The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland Page A

don’t care a pebble’s worthabout him, but I do care that I am considered innocent by the one man in the world who might matter.”
    The thought seemed to embarrass him and he turned to look out the window again. I straightened my back. Dignity, I thought. I wanted him to see in me some dignity. A quick movement passed over his lips. Maybe he understood. Or maybe he was merciful, not wishing to make me explain any more. Or maybe it meant that he didn’t even care.
    â€œWill we live with your parents?”
    â€œNo. They’re dead.”
    â€œOh, I’m sorry.” I felt like a fool to have said that. I should have asked Porzia ahead of time.
    â€œMy uncle took Giovanni and me away to a hill town during the last plague, twelve years ago, but they had to stay. I own their house now.”
    I thought better than to ask any questions about it.
    I grew hungry, but was afraid to mention it. I didn’t want to make demands just a few hours into our marriage. I realized with a sinking desperation how completely a married woman gives herself into another’s keeping—even to the eating of a morsel of bread. Had Graziela felt that way? Had my mother? It pained me now that I had not talked to my own mother more.
    â€œGiovanni tells me you are a painter,” I said after a while.
    â€œI am.”
    â€œI am too.”
    â€œYou?”
    â€œSurely Giovanni told you.” I pointed to my rolled-up canvases.
    â€œThere were two women painters in Bologna once,” he said. “They painted flowers.”
    â€œI paint human beings.” Curiosity streaked across his pocked face. “Would you like to see?”
    Pietro nodded. I held them up and let them unroll in front of me. Woman Playing a Lute happened to be on top. Hestudied the whole canvas. “A graceful hand,” he said. I let it slide to the floor and revealed my Susanna , too large a canvas to unroll all the way in the coach. He couldn’t see the bottom where Susanna’s foot dipped into the water of the stone bath.
    â€œOh!” His eyes opened wide. My heart beat more strongly now than during the wedding mass. “It’s very good,” he said with what I took to be mild surprise. He looked at Susanna’s face and his expression darkened. “It has a lot of feeling. Her feeling, I mean. When did you paint this?”
    â€œA couple of years ago.”
    â€œBefore—”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSo young.” He was thoughtful a moment, and then said, “You have a fine, subtle blending of color, especially in the flesh tones. As lustrous as glass.”
    â€œDo you want to know the secret? Varnish made from amber resin that lutemakers use in Venice. The colors just glide on. One part amber varnish to three parts walnut oil or linseed oil. Combine them over a slow heat and glaze the entire painting after each day’s work. Then it’s more stable and will dry quicker than oil alone. Glazing with just oil, the colors tend to slide down the canvas and bleed.”
    His face was tipped down at Susanna’s belly but his eyes peered up at me as I looked over the top of the canvas, so the angle of his face gave him a covert, shadowed look.
    â€œHow did you learn this?”
    â€œFrom my father. He just combines a drop of the varnish to each oiled color on his palette. The idea to do the whole canvas is my own.”
    He made a low, reverberating sound in his throat but it wasn’t a word.
    â€œYou’ll see. The brush doesn’t tug as you take a stroke,and the colors are more brilliant. Now you know too.” I smiled in what I hoped was a coquettish way. “It’s my wedding gift to you.”
    He didn’t smile back. He motioned for me to reveal the third canvas. Judith .
    â€œIt’s not finished yet,” I said, and let the Susanna fall.
    He blew air out of his mouth with a “whooff!” His face contorted. “Not quite what