The Portrait of Martina

by Friedrich Wallisch

“I’ll sit tight here now,” said the guest and looked out through the narrow window in the parlour at the blizzard that was making the earth disappear under a flood of white. “I would not have thought to be surprised by a piece of winter after getting through the mountain passes without hardship.”

The guest had turned up in the village at midday in a solid carriage coming down from the Tyrol and had, as the snowstorm worsened, ground to a halt in the outer courtyard of the farmer and master blacksmith Raimund Bacher. The coachman did not trust himself to go any further. You could not see your hand in front of your eye. The Bacher family had taken in the stranger as a guest, as they had his vehicle and entourage, not to make money from this visit but out of humanity and Christian duty. Whenever bad weather struck down from the mountains, anyone in like predicament stood in need of safe shelter, the distinguished traveller in the coach no less than the solitary wanderer.

“In my opinion you shouldn’t worry,” the smith said reassuringly. “You are welcome and valued in my house for as long as you want to stay.” And Mrs Bacher nodded at her husband’s good words as she pushed the stranger’s bowl invitingly towards him across the wide table.

Martina, the Bachers’ daughter, a youngster in the springtime of her life, gazed, as often as propriety allowed her, at the guest. She knew of the world little more than the village and the meadow, the woods and the mountain peaks around her. And if the road on which the courtyard and the smithy stood was often used by peculiar strangers, they all went by in a hurry, merely concerned with making their way through the village. Sometimes of course a carriage or a group of horsemen halted in front of the smithy to have their horses shod. Now and then her father would take in this or that person to give them a meal or to let them shelter from a stormy night in the Bacher home. But the guest who was sitting at their table today, kept here by the snowstorm, seemed quite different. The strangest thing was that Martina kept thinking he looked like someone she had known from childhood and had enormous respect for although she could remember no-one else like him.

The look from his blue eyes had the sharpness of a sword and, at the same time, the mildness of the picture of a saint. His face, tanned by a southern sun, was slender and framed by a short and soft beard. From a high, clear brow his dark blond locks fell down to his shoulders and softly glided with each movement of his head along the fur-trimmed collar of his jacket. Martina had never seen hands that resembled those of their guest. They were not coarse like those of the men that she knew, but neither were they soft, young female hands. Whenever they played with the breadcrumbs on the table these tender and yet strong hands looked to be living beings that could think and act for themselves.

The guest stayed with the Bachers for a day and then another day. He told them many a wonderful tale of foreign towns and countries, chiefly the exceedingly remarkable town of Venice where the houses all stood in the sea so that whoever there wanted to walk, to go to a wedding or visit a grave, had to make use of small boats.

When, on the third day, the snowstorm stopped and the street had for a long time now lain under the soft white deluge, the guest took pencils and blank sheets of paper from a small chest and started with cursory strokes to draw. He drew little pictures of the dining table with bowls and jugs on it, later venturing to make likenesses of living beings. First of all he drew the cat, sniffing with its dainty nose at a saucer, then the smith’s small children creeping through the room clumsily. Later he drew Mrs Bacher standing in front of the oven. There was much astonishment and laughter as the image of the housewife, without her knowledge, came to life on the paper.

“Good Lord, I’ve never seen anything like this!” said the smith. “It’s almost like witchcraft the way that you’ve captured my wife on paper like that!” One day succeeded another so quickly as they viewed the extraordinary art of this stranger that the snowed-up family lost all track of time. Martina only had eyes and ears for him. While her parents went about their everyday work as best they could in the bad weather, she was pleased to sit there with their guest. Although he was certainly not as old as her father, he had become like a fatherly friend to her. She did not know herself how it came about that she confided in him all the secrets of her young life, more even than she could have admitted to her own biological father.

And she also told him about Meinrad. He had grown up with her here in the village and had then worked for her father as an apprentice. Between her and Meinrad it had been agreed that he would one day stay there as a permanent fixture as her husband and later as a master blacksmith. One day a traveller came who praised Meinrad’s artistry and had him believe that he had not been born to just become a village blacksmith. He should put his ability to nobler uses and the making of objects of greater worth.

