French fiction -- Translations into English; Short stories, French -- Translations into English
She would hardly have found out her mistake even then, had she not grown
impatient at receiving no reply, and pulling the master by his cloak,
brought crock, stool, hat, brush and all tumbling at her feet. Then, as
she was by no means wanting in sense, she saw it was intended as a
lesson not to judge the artist by his dress. She sent her steward to
Buffalmacco, and begged him to finish what he had begun.
He completed the work greatly to his credit. Connoisseurs especially
admired in these frescoes the figure of the Crucified Redeemer, the
three Marys weeping at the foot of the Cross, Judas hanged on a tree,
and a man blowing his nose. Unfortunately the paintings were all
destroyed along with the Church of the Nunnery of the Ladies of Faenza.
IV
THE PAINTER
Equally famous for his wit and humour and for his skill in devising
figure subjects on the walls of Church and Cloister, Buonamico, surnamed
Buffalmacco, had already left his youth behind when he was invited from
Florence to Arezzo by the Lord Bishop of that city, who wished the halls
of his Palace decorated with paintings. Buffalmacco undertook the
commission, and directly the walls were duly laid with stucco, started
on a picture of the Adoration of the Wise Men.
In the course of a few days he had painted in King Melchior complete,
mounted on a white horse, looking for all the world as if he were alive.
His horse's saddle-cloth was scarlet, dotted with precious stones.
Now all the time he was at work, the Bishop's pet monkey sat staring
intently at his proceedings, never taking his eyes off him. Whether the
painter was squeezing his tubes, mixing his colours, beating up his eggs
or laying on the colour with his brush on the moist surface, the
creature never lost one of his movements. It was a baboon brought from
Barbary for the Doge of Venice in one of the State Galleys. The Doge
made a present of it to the Bishop of Arezzo, who thanked his
Magnificence, reminding him prettily how King Solomon's ships had in
like fashion imported from the land of Ophir apes and peacocks, as is
related in the First Book of Kings (x. 22). And there was nothing in all
his Palace Bishop Guido held more precious than this baboon.
He left the animal to roam at liberty about the halls and gardens, where
it was for ever at some mischievous trick or another. One Sunday, during
the painter's absence, the creature climbed up on the scaffolding, laid
hold of the tubes, mixed up the colours in a way of its own, broke all
the eggs it could find, and began plying the brush on the wall, as it
had seen the other do. It worked away at King Melchior and his horse,
never leaving off till the whole composition was repainted according to
its own ideas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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