A Stopover in Venice by Kathryn Walker

Author:Kathryn Walker [Walker, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

Ronald had come. There was tension in the air. Lydia was with him. It was late afternoon. I didn’t believe that we had sufficiently prepared for this; we hadn’t compiled questions. We sat around the low table in the salon with tea before us. No one knew how to begin. Leo was sitting on Lucy’s lap with ears erect. He was not used to so much company and could tell that something was going on. Pleasantries were exchanged.

How was Rome? I inquired.

Always a delight, he replied. And always useful.

You went in pursuit of your Titian studies? Lucy suggested.

Yes, just that. To speak to some authorities. He had trouble with the word.

Who would begin? Matteo took the lead.

We have questions, he said, that we hope we may ask you without implying more than that. Will that be all right?

Of course, Ronald answered, looking down at his lap. Lydia smiled at me.

Our questions regard Giorgione. I understand there is little to know but I’m sure, given your field, that you must have more information than we have: dates, details, new theories, if there are any.

Giorgione is a mystery, he replied. A phenomenon but a mystery. I imagine you’re acquainted with the debates?

Yes, Matteo said. However, I do believe that there was such a person and that the work that is attributed to him is the work of an actual person and not a stylistic innovation.

I agree.

How to go on from here without mentioning something? Matteo was bold.

We have uncovered a fresco and found a painted object, a box—both are suggestive—and other things as well: letters, references. We understand that the idea of finding such things at this point is unlikely, incredible, and yet they are, as I said, suggestive.

I see, Ronald replied. What a dance this was.

He died in 1510, I believe, of the plague?

Yes. Gossip suggests it was contracted from his mistress. He was thirty-two or thirty-three. We know little more, virtually nothing, just where he was born, a few associations and patrons, that he was a musician, an attractive, powerful personality. He transformed Venetian painting, apprenticed with Bellini, but there’s no indication of any real discipleship; he never ran a workshop of his own until quite late. Some think he was a sort of autonomous genius, not painting much but painting it with transformative insight. Humbly born but moved in patrician circles, very famous in his time. Vasari makes him out to be as important as da Vinci. An early connection to Titian, who may have been his pupil or apprentice but who certainly carried on and perfected, in a sense, his remarkable innovations. Some suggest they shared a studio at one time, but that first decade of the century is obscure, even regarding Titian, about whom we know so much more. I’m sure you know all this. Ronald barely stuttered.

Yes, Matteo replied. You would put La Tempesta around 1504 and the Laura portrait around 1506?

Yes. We think so.

Naturally, because of the things we’ve discovered here, we’re trying to make a connection to this house, which seems to have been an adjunct to the Le Vergini convent.

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