Three or four young men in shabby smocks stopped their various tasks to gaze curiously at me—students, I supposed them to be. And from behind a counterlike bench at the door, a man greeted Guaracco.
"Good-morrow, Ser Andrea," said my patrol. "I said once that I would watch out for a likely pupil for you. Here is one—my own cousin, Leo."
The master of the bottega came from behind his bench. He was a spidery little fellow of forty or thereabouts, clad in a long gown of dark wool like a priest's, with ill-fitting, worn slippers on his flat feet. His face was beardless, white and puffy, and he wore spectacles low upon his snub nose. His hair, already gray, had begun to grow thin on top. His finest features were his big, wise eyes and his slender, delicate hands.[2]
Guaracco praised me highly and finally produced my drawings. Andrea Verrocchio carried them into the light and looked at them narrowly, with pursed lips. Finally he turned his spectacles upon me.
"You draw well, boy," he commented. "Drawing is the father of all the arts. Would you learn to paint?"
I told him, quite truthfully, that it was my ambition.
"If you study with me," he admonished, "you must work entirely as I devise."
"To devise is the work of the master," I said, respectfully. "To execute is the work of the apprentice."
"Well worded." He nodded, and smiled a trifle. "Come here—look at this picture."
He beckoned us across the room. Against the rear wall hung a sizeable sheet of wood, held in place on a sort of scaffold with cords and pins. Upon this had been painted, but not finished, an oil of the baptism of Jesus. Some figures were executed with spirit and intelligence, but over one of them, a kneeling angel, I could not but shake my head.
"You see the fault," murmured Andrea Verrocchio beside me. "The draperies, Ser Leo, are not properly done."
"They are not, sir," I agreed, after a careful examination.
He smiled slowly. The students, too, had gathered with us. I had a sense of their critical suspicion. Perhaps they had worked at the thing, and failed.
"Peradventure, boy, you can better it," suggested Verrocchio, in a tone that was full of superior doubt.
"May I use these paints?" I inquired, stooping to some pots and brushes at the foot of the framework.
As I did so, I caught a glimpse of Guaracco's face, set in an easy smile. For all his strange, menacing nature he at least trusted my skill.
"Drapery is a science worth close study," I lectured the group, as I mixed some colors upon a rectangular palette board. "The part of the fold which is furthest from the ends where it is confined"—I pointed with my brush to the fringe of the angel's robe—"will return most closely to its original extended condition."
One of the students snickered at my words.
"Show us what you mean by these words," Verrocchio said.
"With your leave, I shall try to," I accepted his challenge, and began to dash on my paint. Here was another old skill that I had not lost. "Everything naturally desires to remain in its own state," I elaborated. "Drapery desires to he flat. If it is caught into folds or pleats, thus,"—and I executed a crumpled crease upon the knee of the angel—"it is forced to quit this condition of flatness and obeys the law of this force in that part where it is most constrained."
I progressed to the hem.
"The part furthest away from such constraint," I went on, "you will find, returns most nearly to its original state—that is to say, laying extended and fall."
"You say truth, Ser Leo, and you paint truth, too," Verrocchio commended warmly, and turned quickly to Guaracco. "Your kinsman stays here as my pupil and helper. Go forward with that drapery, young sir. When you are finished, the picture can have no further improvement."[3]
I worked away, caring little for the jealous staring of my fellow students. Meanwhile, Guaracco's groom brought in a bundle of clothing for me, and Guaracco himself gave me a bag of clinking coins.
"I have paid the charge for your education, Cousin," he said to me. "Stay here, live and work here, and do me credit. Do not forget what I require from you, according to your recent conversations. I shall keep an eye and ear upon you. I may even take a house to be near you. Again I say, do not forget."
And with this equivocal farewell he strolled out, the very picture of a kindly and helpful kinsman.
So I became a pupil of Andrea Verrocchio, the finest teacher of arts in Florence. I made the acquaintance of my fellow students and found them not at all bad fellows, some indeed quite adept at their work. I had a cell-like room with pallet bed and table and chest of art materials. I listened dutifully to the precepts of our instructor, and under his tutelage did many kinds of work.
Verrocchio's aptitude and taste was for sculpture, and though I thought this less intellectual than painting, for it cannot represent the transparent or yielding things, I did not rebel.
My first piece of finished work, a gold ornament for the King of Portugal, was called splendid by Verrocchio. He let me help him with the great bronze busts he was fashioning for the palace of the Medici, and let me do alone a series of ornamental shields of painted wood for a wealthy merchant.
In the evenings, and sometimes in the daytime when work was slack, I was permitted to go with my fellow students through the streets. I could never weary myself with the sights and sounds and smells of Florence.
I loved the pageantry of the main thoroughfares—laden beasts, processions of armed men going from one sentry post to another, occasional rich coaches of the great or wealthy, cavaliers on prancing horses, veiled ladies in mule-litters; rougher but still picturesque guildsmen, artisans, beggars, burghers; an occasional captain of mercenaries, a condottiero, slashed and swaggering, his long swordsheath hoisting up the hem of his mantel; criers loudly acclaiming their wares of fruit, fish, wine or what-not.
On the poorer, narrower streets there were hucksters and small tradesmen with baskets and trays; bevies of bright-eyed girls, on the lookout for romantic adventure. There were palaces to see in the wider spaces and the great sculptured bridges across the Arno. Too, there were pleasant, cheap taverns, where young men might get good wine and plenty for copper coins.
So it went for the month of May. Twice during that time, Guaracco called to talk to me, in honeyed protestations of concern over the welfare of his supposed cousin. But between the pleasant lines of his conversation my inner ear could distinguish the warning and insistence of his power over me.
Once he remarked that Lisa—"You remember our little Lisa!"—had sent me her warm regards. I found myself heartily grateful for that brief message from one who had treated me fairly and kindly.
The first of June dawned bright and sultry hot. I was up betimes, putting the last touches to an improvement on the scaffolding which served Verrocchio as an easel for extra large pictures. I fitted its cords to pulleys and winches so that the artist, instead of moving from one place to another, could hold a certain position with advantageous lights and viewpoints, while he lowered the picture itself, or lifted it or moved it from side to side at his will.
In the midst of my work, a boy came in from the street. He approached and said, very softly, that he had a message.
"A message?" I demanded, turning. "For whom?"
The little fellow bowed. "For you, Ser Leo. I am ordered to conduct you to a place in the next street."
"How do you know my name?" I asked, and looked sharply at him. Then I saw that it was no boy, but the dwarf who had once opened Guaracco's door to me, and whom I had then mistaken for a handsome child.
"Come," he persisted, "you are awaited."
Turning from my work, I asked Verrocchio if I might be excused for a few moments. He glanced up from the bench where he and two other students were studying the plans of a chapel, and nodded his permission.
2
This is the accepted description of Andrea Verrocchio, who was not only a painter and sculptor high in favor at court, but the teacher of some of the most distinguished artists and craftsmen of his time.
3
A painting that fits this description, and that might be the same, exists today in Florence. It is certain that the draperies of the kneeling angel are done more skillfully than those of the other figures.