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September 26, 2006

Popes, Cardinals, and Women

What did Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, the protagonist in the historical novel Maddalena, have in common with his grandfather Pope Paul III, besides being the greatest art patron of his time?

A lust for women.

When Alessandro was twenty-four-years old, his miniaturist Giulio Clovio provided Titian with a sketch of his mistress, the courtesan Angela, whose lovely face was immortalized in the Venetian master’s reclining nude, kept in the cardinal’s private quarters for most of his life. To satisfy a code of propriety, the Venetian master transformed the sensuous nude in Alessandro’s painting into the mythological Danaë being raped by Zeus, the wanton god symbolized by a shower of gold.

How sensuous? The papal nuncio, Giovanni Della Casa, reported that Titian’s masterpiece would have excited even the principal Censor of the Church, and the future head of the Roman Inquisition, the severe Dominican Tommaso Badia. Although the pope was furious by his grandson’s lack of prudence, if not virtue, he was too busy having his bedroom decorated with the stories of Cupid and Psyche. And Cardinal Farnese, protected by his grandfather, and unlimited wealth, could not only buy many courtesans’ favors, but stop the wagging fingers over breaking every code of honor imposed on him as the second-in-command after the pope.

A family aberration? Surely not.

Paul III ascended the papal throne with four legitimized children, and great dynastic plans for his grandchildren. His grandson Alessandro, made Cardinal at fourteen, and life-time Vice-Chancellor at fifteen, resented his ecclesiastical career, dreaming of being a prince. Papabile three times, he didn’t take his major vows for thirty years. Unlike Paul III, the immensely rich Alessandro was not rich enough to bribe his way to the coveted papal chair.

The moral climate in the Eternal City is so severe that you can be burned at the stake for the smallest transgression from church dogma. Yet, the Vatican’s most powerful Cardinal has a mistress, an illegitimate son and a daughter, and a sexual relationship with his ward. Prudence, temperance, courage, and justice may be the cardinal virtues; the Cardinal clearly possesses none of them. That His Most Reverend Excellency, Cardinal Farnese, actually lived, adds a deeper dimension to what is already a stunningly rich tapestry of everyday life in Michelangelo’s Rome.

There's more. Read Maddalena!

Posted by Eva Siroka at 06:58 PM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2006

Magdalena

I would love to see Maddalena translated into Spanish. Not only are the heroine's ancestors of Morish-Iberian descent, but the story should also appeal to people from that culture for many other reasons, including the heroine's miraculous powers.

At some point, I had my original website translated for the Spanish-speaking readers by Blanca Acosta. Should you be interested, would you let me know what you think about my book? To find out more, click on Magdalena and enjoy! If you have an idea about a publishing house interested in translating the text into Spanish, please write to me, OK? Many thanks!

Posted by Eva Siroka at 03:09 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2006

Illustrating Maddalena

We now take illustrated material for granted, be it a child's first book of rhymes, an illustrated atlas of history, or a newspaper cartoon.

I loved drawing since I was born. Not quite true, but close enough. Much later, at the university, I began to study the history of drawing.

It took time to truly understand the metal-point technique, in which the artist drew with a silver stick on paper coated with ground lead or chalk suspended in oil, or liquid bound by animal-hide glues. Only after I saw a few examples of such drawings in museum collections, I understood the delicate process. Yet, even great masters like Leonardo or Raphael used the medium, but preferred a charred stick or sharpened quill as a more natural tool.

Then came colored chalks, pastels, crayons and, of course, the ubiquitous graphite pencil! Did you know that graphite was known already in sixteenth-century England?

When I was trying to describe my illustrations for Maddalena, I couldn't decide what to call them, because they turned out to be water-colored pen and ink drawings. Not watercolors. Not drawings.

Being skilled in copying old master paintings and drawings, I wanted to imitate the "hand"--really the style--of sixteenth-century artists like Berti Spranger and Hans Speckaert. And I did, in Berti drawing Lucretia. But I decided that most readers would not appreciate the effort. As it happened, the grumpy lady who wrote the Greenmanreview found my drawings childish, without understanding anything about the history of drawings or their stylistic development!

A colleague of mine, an eminent professor at the university of Brussels, wrote to me how much she like the fairy-tale like quality of the illustrations. I was so pleased. I guess, Maddalena is like that. A bit of magic. We all need a bit of magic.

The birth of each drawing for Maddalena involved much thought: days, even weeks of trying to produce an image that not only satisfied the text to which it referred, but also to capture the spirit of late sixteenth-century graphic art, a time when the first drawing academies were being born in Europe.

You know what I'm talking about. Men sit at long tables illuminated by candles, look at marble busts, draw studio boys, copy prints by famous artists, using every square inch (should I say square centimeter?) of the precious rag paper.

I wish I could include the picture of the single sheet where I was trying to find Maddalena's face for the illustration where she waits for Alessandro's litter-chair to go by. I counted some seventy-five sketched faces, each with a slightly different wiggle of the nose, arched brows, round or slanted eyes; puckered, happy, sad mouth.

It's extremely hard to imagine, without seeing the stacks of rejected sketches, how much love and labor went into producing the illustrations produced--and here comes a confession--with hands ruined by thirty years of passionate gardening.

Posted by Eva Siroka at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2006

Bartholomaeus Spranger

Oh, what a beautiful early September morning. Here I am, at the computer, smelling crispy air, watching the sun reflecting off the window shade's slats.

Berti Spranger, Maddalena's impetuous lothario, is on my mind, this time as the main character of Bartholomaeus, Book Two of The Golden Tripolis Trilogy. Due to his privileged position at court of Rudolf II Habsburg, he is a natural narrator in Book Two. With his friendship and blessing, Berti marries goldsmith Muller’s daughter, yet his patron dominates his life. Commanded to paint nearly exclusively in the castle studio which the emperor visits regularly, Berti’s erotic compositions offer intimate comments on Rudolf’s sexuality.

Home to Rabbi Loew and a large Jewish population, as well as numerous foreigners—mostly Germans, Netherlanders, Spaniards and Italians—Rudolfine Prague is also where the first tulips arrived from Turkey, where exotic lions and Dodo birds landed in Rudolf’s menagerie. His patronage of artists, artisans and craftsmen, scientists and quacks, scholars and pretenders; his unwillingness to marry royal princesses while fathering children with a mistress; and his religious indifference and need to rule an imaginary macrocosm alone energize a singular historical novel.

Are you ready for it? It's coming! Word-by-word, one chapter at a time. Dear reader, be patient, please.

Posted by Eva Siroka at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)