The Giant by Laura Morelli

Author:Laura Morelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Art-Historical Fiction
Publisher: Laura Morelli, LLC
Published: 2020-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

He’s getting a raise. Twelve broad florins. Is the giant really worth that fortune? If I am honest with myself, yes. Perhaps more.

I contemplate the sum while brushing a layer of white varnish on the cornices of a makeshift building that has been hastily constructed atop one of di Cosimo’s wooden parade floats. Above my head, a pair of swallows reels swiftly in the blue expanse of the sky, then disappear from view. It’s a shade of blue so perfect that only God could have conjured it, and all I want to do is to capture it, to pull down just a little of that heavenly beauty, to preserve a bit of its divine Creator.

From my spot high on a ladder, I survey the large cloister. Around us, the parade floats are beginning to take shape. The cloister has become a staging area for the floats. For this spectacle, di Cosimo has envisioned a heavenly city, a series of makeshift temples contrived of wood and paint that resemble the buildings of antiquity. Around us, white columns. A vision of a heavenly city. One of the older Dominicans, Brother Maffeo, circulates excitedly among the floats, sanguine in his brown robe, hood pulled back to reveal his bald pate and ring of short, graying black hair.

For any other artist, this divine sky and these fantastic, imaginary scenes might inspire a work of art for all ages. But in my case, surely it is only a burnt offering. As I watch my fellow guildsmen swept into greatness, my own works remain in the shadows. And while Michelangelo Buonarroti stands inside his stinking box, earning a salary that will keep his father and brothers rich in wine and pork fat for the winter, I stand slathering a layer of varnish on a sad-looking, papier-mâché replica of St. Peter that may be burned in di Cosimo’s fire pit by Christmas.

“You almost finished, L’Indaco?” I turn to see di Cosimo’s foreman, Giusto, approaching from across the monastery square where the floats are lined up in a circle, workers on each side to finish the floats before the parade. Giusto is a serious man; I like that about him. I respect his dedication to protocol and decorum, just as he seems to enjoy my irreverence for such things.

“Pazienza! Inspired genius cannot be rushed,” I say. I look the statue over, one of two dozen floats that will be part of that procession alone, one of dozens throughout the city. “Anyway, I hope old man Peter will be happy with it. I don’t want to get to the hereafter and have him tell me the likeness wasn’t flattering.”

The men working around the base of the float chuckle, but I am left staring dolefully into the crudely painted face of Saint Peter, and out into the future. As this fake city of God, this brilliant ephemera, takes shape around me, I feel the darkness licking the edges of my mind. The familiar abyss. For this moment, I’m hanging on to the splendor of white and gold taking shape around me.

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