After ten weeks of hard work Francis thought he had earned a holiday, and would go to Rome. He would see the sights of Rome, and he would find out if Tancred Saraceni had meant anything more than pleasantry when he said to hunt him up.
Saraceni meant much more than that. He insisted that Francis stay with him, and allow him to display the wonders of the great city. There was more than enough room in his apartment.
The apartment was a marvel of splendid clutter. For thirty years Tancred Saraceni had never been able to deny himself a bargain, or a good piece of painting or furniture, or tapestry, or embroidery, or sculpture, whenever one turned up that he could afford, and in his life such things turned up all the time. It was not a pack-rat’s nest and there was not a thing in it that was not fine of its own kind; everything was disposed with taste and effect, so far as space allowed. But even in the generous space of that apartment there were limitations, and though Saraceni would not have admitted it, the limitations had long ago been exceeded. The effect was overwhelming.
Why overwhelming? Because it was vastly more than the sum of its parts. It was a collection various in kind, but coherent in representing the taste of one avid, brilliant, greatly gifted connoisseur. It was Saraceni swollen to immense proportions. It was a man’s mind, the size of a house.
The apartment itself was part of an old palace that faced what had once been a charming little square with a fountain playing gently in its middle. But that had been in the days before the motor car degraded and despoiled Rome as it has degraded and despoiled so many cities. Now the little square was every day parked full of cars that came and went, leaving their stink on the heavy September air. The little fountain still played, but its basin was full of food wrappers and trash, rarely cleared out. Because the air outside was fouled by cars, Saraceni logically refused to open his windows, and this did nothing to lighten the oppressive feeling of his dwelling. Literally it had an air of an earlier day.
He was alone. A woman came every morning and did such cleaning as he would permit; he dusted all the objects of art, and himself polished whatever needed to be polished. He had been married, yes, to a wonderful English lady who had at last decided that she could no longer bear to live under such circumstances, and they had parted amicably. Tancredo, she had said, you must make a decision—shall it be the collection or me? He had not needed long to decide. My dearest one, he had said, the collection is timeless and you, alas that it should be so, are trapped in time. She had laughed so marvellously that he had almost been tempted to change his mind, but had not done so, in the end. A wonderful woman! They met and had delightful encounters every time he visited England. He had a daughter, also, but she was happily married and lived in Florence, where he saw her from time to time. She could not be tempted back to the apartment, even for a brief visit.
Saraceni was philosophical about the lonely state. He had made his choice. If it was art or human relationships, art unquestionably had the prior call.
He was an admirable host. He took Francis everywhere, and showed him things that even a privileged tourist could not have seen. It may not be said that at the Vatican doors flew open, because they moved gently on oiled hinges, but there were few doors that did not move for Saraceni; there were cardinalical palaces to which the public was not admitted, but where the chamberlain knew Saraceni as a privileged friend of the household. And in many great churches, chapels, and palaces he let it be known, with modesty, that such-and-such a splendid piece had regained its beauty because he had worked on it.
“You keep the Renaissance in repair,” said Francis, meaning it as a joke.
But Saraceni did not take it as a joke. “I do,” said he; “it is a trust that must be taken very seriously. But it is not repair. Call it re-creation. That demands special knowledge and special techniques. But if you want to know what these are, you must come and work with me.” And he looked intently at Francis.
“I must get my degree first. No sense spending two years on it and then chucking it away. I have a third year to go. Then, if you will have me.”
“By then I shall be busy on a long and tricky problem. A private collection that has been allowed to decline fearfully. But I think much of it may be reclaimed. I shall want an assistant. I promise that you could learn a great deal.”
“I have everything to learn. Working in Paris I have found out what a totally incompetent painter I am.”
“No, no, no; you have learned some basic things, and it takes time to make them work for you. All that you tell me about laying fat over lean, and so forth, is excellent, and you were doing it with modern paint. If you come to me you will have to learn to do it with old paint, which is harder in some ways, easier in others.”
“Old paint? Where does it come from?”
“I make it. Make it as the masters made it. They did not buy their paint in tubes, you know. They mixed their own, and much of the work is to discover what they used, and how they mixed it. Did you know that Nicholas Hillyard used ear-wax in those splendid Elizabethan miniatures? What is ear-wax, when you have painstakingly gathered the yield of many ears? I know. Chemistry is the secret. You cannot satisfactorily repair an old picture with a paint that is too much unlike what the painter used. And when you have done that—Ah, well, you shall see what follows, what must follow if restoration is to be that, and not simply cobbler’s work.”
At night they sat in the awesome apartment sipping Scotch whisky, which was Saraceni’s preferred tipple, and as they mellowed, Francis talked about his own taste in art. He was inclined to deplore the fact that, strive as he would, he liked the painting of an earlier day better than that of contemporary artists. What was he to make of himself? How could he hope to be an artist, even of the humblest rank, if he did not live and feel in tune with his own time? When the paintings that haunted him were not modern either in technique or in taste? The Bronzino, for instance…
“Ah, the Bronzino, The so-called Allegory of Love. Who gave it that inexpressive name, I wonder? It is not about love at its highest, but about Luxury—the indulgence of the senses. For all its erotic splendour and evocation of sensual pleasure it is a profoundly moral picture. Those old painters were great moralists, you know, even such a man as Angelo Bronzino, who so many imperceptive critics have called a cold and heartless artist. Surely you have seen the morality behind it?”
“I’ve looked at it literally for hours, and the more I look the less I know what is behind it.”
“Then you must look again. You, who once won a prize for Classics!”
“It isn’t really a classical theme. Venus and Cupid are the principal figures, but not doing anything I can associate with any classical reference I know.”
“You must understand the classics as the Renaissance understood them, which is not the way a boys’ school understands them. You must penetrate the classical world, which is by no means dead, I assure you; classical morality, classical feeling. Venus is tempting her son Cupid to a display of love that is certainly not simply filial. Is not that what many mothers do? Since Freud there has been a great deal of cocktail-hour chatter about the Oedipus complex and the love of a son for his mother, but who ventures on the dangerous theme of the mother’s part in that affair? Come now, Francis, has your mother, whose beauty I have heard you praise, never flirted with you? Never caressed you in a way that was not strictly maternal?”
“She never put her tongue in my mouth or coaxed me to play with her breast, if that is what you are talking about.”
“Well—but the possibility—was there never the possibility? If you had been of the pagan world and hot for pleasure, and not frightened out of your wits by Christianity, might you have recognized the possibility?”