He stopped suddenly, at the end of the few words he’d used and which he’d been arranging for some time now. The smell of beans rose from the house, he remembered that he hadn’t eaten since dawn. The pig’s eyes were jumping from one thing to another, indifferently, terrified. The old woman and the saint moved off, dancing in the wind; Lorentino looked at them, then at this man who looked a little bit like him, then again at the pig. He accepted immediately, or at least, as soon as the man had finished this story that during the day he had told a hundred times in the studios of Arezzo, as soon as, dumbfounded, the farmer had stood there at a loss and had waited, looking at the painter while saying to himself at least this one had listened to everything he’d had to say and hadn’t interrupted him; when Lorentino accepted the farmer immediately felt contempt for him, believing he was being duped and therefore not trusting him, or perhaps — if we indulge in Hope as well, we too — he thanked him, on his knees. And we can allow ourselves to think that gently but firmly Lorentino had helped him to his feet, as in his master’s frescos old Solomon helps the queen of Sheba, although between these men it was about neither love nor kingdoms, although they both were getting old and a little fat. So it was agreed. The farmer moved off into the countryside while talking to himself, perhaps with a bowl of beans in his belly, perhaps not, but without his pig. The wind made him dance a little too. Night was falling.
We do not know if Saint Martin witnessed the scene, and if he had, whether he might have stood closer to the farmer or to Lorentino.
Lorentino considered all of this in the big room down below, the studio, holding the terrified beast that hadn’t much time left, that wouldn’t look indifferently at the world much longer. He asked himself if he had enough pigment left over from the last commission; he decided he had. And the motif for this preposterous commission, to which he gave thought prior even to killing the pig, scarcely required a second thought: he decided that he would do the saint at the expected moment, when on horseback or on the ground he cuts his cloak in two and offers the beggar a half worth all heaven; and, of course, Roman, warriorlike, armored. But as models for these two figures, their resemblance to men, he was not yet sure. First he thought of giving the beggar his own face, and the saint that of dead Piero; but something in this idea made him ashamed of himself. Keeping himself in the role of the beggar, he thought that the saint could have the face of the farmer, twenty years younger; he felt ashamed of this idea too, a painter doesn’t need a farmer. So he resigned himself to being absent from this painting in which he wasn’t of much use, and decided to give the saint his master’s face, in his prime, on his scaffolds in San Francesco amongst the Constantines, the queens of Sheba, when he was already forty but would look younger in the memory of an old disciple; and so for the beggar, the wily, dumbfounded face of the farmer. But maybe he would do something completely different, it hardly mattered. Lorentino was a little annoyed, was trying to avoid these rapid little eyes looking up at him; he heard the wind whistling outside. He didn’t start on the painting that night, he had to kill and dress the beast first, which he did.
And Vasari, regarding the details of this miraculous little skit — which was more out of the old Flemish masters and their beasts, their gifts, their more clement God, and their cold country than out of the Platonic dispensary where he painted too-plump Virtues and helmeted young boys in the employ of lascivious old men — Vasari doesn’t mention the particulars of these culinary operations. He stops there. But in his Life of Piero della Francesca, where our story is told in ten lines, in a little aside about the faded face of Lorentino d’Angelo, which didn’t warrant the ten or twenty little pages necessary for the unfurling of a Life, Vasari leaves it as understood, or rather says nothing about it as though it goes without saying, that the old disciple was happy about this little miracle, was dazzled and aware that a saint had offered, in the flesh, a pig to his children for Carnival; Vasari leaves it as understood that the painter thanked his blessed art for another triumph of theological order, Golden Proportions, and the way of the world, all of which had manifested in a pig; Vasari leaves it as understood that Lorentino cried tenderly; that proudly he had produced this pig before his children. And that they all had fallen to their knees. Vasari leaves all of this as understood.
One can disbelieve Vasari.
HIS MOTHER HAD NAMED HIM little Lorenzo, since he wasn’t growing quickly: Lorentino. In this inner theater in which we play the leading role, not always the lead, but at least from time to time, in order to survive — he appeared under the name of Lorenzo. Lorenzo d’Angelo. But he bore this name only for his own use; the neighbors and the commissioners always called him Lorentino, even though they didn’t mean it in the same way his mother had, they didn’t say it sweetly, nor spitefully either, they just said it plainly; which was only fair. His mother was dead, his hair had gone gray, and he was usually out of breath when he spoke, but the Aretinians always called him Lorentino and it is fairly certain that he recognized himself in this name and answered to it. It’s only fair, thinks Lorentino, and you can see him, sitting in the upper room, surrounded by his family, having taken off his bonnet to think. It’s a domestic scene in chiaroscuro, and Lorentino, who learned la pittura chiara from Piero, has no interest in this half-light. Everyone is preparing the meal and he, for a moment, is resting. The frozen wind from the Verna whistles louder past the windows; in his street, beneath the dark cypresses, the farmer runs through the black. You see night following behind him along with the remains of day, following behind him like dogs, one black, one white. The children are smiling, they thank their father for not having lied, they’ve gotten what they wanted. Lorentino is smiling at them, thinking of something else; he is asking himself about this little Lorenzo and what had been done with him. And so he looks at Angioletta, his tall and beautiful daughter who is still with them, who doesn’t yet have a husband though men revolve around her like shadows around the sun. And little Lorenzo asks himself, or perhaps it’s Lorentino who asks Lorenzo, why this perfect object sprung from his loins hadn’t instead come from his art; why neither the pleasure he’d had within Diosa nor this flesh fallen from her hadn’t transformed Lorentino into Lorenzo. Without speaking, he asks Angioletta which sacrament addresses the art of painting and how it may be used to gain a better name than that which one is christened; this he asks Angioletta, who is painting made flesh, but who isn’t paint.