“I want a very delicate miniature device taken from certain fables of the poets, which you will know how to combine for me. It must be painted on a wooden case—I will show you the size—in the form of a triptych. The inside may be simple gilding: it is on the outside I want the device. It is a favourite subject with you Florentines—the triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne; but I want it treated in a new way. A story in Ovid will give you the necessary hints. The young Bacchus must be seated in a ship, his head bound with clusters of grapes, and a spear entwined with vine-leaves in his hand: dark-berried ivy must wind about the masts and sails, the oars must be thyrsi, and flowers must wreathe themselves about the poop; leopards and tigers must be crouching before him, and dolphins must be sporting round. But I want to have the fair-haired Ariadne with him, made immortal with her golden crown—that is not in Ovid’s story, but no matter, you will conceive it all—and above there must be young Loves, such as you know how to paint, shooting with roses at the points of their arrows—”
“Say no more!” said Piero. “I have Ovid in the vulgar tongue. Find me the passage. I love not to be choked with other men’s thoughts. You may come in.”
Piero led the way through the first room, where a basket of eggs was deposited on the open hearth, near a heap of broken egg-shells and a bank of ashes. In strange keeping with that sordid litter, there was a low bedstead of carved ebony, covered carelessly with a piece of rich oriental carpet, that looked as if it had served to cover the steps to a Madonna’s throne; and a carved cassone, or large chest, with painted devices on its sides and lid. There was hardly any other furniture in the large room, except casts, wooden steps, easels and rough boxes, all festooned with cobwebs.
The next room was still larger, but it was also much more crowded. Apparently Piero was keeping the Festa, for the double door underneath the window which admitted the painter’s light from above, was thrown open, and showed a garden, or rather thicket, in which fig-trees and vines grew in tangled trailing wildness among nettles and hemlocks, and a tall cypress lifted its dark head from a stifling mass of yellowish mulberry-leaves. It seemed as if that dank luxuriance had begun to penetrate even within the walls of the wide and lofty room; for in one corner, amidst a confused heap of carved marble fragments and rusty armour, tufts of long grass and dark feathery fennel had made their way, and a large stone vase, tilted on one side, seemed to be pouring out the ivy that streamed around. All about the walls hung pen and oil-sketches of fantastic sea-monsters; dances of satyrs and maenads; Saint Margaret’s resurrection out of the devouring dragon; Madonnas with the supernal light upon them; studies of plants and grotesque heads; and on irregular rough shelves a few books were scattered among great drooping bunches of corn, bullocks’ horns, pieces of dried honeycomb, stones with patches of rare-coloured lichen, skulls and bones, peacocks’ feathers, and large birds’ wings. Rising from amongst the dirty litter of the floor were lay figures: one in the frock of a Vallombrosan monk, strangely surmounted by a helmet with barred visor, another smothered with brocade and skins hastily tossed over it. Amongst this heterogeneous still life, several speckled and white pigeons were perched or strutting, too tame to fly at the entrance of men; three corpulent toads were crawling in an intimate friendly way near the door-stone; and a white rabbit, apparently the model for that which was frightening Cupid in the picture of Mars and Venus placed on the central easel, was twitching its nose with much content on a box full of bran.
“And now, Messer Greco,” said Piero, making a sign to Tito that he might sit down on a low stool near the door, and then standing over him with folded arms, “don’t be trying to see everything at once, like Messer Domeneddio, but let me know how large you would have this same triptych.”
Tito indicated the required dimensions, and Piero marked them on a piece of paper.
“And now for the book,” said Piero, reaching down a manuscript volume.
“There’s nothing about the Ariadne there,” said Tito, giving him the passage; “but you will remember I want the crowned Ariadne by the side of the young Bacchus: she must have golden hair.”
“Ha!” said Piero, abruptly, pursing up his lips again. “And you want them to be likenesses, eh?” he added, looking down into Tito’s face.
Tito laughed and blushed. “I know you are great at portraits, Messer Piero; but I could not ask Ariadne to sit for you, because the painting is a secret.”