Twain's Portrait - Chapter 3 - Art, Miracles and Artifice
My pilgrimage to Petalumo had two objects, one dead and one living: I wanted to see the famous murals by Velásquez, and I wanted to meet Goya’s son, Francisco.
Velásquez fled the Spanish Inquisition in 1638 and came to Alta California, where he spent 22 years as the premiere painter of the New World Renaissance. The altarpiece in the chapel of the municipal palacio in Petalumo is a mural of 6 panels, larger than life, painted in oil on linen attached to plaster walls, ranged in a semicircle around the asp. During my stay in Petalumo I returned several times to study the panels, and to sketch certain heads and poses that caught my eye. Velasquez was able to capture personality in a few deft strokes. I particularly liked a young peasant boy in profile, and sketched him twice.
On the day I went to see the murals for the first time, the sky was overcast, sending a pearly light through a leaded glass dome and washing Velásquez’ masterpiece with an illumination splendid for viewing his overall composition, but a bit dim for close examination of the brushwork. I borrowed a votive candle from a rack near the altar rail and held it close to the surface of the wall. The finish was very fine, with highlights laid on creamy, smooth, and slightly translucent. The shadows were about a foot deep, thanks to a generous, almost reckless amount of medium—walnut oil, I’m sure—and a well-laid coat of varnish with very little cracking or surface dirt.
“Last month you would not have seen half the detail,” a voice remarked in Castilian Spanish. I turned to see a bent old man in a stained smock, leaning on a cane.
“The paintings do seem very fresh and bright,” I replied in my version of the same dialect.
“We have just finished cleaning them, freeing the master’s work from over 200 years of dirt, dust, and candle smoke.” He glanced at my candle and I moved it away from the painting.
“They are magnificent. I have wanted to see them since I was a boy. I am a painter myself and I have come from Paris to learn from these walls.”
“What can they teach you?”
“Oh, to my eyes they are like a text book. Look here how Velásquez has created the highlight on Cortez’ forehead with one perfect stroke.”
The old peasant leaned forward, squinting at the surface.
“It is only paint.”
“That’s my point,” I explained, “With one daub of paint smeared on a flat canvas, he creates the illusion of round form, of a real human head, lightly perspiring on a sunny day. More than that, the shape of the edge somehow informs us that Cortez is noble, intelligent, brave, and passionate.”
“He was the father of the New World. This painting is called Discovery. It is 1518 and Cortez is claiming New Spain for the Spanish king. However, in later pictures he changes his mind.”
The panel shows Cortez planting the Spanish flag in the sand of a stylized tropical beach. He is surrounded by brutish conquistadors in silver helms, their poses echoed and slyly mocked by three amused Indians in the background.
“This is so clever, so simple.” I pointed to the lower part of the panel. “Velásquez uses the noon shadows of the figures to tie them all together with one strong horizontal dark shape, like a solid border on a lace mantilla.”
I spent more than two hours examining Velásquez’ work in detail, and the old gentleman stuck with me the whole time. He became my personal tour guide, as we worked our way around the asp with votive candles, like monks of art performing the stations of the brush. I was amazed at how much he knew of history, and how quickly he grasped the finer points of my explanations of composition, color, and brushwork. The old man pointed out that in Conquest, the second panel, the same three Indians reappear as the chiefs of the Aztecs, Zapotecs, and Mixtecs, surrendering to Cortez in 1522. Cortez’ silver helm is now trimmed with quetzal feathers and he receives a symbolic golden mace from the conquered chieftains.
The third panel is Repentence. It shows Cortez bent over a stone altar, stripped to the waist, his helmet lying in the dust, being lashed by a tonsured monk in a coarse brown robe.
“Why is a lowly monk beating the Emperor?” I asked.
“Here it is 1524, and Cortez is not yet emperor. After the conquest he asked the bishops of Old Spain to send him priests from the Franciscan and other mendicant orders—priests who took a vow of poverty and ministry to the common people. Cortez feared that the corrupt secular clergy of Spain would enslave and murder the Indians. He wanted priests who might help him to include the Indians a new society. Cortez had himself lashed in public to show the natives that even he was a sinner and not above the rule of the Church.”
“The composition is wonderful, but the subject matter is not to my taste.”
We moved on to the Apparition, the most famous panel and the one my teacher Carolus Duran raves about as the perfect depiction of ethereal light. It shows the black Virgin of Guadalupe appearing to Juan Diego in 1531. The Indian peasant boy and the dusky Virgin are bathed in shimmering light that surrounds their heads with soft-edged, not-quite-halos.
