The Woman in the Painting

KERRY POSTLE left King’s College London with a distinction in her MA in French Literature. She’s written articles for newspapers and magazines, and has worked as a teacher of Art, French, German, Spanish, and English. Kerry’s first novel, The Artist’s Muse, came out in 2017, followed by A Forbidden Love in 2019.

She lives in Bristol with her husband. They have three grown-up sons.

The Woman in the Painting is her third novel.

Praise for Kerry Postle

‘Richly entertaining, wry and funny, and at the same time dark, thoughtful and allusive’

‘A richly layered read, that delivers on many levels’

‘Postle has taken me into a world full of characters that jump off the page with life’

‘This novel evokes a time and a place with such power’

Also by Kerry Postle

The Artist’s Muse

A Forbidden Love

The Woman in the Painting

KERRY POSTLE

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Kerry Postle

Kerry Postle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008331092

E-book Edition © May 2020 ISBN: 9780008310288

Version: 2020-04-20

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Praise for Kerry Postle

Also by Kerry Postle

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Historical Note

Acknowledgements

Dear Reader …

Extract

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

For Simon

for loving my books when he hates historical fiction.

Prologue

Raphael’s house, Rome, April 1520

The heavens opened and the rain poured down, making the streets of Rome look like streams. I was standing outside the studio I’d been working in for days, trying to dry off before entering, an ever-increasing puddle forming around my feet. I shuddered, wet and cold. The light was gloomy. I looked around. Outside, the clouds were dark, loud, threatening; inside, a sense of foreboding enveloped me like a cape. I never did like this weather. It always filled the air with sorrow, and now it gave me the uneasy feeling that I’d done the wrong thing.

The clouds clapped thunderously in agreement.

The door I was about to open was blown suddenly ajar by the wind. I stood still. Inside I could hear Cardinal Bibbiena, the man who, with flattery, had persuaded me to paint over my late master’s most precious work. He was talking to somebody. I waited. Listened.

‘The woman in the painting, who is she?’ The voice was accusing, the accent northern European.

‘Some whore he paid for.’ I winced at the Cardinal’s answer. ‘Look here. He’s even added a ribbon with his name on as proof of purchase.’ He laughed. His guest did not.

‘His reputation as the most …’ The stranger paused, looking for the right word. ‘… amorous artist in all of Rome was no idle boast then.’ The flames of his northern disapproval licked around the door.

‘No, indeed it was not. His nature was ever thus.’ The Cardinal adjusted his tone.

I hovered, afraid to enter, reluctant to retreat. The Cardinal’s fleshy ringed hand slipped round the side of the door, pulling it to, shutting me out. I put my ear up close to listen some more.

‘That must have been trying,’ the cold, faceless voice said. ‘For you. And your niece.’

‘No. All this—’ I imagined the Cardinal gesturing towards the painting, as I’d seen him do so many times before ‘—was nothing but lust, not love. Love. That was something Raphael shared with my dear Maria.’ The Cardinal sniffed loudly as if fighting back the tears. ‘He never recovered after she left this world. However, I have made plans to bury him in the Pantheon, in the same tomb as my beloved niece. They will be together at last.’

I reeled at the news and put a hand against the stone doorway to steady myself.

‘Fitting,’ came the reply.

‘Yes, they were perf—’ But before the Cardinal could finish the lie his guest cut him off. He had not come here to listen to how Raphael and the Cardinal’s niece were perfect for each other, or some other made-up story.

‘The world grieves to lose such a rare talent.’ The northerner’s voice now softened. I imagined him moved by the beauty of my deceased maestro’s work on the easel before him, admiration warming his eyes. I’d recently added the finishing touches to it, painting over the tell-tale foliage and ruby ring. ‘Even this rendition of a whore shows the scope of the artist,’ he said. My chest dared to swell a little with pride, my ear suddenly forgiving of his harsh northern consonants, strangely deaf to his slur on the model. But he hadn’t finished. ‘Though it is not as flawless as many of his other works. The background is …’ He paused to find the right word. ‘Clumsy.’

My hand shot up to my mouth in time to silence the splutter of surprise provoked by this foreigner’s damning summation of the changes I myself had made to the painting. The Cardinal had told me he found them sublime. I held on to that. What did this man with the guttural accent know of beauty?

