Old Men in Love

11: A FLORENTINE NUNNERY

In a convent cell lent to him for a studio Filippo painted a young nun, Lucrezia Buti, lent to him as a model for his Virgin Mary in Glory. As usual he had begun the session by sinning with her carnally because, he said, that let him paint without the distraction of carnal lust. He had then worked for nearly half an hour in silence before she murmured between rigid lips, “Filippo, if I have a child?”

“Have you already missed a period?” he said, frowning and mixing a colour.

“No.”

“If God wills you a child,” he said, applying his brush carefully to the panel, “six or seven months will elapse before your appearance announces the advent. Plenty of time.”

“But Filippo — ” she cried.

“Don’t move! Imagine that I am the Archangel of the Annunciation. Imagine the little baby God is perhaps making in you. It is a wonderful thought, fearful also! What will people think? You are a virgin, and unmarried, yet the child will be God’s as well as yours, so He is bound to save you from harm. You know how God saved the Holy Virgin from scandal — He got old Joseph to marry her before she bore His Son. Wedding a jobbing carpenter must have been the first of her sorrows. You need not stoop so low.”

Between rigid lips she murmured, “I am afraid.”

He said cheerily, “Don’t be. You have me.”

“Not often.”

He stroked colour into the Madonna’s robe then said firmly, “When I have finished this you must leave here. I will help you escape on a holy day, a sacred festival when the Mother Superior is looking elsewhere. Come and live with me.”

“As your wife?”

“Of course not. I am a priest. STAY SERENE!” he shouted, “You are to be my Virgin in Glory, not my repentant Magdalene.”

“My convent will be dishonoured,” she said mournfully. “My family will be dishonoured.”

“Your noble brothers are not as rich and powerful as my friend Cosimo Medici. They made you and your sister Spinetta nuns because they could not afford dowries that would fetch you noble husbands. You will be happier when not quite married to me, a butcher’s son, yes, but also a great artisan and priest. There is room in my workshop for you and Spinetta also, if she too wishes to escape. A couple of women will be useful. Brother Diamante does his best but is not a good housewife.”

“This makes me weep, Filippo,” she said and wept, uncertain whether from sorrow or joy.

“Weep joyfully,” he urged, “Despair is the one sin God cannot forgive because it prevents repentance. He easily forgives other ones, even murder, which is a nasty big sin. Making babies is hardly a sin at all. In the beginning God commanded all his creatures to be fruitful and multiply. Stay serene Lucrezia!” he pled, but her weeping became sobs until he yelled, “Stay serene or I cannot paint you!”

With a great effort she mastered the sobs. For a while there was silence but for the soft strokes of his brush, then he said casually, “You will often be painted when we live together. There will always be a market for Virgins with your face and eyes.”

Lucrezia’s convent was a small one with only four other nuns. The house was of a kind later denounced by the republican friar Savonarola because of a grill in the door behind which young nuns sometimes stood flirting with young men in the street outside. On a day of Holy festival when the Mother Superior led out her Brides of Christ to see the Girdle of Our Lady displayed it was easy for Lucrezia and Spinetta to escape in the crowd.