“Look how Velásquez blends his colors from white to yellow to brown. From a distance you would swear he had used gold leaf and not simple oil paints.”
“The apparition,” my guide explained, “was confirmed as a genuine miracle by Bishop Zumarraga of New Spain, in defiance of Rome. This miracle is considered the founding event of the Western Church, the slender edge of the wedge that eventually split the Catholic church into the Western, Roman, and Eastern rites we know today.”
“This painting is the miracle.” I was spellbound, consumed with envy, almost inarticulate. “The spiraling, interlocking shapes of dark and light… the lost and found edges... it takes your breath away.”
My elderly guide just smiled. I could not tell if he approved of my enthusiasm or was merely amused.
The least successful panel is the Cleansing. Cortez appears again on another beach, banishing to a deserted offshore island the Papal Nuncio, seven of his more vicious lieutenants guilty of murdering Indians, and all copies of the 1545 Index of Forbidden Works issued by Pope Paul III. Even Velásquez’ compositional genius was foiled by the necessity of including such a large cast of characters and stage props.
In Coronation, the sixth and final panel, Cortez crowns himself Emperor of the New World and protector of the faith in 1546. He sits on a throne-like chair and smiles triumphantly, but seems pale and thin. At his elbow is a sheet of parchment.
“That is the letter he wrote to Pope Paul III,” my guide explained. “Cortez demanded that the Pope make Juan Diego a saint and Bishop Zumarraga a cardinal. Naturally, the Pope excommunicated him for his arrogance. Cortez was sick and died soon after. He didn’t live to see New Spain become an independent empire, but his vision inspired later reformers.”
The old conservator at my elbow showed me where serious water damage had been repaired. As he explained how the linen had been removed, the roof and wall rebuilt, and the linen replaced and artfully retouched, I finally realized that he had done the repainting himself. It dawned on my poor, stupid brain that I had been lecturing someone who probably knew more about technical painting matters than myself.
I apologized for my single-mindedness and at last took the time for formal introductions.
“My name is John Sargent.”
“Pleased to meet you.” He bowed slightly. “My name is Francisco José De La Goya.”
My mouth gaped wide open. Here was the second object of my pilgrimage, the son of the great painter Goya himself. I apologized again and told him how much I admired his father’s early work that I had seen in Spain.
“I feel such a fool, to have come halfway around the world to visit you, then act like a know-it-all and actually explain your countryman Velásquez to you like a boarding school drawing master. I am exceedingly embarrassed.”
He laughed. “Not at all. I was charmed by your enthusiasm. And you actually know quite a lot about the master’s painting, for a boarding school drawing master.”
“You are too kind. I wonder if I may impose further on your patience and pay you a more formal visit later this week?”
“I would be pleased to receive you in my studio on Friday. I have some works of my father’s that you might find interesting, and I’d like to hear more of your observations of the state of art in the Old World.”
* * *
Violet Paget
17 Rue Des Jardins
Montparnasse
Paris, France
My Dear Violet:
Or should I address you as Vernon Lee? I still think it a shame your critical pieces cannot appear under your real name. Genius should be qualification enough for publication, regardless of the sex of its owner. It remains difficult for me to think of you as Vernon, although you look quite fetching in trousers.
Greetings to you and all the poor starving inmates of les Beaux Arts. I enjoyed your review of the student show. I laughed aloud at the part where you said that, to hopeful applicants, B.A. stands for “Beaux Arts,” to persecuted lower levels, “Balaam’s Ass,” and to jaded uppers, “Balzac’s Arsehole.” I wonder if I shall ever scrape all trace of the B.A. house style off my canvases?
I have met Goya’s son! I spent this afternoon in his father’s old studio, the skylit upper floor of an enormous adobe palacio on Canal Hildalgo. The Senior Goya painted the walls with dark, fantastic scenes: a Greek Colossus towering over a tranquil California pueblo; an Iberian Saturn devouring his children; conquistadors drawing and quartering a peon farmer; heraldic pumas attacking Spanish imperial eagles; a carnival of infants; a jury of baboons.
Some are allegories in which Vice triumphs over Virtue. Others recast mythological creatures as characters in the history of New Spain. All are unique and vastly different from the bravura portraits that we have seen in Europe. Goya’s alla prima strokes and dynamic compositions are present, but in service of a vision more individual, more tragic, more—dare I say it?—insane than I would ever have imagined possible.
Goya’s son told me, “I never receive the Alcalde or council members up here,” speaking in a booming voice. I think he speaks too loudly because he is a little hard of hearing. “Them I entertain downstairs.”
“I can see why,” I shouted back.
