Woman Triumphant (La Maja Desnuda)

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

"Good-by, my boy. I shall never see you again."

And in truth it was the last time that Mariano saw that pale face with its great expressionless eyes, now almost wiped out of his memory like a whitish spot in which, in spite of all his efforts, he could not succeed in restoring the outline of the features.

In the city his life was radically different. Then for the first time he understood what it was his hands were striving for as they moved the charcoal over the whitewashed walls. Art was revealed to his eyes in those silent afternoons, passed in the convent where the provincial museum was situated, while his master, Don Rafael, argued with other gentlemen in the professor's hall, or signed papers in the secretary's office.

Mariano lived at his protector's house, at once his servant and his pupil. He carried letters to the dean and the other canons, who were friends of his master and who accompanied him on his walks or spent social evenings in his studio. More than once he visited the locutories of nunneries, to deliver through the heavy gratings presents from Don Rafael to certain black and white shadows, which attracted by this sturdy young country boy, and aware that he meant to be a painter, overwhelmed him with the eager questions born of their seclusion. Before he went away they would hand him, through the revolving window, cakes and candied lemons or some other goody, and then, with a word of advice, would say good-by in their thin, soft voices, which sifted through the iron of the gratings.

"Be a good boy, little Mariano. Study, pray. Be a good Christian, the Lord will protect you and perhaps you will get to be as great a painter as Don Rafael, who is one of the first in the world."

How the master laughed at the memory of the childish simplicity that made him see in his master the most marvelous painter on earth!... Mornings, when he attended the classes in the School of Fine Arts, he grew angry at his comrades, a disrespectful rabble, brought up in the streets, sons of mechanics, who, as soon as the professor turned his back, pelted each other with the crumbs of bread meant to wipe out their drawings, and cursed Don Rafael, calling him a "Christer" and a "Jesuit."

The afternoon Mariano passed in the studio, at his master's side. How excited he was the first time he placed a palette in his hand and allowed him to copy on an old canvas a child St. John which he had finished for a society!... While the boy with his forehead wrinkled in his eagerness, tried to imitate his master's work, he listened to the good advice that the master gave him without looking up from the canvas over which his angelic brush was running.

Painting must be religious; the first pictures in the world had been inspired by religion; outside of it, life offered nothing but base materialism, loathsome sins. Painting must be ideal, beautiful. It must always represent pretty subjects, reproduce things as they ought to be, not as they really are, and above all, look up to heaven, since there is true life, not on this earth, a valley of tears. Mariano must modify his instincts—that was his master's advice—must lose his fondness for drawing coarse subjects—people as he saw them, animals in all their material brutality, landscapes in the same form as his eyes gazed upon.

He must have idealism. Many painters were almost saints; only thus could they reflect celestial beauty in the faces of their madonnas. And poor Mariano strove to be ideal, to catch a little of that beatific serenity which surrounded his master.

Little by little he came to understand the methods which Don Rafael employed to create these masterpieces which called forth cries of admiration from his circle of canons and the rich ladies that gave him commissions for pictures. When he intended to begin one of his Purísimas, which were slowly invading the churches and convents of the province, he arose early and returned to his studio after mass and communion. In this way he felt an inner strength, a calm enthusiasm, and, if he felt depressed in the midst of the work, he once more had recourse to this inspiring medicine.