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.His life does hang by the frailest filament of silk.Don Juan is no longer here to protect him.Soon after our capture, the King made Don Juan a knight, gave him a navy, and sent him to fight pirates off the Barbary Coast.Few return from such a mission.Often, my thoughts return to Tiberio and Michelangelo, to Don Juan, the Queen, and her King.Will I ever Understand the workings of the human heart? Will I ever know why we so often love those whom we cannot possess, and why we do not cherish those whose love we do possess? We are as thistledown twitching and turning in the current, captives to feelings we cannot control.How are we to Understand those persons who mean the most to Us, when we cannot truly Understand our own blind and hapless selves?Too late, it seems, I began to Understand Tiberio.Not long after our ill-conceived attempt at escape, the King, finding me painting on the Queen's portrait, stopped to study my work.Alone and filled with the remorse and shame that his presence now evokes in me, I painted in silence, the hushed dab of my brush against canvas mingling with the moan of the river outside.I heard his pained swallow behind me."You have captured her."I turned my head, just enough.He held out his hand.My youthful image smiled from the miniature painting on his palm.I saw the emblem Tiberio and I had devised those years ago in Rome."This was found by my agent in Tiberio Calcagni's studio in Michelangelo's house.It was the only item in a velvet-lined coffer, on a table next to an Unfinished statue."I looked Up into his face, so calm with its mask of sosiego."Take it." He gave it to me, its smooth copper back still warm from his hand.And then he left, his fine kid shoes tapping quietly against the rushes.Now I know the power of the spoken word.Now I know how deeply it can ruin.For the consequences of my own ill-considered speech, I must make amends, and so I paint, here in my tower, with a purpose.I paint for my sisters.I paint for my Queen.I paint for all the women of the world who, burdened by caring for their families, by the expectations of others, by Unbreakable chains of love or gold, can never go in search of their dreams.How often we cautiously receive our lives, pale, Uncertain Eves, as in the Maestro's painting.If only we can be so brave as to love and accept the fragile spirit residing within each one of Us, then, only then, we might take the gift of self-knowledge offered in its shy and trembling hands.I wish doctor Debruyne could see my efforts.I think of him often.He writes to me from the mountains of Peru, where he seeks precious herbs that can free man and woman from pain, from sickness, from the ebbing away of our lives with each breath that we take.I like to think he will find them, and will tell me of them someday.Now, here in my tower, my hands have calmed sufficiently at last.Once more I may return to my painting.Again I will lift my brush, and screwing my courage to the sticking point, peer into the mirror.This time, maybe this time, I will see the one inside who is me.Meanwhile, just the toss of an olive pit away, a man stands in another tower of the palace.As the river below his window roars on its painful journey to the sea, he tenderly shows an Unopened moonflower blossom to his darling.She touches the fragile closed trumpet, then looks Up, her chin tucked in, to see if she has done wrong.He shakes his head no and kisses her dimpled knuckle.How he does cherish her--his heart, his hope, the child Isabel Clara Eugenia.Author's NoteSofonisba Anguissola became the governess to the two-year-old Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia and her one-year-old sister, Catalina Micaela, after Elisabeth of Valois died from a miscarriage in the fourth month of her fourth pregnancy, on October 3, 1568.In 1570, King Felipe (Philip) chose the thirty-eight-year-old Sofonisba a husband, don Fabrizio de Moncada--a Sicilian, since Sofonisba said that if she must be married, she was "inclined to marry an Italian." She was allowed to leave Spain with her husband in the year of her marriage and was reunited with her family in Cremona.The couple traveled extensively in Italy and Spain, with Sofonisba painting at each stop, Until don Fabrizio died in 1579.Newly widowed at age forty-seven, she immediately set sail for Cremona.During the voyage home, Sofonisba met and fell in love with the ship's captain, Orazio Lomellino, a Genoan more than a decade younger than she.By the journey's end, she had promised to marry him.Sofonisba married, at last, for love.The devoted couple moved to Genoa.Sofonisba kept in touch with Isabella Clara, Catalina Micaela, and King Felipe, who, Until his death in 1598, granted Sofonisba a generous income.In Genoa, she inspired the many young painters who sought her out, among them Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck.She lived Until the age of ninety-three, painting, always painting, Until blindness finally stilled her brush.All these things are true, yet the story of The Creation of Eve, while based on a solid foundation of research, is a work of fiction.However, the most fantastical elements of the story tend to be the true ones.After Michelangelo abandoned it, his beloved and talented follower, Tiberio Calcagni, worked on the Unfinished statue now called the Bandini Pieta or Florentine Pieta, Until his own death (cause Unknown) in 1565.It is likely that Tiberio and Sofonisba met when she visited Michelangelo in Rome, as Calcagni, Tommaso Cavalieri, and Daniele da Volterra, the self-sacrificing friend who painted loincloths on the nudes in The Last Judgment, were in frequent attendance to the great artist.These three men were at Michelangelo's side at his death in 1564.As for Michelangelo himself, although during his lifetime he was known as Il Divino, the Divine One, and was sought out by the most powerful men in Italy to decorate their palaces and churches in works of stone and paint, it is true that the only traces he left of himself in his art were as the flayed skin in The Last Judgment and as Nicodemus in The Florentine Pieta.Neither depiction is flattering [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]