"Forest--no; but why? For the hunting of dragons?"
"N-no, b-but--" Padraig was apt to stammer when excited--"if I had
balsam like ours I could make the green. We had none, and so we hunted
until we found the right resin--Brother Basil and I."
"Basil Ossorin, an Irish monk from England?" asked Matteo quickly. "I
met him ten years since when he was on his way to Byzantium. If he was
your master you have had good teaching."
Padraig nodded. Brother Basil was the man whom he best loved.
"There is no trouble about the balsam if you know it when you see it,"
the artist went on. "I will take you to a place where anything may be
bought--cobalt, lapis lazuli, cinnabar, orpiment, sandarac--and it is
honestly sold."
Padraig numbered the matters off on his fingers. "Copper,--and
Venice turpentine,--and saffron, to make him yellow underneath
like water-snakes in an old pond. His wings must be smooth--and
green--bright, and mottled with rusty brown--the sun comes from behind,
and he must look as if it were shining through the halo round the
maiden's head."
"I wonder now about that balsam," mused the painter.
Padraig drew an outline in the dust on the stone flags. "The tree is
like this--the leaf and berry like this."
Matteo laughed with pure satisfaction. "That is all right; the tree
grows in the abbey gardens. Come, young imp with the crest of fire,
come quickly, and we will have a glorious day."
It is not certain who painted more of that dragon, the master or the
journeyman. Padraig directed the making of the vivid gold-green as if
he were the artist and the other the grinder of paints. Matteo dragged
old Brother Joseph, the caretaker, from his work in the crypt to scrape
the original dragon off the wall until only the outline of curling body
and webbed wings remained. The design was all right, for that was
Matteo's especial skill. He could make a wall-painting as decorative
and well-proportioned as the stiff symbolic figures, and yet make the
picture natural.
There was a fearful moment when the paint was ready and they made the
trial, for neither was sure that the pigment would look right on this
new surface. But it gleamed a living green. Padraig brightened the
scaled body with yellow where the light struck it. Matteo used his
knowledge of armor to deepen the shadows with a cunning blend of blue
and bronze that made the scales look metallic. Each worked on a wing,
spreading it with sure swift strokes across the base of the scene. Just
as Padraig drew his brush for the last time along the bony framework of
the clutching talons, the painter caught him by the arm and drew him
back down the nave.
"Now look!" he said.
The dragon wallowed at the feet of Saint Margaret in furious, bewildered
rage. Old Brother Joseph, coming out of the corner where he had been
sitting half asleep, looked actually frightened at the creature. Matteo,
well pleased, did not wait for the verdict of the monks, but took
Padraig home to his lodgings in a narrow street of the town, and they
sat up late that night in talk over many things.
The painter was a Florentine, and when at home he lived in a street even
then called the Street of the Painters, in Florence. He had been in
London years before, in Paris, in Rome, in Spain, in Sicily. Now he
had commissions for the decorating of a palace in Rouen, and he took
Padraig's breath away by suggesting that they work together.
"Some day," Matteo averred thoughtfully, "there will be cathedrals in
Italy, France, Normandy, Aquitaine, England, greater than the world has
seen. There will be cliffs and forests of stone-work--arches, towers,
pinnacles, groined and vaulted roofs, hundreds of statues of the saints.
Every inch of it will be made beautiful as the forest is--with vines and
creeping mosses, blossoms and the little wood-folk that shelter among
trees. There will be great windows of stained and painted glass. There
will be altar-pieces like those that we only dream to-day. I tell you,
Patricio mio, we are in the dawn of the millennium of the builders. What
has been done already is nothing--nothing!"
Padraig found in the following months that a group of young Italians,
Matteo and some of his friends, were working along a new line, with
models and methods that accounted for the beauty of their achievements.
The figures that they painted met with scant appreciation oftentimes,
for many of the churchmen desired only symbolic figures of bright
colors, with gilding to make them rich. Moreover, there was a very
general disbelief in the permanence of wall-painting. Walls were damp,
and the only really satisfactory decoration thus far had been the costly
and tedious mosaic. Made of thousands of tiny blocks of stone of various
colors, the design of the mosaic had to be suited to the infinite
network of little cracks and the knowledge of the worker. Kings and
noblemen usually preferred tapestry which could be saved in case of
disaster, and carried about, to costly wall-paintings which must remain
where they were. Yet Padraig found Matteo's rich and graceful figures
equal in their way to the stone sculptures of any French master, and
said so.
