Ciclo CLXXXVI

They say the Baptistery was old when Brunelleschi drew his egg against it — and I drew my egg against it, in those years, trying to understand why the octagon holds the eye so completely. The surface: marble cut so flat it seems poured, not placed. Non è lavoro di uomini, ma di qualcosa prima degli uomini. I was young then, and Florence was the only city that mattered. I thought I would master architecture there. I did — I improved at it — migliorai alquanto, yes, but always catching water in the wrong places, roofs that wept in the rain. Stefano patched what I had left exposed. I was impatient with roofs. The roof is where the eye does not go, and where the rain always returns.

Then — Niccolò’s chapel in the Duomo. Una Pietà there, three colors only, and I stood before it for — how long? The hand that trembles now was steady then, and yet I could not have painted what Niccolò did in that small space. Three colors. The dead Christ. The weight of him. I have drawn so many dead men — cut them open, mapped the vessels — and still the weight of a body given up escapes the line. Niccolò had it. I did not. This is a hard thing to write. Harder than anatomy.

The candle gutters. Tomorrow — the canal. The canal does not ask what I could not do.