‘It is not without the impulse of a lofty spirit that some are moved to enter this profession, attractive to them through natural enthusiasm. Their intellect will take delight in drawing, provided their nature attracts them to it of themselves, without any master’s guidance, out of loftiness of spirit. And then, through this delight, they come to want to find a master; and they bind themselves to him with respect for authority, undergoing an apprenticeship in order to achieve perfection in all this. There are those who pursue it, because of poverty and domestic need, for profit and enthusiasm for the profession too; but above all these are to be extolled the ones who enter the profession through a sense of enthusiasm and exaltation.’
Cennino Cennini,
The Craftsman’s Handbook, c. 1400
The cold afternoon is steeped in sunshine. A boat carves a line up the coast of the Adriatic. There is a small party on it that has met in Rome, and then travelled up to Assisi before crossing to Ancona and taking the boat to Venice. A young woman sits near the prow of the boat, staring out at the water with a faraway look in her eyes. Around her the voices of the travelling party come in and out of focus.
‘There is a part of me that fears seeing Venice,’ one of the other women declares. She is in her late twenties, but her hair has turned grey early. Swept back into a stylish chignon, it is offset by a youthful, slightly over-pink complexion.
‘Napoleon’s victory there has brought most grievous harm,’ concurs her husband, who is some ten years older. ‘His soldiers have plundered and looted everything they can.’
‘My friend has written to me that they took the four bronze horses from the front of St Mark’s,’ the woman interrupts, keen to be perceived as the expert on this matter. ‘It was as if they wanted to tear out the very spirit of the Republic.’
The young woman has been trying to stay her tongue for a while now. ‘But the Venetians themselves stole the horses from Constantinople in the thirteenth century,’ she says, turning back to her travelling companions with an easy laugh. ‘The horses’ heads were severed so they could bring them more easily from Constantinople to Venice.’ Her pale blue eyes flash.
The slightly older woman, Mrs Allenby, surveys her. ‘My dear Emily – you never cease to surprise me with your distinctive observations. We have enjoyed your company greatly on this tour – how sad it is for all of us that your husband cannot also join us.’
A look of distress flickers across Emily’s face. ‘I will write to him tonight. Hopefully he will be in a position to join me soon,’ she replies softly, and looks away again. Around them the water turns molten gold in the sunset.
The young woman has been a source of fascination to the other members of the party – which consists of herself and two married couples – ever since their first encounter in Rome. She talks as eloquently as any man about art, but in company reveals very little about her own personal affairs. Mrs Allenby has made assiduous efforts to befriend her. The discovery of a hidden tragedy has been a triumph. ‘Her husband was taken ill in Paris,’ she has told her husband. The latter nods through his habitual fog of disinterest. ‘He may not live another year,’ she continues. ‘Yet he refused to let her stay in Paris to look after him, and begged her to go on to Rome. He had a business matter that he trusted only her to address.’
Emily, for that is now Ann Jemima’s name, has proved most agreeable company for a couple whose conversational resources were fully spent within minutes of leaving Dover. The other couple on the boat are only slightly better matched. The wife, Caroline, a handsome woman with black hair and lips painted a vivid red, has an astringent wit which is often directed at her husband, Mr Dornoch. A mature clergyman and amateur scientist with extraordinary empathy for humankind’s fallibility, he has so far proved the most interesting companion of the journey.
Despite the disparities in their characters, the five have agreed to embark together on a difficult expedition. It is but six months since Venice fell to Napoleon, and just one since he signed it over to Austria. Emily has met the Allenbys by chance at the Roman Forum, as they all stared at the faded grandeur of the Arch of Septimius Severus. Around them the sprawl of relics from an ancient empire seemed somehow more alive through the reports they were receiving of Bonaparte’s desire to reinvent himself as a latterday Caesar. Over dinner two nights later, Mrs Allenby proposed they should take the trip to Venice to see what had happened in the wake of his invasion there.
‘My friend Isabella Albrizzi has written very movingly of how difficult it has been since the French invaded,’ she said. ‘The soldiers have proved both drunken and brutish.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Many women have been violated. Napoleon denies such transgressions strongly.’
‘His intentions were brutal from the start,’ said Mr Dornoch. ‘He wanted not just victory but revenge. He told the Venetians, “You have murdered my children – the winged lion of St Mark must lick the dust.”’
‘Then it sounds as if we should not go,’ Mr Allenby said.
‘I believe the barbarity is starting to recede since the Austrians took over,’ Mrs Allenby replied. ‘Now that France has attempted to invade Britain, I know many Venetians would feel a certain fellowship with us. I think we should take up her invitation.’ Her eye lit on Emily. ‘She has asked my husband and myself to spend a week with her there. I am sure, if I sent word, that you would be most welcome too.’