‘And this hand,’ he went on, ‘it’s …’ He paused again. This time I wasn’t hopeful. ‘This hand, well, it’s so … unnatural.’ Though expecting the slight, I still flinched at the injury. Unnatural? The Cardinal had assured me the now ringless hand was so well executed as to be indistinguishable from any done by Raphael himself. But it made no difference; the stranger’s words cut too deep for me to be able to heal the wound they had inflicted on me. My chest hurt as if punctured, and my mind conjured up a vision of claw-like hands stab, stab, stabbing at the parts of the painting I had worked on with such devotion. That northern European accent was beginning to grate.

But not as much as the Cardinal’s deep, throaty laugh that followed. And not as much as the words that came after that.

‘Yes,’ he answered when he’d composed himself, ‘sadly those elements do detract from the rest of the work. It’s almost as if he’d allowed his least talented apprentice loose on it. That aside, Raphael was peerless – a prince among painters, brought down by this lowborn wench. That must surely be the reason for the angel tears falling from heaven down in the streets outside.’

It was still raining heavily – and ordinarily I would have wondered at the Cardinal’s quickness of wit in using the elements to convey his own sorrow. But the revelation that he thought me the least talented of Raphael’s apprentices came as a shock. My whole body shook and shivered, with cold, loss, then shame. Yes, an overwhelming sense of shame ran through me. I was drenched with it. It flushed out my vanity and ambition and presented them to me for what they were – ugly sins that had turned my head and seduced me into betraying one of the kindest people I had ever known.

‘So the woman in the painting,’ the grating voice started up again, ‘she is the one who killed Raphael? She is the baker’s daughter of whom everyone is talking?’

‘Yes. Base. Immoral,’ the Cardinal replied, the deep laugh now a lascivious sneer. ‘This is the woman who brought down one of the finest artists the world has ever known with her wantonness. This is La Fornarina.’

I lifted my ear away from the door. I’d heard enough. My mind searched wildly for a borrowed dignity with which to disguise the tatters of my own. I scraped together some well-woven deceits with which to cloak myself made up of my righteous indignation at the Cardinal’s undeniable duplicity. But it was no use. Thunder clapped outside once more. Yes, I had done the wrong thing and I did not need the elements to tell me so.

Chapter 1

Twelve years earlier

Rome, January 1508

The year was 1508, the month January, and it was a Friday. I remember it all too clearly. I was still innocent then. ‘Pietro! Get that weak arse of yours up now!’ My father’s rough hands dragged me from my sleep. He threw open the shutters, exposing me to the bright glare of the early morning sun. ‘If the Venetian throws you out too, I’ll …’

My body tensed as he bellowed at me. ‘S-s-s-s-sorry,’ I stuttered, waiting for the blow.

It didn’t come. Instead, my father looked out of the window, distracted by a commotion that had broken out down in the street below. ‘The lads have pulled something out of the Tiber!’ a voice called up to him. More voices joined in, urgent, excited.

My father looked back at me for a second, his eyes distressed at my attire. His knuckles twitched but they stayed at his sides; the sounds of men running towards the river was too great a lure even for him. He left the room, though his disgust remained.

I looked down at myself, at the white shirt and the yellow hose I still had on from the day before and that I loved so well. My legs hurt, my eyes felt swollen, my head ached. Yesterday.

Yesterday my father was proud of me; I was an apprentice in the workshop of the great artist Michelangelo. This morning I was not.

Artists. They weren’t popes or cardinals, kings or princes; in Rome they were better than that. At least in the eyes of people like my father – the common man. And that was because they walked among us, drank with us, sang with us, painted us. They even took us on as apprentices making our fathers proud.

Gifted, feted, popular, they enjoyed all the dishes at the rich man’s table without having to torture or kill for them. Though Michelangelo had seemed no less ruthless to me.

It’s true that most artists sang their happy song like a bird within its gilded cage, wings clipped, without the freedom to sing as they chose, fly where they might or most importantly paint what they liked. But one or two, whenever their patrons left the cage door wide open, soared high above and up into the heavens. And there they dazzled us.

Michelangelo was one such painter, though his temper was as brutish as his work was divine. And yesterday, talk in his workshop had turned to another: Raphael Sanzio. Though I’d not yet seen a single one of his paintings (he’d been working in Florence), I knew that as an artist he shone so brightly that nothing could subdue his brilliance, nor eclipse his perfection. Perfetto, ottimo, squisito, meraviglioso, eccellente, superior, divino. It was claimed that there weren’t enough superlatives in the whole of the Italian language to express how exceptional Raphael was. And rumour had it that as a man he was as sublime as his work, in both character and appearance.

