(blogging live from train to Ravenna)

Remember the Rod Stewart song? Some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the pain... It could have been written for my unfortunate painter. The guy was possibly unlucky in life (or rather death), almost unknown in art, and even his fans can't go and pay tribute to him as he'd deserve!

The plan was flawless. I had to meet my cousin in Bologna, so he'd take me to Riccione where I was to work for a week with a lady whose book I'm editing. On the way there were 3 Avanzi sites beckoning to me: the National Gallery in Bologna with the Mezzaratta frescoes, the castle of Montefiore Conca near Riccione, and San Giovanni in, of course, Ravenna. In all the times I've been to Ravenna, I've always known - and forgotten - there was (maybe) an Avanzi fresco there. What can I say, a superior power was mystifying me. This time I would force myself to go FIRST to see Iacopo, and THEN pay homage to the king.

It all started to go pear-shaped in Bologna. The Mezzaratta room was roped off. I stood at the entrance like a dog outside a mall, waiting for its owner and whining. I think I made out from a distance Iacopo's sombre hues among the other painters' scenes. Small blessings. Downstairs I chatted with the girl at the bookshop.

"They restored the frescoes, but they are redoing the lighting of the room," she said.

"Well, that's nice, when will it be ready?"

"Who knows, there's no money."

*sigh* "Do you have books about Mezzaratta?"

"Alas no. There was a great one by a leading expert, but they are not sending it."

And it's not the same one that Amazon failed to locate for me. 'Nuff said.

There WAS an incredible stroke of Avanzi luck (is that an oxymoron?) in Bologna. After touring the whole city's bookshops, I found a small one just off the station, of course. They had a nice (and discounted) book about Vitale, one of Avanzi's masters.

I can be shy, sometimes. "Do you have something else on Vitale?"

"No, sorry."

"Oh. And nothing about Iacopo Avanzi, of course."

"Sure, I'll go fetch it."

*Aelfie stares*

It was THE book about Avanzi, by Benati. Chock-full of data and original documents - and upholding the theories I'm basing my novel on. I think I've been clutching it to my chest for all the trip.

Then I stretched my luck. "Altichiero?"

"No, sorry."

"Ravenna?"

"Nope."

This last was unbelievable, in the middle of Emilia-Romagna, but it just highlighted the wild luck I had in finding the Avanzi book.

Then I got to Riccione, started working and planned a visit to Montefiore. My boss (a very nice one, and a friend) was delightedly ready to take me there. Then a friend called to say that there were works at the castle, and entrance might be forbidden. There go my Avanzi frescoes. Hopefully they are restoring them. Well, it would be nice to see the castle from outside, since I plan to set a scene of the novel there.

Phone call to the Montefiore municipality.

"I fear I don't have good news. The scaffolding is also on the outside. So you wouldn't be able to take pictures either."

We went to lunch by the seaside. Disappointment doesn't last much in Romagna, in front of a salmon carpaccio.

Also, my friend was fascinated by A&A's tale. She's such a cool person that she could concretely help to get the novel published, if I got off my butt and finished it. For some reason she was colder towards Theodoric. Then again, as to notoriety, even neglected Theodoric is Paris Hilton compared to Iacopo Avanzi. He can stand having only our King Theodoric and myself as cheerleaders for a while longer.

It got a little surreal. "A friend's wife is a medium. She could contact Iacopo and discover how he died."

What can you answer to this?

"Uh, I think I'd rather not know. My novel is a hypothesis, the truth might demolish it."

"Nooo, why, you might discover you're right!"

Uh.

You know, I might even do it. Then again, there was a voice inside my mind whispering: "You whelp, if you ask about some sissy painter and not about me, it's off with your head."

She really got into the story, even too much. We were discussing it, and she said: "So they are the same person?"

"GURGLE?"

"The same person as you, I mean."

"Oh yeah, NOW I get your meaning." She's coming to understand that, while always upholding historical truth, most of my characters are facets of myself. Still, for a moment I thought she had yet another whacky theory about A&A.