Emily has now absorbed her new identity so fully that she would not even look round in the street should someone call out Ann Jemima. The invitation has proved the culmination to a trip that has been both less terrifying than she feared and more profitable than she had dared hope. The trip across the Channel did not initially bode well. Though it was a short crossing, the waters were choppy and the summer rain relentless. Few people paid heed to the girl scratching methodically in her notebook with a quill, mapping out the boundaries of her new life.
Since the grief she had brought to London had been compounded by the grief for those she left behind there, she considered that the title of recent widow might suit her. But a little more thought led her to decide that the device of a sick husband would be far better. It would create a haze of discomfort which would mean people would not ask her too much about her past. It would also deter proposals from men who might delude themselves that they could provide her with a new future on their own terms. In short, she concluded, an imaginary husband will allow me both freedom and protection. She determined she would write letters telling two people of her changed identity. One was to Josiah Darton, who wrote back swiftly promising her introductions under this new identity to individuals he knew in Paris and Lausanne. The other was to Thomas Provis, from whom she received no reply.
From Lausanne she continued across the Alps through the St Bernard Pass. The roads felt treacherous – at one point a mule died of exhaustion. As she gazed out over the rocky landscape plunging towards the valley below Emily felt a strong sense of the perilous conditions that now circumscribed her existence. Yet gradually she was realising that she had the resources to survive on the Continent, just as she had in London. The shades of Darton’s other lives were proving more useful than she entirely wanted to admit. The people whom she had met in Paris had given her introductions for Turin, and Florence – and the new friends in Florence in turn sent letters to acquaintances in Rome who declared they would be very willing to have Emily to stay. In Rome she had finally started painting again, creating a small Alpine scene in oils for her delighted hostess.
On the day that she finally takes the boat up the Adriatic with the Inghams, Emily is somewhat distracted. After six letters to Thomas Provis without a reply, she has despaired of ever hearing from him again. Yet this morning a letter has finally arrived from London. She has been filled with contradictory emotions on seeing the familiar spiky handwriting. Carefully she has broken the seal, which she recognises as one from his collection of unusual designs. The red wax bears an imprint of Laocoön wrestling with snakes, and she smiles at the irony.
‘My dearest Ann Jemima,’ the letter begins.
‘Forgive me for what may seem an Inappropriate style of address by now. Hard-forg’d habit makes any other form of Approach seem wrong to me. I trust that you are in good health. It seems that Europe is proving every bit as Extraordinary as you anticipated, even under the constant threat of Napoleonic invasion. From your letters it seems you have turned the Vexatious circumstances of your departure into a Triumphant beginning for a journey that you have dreamt of for some while.
‘I ask myself if there are moments in your life when you might Reflect on what the news is from London. It may surprise you that it barely seems to have stopped talking about you and the Venetian Secret ever since you left. I flatter myself that you may be a little Curious to know how this has affected my own life. Perhaps it will come as some relief to you that I have not suffered terribly – certainly not as terribly as Benjamin West. I did Precis’ly as you and Darton instructed. I waited for West to come and see me – and then I told him that you had Blackmail’d me into taking part in the scheme and took all the money. The old fool never learns. He ingested the story whole, and told me he felt Sorry for me. I suffer’d a while from bad health, but have now recovered. If he sees me at the Palace now, he is so Embarrass’d, he does all he can to avoid conversation with me, which suits us both perfectly.
‘Each time that it seems London has wearied of the Venetian Secret, something fresh occurs to Remind people of it. If you’ll forgive me, it is not Unlike watching an animal in its death throes. In June, a great enemy of Benjamin West, the Irishman James Barry, wrote an Open letter to the Society of Dilettanti, decrying the Academy because of the scandal. There were more calls for Benjamin West’s resignation, but here we are in late October, and still he remains in his position. That seemed to be the Sum of it, but just this week, the alcoholic Gillray has produced a cartoon that goes into some detail about the way he thinks we deceived the Royal Academy.*
‘Yes, my dear, you have even inspired a work of Art. I think in some strange sense it would please you that it is a work of art in which you yourself appear as the main Artist, though the Depiction is obviously not without its ironies. As you know, Gillray has caricatured everyone from Pitt to Napoleon – so you should take some pride that you have seized his attention.’
Provis has enclosed a copy of the cartoon. Now she is on the boat she cannot resist taking it out of her bag once more. She looks at it surreptitiously, feeling as if she is taking some great risk in doing so. The detail is both absurd and extraordinary. It both makes her laugh and seizes her with horror.