"It is like this, comrade," the Florentine explained, slipping his arm
across Padraig's shoulders as they strolled past the church of Saint
Ouen. "A picture is a soul; its life on earth depends upon the body
that it inhabits; and we have not yet found out how to make its body
immortal. I do not believe that my paintings will live more than a few
years. You see, a mural painting is not like your illuminations. You
can keep a book safe in a chest. But a painting on plaster--or on a
wooden panel--is besieged day and night by dampness, and dryness, and
dust, and smoke, changes of heat and cold,--everything. The wall may
crack. The roof may take fire,--especially when pigeons and sparrows
nest in the beams. The mere action of the air on any painting must be
proved by years. I got my lesson on that when I was not as old as you.
I heard from an ancient monk of a marvelous Madonna, painted from a
living model--a beautiful girl pointed out for years as the Madonna of
San Raffaele. I tramped over the Apennines to see it. Patricio mio, the
face was black! The artist had used oil with resin and wax, and the
picture had turned as black as a Florentine lily! I never told the old
man about it, and I praised the work to his heart's content; but to
myself I said that I would dream no more of my own immortal fame. I
dream only of the work of others."
"But suppose that a way could be found to make the colors lasting?"
queried Padraig.
"Ah, that would be a real Paradise of Painters--until some one came
along with a torch. I think, myself, that some day a drying medium will
be found which will make it possible to paint in oils for all time to
come. There is painting on wood, and on dry plaster--and fresco, where
you paint on the plaster while it is still damp. In fresco you must lay
out only the work that can be finished that day. Me, I am content for
the time to be a fresco painter."
"And if it is all to vanish in a few years, why do we paint?" mused
Padraig with a swift melancholy in his voice.
Matteo's hand fell heavily upon his arm. "Because we must not lose our
souls--that is why. The life of our work will last long enough to be
seen and known by others. They will remember it, and do their work
better. Thus it will go on, generation after generation, until painters
come who can use all that we have learned since Rome fell, and cap it
with new visions. Every generation has its dragon to dispose of. When
I have tamed my dragon he will take me to the skies--maybe."
It was not long after this that Matteo, overhauling the flat
leather-bound coffer in which he kept his belongings, dragged up from
the bottom of the collection some parchments covered with miscellaneous
sketches, mostly of heads and figures. He had received a message from a
sharp-faced Italian peddler-boy that day, and had been looking rather
grave. On the plaster of the wall, in the sunset light, he began to
draw, roughing it out with quick sure strokes, a procession of men and
horses with some massive wheeled vehicle in the center. Presently this
was seen to be a staging like a van, drawn by six white oxen harnessed
in scarlet. Upon it stood churchmen in robes of ceremony, grouped about
a tall standard rising high above their heads--a globe surmounted by a
crucifix. Padraig knew what this was. It was the Carocchio or sacred
car bearing the standard of Milan--but Matteo was a Florentine.
"Patricio caro," said the artist turning to his young pupil, "to-morrow
we shall have to part. I have told the Prince that you are quite capable
of finishing his banquet-hall, and that I have other business. So I
have, but not what he may think. I had word to-day that Barbarossa has
crossed the Alps. This time it will be a fight to the end.
"You know, for we have talked often of it, that the League of the
Lombard cities is the great hope of the Communes in Italy. Moreover,
it is your fight as well as ours. If the Empire conquers it will stamp
those Communes flat, and take good care that the cities make no headway
toward further resistance. The next step--for Frederick has said that he
is another Charlemagne--will be the conquest of France, and then he will
try to hurl the whole force of his Empire against Henry Plantagenet, his
only great rival. Myself, I doubt if he can do that. When men do not
want to fight they seldom win battles.
"Now there are three hundred young men of the leading houses of Lombardy
who have sworn to guard the Carocchio with their lives. The Archbishop
and his priests will stand upon the car in the battle and administer the
sacrament to the dying. If the Emperor takes it this time it will be
after the death of every man of the 'juramento.' I am a Florentine, that
is true, but I shall be a foot-soldier in that fight. If we live, we
will have our cities free. If we die--it is for our own cities as well
as theirs.
"This is what I want you to do, little brother. Ah, yes, to die is not
always the most difficult thing! These are the names and many of the
faces of the 'juramento.' Keep them, and to-morrow, when I am gone, copy
this sketch of the Carocchio going into the battle. Then, if I never
come back, there will still be some one to paint the picture. When you
find a prince, or some wealthy merchant, who will let you paint the
Carocchio on his wall, do it and keep alive the glory of Milan. You will
find some Milanese who will welcome you, however the game goes. And
the picture will be so good--your picture and mine--that men will see
and remember it whether they know the story or not. If they copy it,
although the faces may not be like, they will yet carry the meaning--the
standard of the free city above the conflict. Your promise, Patricio
mio--and then--addio!"
Padraig promised. The next day, when he came back to the little room at
the end of the narrow stair, there was only the picture on the white
sunlit wall.