I showed her a wallet-sized enlargement of the alleged self-portrait of Altichiero at the far right of the "Death of St. Lucy" in Padua. She took one long look at him and exclaimed: "Why, it's Edward Norton!" Now yes, I see the uncanny resemblance, and he's tall and thin, and I've always liked him, a great actor and a cool guy. (Quote: "I'm not interested in making movies for everybody. I like making movies for myself and my friends and people with my sensibility." I wish I was just as at peace with what I do as he is.) "The 25th Hour" stunned me, and he's going to be a great Bruce Banner, a favourite character of mine. I feel he would be way too moody as Altichiero, though he would make a decent Avanzi; yet it was funny to see my friend talk about Edward Norton movies while unconsciously waving the Altichiero portrait at me as though it was his picture. The scary thing is she'd be perfectly able to pick up the phone and give him a call. Oh my, what a wide world it would be, if I only managed to step into it. Good inspiration for drawings, though.

Now (still writing in real time – of course I'll post later from home) I'm approaching Ravenna. According to the Benati book, the last frescoes of my Avanzi tour might not even be his. Oookaaay. Oh well, it has been a nice trip. And Ravenna is a thrilling certainty. But if I discover my usual haunts are closed or scaffolded too, I might SCREAM.

Post Scriptum (written while sitting in front of the Mausoleum's closed gate). I saw the frescoes and they are very ruined and badly restored, and at first sight it doesn't look like Iacopo's hand, but what do I know. They need a lot of work before something can be said about their paternity. As for the rest... Did I scream? You'll know when you read the report I'll write on the train to Milan... if I catch it.

No ugly stuff today, quite the contrary: dazzling beauty. Pity that I can't share much because there's not much on the Net. I've already introduced here my novel about Italian Mediaeval painters Altichiero and Iacopo Avanzi. They have been nagging me for close to 13 years and now they want me to finish their novel, of course while I am writing ANOTHER novel, or it isn't fun enough. So now I have to juggle horses and dragons and kings and walls and I thought that dividing the journals could help. Yay, TWO literary journals totally impossible to understand for those who are not acquainted with my novels! This journal is my personal birthday present to myself; I recycled "The Words of Wyrd" (I'm good these days, I whine in the first person) and stuck those posts somewhere in 2005 in the "Heart" journal. I hope this gets me unstuck in other ways, so I'll get back to scribey stuff.

The Dragon is a massive work in progress, what with all the Ravenna stuff growing around it, and the continuing storyline even after the end of the novel itself, as I chart Aelfwine's life at the court. The Horse wants to be finished. A sort of closure. It's a novel about beauty and sorrow, detailing the last eight years of Iacopo's life. This is not a spoiler - well, it is, but there's no way I can tiptoe around this: yes, Iacopo dies in the end, he dies young of an incurable disease, and, what's worse, he knows it from the beginning. And he tells nobody. (I have to find a believable way for this to happen in a Mediaeval setting when medical knowledge was not very advanced.)

It sounds like a novel that nobody would want to touch with a barge pole. Actually, it's a story of the things that help Iacopo overcome this horror: love, friendship, beauty. And of the richness that he leaves behind in the hearts of those who knew him. I'm even toying with the idea of actually letting the reader know in the prologue (set a few years in the future) that Iacopo is long dead, so that the issue in the novel won't be to discover what his problem is, but to appreciate his life as it is.

I wonder whether I'm trying to say goodbye to the sad and desperate part of me by accepting that it gave me a lot of sorrow but it also was indeed a beloved and beautiful part of me. I don't have many other explanations for this story suddenly coming to the fore beside the complicated, political and after all optimistic Dragon. Aelfwine is me, contradictory, but alive and growing. Iacopo is me with my fears, wanting only to be left alone with lots of walls for his horses. I'm also thinking of tweaking the final scene. As it is now, Altichiero reflects that he has been incomplete after Iacopo's death. I'd like to emphasize that Iacopo became a part of him, making him complete in a different way. Even if his last works miss Iacopo's hand, their art will be forever fused together.

This is tough and requires a whole lot of research, even harder and different from the Dragon. So little is known about these painters, and so much has been said. If I manage to be ambiguous with the Dragon, because after all I describe a young Theodoric, far from the tragedies of the end of his reign, and so I can somehow refrain from passing judgement, here I must take a stand among all the critics who commented Altichiero and Avanzi's art. I hint at the fact that Altichiero considers Iacopo as better than he is; I choose to accept the theory that Iacopo died while painting the Lupi Chapel; I most certainly don't see them ultimately at odds as some theories go. But the very fact that there are so many hypotheses about them, who was the best, who was the most important in the workshop, who was whose master, who died when and why, who painted what (at least today there seems to be agreement on this). But that's just the point of it all: you cannot have one without the other... and that's exactly what my Iacopo wanted as a memorial.

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