“Alta California has become a nation of miserly merchants. Cowards and dunces. No one wants a real painting. They just want their boring, excremental lives illustrated in gilt and aquamarine.”
He showed me a life-size reclining figure. “Papa called her the Maja reformed. She was mistress of a grand rancho to the east. Here you see her fully clothed like a Hellenic maiden. Her first portrait was a nude, same pose, same size. One of the best things Papa ever did, but he nearly got hung for it. You see, it wasn’t Athena or Diana or some other classical slut. It was a real, contemporary slut and the local jefes could not tolerate that. After Papa died, I retitled it ‘Helen Reclining During the Sack of Troy,’ and sold it for a song to the Tsar’s bastard third cousin across the river.
“Don’t waste your time in this country,” he advised. “Go north to Rossland. They still commission portraits worth painting, and they’re aristocratic enough to like what they like, not what the peons or the church tell them to like.”
I am tempted to take his advice. Alta California is a charming, colorful place, but all the good paintings here were done 200 years ago. There does not seem to be any competition among the upper classes to outdo each other in the portrait wars.
I told Goya that I hoped to accompany Mark Twain to Rossland on his lecture tour.
“If you do, allow me to write you a letter of recommendation,” he said. “I can put you in touch with the Minister of Culture there. He knows all the best families and the influential people you will want to meet.”
I thanked Francisco for his kindness. It is unusual in artistic circles for one painter to be so free with his upper class acquaintances. Then he set me a task, as if he were Carolus assigning homework at BA: “While you are here, go see the mantle of Juan Diego. It is on display this month in the cathedral. Examine it closely and tell me what you think.”
The next day Mark Twain and I did exactly that. The cathedral is dark and heavy in the mission style. A long line of peasants was inching toward the altar rail, where a friar and two bored looking acolytes presided over an easel draped with cloth of some kind. I joined the line so that I could get close to the relic. Supposedly, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (Indian for ‘talking Eagle’) saw a vision of the Virgin Mary, who told him to build a chapel out in the desert. The local bishop didn’t believe him. Then the Virgin told Juan to gather some roses and take them to the bishop, even though it was winter and no roses were in bloom. He found some miraculous out-of-season roses and wrapped them in his mantle, an apron of sorts, and took them to the bishop. When he dumped the roses out, they found an icon of the Virgin imprinted on the mantle.
The peasants were lining up to kiss the grime-blackened hem of the alleged mantle. When I got to the head of the queue I pretended to kiss it so I could lean in for a good look and a deep sniff. The image was dim in the poorly lit church, but I could catch a hint of turpentine and linseed oil. The fabric was a rough weave of linen, not the cactus fiber cloth that tradition says Juan Diego wore. And if the icon was of divine origin, then the Almighty used the same palette and iconographic conventions as the students of Velásquez. I worked very assiduously to present a reverential demeanor on the outside, because I was chuckling heartily on the inside, along with Goya.
If you and I and the other hopefuls of B.A. cannot find employment flattering our social betters with portraits, perhaps we can cobble together “relics” for the lords of the church.
With one blasphemous foot in brimstone, I remain,
Forever yours,
Juan
* * *
After my first lecture I was congratulated by the mayor of Petalumo, a distinguished looking gent who worked my arm like a pump handle and insisted that I dine with him two nights hence, at such and such an address, which he wrote with an abalone shell fountain pen on the back of his calling card.
I immediately coveted his pen. Not because it looked beautiful or wrote well, although those were true enough facts, but because close examination of the mayor’s shirt, vest, cravat and coat revealed no telltale blotches of leaked ink. Every fountain pen I have ever adopted has spotted my clothes like a leopard’s pelt. I admired the writing instrument and he assured me that it was fully leak-proof, a product of immigrant Russian artisans in a border town to the north.
I thanked the mayor for his invitation and promised to come. He told me to invite any other guest I would like, so I asked young Sargent to come along, since I hadn’t been in town long enough to acquire a presentable female companion.
I expected an intimate meal at the mayoral hacienda, or perhaps a quite repast in a private room of a restaurant. I was wrong. The designated address was simple to find, in view of the gondolas storming its dock and the crowds of finely dressed ladies and gentlemen converging on it from surrounding squares, promenades and alleyways. It was some kind of municipal meeting hall, a vast, barn like space full of tables and chairs, bunting, jabbering people, smoke, music, and some very promising aromas of roast meat and chiles.
