Stone Virgin by Barry Unsworth Read Free Book Online Page B

being. It would be better to simply be sensible instead, and not make so many judgements of any kind.’
    ‘Just because it’s risky,’ Raikes said excitedly, ‘we should steer clear of it. Is that what you’re saying?’
    ‘Not exactly.’ Steadman seemed about to go on with the argument but checked himself, perhaps misliking Raikes’s combative manner, and after a moment said in different tones, ‘Anyway it’s not true of all of us. Take Sir Hugo Templar, for example. He’ll rattle off value judgements for you nineteen to the dozen. Have you met him?’
    ‘Not really. He has been to give lectures at the museum.’
    ‘Pleasure in store,’ Steadman said.
    Sir Hugo Templar was the chairman of Rescue Venice, the organization funding the British restoration project. He was also an authority on European Baroque. He was coming from London to preside over a working conference due shortly, combined progress report and pooling of information.
    ‘I’ll have to be there, I suppose.’ Steadman looked gloomily into his glass. ‘I’m not going back till two days later. Just my bleeding luck.’
    ‘What did you mean when you said she wasn’t typical?’
    ‘Your Madonna? Not typical of the Venetian sculpture of the time, I meant. That was still fairly primitive, you know.’
    ‘Well, of course, I know that. But he could have trained somewhere else, couldn’t he?’
    ‘I don’t think there was a native Venetian capable of it, at the time. My guess is that he came from the north, Lombardy perhaps. There are Tuscan influences too. It’s not a flamboyant style, it’s a more naturalistic type of Gothic. If you look at the original shape of the block of stone, which you can see from the base, you’ll notice that it had no real effect on the composition of the figure. The knees and feet are more or less aligned with the block but the upper torso cuts across one corner. This is quite untypical of Venetian Gothic. I noticed it at once.’
    Launched on his subject, Steadman had forgotten that he was supposed to be a tough guy. His voice had taken on warmth, his tone had quickened, he was looking quite eagerly at Raikes. ‘Her arms, too,’ he said. ‘The right hand is conventional enough, pressed to her breast to show how unworthy she is. And of course the extended left hand is common in Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, but hers is held very low, and across the body. It gives a curiously sexual significance to the pose. That might be accidental, of course. Or one might be quite mistaken, simply a perverted modern. The trouble is, we don’t know enough, and we never will now. Artists were constantly on the move, a sculptor of the time might work in half-a-dozen cities in the course of his career, there was a lot of cross-fertilization going on. Most of the work has no documentation. The difficulties of attribution are enormous.’
    ‘But you think a northern Italian, who had worked in Tuscany?’
    ‘Not necessarily worked there. It would have been enough for him to come into contact with Tuscan artists, like the Lamberti, or Nanno di Bartolo, who are known to have been in Venice in the 1420s. There was a lot going on here at the time. Foscari was extending the Ducal Palace, an enormous building project. The republic was rich, the pay was good, people came flocking from all over the place.’
    ‘I wonder where the Gabriel is,’ Raikes said.
    ‘The messenger boy? Dismembered in some mason’s scrapyard or lurking about in a cloister somewhere. Perhaps he was never made. One thing’s certain though.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Whoever the sculptor was, if he really intended that left arm to seem to be guarding the pudenda, which is certainly what it looks like, then it is unique among depictions of the Annunciation, she has a unique left arm.’
    Steadman paused, looking across the square. ‘That in itself would be profoundly original,’ he said. ‘Oh God, here come the Stakhanovites.’
    The Tintoretto people were