I

remember that hot, dusty afternoon in Florence. I ordered every­body out of my studio. I got up from my workbench and de­manded that they leave: the tattlers, the oafs, the bores, the faithful. I packed them off. Yelled at them. Stormed. I had work to do, work that would keep me until dawn. I had to have serenity, no ribaldry, no disgrun­tled si­lence, no questions, no interruptions of any sort.

I slammed the doors, bolted them.

A mouse scuttled across the room.

Until I resolved the perfect angles, sheet after sheet went into the making of that pelvic drawing.

Queer how memory is: I can see that messy workshop, easels, clay figures on stands, rags, canvases, frames, chisels, pigments, brushes... I can see the mouse watching me from beneath a basket. Again I sense that long afternoon, that long night... I had dried bread, cheese, and port. I remember the church bells. At dawn I slid my work into a special portfolio, then concealed it. I was often hid­ing things in those days, hiding sketches, hiding determination, hiding frustra­tions, goals.

Memory...it gives you what you want and supplies absurdities as well, like the dream that I had in Florence, recurrent: I was lying on my cot... I was dead... I was carried to a morgue and dumped there, among cadavers...blood and mould satu­rated my drawings and my writings...my canvases were being eaten by termites... how well I remember that dream.

I remember a fat Milanese who used to haunt me while I was decorating the walls and ceiling of the Sala delle Asse: he was a pompous member of the Sforza household, a great nose-picker, who had done nothing at all through his long life. While I worked, he sat, hunched in a princely brocade chair, in elegant clothes, sometimes asleep in spite of my assistants, ladders, and scaffolding.

That Sala delle Asse work was boring. Like many a commission it was com­pulsory. To arrange masses of foliage on walls and ceiling seemed absurd. Designs were refused, at the outset. The employment of immense tree trunks satisfied. As I painted, I mingled knotted cords with the foliage, intermingled branches, established a rhythm. I kept my greens from becoming monotonous. I achieved a kind of helmeted bark on the tree trunks. Before I finished, the Sala’s canopy, the forest umbrella, became more meaningful.

My fat friend slept on and on.