And now he was coming to Rome. The prospect of his imminent arrival was causing the already full cups of the rich and powerful to bubble over. Lists were being drawn up in fortified palazzos around the city of all the artworks they would have Raphael paint for them. Of altarpieces, frescoes, birth trays, tondi, even going so far as to ponder which jewels and garments each family member should wear for that most essential object for the aristocrat hoping to dazzle with a show of wealth – the portrait. Prosperous families were coming to blows over whom Raphael would paint first.

And Michelangelo hated him for it.

That was why two starry-eyed apprentices, caught with Raphael’s name in their mouths, were beaten and dismissed with nowhere to go. Luigi and Federico had promise. They would never fulfil it now, the fools. Those of us suspected of the lesser crime of listening to them had received a good kicking but were not completely discarded. Michelangelo had handed us over to another artist who had recently arrived in Rome, this time from Venice.

‘That artist you’ve been passed on to, Sebastiano Luciani, he’s got a good reputation. But be careful. They say he’s another moody bastard.’ My brother Giacomo’s voice, deep with sleep, pulled me back to the present. He had still to get up. ‘So keep your head down, otherwise Father will have it.’ He yawned. ‘And don’t speak unless you have to. That stammer of yours can get you into trouble.’ Giacomo’s eyes studied my attire as I left the room. ‘And try not to draw too much attention to yourself,’ he called after me as I stooped down to pick my jacket up from the floor. I left, closing the door behind me.

I’d recently started grinding pigments at Michelangelo’s. I’d enjoyed it. I walked in disgrace to the workshop of my new maestro, Sebastiano Luciani. A great colourist, he would surely have pigment grinders of his own. So what of me? Only the idea of Raphael Sanzio, an artist beautiful in mind and body, or so it was said, prevented me from feeling like a condemned man. By the time I stepped over the threshold of my new maestro’s workshop I knew what I had to do – not say a word and try my best. I took off my jacket and ran a hand over my hose for luck before pulling on a white tunic and tying my leather apron at the back.

I had much to learn, from watching more advanced apprentices as well as observing Sebastiano himself. Yet as I and the other boys were taken round the workshop that first morning to admire our new maestro’s work, I for one saw nothing superior in it. Though I knew better than to share my opinion. With every flick of Sebastiano’s self-satisfied wrist as he presented another of his paintings to us, my face expressed wonder while my mind felt nothing but disappointment. The artist from Venice had some way to go before he even came close to deserving the reputation bestowed upon him.

It was said he had trained under the great Giorgione. If that was true he disguised it well.

‘And this,’ he said, standing in front of an unfinished work depicting a young, dark-haired woman, a fur-lined cape draped over her shoulder, ‘is a piece I call La Fornarina – The Baker’s Daughter – because she is the woman in the painting.’ He clapped his hands together with delight and gave a little laugh as though sharing a secret joke with someone. No one laughed back.

‘Note the composition … and the tones here … and here … And I say again, it’s of …’ He paused like an actor waiting for the crowd to finish his line. The silent horseshoe of apprentices grew bigger as each boy, bar one, breathed in. They wiped the palms of their hands on the leather aprons that protected their belted white tunics while taking a step back. Their wide eyes shouted respect and fear but not a peep came out of their mouths. Only Giulio Romano, standing at one end, an apprentice I’d known quite well at Michelangelo’s, seemed calm and composed enough to say anything. I was surprised to see him here. Giulio was older than me and more skilful than the rest of us, the equal of Giovanni da Udine, who wasn’t here; Michelangelo must have kept him on. Giulio appeared decidedly unimpressed as he looked at the unfinished painting before him. I caught his eye, distracting him from his silent assessment. He raised an eyebrow, mouthed: ‘You tell him what it’s called.’ I looked at him with foolish, trusting eyes and began.

‘La F-f-forn, f-forn …’ My mind swam, my face felt hot, and my eyes asked Giulio for guidance.

He mouthed: ‘La F-f-fornicatora.’ Desperate and horrified that I’d stammered, I took Giulio’s lifeline without caring to see what it was. Without thinking I threw it back out as quickly as I could.

‘La F-f-fornicatora.’

The moment I said it I knew. And the squeal of delighted horror that pierced my left ear made by the young boy standing next to me confirmed it. But it was too late to take it back. The new apprentices fizzed and frothed, unable to suppress their mirth, and as I searched Giulio’s face for an explanation I saw that his treacherous eyes had disappeared behind tears. Of laughter.

