Romano rubs the substance between his fingers, his tongue licking the ridges of his teeth. Veneziano, beside him, waits eagerly, face hopeful and shining.
“Well? Isn’t it great?”
He frowns, squints his eyes, brow furrowing in concentration.
It feels alien.
“Stop jumping, dammit!”
Romano looks up at the canvass, figures splayed across the sea of blending color. The technique is magnificent. He breathes in the heavy scent of the paint, the smoke, the depth and curve of shadowed flesh. He balls up his fist. His head is spinning.
“Ve, brother? You do not like it? It’s the muses, the muses! I saw them in a dream! And the style is new.”
Le muse
He’s paid tribute to them himself: upon clay, upon ivory horn, upon marble. He remembers the soft earth and hard stone beneath his little hands. He remembers the heat of the kiln.
Terracotta; (ochre length of his thumb)
Veined Marble; (gray palate of his mouth)
“Sfumato,”he mutters, glaring and shoving his brother to the side “I know. I’m not stupid. Fuck off.”
“But I didn’t say- ve, brother, wait!” Veneziano pulls at him, eyes watering.
Romano huffs and walks away. His brother’s cries become distant. He knows they will stop, tears wiped by old calloused hands. Later, he will sit alone in the garden, open his own paint set, lift brush unto cloth and fail. Then, his siesta.
(Finest down in Southern Italy, pressed lightly around his head)
Grandpa is wrong. Romano is not lazy.
He is simply overwhelmed.
The wheat field parts as he walks a path to his house. His chest aches.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Chiaroscuro [2/6]
(Anonymous) 2012-02-02 06:07 pm (UTC)(link)Gouache; (muted yellow plaster on his lips)
Tempera; (silver sand on left palm)
Romano rubs the substance between his fingers, his tongue licking the ridges of his teeth. Veneziano, beside him, waits eagerly, face hopeful and shining.
“Well? Isn’t it great?”
He frowns, squints his eyes, brow furrowing in concentration.
It feels alien.
“Stop jumping, dammit!”
Romano looks up at the canvass, figures splayed across the sea of blending color. The technique is magnificent. He breathes in the heavy scent of the paint, the smoke, the depth and curve of shadowed flesh. He balls up his fist. His head is spinning.
“Ve, brother? You do not like it? It’s the muses, the muses! I saw them in a dream! And the style is new.”
Le muse
He’s paid tribute to them himself: upon clay, upon ivory horn, upon marble. He remembers the soft earth and hard stone beneath his little hands. He remembers the heat of the kiln.
Terracotta; (ochre length of his thumb)
Veined Marble; (gray palate of his mouth)
“Sfumato,”he mutters, glaring and shoving his brother to the side “I know. I’m not stupid. Fuck off.”
“But I didn’t say- ve, brother, wait!” Veneziano pulls at him, eyes watering.
Romano huffs and walks away. His brother’s cries become distant. He knows they will stop, tears wiped by old calloused hands. Later, he will sit alone in the garden, open his own paint set, lift brush unto cloth and fail. Then, his siesta.
(Finest down in Southern Italy, pressed lightly around his head)
Grandpa is wrong. Romano is not lazy.
He is simply overwhelmed.
The wheat field parts as he walks a path to his house. His chest aches.