The Venetian Bargain by Marina Fiorato

Author:Marina Fiorato
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Chapter 21

When Feyra went to Palladio’s studiolo the next morning, the room looked entirely different.

The walls were scrubbed, and the only evidence of the fire was a sooty stain on the tapestry that hung above the mantel. The plans were packed away again and the only drawn material in evidence was the book of Vitruvius, open at the circle and the square, and the picture of the man with many limbs pinned on the wall, staring down from his geometrical prison. The great chair had been shifted to the middle of the room. Palladio invited her to sit in it while he stood. Feyra duly settled herself, and their visit to Constantinople began.

The architect bid her sit still with her hands in her lap and close her eyes. Then he asked her to imagine herself back in Constantinople, and to walk from her house. He limped around her as she spoke, firing questions at her like an archer at a mark. Feyra, intrigued, acquiesced.

In her mind’s eye she crossed the threshold of the little house in Sultanamet that she’d shared with her father and set off down the worn, warm cobbles. ‘Take me somewhere,’ she heard Palladio’s distant, gravelly voice say; and she went left to the Bazaar Quarter and through the spice market. She was so immersed in her daydream that she could smell the acrid leaves and feel the fallen herbs underfoot though her thin yellow slippers. She walked until she reached the Imaret gate. ‘Where are you?’ asked the voice.

‘I am at the Süleymaniye Mosque, the greatest edifice Sinan ever built, for the tomb of Süleymaniye.’ Now she passed under the vast shadow of the Muvakkithane Gateway, dwarfed by the massive ornamental marble postern. ‘And now I’m in the avlu, a great monumental courtyard on its west side. There’s a long row of continuous arches…’

‘A colonnaded peristyle. Go on.’

With the architect occasionally interrupting with questions, Feyra walked round the whole complex in her mind, describing its columns, courtyards, minarets in minute detail.

‘And what of the church itself?’ he asked.

‘The main dome is as high as heaven, and gilded within, as if someone has captured a lightning flash. The interior is almost a square.’

‘A circle in a square,’ breathed the voice, softer than before. ‘Go on.’

‘The two shapes together form a single vast space. The dome is flanked by semi-domes, and to the north and south arches there are windows with triangles over them, cemented with a rainbow of tiny tiles.’

‘And how are the domes supported?’

Feyra turned around beneath the dome. ‘There are supports built into the wall, but they are hidden by the arches of the galleries.’

‘He’s masked the buttresses, to give a more harmonious interior. Clever,’ said the voice, warm with admiration.

‘There is a single serife … gallery … inside the structure, and a two-storey gallery outside. The inside is clad with subtle Iznik tiles and the woodwork inset with simple designs in ivory and mother-of-pearl. But the jewel in the casket – the tomb of Süleymaniye – is clad in white marble.

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