Class #3 – What If? Story

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For this assignment, we were asked to find an article in a newspaper or magazine or a headline that caught our interest and ask ourselves “What If?” and then create a story around that.  I found an article that discussed the real identity of a famous figure in history … I can only hope you can identify who that is from the story I wrote: 

The Smile 

Lisa Gherardini, beloved wife of Francesco del Giocondo, devoted mother of Piero and little Andrea sits upright in the stiff wooden chair, her left arm resting on the edge, her right arm covering the left, fingers gently splayed.  She faces the Artist, body slightly off centre to the right, head erect.  Her dark dangling hair, gently curling at the long base, rests on her shoulders.  Leo says he is almost finished the work.  Only the mouth is left to do.  Lisa’s thoughts turn to the journey of the last few years and her anticipation nearly releases a grin that begs to escape from her lips.  “Foolish, woman” she muses to herself, “you should know better by now”!  She almost laughs at the thought of the smile she conceals.  It had been so much different all those three years ago. 

… 

It was the year of our lord 1503 when they had first begun.  She had been introduced weeks earlier to Leo’s father, Ser Piero da Vinci, by her husband Francesco.  The two had known each other for many years, Francesco being a socially prominent merchant in the silk trade and a frequent participant in Italian society. As a gift to her and her husband on the birth of their second son, Andrea, Ser Piero had commissioned the portrait to sit in their new home.  The men had been sitting in the dining room when she had been called in.  A woman by then of twenty-four years, a mother for four, she had been married since sixteen and had been, by all views, a ‘good’ proper wife.  She managed the household during the many frequent business trips of her husband.  She dressed appropriately, suiting a mother and a wife.  She performed all her duties without complaint, her two healthy sons were evidence of that.  Presenting herself there in front of her husband and his dear friend, her sight kneeling on the floor, Ser Piero had looked her up and down as if assessing the quality of a fabric or a piece of furniture.  “Yes, this will work” he had declared, “I shall make the appropriate arrangements for next week”!  And with that announcement, she was dismissed. 

She had shown up as requested at Leo’s studio ten days later.  Her dress, an unadorned black robe draping gently off her shoulders, masked any figure underneath.  The body concealed underneath showed little affects of the two sons she had brought into the world, but the robes hid all that, the top revealing but a shadow of the bosom underneath.  He wasn’t Leo in that first awkward meeting, of course, he was just, politely, Signore da Vinci.  Without any exchange of social pleasantries, he had requested she sit in the chair directly in front of the blank canvass.  They spent hours it seemed, positioning her properly, moving her hands this way and that, like you might arrange flowers in a vase or a painting on a wall.  That first sitting she had frustrated him, as she glanced compliantly downward and he was forced to raise her chin time and time again.  But she could do nothing less.   He was already a well regarded artist at that time and Lisa couldn’t help but be cowed by his stature.  He, by contrast, was the gusting wind buffeting against a door.  Even his gentle, subtle adjustments of her positioning seemed to be filled with grand design.  Every movement calculated, like he searched frantically for perfection, a maestro conducting the various instruments of a symphony.  This intensity beneath his surface frightened her, causing her to wither even more.  She had not felt such fire around her before, such passion.  Hers was not a life of feeling the beauty of the world. Hers was a life of quiet duty, proper behavior, social constraint and he, this man in front of her, was everything she was not … loud to her quiet, indecent to her proper, swaggering to her constrained.  

Those first few sittings were daunting, as he flung canvas after canvas across the room, none meeting his expectations, the vision that he struggled to achieve.  It was a vision that, at first, she could scarcely see, like a figure walking in a valley far below, concealed by darkness and fog.  Finally he begrudgingly seemed content by the beginning of one frame, and they had begun in earnest.  Hour after hour she had sat composed, her back aching, but making no comment or complaint.  He, at times, would remain motionless, staring at the canvass, or worse staring directly at her, seemingly, through her.  They were the worst times in those early days.  For she felt he could not only see through her, but into her, to the little girl, to all those secret places and dreams long ago abandoned. 

Over time, watching him engaged by the canvas, surrounded by bottles and brushes and paints and rags, become her only bright moments.  The energy coming from behind the canvass was at times blinding, so unlike her own neutral beige life.   She became slowly accustomed to the sittings and the feelings that arose within her.  While she still seemed to hold them at a distance, like a guilty pleasure, his passion scared her less and less and the weeks moved on, the months passed.  Her shoulders began to loosen just slightly, her neck not quite so unpermissive, her breasts that she had held back, uplifted ever so slightly, exhibiting a quiet confidence, as if her lungs were filled with more air than usual. 

He, in her eyes, seemed to be responding to this change within her.   With each day, her security grew and he appeared to sense this.  His grumbling became less frequent, his frustrations, less evident.  He seemed to relax, himself, no longer struggling with the brushes and paints and canvass, but becoming part of them, like they were an extension of his own hands and arms and eyes.  Like two brothers who, at first, bickered and then came to realize the bonds they shared as family and moved forward, stronger together than separate. 

One special day he had approached her for the first time and offered water.  Bringing the chalice up to her lips created the first physical connection between the subject and the Artist and the pink flush arising in her face seemed to outweigh the cool liquid poured down her throat.  “Grazie”, she thanked him politely.  “Prego, Signora del Giocondo” he replied, his manner softening.  No longer just a landscape or a sculpture or an anatomical drawing, he appeared to see the woman emerging in front of him.  Perhaps he sensed the growth in her, inching up each day like a tulip bulb after the spring thaw, edged on by the rays of the sun.   

Day after day, month after month, she returned to the studio.  Each time the glow she felt seemed to saturate her, strengthen her, like the Spring blossoming a bud, then the small tip of a petal, then the stem.  After he concealed the canvass each night, she would return home, and the feeling would be dimmed nearly to black, like someone had extinguished the candles in the room, like the turn of the day to night.  But even then, it couldn’t be totally smothered, as if each time, however small, the light became stronger and no matter how much grey existed outside the studio, it could no longer totally diminish it.  The guilt she had initially felt was replaced a little bit at a time with a quiet strength, as if she had placed a treasure in an air tight container and hidden it away, only to be unlocked in His presence.  Outside, in the real world, it was cloaked, like her body underneath the robes.  

… 

“Lisa”? She dimly heard him call her name, his voice pulling her away from the memories.  “Si, Leo”?, she said as she returned to the present, only her eyes moving to his, her body trained to remain still.  “Finiti. We’re finished”, he said.  He stepped back from the canvas.  Her body took this as a sign and she slowly relaxed and stepped away from the chair.  The anticipation as she walked around the edge of the studio to see the picture for the first time made her heart pound, her skin perspire, her legs languid.   The closer she came to the painting, the faster her heart beat, her throat constricted.  At the moment she first glimpsed her true reflection in the canvas, the floodgates burst open and she felt filled with warm, bright, coloured light. 

There she was, finally.  On the surface, the subdued black robe, the dark flattened hair against her scalp, the gloomy, nondescript background.  Her hands chastely settled on the chair edge, her back straight.  It was the perfect image of the proper Italian wife.  But here and there, she could see what made him such a Master.  The eyes, that when you moved, seemed to follow you with the vaguest hint of sparkle.  The light, hitting the top of her bosom, subtly exposed her rising breasts. And finally, the shadows on the edges of her lips, the mouth, expressing an almost conspiratorial grin, almost … a smile.

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