We sat with the mayor at the head table, with about a dozen Dons and Donas he introduced in flowery Spanish and wilted English. Everyone smiled and bowed agreeably. The gentry of Petalumo are a convivial lot, and hungry for occasions to gather and dine and palaver together. We were about to put on the feedbag with a quorum of Petalumo’s finest society—the conniving politicos, debauched clergy, crooked lawyers, guilty philanthropists, and more prominent newspaper hacks without whom no thriving Republic can be run on a paying basis.
The grub was ample and spicy, the musicians loud and enthusiastic, and the oratory predictably long-winded and boring. My only entertainment was offered by a talented young lady, a ravishing Spanish beauty, or so I thought at the time, dressed in threadbare red velvet and black lace. She was our translator, seated at the foot of our table where she could make a running summary of the Spanish speeches in English.
There was a spice of deviltry in the girl’s nature, and it cropped out every now and then when she was translating the speeches of slow old Dons who did not understand English. Without departing from the spirit of a distinguished gentleman’s remarks, she would, with apparent unconsciousness, drop in a little voluntary contribution occasionally in the way of a word or two that made the gravest speech utterly ridiculous. “The tradition of English literature” became “the transgression of English littering.” with a look at me up from under her thick eyelashes. “We extend our hospitality” became “We extend our hostility.” She was careful not to venture upon such experiments, though, with the remarks of persons able to detect her. I loved her for it, and marked her for further acquaintance.
In time I was asked to make a few remarks in self-defense, and I did so cautiously, with a few Spanish phrases I had prepared beforehand. In English I told a couple of brief jokes and the diabolical woman in red translated them into Spanish for the crowd. I will wonder to my dying day whether the laughter I drew forth was due to my unadulterated native wit or thanks to the annotations of my translator.
The mayor kindly presented me with a gift from the municipality, one of the fine Alta California fountain pens in a redwood box. I was quite moved and thanked them effusively.
“I’m sure this is what my writing has been needing all these years,” I said, holding up the pen and letting the lamplight flash on its abalone casing. “I have always wanted a writing implement worthy of the language I butcher. I’m sure this pen will improve the quality of my hand, my grammar, and my garments.”
Over brandy and cigars, the mayor drew me a map in my notebook with my new pen, giving me the lay of the land and suggesting how I might visit every little hamlet and pueblo in between my lecturing engagements. If Napoleon had enjoyed the mayor’s services as tour director, his winter jaunt through Russia would have been a much more enjoyable and rewarding trip.
* * *
Our host for Twain’s welcoming dinner was Alejandro Natalio Vargas i Diamante, the Alcalde of Petalumo. In Spain, alcalde means “mayor,” but in California it seems to have acquired overtones of “innkeeper” and “procurer.” Mayor Diamante was a short, rotund, overly jolly man, all convex greasy curves, with large dropping mustachios and well-oiled hair. He held one’s hand too long and stood an inch too close, so you could smell his eau de cologne and the garlic he had for breakfast.
In painfully broken English he welcomed Twain and I to the banquet and seated us at a long table on a modest dais at the head of the room. He would have made a good waiter, but as a mayor he was a disappointment. He did, however, make an interesting subject for a caricature sketch, which I did surreptitiously at table during the speeches later.
Already seated at our table were various city council members and civic functionaries, with names like Vega and Santiago indicating their blood ties to Old Spain. But one man and one woman had guttural native names and earthy complexions that marked them as Indians. I tried to follow the introductions and remember the names and stations of my tablemates, but they were mostly lost in the tumult. Everyone was talking at once, in Spanish and Esperanto and various debased versions of English, with the result that nobody listened to anybody. I felt like a swan in a flock of honking geese.
The hall was decorated with atrocious murals of an historical nature. There were wooded landscapes with helmeted figures on poorly drawn horses, jabbing crosses and Spanish flags into a riverbank. Dredges scooped up river muck with adobe churches under construction in the background. Indians were baptized and doves and putti fluttered about near the ceiling. A few painted medallions in the corners held murky portraits of bearded gentlemen who all looked alike, undoubtedly Petalumo’s founding fathers. If this was the best the local painters could offer, I felt confident I might arranged a portrait commission or two.
The food was common and over-spiced, but no one cared. They shoveled it into their mouths like coal into a boiler, damping the fires with tumblers of raw red wine. The faces around me took on an overstoked glow, and I amused myself imagining how many tubes of burnt umber and crimson lake it would take to paint all the flushed complexions.
The manners of the Dons were atrocious. Most ate everything with their knives or sopped up sauce with wads of tortilla. They brayed and cackled at each other, screaming ungrammatical Spanish with their mouths full of half-chewed food, spraying beans and flecks of rice all about.
