The Madonna of the Almonds by Marina Fiorato Page B

what she saw overwhelmed all, and her other senses retreated.
    How incredible was his work, this loutish, insolent man? How divine his talent, how angelic, how Godlike? How could a man, any man, not just one such as he, create such things? Lambent Saints with their sufferings writ large, angels with wings that seemed to fully support their weight, so tenderly was each filament of each feather described. Simonetta could not believe that she too was to be transformed, transcended into such an expression, turned from three dimensions into two, immortalized in such colour and form. An apotheosis indeed.
    And yet, it was the human, not the Holy that assailed her sight. Despite the marvels that surrounded her, why did her eye return to their creator? Why, with all that there was to occupy her sight, could she not turn her eyes from his face? He worked with a passion, quickly and accurately, scrutinising her face and form with eyes that seemed not to truly see her. What calculations and comparisons took place in that quick brain, what mathematical equations, that he might hold out his brush to her nose, mark off a distance with his thumb, and then have it appear on the white wall? And yet it was no science that he practiced, but an art of the highest form. She could not but admire the work, as much as she hated the man. As he painted her form, she scrutinised his. Tall, but somewhat shorter than Lorenzo, his height was disquietingly similar to her own, so that when they werefacing, their eyes were at a level. Those eyes, strange silver like a wolf ’s, raised the hairs on her neck with a prickle of danger. They were alive, intelligent and rapacious. His gaze was never still, it rested nowhere. It looked for ever but never saw. He calculated, and set down. He thought but he did not feel. So believed Simonetta. But she was wrong.
     
    Bernardino looked at Simonetta and knew he had been born to paint her. There were no false starts, no hesitations or erasures. He could not take his eyes from her. Her figure, the moulding of her shoulders, the soft muscling of the arms, the peerless face. The length of the leg and the arched feet, and the soft swelling of her breasts beneath the blue cloak, all bewitched him. Even her hair had retained its beauty – the shortness of it now curled and framed her face as her long braids had never done. She was perfection. But yet not so: for the Creator had given her those hands, those hands of such pleasing asymmetry. Those hands : wrong but yet right, freakish yet more beautiful than any other woman’s. For the artist, this joke of the Creator, this token imperfection, meant that when the fingers were parted like callipers to cartograph a map they appeared still the same length. Such faults did the Arabs weave into their rugs or their Moorish patterns for the very reasons that, as Anselmo had said, only God should create perfection. But if God, or Allah, could create perfection he had decided to leave Simonetta flawed, and the faithless Bernardino gave thanksfor it. He could not think of her as the Queen of Heaven; she was flesh and blood to him. Despite her ethereal manner. For the first time he looked at a woman and truly saw her, not as an empirical model of beauty but as a living breathing woman. Her husband was dead but she lived . And now Bernardino did too.
     
    ‘What do you mean, how much?’ Bernardino had taken the offensive, even though he knew full well why Simonetta had come, and had expected her long.
    ‘I mean I’ll do it. You said you’d pay. Well now I need money. So how much?’
    Bernardino circled her, his eyes lively. She excited him, and he was determined to bait her in order to see the fire in her eyes. ‘Well, the price may have reduced somewhat. You are wearing – how would I describe it? – a man’s hunting outfit. And you look deliciously dirty. And God knows what you’ve done to your hair.’
    Simonetta held her tongue, hating him. Anselmo eventually found the use