‘Stupid boy!’ It was Sebastiano who spoke.

Something ungovernable had been unleashed and the maestro of the workshop, the great Sebastiano Luciani, held me responsible for unleashing it.

He stood and waited, holding his head high like the grand maestro that he was. He coughed first, glowered second, and on the third count he attempted to beat the horseshoe of apprentices back into shape.

‘It’s called La Fornarina. FOR-NA-RI-NA!’

Squeaks and titters escaped from behind hands. The damage had been done. Sebastiano ranted and railed like a bad choirmaster unable to keep control. Squeaks became shrieks, the titters guffaws. Eventually, beaten, a pained expression settled on his face and his nose twitched as if displeased by a bad odour. ‘Let’s to work!’ he exclaimed with a clap of his hands. And then he walked away.

That was the end of our introduction to the workshop, and my first meeting with la fornarina, the woman in the painting. I did not like her.

Chapter 2

A flurry of prospective patrons with a penchant for portraits patrolled the workshop over the following days and weeks. Now there’s a sentence I couldn’t have said at the time. I kept my head down and worked hard. My father’s ire was – for the moment – appeased. And though, after that first day at Sebastiano’s, I’d been demoted to mopper-upper (all because I’d got the name of a painting wrong), I very quickly worked my way up to brush cleaner. Giulio said I was the best. The best brush cleaner he’d ever seen. And, very recently, I had been called on to grind pigments. At last. The job I’d had when I was at Michelangelo’s was mine once more. Giulio had seen to that.

Giulio had a very special talent when it came to drawing that was in great demand. And the guilt he’d felt at the humiliation he’d caused me had prompted him to use his particular drawing skills to help me out. He had an excellent hand and eye when it came to drawing the human form, and Taddeo, in charge of assigning jobs in the studio, had a greedy interest in Giulio’s particular line of work. He was so hungry to accept Giulio’s latest drawing of a young woman, undressed, that he overlooked the fact that I might need training for one of the jobs I was soon going to be called upon to do. That I was managing to grind Verona green, umber, sienna, until I could hide behind their undulating hills of colour, must have misled him. But for now, we had no idea what disaster lurked up ahead. For both of us.

It was a Tuesday, the day that wretched girl came. Or was supposed to. I’d seen her once or twice. She was more graceful than in Sebastiano’s, admittedly unfinished, portrait of her, her features less lumpen. She’d been unreliable of late, and her blatant lack of respect for the maestro divided the apprentices, shocking some (Taddeo and myself), entertaining others (Giulio and everyone else). Out of all the people to pass through the studio, she was the only one who’d ever said buongiorno to me. But I still didn’t like her.

And now Sebastiano was waiting for her to arrive. He paced the studio floor, starting each time a would-be patron came through the door. His face forced a smile as noble after noble looked round the studio with a view to securing a portrait of themselves. The rich and the vain of Rome, unlike the girl with the floury skirt, were queuing up to be painted. They had bags of money with which to pay, while la fornarina clearly paid in other ways. As I peered over my impressive mounds of ground pigment, I observed Sebastiano. His eyes smouldered like hot coals sparking angrily to life every time they caught an apprentice chatting, smiling, looking up from his work. I slumped further down behind my pigment piles. I could only imagine that the girl in the unfinished painting was late with her payment.

A common baker’s daughter, immortalised in paint by one of the finest painters in all Europe. At least, that was the reputation Sebastiano had. She did not realise her good fortune.

I looked on while the nobility of Rome jostled with each other to enjoy the same privilege, bombarding the maestro with questions.

‘Who have you painted?’

‘Him? Have you really?’

‘Her? Well I never.’

‘Them? How marvellous.’

‘Could I possibly see them?’

‘When can you start?’

‘When can you finish?’

‘How long must I wait?’

Interest was overwhelming. Portraits were easier and evidently more profitable than painting an elaborate fresco cycle for a church or a monastery, they needed less planning and were relatively quick to complete. Sebastiano must have been pleased when he’d turned his hand to them. But as I noticed the colour in Sebastiano’s face rising, caught the flames flickering in his eyes, it was clear portraits were not uppermost in his mind this Tuesday. I kept my head down. He could go off at any second.

‘Have you seen her?’ He drew close to Giulio, his eyes pulled to the door by invisible strings.

I clapped a pigment-covered hand over my mouth as I watched an interested patron reach out to touch a just-finished portrait left to dry on an easel in the corner. ‘The hair, it looks so real,’ he trilled with enthusiasm.