‘The Feast in the House of Levi,’ said Freja, consulting the caption on the wall and stepping unwittingly into my trap.
‘That’s what Veronese ultimately called it, but in fact it was originally The Last Supper. The Inquisition didn’t like the picture, they thought it was irreverent — all these people, bustling around, Germans, children, dogs, black people. You see that cat, under the table by Christ’s feet? They thought it was blasphemous. So instead of painting out the animals and the dwarves, Veronese simply changed the title. Not a Last Supper, but The Feast in the House of Levi.’
Freja looked me up and down. I realise this is a cliché, but her eyes really did scan up then down. ‘You know a great deal about art,’ she said.
I shrugged modestly. ‘My wife’s the expert. I’ve just picked up a thing or two along the way.’ … from the internet, I should have said. My expertise lies entirely in looking things up, but I kept my counsel and strolled on, hands locked professorially behind my back.
‘So what do you do?’
‘I’m a scientist, a biochemist by training. Nothing to do with art, I’m afraid. You?’
‘A dentist, so to me biochemistry sounds fascinating. Dentistry is also not very artistic.’
‘But necessary!’
‘I suppose so, but there’s not much room for free expression.’
‘You have terrific teeth,’ I said, somewhat idiotically.
‘Well, I’ve learnt that as soon as you say you’re a dentist, people start peering into your mouth. I suppose they want to see if you practise what you preach.’
‘“Practise what you preach” — you see? Your English is incredible.’
‘You mean I know a lot of clichés?’
‘Not clichés. Idioms. You’re very idiomatic.’
‘So much praise!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, I don’t mind. Why would I mind?’
In the final gallery we found a terrific mural by Carpaccio, occupying a whole room and telling the legend of the life of St Ursula in comic-book form. If I knew anything about Renaissance art, it was that stories of saints rarely end well. In this case, the virtuous Ursula says goodbye to her betrothed and leaves Britain to go on a pilgrimage with 10,000 virgin followers, but they’re all beheaded by the Huns in Cologne. In one canvas, an arrow is fired point blank into Ursula’s chest, and I wondered what message could be drawn from that?
‘The moral is, don’t go to Cologne,’ said Freja.
‘I went to a conference in Cologne. I thought it was a charming city.’
‘But were any of you virgins?’
‘Well, we were all biochemists so, yes — almost certainly.’
She stepped closer to the canvas, tilting her head. ‘Poor St Ursula. Poor ten thousand virgins. Still, it’s a comfort, I suppose, to know that someone is having a worse holiday than you.’
For all the gore of the final frames, it was a wonderful painting, full of colour and life and strange, imaginary cities under cobalt blue skies, with that precise perspective that is so conspicuous in early-Renaissance art, as if they had all been issued with really terrific geometry sets. ‘I don’t want to sound conceited, but I’m pretty sure that, if I’d been around in the early Renaissance, I could have come up with the theory of perspective.’
‘Yes!’ said Freja, grabbing my forearm. ‘I’ve always wondered, why did no one pick up on that before? “Listen, everyone! I’ve just realised, when things are far away they appear smaller.”’
I laughed, then remembered my new guise as an art historian. ‘Of course it’s a little more complicated than that.’
‘Of course, of course.’
‘I love Carpaccio’s version of England.’
‘Yes,’ said Freja, ‘it just so happens to look exactly like Venice.’
‘I suppose, if you’d spent your life in Venice, you might very well expect everywhere to look like Venice.’
‘Why would you wish for anything else?’
And then we were out in the clean blue light of the morning, our surroundings seeming somehow refreshed and made vivid now that we had seen them on old canvases. Those strange top-heavy chimneys were still there, the same accentuated geometry of the buildings and fruit-bowl hues of pink and orange and peachy yellow, the forced perspective of the eastward view from the top of the Accademia Bridge. We took it in.
‘What a place,’ said Freja. ‘It shouldn’t be here, and yet here it is.’
‘There’s a nice café on Santa Margherita,’ I said. ‘If you’re not in a hurry.’
We headed west. Freja had been separated for two years, divorced for six months. ‘The usual story. It hardly bears repetition. He had an affair, and then I had a silly affair to punish him for his affair, and then he had another affair, like some ridiculous poker game. Except that he fell in love with his lover and I did not. To begin with it was awful, a catastrophe. Chaotic and shocking and sad. We had built this business together — we were in the same surgery every day — and all through the day there would be arguments and rows and accusations. Believe me, no one wants to see their dentist cry, not while they’re working. Can you imagine? Tears plopping into your mouth while this hysterical woman is wielding a drill. And of course the children were so furious with us both.’
‘How many children?’
‘Two, both girls. But they had already left home for university, so perhaps things could have been worse.’
‘And do you think that was a factor in the break-up?’ I said, adopting a casual tone.
‘That they’d left home?’
‘And that your work was somehow … complete?’
Freja shrugged. ‘For him, perhaps. Not for me. I loved our family, I was proud of us; it never occurred to me to think of it as work. My husband used to send me crazy, of course, but that was beside the point. The point was we were married and we would be together until we died.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘So it was awful to begin with, screaming and shouting and tears, and the girls went a little off the rails. But then you’re lying in the wreckage — to continue the metaphor — you’re lying in the wreckage and you reach down and feel for your legs, they’re still there, and both your arms and your skull is in one piece. You can see and hear and realise you can still stand up. And that’s what you do. You stand up and you catch your breath and you stagger away. I’m talking a lot. It is because I have said nothing but “grazie” and “a table for one” for the last three weeks.’
‘I don’t mind. Really.’
We were out of the dark alleys now, into Campo San Barnaba, the church front bright and elegant and unadorned.
‘I haven’t seen this square. I like it a lot,’ said Freja, and as her tour guide I felt rather proud.
‘You must see this,’ I said, the expert once again. On the bridge at the far side of the square, four white marble footprints were inlaid deep into the stonework. ‘It’s a fighting bridge. If you had a dispute with someone, you settled it here. A sort of public boxing ring. The footprints were where the fight started.’
‘You’re a real local historian, Douglas.’