The Maestro

The Maestro
Part 1
for Leonardo Davinci

fiction
edward w pritchard

The Artist hurried, He was late, late because he was unorganized, ofter overslept, although he hadn't slept well in a long time. The man never knew quite where he was, seemed frantic at times, ungraceful, and out of step. The man hurried down the hall from his bedroom dressing as he walked.

His customers would be upset. Hopefully he wouldn't lose the commission.

With a long sigh, later he entered the Church and only the King who was admiring the picture smiled at him. The others, to a man, also surrounding the picture, another masterpiece, The Last Supper, frowned judgmentally at his tardiness. As he walked up he could hear the priests arguing over the faces of saints in the picture and worrying about new painting technique he had used.

end part 1


part 2


The Maestro
for Leonardo Da Vinci
Part 2
Business had Been a little Slow

fiction
edward w pritchard

The man walked purposefully through the early morning streets. He would have to hurry to get to the Church and return to his work at the normal opening time.

He owned his own business, not a proposing one, he only made wagon wheels, axles and grease. His fellow townspeople usually called him the grease maker. It was a good living but a hard one for the man's heart was not always in his work.

The man's mind drifted to the argument with his wife earlier this morning. She was upset, justifiably so, because he had impulsively paid the lunch tab for the famous painter, who by chance, had happened to be at the tavern where the man stopped at noon yesterday for a glass of wine. He stopped , yesterday, because he felt strangely, and he had surprised himself by paying the bill for the painter and his two friends the painter was with. The bill was nearly a month's pay for the man. His generous impulse, was expensive for him, because the painter was a vegetarian and often ate imported fruits and vegetables and always the finest wines.

Still as the man entered the Church, he knew he wasn't sorry for what he had done, paying the lunch bill, even though he faced his wife's wraith for a long while, and he knew such an extravagance was out of character for him.

Entering the vestibule, he stared at the picture of Christ and the disciples, The Last supper, and smiled at Saint yyy. who had his hands up as if to stay --stop--.

That saint with his hands up in Leonardo Da Vinci, the maestro's, picture was the reason the grease maker had acted out of character and picked up the famous eccentric painter's lunch tab. The maestro had used the grease maker and his grand daughter as models for two of the saints in his picture.

Last year while taking his beloved, sick grand-daughter to the Doctor, the grease maker had by chance met the famous painter, the Maestro on the street, who sought to comfort the sad sick little girl, and to cheer her had drawn two butterfly's one looking like herself and the other like the grease maker, as the artist kindly called him. The skill of the painter drawing with a burnt stick on the town wall was astonishing.
Feeling sulky, the little girl had thrown up her hands to the painter and yelled stop to keep him from capturing her likeness that day with a stick in the street.

The impression of the Maestro creating had stuck in the man's mind and like many others in Milan he was overwhelmed by the divine talent in someone he knew as human all too human. For the maestro had once honored the grease maker by asking him for advice on maintaining a budget; for the painter had explained he never seemed to have enough money to pay his bills and expenses each month.

As the grease maker now, in the Church looked at the partially finished Last Supper, he smiled at the remarkable likeness of the little grand-daughters eyes.
The painter had used the granddaughter as the face of saint yyy and used the grease maker sad eyes as the face of saint xxx. Of course he hadn't asked them, and wealthy patrons often paid a partial fortune to have their faces in the Maestro's paintings especially as a Saint. It was the kind of secret joke the painter was known for and why he was always in trouble with his patrons.

Still, the grease maker knew he shouldn't have paid the tavern bill for the painter yesterday, for business had been a little slow, and looked to remain so for a while, at least according to certain business men in Milan who know of such things.

end part 2