The Unknown Masterpiece Read Online Free PDF Page B

vermilion, his waves of auburn hair, and his clashing colors. At least here you have color, and feeling, and drawing, the three essentials of art!”
    “But that saint is sublime, my dear sir!” the youth exclaimed loudly, emerging from his deep reverie. “Those two figures, Mary and the boatman, have a delicacy of purpose quite beyond the Italian painters—I can’t think of a single one who could have invented the boatman’s hesitation.”
    “Does this young fool belong to you?” Porbus asked the old man.
    “Apologies, maître: forgive my boldness,” the youth answered, blushing. “I’m a nobody, an ignorant dauber just arrived in this city, which I know to be the fount of all knowledge.”
    “Then get to work!” Porbus ordered, handing him a red crayon and a sheet of paper.
    The unknown youth nimbly copied the figure of Mary of Egypt.
    “Oh ho!” the old man exclaimed. “Your name?”
    The youth wrote “Nicolas Poussin” under his drawing.
    “Not bad for a beginner, not bad at all,” observed the singular creature who had been lecturing so wildly. “I see we can talk painting in your presence. I don’t blame you for admiring Porbus’s saint. The world accounts her a masterpiece, and only the initiates of art’s secrets can discover her sins. But since you’re worthy of the lesson, and capable of understanding it, I’m going to show you how little it would take to make this a work...of art! Be all eyes, and give me your undivided attention: such an opportunity to learn something may never come again. Your palette, Porbus!”
    Porbus went to get a palette and brushes. The little old man rolled up his sleeves with an abrupt convulsive gesture and thrust his thumb into the splotched, paint-laden palette Porbus handed him; then he virtually snatched a handful of brushes of all sizes, and his pointed beard quivered with the menacing exertions corresponding to the itch of an ardent imagination. Loading his brush, he growled between his teeth, “Paints like this deserve to be tossed out the window, along with the fool who mixed them—nauseating, how crude and false they are! Who could paint with these?” Then, with feverish energy he dipped the tip of his brush in each gob of paint, covering the whole spectrum faster than a church organist runs up and down his keyboard for the Easter
O Filii
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    Porbus and Poussin stood motionless on either side of the canvas, plunged in the most vehement contemplation.
    “Look here, young man,” the old creature said without turning around, “you see how with three or four strokes and a little bluish glaze you can make the air circulate around the head of this poor saint who must have been stifling in that dense atmosphere! Look how this drapery flutters—now you can see the breeze is lifting it. Before, it looked like some starched linen pinned in place. Notice how the glossy highlight I’ve just put on her breasts renders the plasticity of a young girl’s skin, and how the mixture of russet and burnt ochre warms the cool gray of that big shadow where the blood had congealed instead of flowing. Young man, young man! What I’m showing you here no master could teach you. Only Mabuse possessed the secret of giving figures life, and Mabuse had only one pupil, who happened to be me. I’ve had none, and I’m an old man. You’re intelligent enough to guess the rest, from what I’ve let you see.”
    While he was talking, the strange old man touched every part of the painting with the tip of his brush: here two strokes, here only one, always to such effect that it seemed a new picture, but a picture steeped in light. He worked with a frenzy so impassioned that sweat beaded on his bulging forehead; so rapid were his tiny movements, so impatient and abrupt, that to young Poussin there seemed to be a demon at work in the strange creature’s body, a demon acting through his hands, uncannily moving them against the old man’s will. The preternatural gleam in his eyes,