Lynn Cullen - The Creation of Eve

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Copyright (c) 2010 by Lynn Cullen

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cullen, Lynn.
The creation of Eve / Lynn Cullen.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-18608-4

1. Anguissola, Sofonisba, ca. 1532/33-1625--Fiction. 2. Women painters--
Italy--Fiction. 3. Elisabeth de Valois, Queen, consort of Philip II, King of Spain,
1544 -1568--Fiction. 4. Philip II, King of Spain, 1527-1598--Fiction.
5. Spain--History--Philip II, 1556-1598--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.U2955C
813'.54--dc22

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are Used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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For Bill Doughty's daughters, Margaret, Jeanne, Carolyn, and Arlene

The First Notebook

In which I shall gather my impressions and observations as a painter, as well as any letters or sundry items of information that may prove useful to me and my work, as have done the great maestros Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Durer, and Michelangelo Buonarroti, also known as Il Divino.

ITEM: "Women are lustful, imperfect creatures. Nature seeks perfection in all her creatures, and would, if she could, produce nothing but men." --COUNT BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE, The Book of the Courtier
ITEM: In painting, three things must be considered--the position of the viewer, the position of the object viewed, and the position of the light that illuminates the object.
ITEM: Rosemary, when its scent is inhaled, concentrates the mind.

7 MAY 1559

Macel de' Corvi, Rome

In the time it takes to pluck a hen, I have ruined myself. I have ruined my sisters, my little brother. Papa--I have ruined Papa. My gentle, good papa, who had encouraged me to paint, when everyone in Cremona laughed. A girl taking up a man's craft, and such a dirty one at that! Who is going to marry her now? Not that Amilcare could have scraped together a decent dowry--God knows he has already got his problems, if you know what I mean.

Oh, I had heard people whisper. I heard them in Papa's bookshop, when they thought the groan of the printing press covered their voices. I heard them over the splashing of the fountain in the piazza outside our house, when they were strolling in the evening air, or as I waited on the church steps for Mamma to finish her prayers, always longer than everyone else 's. Papa must have heard them, too, but that never stopped him from encouraging my painting. He had begun the day I'd come pattering home from Mass in my little girl's slippers, and inspired by the picture of the Madonna and Child newly hung in the Lady Chapel, borrowed his quill and paper to draw my own Nativity scene. Francesca, nursing the most recent of Mamma's babies, had been my captive model.

Hunched over the suckling infant, Francesca had glared at me Under brows as thick and mobile as a man's thumbs. "You go!" she scolded in her peasant's Italian. "What you want with picture of this?"

By the time baby Minerva drained a breast, I had finished my little sketch. I ran with the results to Papa, who put aside the book he had been reading in the courtyard and held the drawing Up to the afternoon sunlight. "It's Minerva and Francesca, isn't it? You even caught Francesca's frown. Eccellente, Sofonisba!"

My chest had swelled with pride. I was all of seven. Now I, the wondrous painting virgin from Cremona, am seven-and-twenty--and ill with fear. For my good papa, I beg the saints and martyrs to not let maestro Michelangelo talk.

Perhaps the Maestro did not see so much. It had been dark in his studio. The Angelus bell marking dusk had been ringing from the church of Santa Maria di Loreto across the piazza when Tiberio and I had run Up the stairs. How could I have been so foolish as to go Up to the studio alone with Tiberio? I must have been drunk, though I had had only a cup of watered wine at cena . But I was drunk--on being maestro Michelangelo's chosen one. On Tiberio's choosing me, too. On the feel of Tiberio's thick fingers, rough from sculpting, around mine. I had to be drunk to do what I did.

But Tiberio said he loved me then, and he meant it, I know. His kiss did not lie. Oh, what kind of wicked she-cat am I? Even now, as black tendrils of shame seep through my heart like ink in water, I dream of his lips. I never knew a man's lips could be so soft in the flesh yet so thrillingly hard when pressed against one's own. Was it the pressure of his lips, or just the musk of his skin, that drove me to animal madness? I have never imagined such pleasure. Since the age of fourteen, my thoughts have been consumed by studying with different maestros, pleasing patrons, and painting, painting, always painting. Now thoughts of his body dance through my dazzled brain, beckoning to me like players in a lascivious masque.