When the traveller passed some time later again through the village, her father’s apprentice let himself be persuaded to go with him. And since then Meinrad had lived in Landshut as a metal worker and caster for priests and nobles and had almost grown into a gentleman himself. Martina knew all about this, for he had come back last spring for a short time to visit his mother and had very nearly changed out of all recognition.

“Do you think, my child, that he’s forgotten all about you and no longer sets store by your promise to marry him?” asked the guest.

“I don’t really know,” replied Martina. “I don’t think he can forget me completely. But I’m too slight and too poor to figure in his big plans.” The guest’s bright firm gaze focused on the hurt look in her eyes. “I know of no-one to whom you’d be accounted slight, Martina.”

Finally, she thought she knew who the stranger resembled, someone who looked like no-one else she had ever seen, and yet had always been familiar with. Did he not look like the godhead himself, with his eyes that embraced the world in love, with his short beard and with slender well-meaning hands that took to themselves the world’s suffering and offered themselves to the nails of the cross? She could never ever have brought herself to express that out loud. Just the very thought of it seemed to her monstrous. How could one dare to recognize one’s heavenly father in a being of flesh and blood? And yet, had not God been made Man and dwelt among us?

The next day began with warm sunshine so that the road was already before midday clear and passable. Only the guest made no preparations to continue his journey.

“Should you be willing to have me here a bit longer,” he said to his host, “I’d gladly stay under your roof for a few sunny days after all this gloomy snow. I’ve already drawn your wife and children, your cat and your room. Now I want to make a picture of your eldest daughter, Martina.”

But now it was a different matter from quick black sketches on white paper. The guest had his servant set everything up near the door to the hall where the light was at its brightest and yet not too dazzling. A wooden easel was placed here with a canvas propped up on it and next to it a stool on which lay a colourful palette and brushes. And Martina had to sit still for hours at a stretch while the guest worked diligently. Children and grown-ups came from the village and wondered at the stranger’s unfathomable doings. After four days the picture was finished.

Although they had all been witnesses to how the brushstrokes and dashes of colour had gradually been applied and taken shape, it now seemed to all of them an absolute miracle that the Bachers’ daughter had the appearance of an angel and yet at the same time looked down at them, totally true to life, from her picture with a smile that was proud and a trifle sad. Finally, when everything was done and ready, the stranger signed the picture in the top left-hand corner, putting there with fine white brushstrokes a broad A and beneath it a small D.

“You mustn’t be angry with me,” he said as he turned to Martina’s parents, “if I take your daughter with me now. The real one will of course stay with you. I only mean to take her picture with me. If you want to keep the sheets of paper on which I have drawn the members of your household and your utensils, you may have them right gladly. But you must now say goodbye to Martina’s portrait as you must to me.”

“I agree wholeheartedly to his taking that thing with him,” said the smith to his wife on the quiet. “What would we do with it? I’d always have the uncanny feeling of having Martina alive twice over in the house. And she might end up giving herself airs with us if she had to see the thing day in day out.”

The stranger gave to the Bachers in parting a large bolt of Venetian cloth and a box inlaid with precious stones so that they could look back on his visit with real pleasure.

Before he climbed into his coach, he took Martina to one side and whispered to her: “I’m not taking your picture for myself. My journey will take me through Landshut, and there I know someone who, God willing, will be most pleased to have Martina with him.”

She really did not know what she ought to say to that, and he had already got into the carriage uttering many words of thanks to the hospitable Bachers. The rested horses, now looking forward to being on the move again, quickly broke into a trot.

* * *

One morning in the workshop of the metal worker Meinrad in Landshut, a gentleman appeared in a fur-lined travelling robe and surveyed in friendly fashion the works of the young master. There were tumblers, goblets and chalices, crosses, shrines for relics, bowls and ornamental covers for books, all wrought artistically out of silver filigree, many gilded and adorned with precious stones and gold leaf.

The stranger praised the master and his handiwork. He made no secret however of the fact that, though there was every hope of success for Meinrad’s art, it had not yet reached full maturity. He was of the opinion that it must first find a way out of stiffness and aloofness to a joyful freedom. The young craftsman thought deeply on this well-meant judgment. He was well aware of just how right his distinguished and knowledgeable visitor was to express some reservations.

