PROLOGUE:
SIENA, REPUBLIC OF SIENA, 1393
The soft Sienese breeze caressed people’s faces as they walked under the sunny sky crowned by the majestic bell tower of Santa Maria Assunta.
At a humble house close by, a child was being born
into the turbulence of late mediaeval times. When Gabriello Bucelli opened his
big hazel eyes to the world for the first time, he was not yet aware of what
sort of tumultuous, fluctuating world he was arriving to. The soul behind those
vivacious eyes would contemplate the glow of an unprecedented Golden age, an
era unlike anything humanity had seen before.
A young woman held the infant in her chubby arms and
lifted him towards his exhausted mother, so that she could give a glance at him
at last.
‘He resembles your husband, Madelena, but his eyes
hide the same spark as yours do.’
She handed the child over to his mother as she
regarded the scene with nascent affection. The mother took him in her arms and
held him close to her hard-beating chest.
‘His name shall be Gabriello. Gabriello Bucelli.’
She pronounced the name with delight.
Mrs. Bucelli asked the girl to call for her husband.
After only a few seconds, the man entered the room nervously, yet quietly,
taking very slow steps. As this was his first child, he was extremely thrilled
and did not know what to expect. His inquiring eyes tried to spot the boy with
a slight dose of fear.
‘Look, my beloved.’ She smiled at her husband with
pride on her lips.
The second Mr. Bucelli held his primogenitus in his arms, he sensed that something incredible was
awaiting to unravel before him.
CHAPTER ONE:
BRUGES, COUNTY OF FLANDERS, 1419
The Bridge, Anna Althea Hills
 |
| The Bridge, Anna Althea Hills |
Pieter, the old merchant, and his son Jan were unloading the many boxes of silk cloth they had brought all the way from the faraway
Republic of Venice. The arduous trip from Venice to Flanders took two weeks by
land and even more, a good three weeks, by sea, which was the option they felt
obliged to take in order to carry as much material as possible in their ship.
Nevertheless, the journey was very worthy of their effort, for the fabrics made
in Venice and Florence were the richest, most luxurious a man could find. They
sold very well in Flanders, where many gentry class men and workshop owners
anxiously wanted to get their hands on some of the finest Mediterranean linen
to be able to commission impressive tapestries to local weavers for their
manors and châteaux.
Not much further from there, a patrician was sitting behind his mahogany table and talking to the director of a renowned weaving workshop in Bruges.
‘Of course, Sir, I am sure we can manage to have it ready by September. It will look very elegant in your chamber, Sir. You shall be happy with it.’
‘Great, great,’ muttered his superior. ‘And make sure to create the design as close to my wishes as you can. I want a perfect tapestry for my grand salon.’
‘Naturally, Sir Everaert. Naturally. We always try our best; that is why we have such a good reputation in Bruges.’
‘I indeed did hear your name praised many times, so I have high expectations of you.’
‘You will not be disappointed, Sir,' said the meester in a humble tone.
The rich man rose from the table and said goodbye to the labourer with a gesture, followed by an amicable and satisfied shaking of hands.
This was the way in which artistic matters were held in Flanders. One could smell the worshipping for art in the air, like an intoxicatingly flagrant perfume. Art had become a passionate madness to gentry-class Flemings, which, duly, had turned out to be a blessing to all those talented young artists who could find joy and recognition at last.
*
* *
The girl in the blue gown looked up from the book
she was reading, suddenly distracted by her childhood memories. She remembered
how her dream had always been to live in the busy, creative and picturesque
city of Bruges, where, as she had learnt from her brother, artistic life shone
at its best. It was there in the charming Bruges where the most famous geniuses
of the time met, created, worked and lived. Patronage, workshops, art trade and
sale bloomed like nowhere else in Europe.
Her mind wandered off to the reminiscences she had of her brother when they both still were in that age in which they started learning the beautiful art of painting together, and they still absorbed every single piece of knowledge they heard of as if it were the most precious in the world. Childhood was certainly filled with outstanding moments of astonishment and admiration. Childhood had been, for those young aspiring artists, a period of self-discovery and reassurance.
‘Margareta!,’ yelled her brother impatiently. ‘Margareta! Father says we can’t be late to our lesson!’
The siblings Van Eyck took regular classes on the most distinguished subjects: Rhetoric, Grammar, Poetry, History and Philosophy with a special emphasis on the classics, thus all the siblings had knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek and had read the classical literature from the Ancient world. What excited them the most, though, were the painting lessons their father gave them. The Van Eyck family was of gentry class, and it showed in the importance they put in educating their children in the most well-respected disciplines of the time.
Their father originally came from a noble family in Brabant, particularly in the village of Hertogenbosch. He had been educated in the art of painting, so he tried his best to pass that knowledge onto his sons Hubert, Jan and Lambert, and even his daughter Margareta.
