Each evening, he made a point of asking about her day and then listened intently as she recounted it with such exuberance and wonder, he felt as if he was seeing the place of his birth and his home for all his forty-eight years on the earth for the first time. For Lilian, everything was an adventure, from the spectacle of the Colosseum and the ghostly ruins of ancient Rome, to the everyday sights, sounds and smells of the street markets. In all cases, it was her reaction which he adored and he blamed the fresco entirely for his new obsession with her.
Pietro had lost count of the number of people he had shown it to. Its rumoured beauty was one of Rome’s most well-known secrets and, aside from all the business connections he regularly brought home to see it to help aid his negotiations with them, there were also curious dinner guests who always asked to see it.
But Lilian’s reaction had been special and different. When nearly everyone encouraged him to have experts study the brushwork to ascertain which parts were by the Great Masters the legend claimed, or commented on how much money that ceiling alone would bring for his house if he ever decided to sell it, she had been more interested in the story of his besotted great-great-great-great-grandparents. She saw the fresco as a declaration of deep and abiding love and was caught up in the romance of his ancestors rather than the value of the painting.
In fact, Lilian had a talent for seeing the intensely personal in everything. The gladiator’s feelings as he walked into the arena of the Colosseum rather than the architecture of the amphitheatre. Bracci’s human inspiration for Oceanus on the Fontana di Trevi. Even the men who carved the stones which built St Peter’s. How they must have felt to be part of the creation of something so significant. In humanising everything in the city he had taken for granted for most of his adult life, she brought a new dimension to it, a new appreciation which was filtering down into his own work. Something which had been sorely missing for a very long time.
Today he had sold a painting by di Banco, a lesser artist of the Renaissance. Pietro had never much cared for his work because the brushwork and skill lacked the sophistication and subtlety of many of his significantly better contemporaries. He had picked up the small portrait, done in oils, for next to nothing a few years back from a conte who had been systematically stripping his villa of valuables. Uninspired by this one, Pietro had consigned the little portrait to storage where it lay forgotten until he sensed he had found a buyer. The Conte didn’t know who the ancestor was so had no emotional attachment to it.
The wealthy English merchant who had bought it only wanted the portrait to give credence to the expensive illusion he was creating—to convince others his money was old and his bloodline was noble, buying the nameless ancestors of others to hang in his new mansion built in the fashionably classical style. These sorts of transactions, although not exciting, were currently very lucrative. Anyone who wasn’t anyone, but desperately wanted to be someone now they had money, knew if they came to Pietro Venturi, he would be able to fill their walls with suitably aged and convincing fake ancestors to impress their visitors while being guaranteed of his silence. In fact, at least a hundred forgotten and unwanted portraits hung in the private gallery behind his main one on the Via del Corso. He had never cared if his clients walked away with a stunning Canaletto cityscape to hang above their fireplace or the cracked portrait of a nameless, forgotten old lady by an unknown artist of yore. All he cared about was making the sale.
Yet Pietro had pondered that crude portrait all day, wondering for the first time about the young man who was staring tentatively out of the aged canvas rather than the handsome profit he would make from it. He wished he had shown it to Lilian before he had sent it off. She would have come up with at least twenty theories about the fellow—who he was, what he was thinking and why he was having his portrait painted in the first place—just as she did each evening when they strolled together around the palazzo and he pointed out some new treasure for her to speculate over. She wouldn’t care how many scudi it had made. He had never met a person more unimpressed with money than Lilian and in turn that lack of interest made him re-evaluate his obsession with it. He had made himself far more money than he could ever spend—perhaps now he should take a leaf out of her book and begin to enjoy life? He envied her her freedom, even though all the restrictions in his life were of his own making.
She came through the door and he drank in the sight of her. ‘You were right, Pietro!’ Typically, she was beaming and brimming with the excitement of the day’s adventure. ‘The Piazza del Popolo was well worth the visit. And so unspoilt. I felt exactly as if I was walking in the Rome of the fifteenth century.’
‘My feet feel as if I’ve been walking since the fifteenth century!’ Alexandra flopped on to the sofa opposite him. ‘If you are going to continually offer her new suggestions to drag me along to, I think you should take some of the responsibility for the walking. I was all done by two. But somebody…’ she glared at her cousin ‘…insisted we traipse all the way down the Via Leonina because a certain somebody…’ then she glared at him ‘…encouraged her to seek out the fresco at the Trinità dei Monti, which also involved the climbing of those ridiculous Spanish Steps. All one hundred and thirty-eight of them!’
He ignored Alexandra’s complaining to focus on her companion. ‘What did you think?’
Lilian’s face said it all. ‘It was a stunning fresco! And you are right, da Volterra is a master. One I had never heard of before. Yet, you can still can see the influence and genius of Michelangelo in the painting—exactly as you said.’
‘It was he who gained da Volterra the commission in the first place. Volterra is said to have based it on Michelangelo’s design and drawings.’ It was so wonderful to be able to converse with another about art. One who reminded him why he had fallen in love with the subject in the first place. He had never met another person who seemed to feel it all as keenly as he did.
‘That doesn’t surprise me. The composition…the way he paints the figures. It leaps out at you. The expressions of grief on the faces of his followers as they reverently lower the body of Christ from the cross brought a tear to my eye. It was so visceral…so utterly tragic.’
Alexandra rolled her eyes, unenthused with their topic of conversation. ‘The pain in my poor feet brings tears to my eyes, too. Not that anyone cares. I hope you know a good cobbler, Carlotta. Another couple of days at this pace and my walking shoes will need new soles.’
‘Yet history has condemned him to be known for ever as Il Braghettone—literally the breeches maker—because he was hired by Pope Pius the Fourth to cover the genitalia on works of art in the Vatican.’
‘Poor da Volterra. To have his greatness forgotten.’ Her eyes locked with his and he realised they were kindred spirits. She understood his thoughts. He understood hers. He could see them in her eyes.
How bizarre…
‘Why don’t you take the carriage? You do not have to walk everywhere.’ His sister, like Alexandra, couldn’t see what all the fuss was about and this, too, was reflected in the amused exasperation in Lilian’s lovely gaze.
‘Because Lilian is determined to immerse herself fully in the experience and, apparently, she would miss things in the comfort of Pietro’s fine conveyance. Like the charming smells wafting from some of the side streets, for instance. The heady combination of rotting vegetables, stagnant water and the sweaty bodies of the great unwashed are also apparently intrinsic to Rome’s charm. It made me want to gag so I had to resort to burying my nose in my handkerchief, but Lilian didn’t appear the least bit offended by the stench. I swear, all her years working at the Foundation have completely destroyed her sense of smell.’
‘I am simply more robust of both body and character than you, Cousin.’ Another thing Pietro liked about her. Lilian was no shrinking violet. The brief years of his marriage had proved he had no time for those. ‘However, to be annoyingly magnanimous and to appease you and your poor old feet, we shall take the carriage to the Pantheon tomorrow.’
‘But