OLIVIER AND PISANO had little in common during their daily life save their joint adherence to the camp of Cardinal Ceccani, but nothing to divide them either. No faction, heresy, or dispute over politics ever clouded their amity; they were both too lowly to have any interest in such matters, which were solely the concern of the great and the powerful. Their job was to live, although that was not necessarily such an easy thing to accomplish. They shared their food, their hopes, their worries, and sometimes their shoes and clothes and money. Gave each other advice, drank together, and knew that, sooner or later, they would part forever. It was Pisano’s ambition to go back to Siena one day, for he daily suffered the pangs of homesickness and saw himself in exile. Olivier knew perfectly well that he would probably never go there. Nor would their friendship continue by letter, for while Pisano could write, he did not like to do so.
Indeed, had the commission for the chapel of Saint Sophia not suddenly descended on him, Pisano might have gone already, as until that moment all favor and income had been denied him. He had been in Avignon for two years or more, waiting his chance. He had worked as a journey-man for that fat, smug dauber Matteo Giovanetti when, by rights, the old-fashioned, harebrained scribbler should have worked for him. Pisano was young, but not without confidence, and held within him the conviction that he could do something the world had never seen before, if only he was given the chance.
He had received the best possible training, under Pietro Lorenzetti himself; the only man in the world for whom he had total reverence and unquestioning devotion. He had seen the quiet, great man racked with the agonies of doubt and indecision about what he did, and seen that uncertainty convert like magic into calm assurance the moment he picked up his brush. For what he was doing was remarkable, unique. He did not try to paint nature; he made his paintings part of nature, as real as the birds and the trees in the countryside all around. The endless possibilities made a head as young as Pisano’s giddy with delight, and after he made his way to Avignon—to seek his fortune, as he had heard of all the building works going on there—he sometimes physically ached with desperation and yearning to show what he could do.
For Pisano had an idea, an idea of such boldness that he scarcely dared mention it. It first came upon him one day when he had brought his master a drink of water from the fountain after a hot morning’s work at Assisi. He’d found him sitting idly on the ground in the shade, with a young boy before him. They were talking, as Pietro delighted in the company of the young, never turned away any child who came to see him work, spent long hours talking to them, and always gave them a little present when, at last, it was time for them to go.
The two were talking as he approached, the child laughing and telling the master a story, unaware of his greatness and importance—as, indeed, was most of the world still, despite the prodigies he had created. Pietro was listening and encouraging him to continue, but kept on glancing down at a piece of parchment that he was drawing on with a lump of charcoal. As Pisano put down the water, Pietro laid the parchment aside and told the boy it was now time he went home to his mother. Pisano held out a hand to help the aging, arthritic man up—his hands the only part of him still unaffected, it seemed, either by the grace of God or the sheer determination of willpower—and also picked up the sheets of paper as they were about to blow away on the wind.
He had drawn a portrait of the boy in the act of tossing his head as he had done when talking and laughing. It was so perfect in the way it captured the child’s spirit that Pisano was astonished and cried out in delight.
“Something I learned to do when I was young,” the older man said. “Before I was trained and forced to forget it all again. I began with sheep, then shepherds.”
“It is wonderful.”
“Ah, but it is but a boy. Our job is to paint the divine.”
Pisano must have looked confused, not knowing what to say. Pietro clapped him affectionately on the shoulder and laughed gently. “Come with me.”
He led the way back into the church, then slowly and ponderously climbed the scaffolding that covered the choir of the building, working his way up then across with an agility that left him the moment the day’s work was done. Eventually he reached a scene he had painted himself a few weeks previously; gestured at it, then stood back.
It was of the Last Supper and, though the face of the Jesus conformed absolutely to what it must be, he had given the figure a similar gesture, that toss of the head, the movement of the shoulders, the slight upward glance and flash of the eye. Half in jest, Pietro held his finger to his lips.
“Our little secret,” he said. “But observe it well. Something of God is all around us, perhaps. All we need is eyes to see and a hand to capture.”
Lorenzetti dared no more, however; or perhaps that was the wrong word, for in his craft he was as absolute in his determination as any pope or emperor. He saw no need to. Still his figures for the most part needed to have something of the divine about them, needed to be recognizable as well. He would give them a gesture, a movement, an air that he had seen in the street, but could not go further. His art and his pride would not allow it. Knowingly or not, he turned from that last step, fearing it might lead to blasphemy, that he might be drawn into the conceit of making God, rather than humbly representing Him. Give the Blessed Virgin the face of an anxious mother? Have Saint Peter resemble a fisherman? Make Our Lord look like a carpenter? Thus formulated, Pisano had his answer, and the secret he took with him when he left for Avignon. He would take that extra step, or try to.
His first essay came when he was given the opportunity to do a whole painting himself in the entrance to the Cathedral of Our Lady in Avignon. Close by the doorway, but in a dark corner, a space of wall that needed filling but that no one would ever see unless they peered hard in the gloom, the contrast with the light flooding in through the door making it all but invisible. Too insignificant a spot for Matteo himself to bother with, so he farmed it out. And there Pisano painted a Virgin high up on the wall, being approached by a prince of the church, an appropriate scene for what was fast becoming the main cathedral of all Christendom. The Virgin was conventional, seated, with the child on her left arm; here he dared little. But with the figure before her he allowed himself to experiment. He painted this as a real man, standing rather than kneeling, giving an impression of power, almost of equality before the divine. And he gave it the face of Cardinal Ceccani, conveying through it the strange mixture of deference and command that that man had so perfected.
He was not pleased with it; he could do better, he knew. And Matteo was outraged and wanted it erased. It was he who sent word through the corridors of what Pisano had done, hoping to cause a scandal; the result had been that Ceccani himself, the next time he came to the cathedral, stopped and looked, peering up in the candlelight to see his own features flickering on the wall.
He stared, his eyes narrowed, he grunted. Then he turned to a priest standing nearby. A few weeks later, Pisano was summoned to the cardinal’s palace and given the commission to paint the chapel of Saint Sophia. So cryptic was his benefactor that Pisano could not be sure whether it was a reward or a punishment. Nonetheless, once the dismay and disappointment faded he realized the chapel would give him his chance. There were no conventionally understood notions of what any of the characters in the tales looked like, apart from the Magdalen; the chapel was isolated and unlikely to attract too much attention; he could experiment at will and see what resulted.