After many a lively exchange of words, the visitor finally decided to purchase a handsome tumbler tastefully adorned with flowers and foliage. “I don’t have a lot of spare cash on me,” he said, which Meinrad found rather disappointing. “Perhaps you will take in exchange for the tumbler a painting.” He called to his servant from the hallway, and the servant brought into the workshop an object carefully wrapped in cloths.

When the stranger removed the cloths, Meinrad was so taken aback that he could hardly contain himself: it was a picture of Martina. It was a picture so splendid, so impalpably lively and beautiful, such as Meinrad had never seen before, neither in churches nor in the castles of his well-heeled clients.

“It seems to me that you have delved too deeply in your noble artefacts into the strict rules governing their manufacture, master,” said the guest somewhat smugly. “It will do you good if you once again consider for a moment that the treasures and things of great worth in this world are not just made of silver and gold.”

“How do you come to have this picture, sir?” Meinrad asked laboriously.

The stranger shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, by not much more than a twist of fate. I spent a few days snowed in in a Tyrolean village at the foot of the Wetterstein and amused myself there by painting the portrait of a blacksmith’s pretty daughter. Do you want to have this picture? I’ll give it you gladly for the tumbler.”

Meinrad, who had noticed the painter’s signature A D in a corner of the picture, now knew that the great artist Albrecht Dürer stood before him. Filled with the happiness of coming by so precious a possession and at the same time intrigued by the serendipitous stroke of luck that had brought him a picture of Martina, he gripped Dürer’s hand and stammered his thanks.

“It’s a fair trade,” insisted Dürer. “I should never have offered it otherwise. Now I no longer need to drag that picture round with me, and I have acquired, in a cash-free transaction, this tumbler I had need of.”

And so it came about that, from that day forward, the picture of Martina hung in Meinrad’s workshop. He was not a little proud to possess a work by Dürer and to be able to show it to his friends and clients.

But when he was alone with the picture, he felt clearly enough that the girl that the great master had magically transformed along with her home meant more to him than the work of art itself. The wall of the workshop on which the picture hung seemed to have been embellished by a window. And from this window Martina looked down at Meinrad. Her eyes spoke to him, her mouth smiled at him, her hands sought his.

He was never alone with himself. Martina helped him with his work. Martina cheered him up on his days off and eves of holy days. Martina told him of her homeland, which was also his homeland.

“You cannot live forever for only your work and your ambitious desires,” said the picture. “Silver and gold are cold and lifeless. The days go by and with them our youth, Meinrad. It isn’t true that work alone can fill your whole existence. The gentlemen who praise you and give you money for your chalices and crosses and bowls are strangers to you; they come and go, they take your works away and make use of them: they pray in front of the crosses, they dine from the bowls, they drink from the goblets. And your heart lacks nourishment, Meinrad.”

In these and similar words, the picture spoke to him. The young master now understood that he had been mad and deceived himself when he had thought his love for Martina was weaker than his ambition. Should he perhaps marry the daughter of an elegant town dweller to sell short his art for an appearance of happiness? Would his work not then dry up as if under a curse? Only with the blessing of a joyful heart could his artistic creativity grow to maturity. And who did he want to work and create for if not for Martina? Was she not worthy to make sense of and indwell the life of a master and even such a great one as he himself could one day be?

More than back when he had been in the village Bacher’s apprentice, he was filled by the desire to win Martina’s undying love. How had he ever believed that he could live without her? He stood as in a fever at his work table, transfixed by his beloved’s melancholy smile.

And when the picture’s spell had so fully possessed him that his hand was no longer capable of a coolly delivered hammer blow, he locked up his workshop even though he knew that some of his wealthy patrons would want to visit him that day, rushed out down the street, hired the first best horse he saw and rode home to the village, to Martina.

When he travelled back three weeks later to Landshut accompanied by his young wife, he had known for a long time already that this had not been due to chance, but to goodness of heart on the part of the great Nuremberg artist who had brought to his home her picture. And now he also understood that genuine art cannot live and thrive without the warmth of a human heart.

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