Her own image is etched on top of the rainbow. She wonders who has described her to Gillray. His drawing does not replicate her perfectly, yet somehow in the poise and silhouette of her figure he has caught something essential about who she is. Her arm is raised triumphantly as she draws Titian’s head on the canvas. Her slender frame perches on precarious red heels. On the right hand side of her, the Neoclassical building that Gillray has drawn to represent the Royal Academy is in the midst of apocalypse. A large crack rends the façade, while shooting stars rain down from the sky as if about to launch their own assault on the building.
The wretched artists at the centre of the scandal sit at the front of a large crowd as if on trial at the Day of Judgement. For a moment she feels the enormity of what she has left behind, and shivers a little. In a corner, West, with his palette and brushes, is sneaking away to evade detection. A little behind him, the ghost of Sir Joshua Reynolds is rising up out of the ground in a shroud, his hand raised like an ancient prophet issuing dire warnings. As ever in Gillray’s work there are Rabelaisian elements – to the left a grinning monkey, crouched next to a headless statue of Apollo, urinates on a pile of Academy artists’ portfolios. Above them cherubs fart their condescension.
Her hand shakes – she feels hot and cold in the same instance.
‘A letter from your husband?’ enquires Mrs Allenby softly.
Emily looks at her startled. Swiftly she folds the document and puts it in her bag.
‘That is right,’ she declares. ‘There is good news – it seems there is a slight improvement in his health.’
‘Your love for him is very clear my dear,’ Mrs Allenby continued. ‘I could see it on your face when you were reading.’ She darts a glance towards her husband.
‘He is in good spirits. He sounds quite like the man he was when I first met him.’ To Emily’s surprise, tears start to slide down her cheek.
Mr Dornoch, the clergyman, clearly considers Mrs Allenby’s curiosity to be intrusive.
‘What will be the first thing you go to see when we arrive in Venice?’ he asks, skilfully diverting the conversation. ‘The boatman has just announced we will land shortly. I have wanted all my life to go to Santa Croce to see the tomb of Galileo – I trust that Napoleon’s soldiers have not ransacked that.’
A strand of red hair has fought loose of Mrs Allenby’s chignon. Distractedly she pushes it back into place. ‘I wish to go and see Canaletto’s View of the Grand Canal from the Campo San Vio,’ she replies. ‘It was seeing a print of it that made me wish to see Venice – despite the dangers.’
‘What is your choice, Emily?’
Emily wipes the tears away with a handkerchief.
‘I think,’ she pauses for a moment, ‘I will go and see Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin in Santa Maria dei Frari.’ She smiles. ‘He created it in the face of huge scepticism. I have a love of those who defy sceptics.’
She takes a deep breath, and looks out of the boat again. As she glances down she sees a sea bream dash below the boat, and briefly envies its solitary progress through the cool waters. She raises her head again, and realises they are about to arrive in St Mark’s Basin.
‘We are there!’ she exclaims. ‘We are there.’
In front of them the Campanile of St Mark soars up on one side, while on the other side the dome of the cathedral is just visible. The evening sky is seared with vermilions, angry golds, and muted pinks. Emily feels that she has never experienced such colour in one landscape before, never seen buildings that looked so much as if they have been imprinted on their surroundings by a painter’s brush. The calls of men lap across the water from other boats as they come into shore. She and her companions look at the buildings imprinted against the raging sky, at the mortals walking before them in the square.
The bells from St Mark’s strike four o’clock. The water throws back the shimmer of their sound. Now she realises that while she has often imagined how Venice looks, she has never thought of the sound of it, the smell of it. The slap of the water against the boats, the faintly diffracted sound of the crowd, the coldness of the air she is inhaling, the scent of chestnuts roasting next to the quay.
Mr Dornoch holds his hand out to her to help her off the boat. ‘I have been told many times that even those who haven’t been to Venice feel they have seen it before when they arrive,’ he says.
‘People always say Venice seems a little unreal,’ she replies. ‘But I have never seen anything so real in my life.’
She gets off the boat. As the others preoccupy themselves with their luggage, she takes a quick look around her. She frowns for a moment and briefly puts her hand on her forehead. The swoop of her gaze becomes wider, she looks beyond the people with whom she has arrived – first out to the lagoon, and then to the far corner of the square.
Suddenly, without saying a word, she picks up her small bag and starts to walk away rapidly.
At first the group does not notice. When they do, the two older women start shouting and waving at her to come back, but she will not heed them. Mr Dornoch makes as if to walk after her, but then he stops himself, recognising the sense of purpose in what she is doing. For a brief while her silhouette remains distinct – there is a point when she turns as if to call something out to them, but then she checks herself and turns away again.
They look towards her, not knowing what to do or say. As they continue to watch, she starts to become eclipsed by the movement of other people. A flock of pigeons cuts dark shapes against the air, a lone trumpeter begins to play to the crowd. Distracted, they realise they can see her no more – she has become just a detail in the ebb and sway of the Venice evening.