The mother, who came from a Mosan family, had been long married to Meneer Van Eyck. She also supported her children’s interest in the fine arts, especially because her husband had transmitted such passion to her through the many years they had spent together.
Their eldest son, Hubert, had already been appointed to serve as an apprentice to a patron chosen by the family, one of the most reputed painters of the Bishopric of Liège. They had plans for their other children to get a formal education in that art as well.
All of them were equally excited about the prospect, but Margareta, the only female, was the one who put more effort in her daily lessons, since she could not wait to succeed and be commissioned to paint for the greatest personalities in Europe. She and Jan, though, had the highest competition going on, as they loved to challenge each other and accept new dares from one another. They took the competition so seriously that they often enjoyed completing a work between the two of them in order to see who could make a better job with the same shared objective and under the very same conditions.
Margareta sighed deeply, taking a lock of her golden red hair off her soft facial features. The childhood she had lived with her brothers would always play a special role in the formation of her personality and realisation of who she was but, although grown-up life consisted of much more arduous moments, she could do nothing but to be proud of what she had achieved and the path which she was following. Settled in Bruges, many future prospects were awaiting to be found, and she was aware of that.
She closed her eyes, breathed deeply and stopped to feel the growing warmness in her hard-beating heart. This feeling of hotness extended to the rest of her chest when she thought about how she was finally fulfilling her dreams, her purpose in life, her mission. She could feel that she had been born for a reason and, at last, at her almost five-and-twenty years of age, saw clearly what it was. She would live for her art, for the marvellous magic of painting, and take that aim to its fullest even if she was of female gender. It would certainly not be easy for her, but she had the skills, the strength and the genius. She had to liberate out of her mind the visions of the world that she had; she had to share with ordinary people the wonderful images that her mind could capture. She, as an artist, saw reality in another dimension. She was able to perceive and transform images, colours, light, landscapes and stories into her mind. Hers was a world of constant dreams and creations, where nothing mattered more than her visions, what she felt was the truth of what was hereafter. Most people were limited to see reality as a constant of hard labour, bad harvests, hunger, illness and death. However, God had blessed her with a special sense, a burning passion in her chest that assured her that all this magnificence created by the most powerful force in the Universe could not be in vain.
A pat on the back took her back to reality.
‘What concerns you, dear? We have a lot of work to do today. Meester Van Eyck will return before the evening to see how far we’ve gone with the project,’ said Cornelia, her friend and one of the very few women working at the Van Eyck workshop.
‘I know, Cornelia; I’ll come back in a minute. I was just reading one of my brother’s books about art techniques, looking for a piece of useful advice.’
‘You are so lucky you can read,’ sighed her friend dreamily, in an admiring and disappointed tone at the same time. ‘I wish I could, too. Those books Meester owns look gorgeous. Besides,’ continued the young girl after a brief pause, ‘if I did, my father could arrange a higher marriage for me.’
‘You must not fret about that, Cornelia. You are a beautiful and smart young woman. I am sure you’ll make a good marriage soon and, if you don’t, you still have plenty of things to thank God for. You are strong and intelligent, I wish you could see that.’
Cornelia lowered her head, looking at the floor.
‘It’s just,’ said she as she shook her shoulders gently, ‘I am already one-and-twenty years of age. Soon I’ll be too old for any worthy man to marry me.’
She looked up again with a pout on her lips. She directed her cold blue gaze to her friend, and Margareta looked back into her eyes deeply, displaying a warm smile. Cornelia forced a friendly expression and, consequently, she burst into laughter. Margareta laughed too and the two young ladies melted into a fond, affectionate hug.
‘Everything will work out for you, Cornelia, I’m sure of it. All you have to do is to follow your heart, for it is guided by God.’
*
* *
Back in the harbour of Bruges, the young meester Jan van Eyck walked by the
water, thinking about the new pigments he had acquired that day. Before going back
to his workshop, where his apprentices would surely be waiting for him, he
wanted to take a look at the insignificant, daily-life conversations between
the merchants and art traders in the harbour. The tiniest situation could be
immense prime material for the artist, who got inspiration from real life
personalities in order to make his creations as real as possible and break with
the unrealistic techniques of painting that contemporary society seemed to be
satisfied with. He knew that most painters among his wide circle of
acquaintances did not regard realism as a matter of importance, but he wanted
to portray his inner world as if it were the real world everyone else could
see, hence making it touchable, perceptible or, in other words, able to bring
real feelings to the viewer and ensnare the human senses.
Ten minutes passed by and he started to walk towards his workshop, established at a corner of a narrow, old street in the centre of Bruges, not far from the canals. Having spent a day away from his creative mission, he was impatient to see how the work on the new commission was being taken care of without his presence.
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