Five musicians added to the din, strumming guitars, sawing fiddles, and tooting on trumpets. It was not subtle or even musical, but it was loud and lively and made primary colors explode in my mind’s eye.
Every few minutes one of the dignitaries in attendance would be overcome with emotion and stand up, signaling the trumpet player for a shrill fanfare that mostly silenced the room. He would make a little speech about Señor Twain and propose a toast. The speeches were drunken and wandering, without flair or style. A girl about my age muttered at the foot of the table, translating the speeches for Twain and myself into better English than they deserved. She would occasionally mistranslate a word for comic effect, which mostly went right over Twain’s head, although he caught her eye a time or two.
* * *
Letter to the ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Mark Twain
Petalumo
Republic of Alta California
May 16, 1879
Esteemed Reader:
My erstwhile traveling companion John Sargent and I have been initiated into the mysteries of the Catholic Faith, Western Division. Our host was an amiable Jesuit named Carlos Gustavo Enrique Jose de los Santos y Maria, and proud of it. He invited us to view the relics on display at the local cathedral, and we were too befuddled by the local vintage to demur. As a practicing Protestant, I offered to apply for a visa, supply references, and post a bond, but diplomatic protocol was graciously waived.
Young Mr. Sargent dragged us up to the marble hitching rail at the front of the church to get a close view of the principle sacred object on display: the Mantle of Saint John Diego, bearing a self-portrait of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God. I am not an art expert, but I do know what I don’t like, and in my opinion, it was a tolerable likeness. I doubt my own mother could have painted one half as good with her full paint box, and the Virgin was working in the hot sun, without a mirror, without a real canvas, without even a brush or paints. It is indeed a miracle.
Father Carlos Gustavo Enrique etc. bragged that the Virgin had painted herself on the back of Saint John’s ragged cactus fiber cloak, which struck me as a callous and cavalier confiscation of a poor man’s wardrobe. However, he pointed out that Catholics, especially native Aztec Catholics, are famous for their self-sacrifice and this is just another example of that virtue.
To my astonishment, John knelt before the graven image and kissed the hem of the cloak, already black and damp with the admiration of previous art lovers. Now, I’m not certain, but at the moment of John’s kiss, I thought I detected a nimbus of light around his head, a genuine halo. I admit it was dim in the cathedral, filled with the gloom of the Holy Spirit, and my eyes were watering a bit, since the cloak emitted what I believe is called the odor of sanctity. I was deeply moved, reminded of my parents’ wedding, when my pap’s cousin Elderberry Pope toasted their union with a spittoon.
Padre Carlos ushered us from one relic to another. John seemed to float in a state of mystical transport, moving as if on tiny wheels. He crossed himself, bowed his head, and periodically genuflected to the cardinal directions. We saw wonder after wonder: one of Saint Sebastian’s arrows, the right forefinger of Saint Junipero Serra, and the donkey’s jaw bone Sampson used in the old testament, showing remarkable little wear after slaying a thousand Philistines. I was minded of cousin Elderberry’s prize possession, the axe George Washington used on the cherry tree, kept in good repair over the years by replacing the head twice and the handle thrice. I noticed several other icons of the Virgin by lesser artists, each with a different complexion, from whitest Castilian to brownest Indio, beauty being notoriously in the race of the beholder.
To me, the prize of the collection was a minute speck of sawdust from the cross of Jesus. Papa Chuck assured me that Holy Mother Church has preserved enough pieces of the True Cross to build the Pope a steamboat. I was not blasphemous enough to inquire whether he referred to the pope in Monterey, the pope in Rome, the pope in Constantinople, or Elderberry Pope, who since he runs a tannery in Hannibal, Misouri is the only one of the quartet who possesses any real need of a steamboat, or has a river at hand to float it. Knowing the Roman Church, I suspect their steamboat will never be launched. Rather, it will be encased in glass, surrounded by a Carrara collonade, and touted three hundred years from now as the private launch of Saint John Singer Sargent.
Despite my native skepticism, I returned to my hotel room a changed man. Before retiring I created a literary shrine on my nightstand, arranging in a mystic triangle one of Shakespeare’s fingernail trimmings, a lock of Dante’s hair, and a pocket watch that once belonged to Homer. In my prayers I asked the Presbyterian God to bless me with a tenth of the pure storytelling imagination bestowed on the Catholics. I fell into blissful sleep, knowing that if my prayer were answered, my stories would be chiseled into stone, pilgrims would line up to kiss the ink stains on my fingers, and my publisher would scurry to reply to my correspondence within a year of receipt.
Devoutly yours, Mark Twain