MODEL OF BEATRICE PORTINARI.
Now we will return to our story. At the time I was modelling the Cain, and as it were for the purpose of repose, I made a little figure of Beatrice Portinari, which I afterwards repeated in marble, I know not how many times. For this statue I had used as a model a tolerably pretty young girl who was named likewise Portinari. I tell this little story for the instruction of young artists. There will even be two of these stories, for I omitted one in speaking of the Cariatidi of the Rossini Theatre; and these little matters show how one should treat the model. One morning, when I had the Portinari for a model, the curate Cecchi of the Santissima Annunziata knocked at my door and told me that he wished to come in to have a few words with me. I replied that for the moment I could not attend to him, as I had a model, but that if he would have the goodness to come back a little later, we should then be alone, and he could speak to me at his ease. After dinner he returned, and said, "Have you a certain Portinari for a model?"
"Yes," I said.
"Then you must know that this girl is engaged to my nephew; and as I have learned that she comes to you as a model, and as I absolutely will not allow my nephew to marry a model, I have already so told the girl, and she denies that she comes to you. Now I beg that you will do me the favour to let me come in when she is here. I will then surprise her, and blow into the air this marriage arranged with my nephew."
A MODEL AND HER LOVER.
"Listen," I said. "This sort of thing I do not like. I cannot lend myself to do an injury of this kind to this poor girl, who comes here to be my model. She has confided to me that she is in want of money, having larger demands than her daily earnings will supply. She has said nothing about her being engaged, in which case I would not have employed her unless her mother or other near relation came with her. But, since it seems to me reasonable that you should not wish your future relation to go out as a model, I will promise you not to so employ her any more; and the first time she comes, I will tell her that I do not want her again, and I will warn her not to go to others. Are you content?"
He seemed to be tolerably well satisfied, and I did as I had promised.
Here is the other little story of the model of the Cariatidi. Every morning there came to me as a model a girl who lived in the Prato, and was a weaver. The first morning, she came to the studio with a subbio.[5] I took no notice of it; but the second and the third, as well as the fourth time, she had always under her arm this clumsy and heavy thing, so I asked her—
"Why do you carry about that subbio?"
She answered: "I have a lover. If I meet him in the street, I tell him that I am going to my employers."