimed to have studied in Paris, and cut a dashing figure in capes and fedoras. In truth, he had escaped from Armenian genocide with the dirt under his fingernails and had never seen the City of Light. He’d supported himself by speed-chalking presidential portraits in vaudeville shows, and had chosen his name to remind himself of heroes in silent Western films. Yet somehow this son of peasants had developed a graceful and beautiful style admired by Miró and prized by galleries and collectors.
Silvio had discovered this treasure in the home of elderly nobleman living in rapidly declining splendor just outside London. Knowing the man was short of cash, Silvio had dutifully wandered among faded tapestries, tribal artifacts, and a collection of tropical fish in jars, despairing that he’d ever find anything of remote interest. Then he’d turned the corner and stepped into the study. There, standing on a rug nearly ruined by mildew and dog hair, he’d found the painting. The Gorky hung over the fireplace, forlorn, askew, and caked with grime. When Silvio had shown the photos to a Gorky expert at the Whitney, the man had remarked, “Good Lord, it looks like a wreck! But I suppose you'll fix it, if anyone can." Ha! The “wreck” he’d bought for a song would now command a princely sum. He supposed that was appropriate.
A flash of movement and color caught his eye and he turned back to the balcony. Down in the piazza, a woman in a summer dress was walking toward the Pantheon, her blond-streaked hair bouncing on her shoulders. She weaved through the morning traffic with purpose, hips swinging just an elegant bit and sandals tapping on the cobbles. The sight of her brought a familiar rush of desire and he gripped the railing. He was about to call out, when a taxi driver laid an arm on his horn and the woman turned. It was not Joanna. It was only a beautiful stranger in a yellow dress, standing under a lapis lazuli sky. The thought of his love down there on the street knocked him back, all his longing and disappointment washing over him like a wave. He sat down, forcing his lungs to fill, in and out. After a moment, he felt steady enough to stand. He wiped his brow and with elaborate care, refolded his handkerchief…