The Cloisters(10)
We had entered a room with a glass case full of enamel miniatures. Shiny renderings of Jonah being swallowed by the whale, Eve biting into an apple so red it glistened. These little masterpieces, over eight hundred years old.
Rachel waved at the guard, who was moving to his next station. “When does Matteo’s summer camp start, Louis?” she called after him.
He stopped shy of his post. “Next week. I think he’s driving his mother insane. Thank you again for watching him last Saturday.”
Rachel waved him off. “We just walked around the park. Spent a lot of time with the boats.”
I tried to imagine Rachel babysitting but couldn’t.
“He loves those boats,” said Louis.
“So do I,” said Rachel. “Louis, by the way, this is Ann. She’s going to be here through the summer. Louis is the head of security.”
Louis walked toward us and extended a hand. “Just filling in today in the galleries.”
I shook it and said hello.
“We have one more stop,” Rachel said, wrapping a hand around my wrist and pulling me away from Louis.
As soon as we were out of the room, she whispered in my ear: “Louis’s son was such a shit. I only agreed to do it because he covers for me with Moira when I’m late, or when my smoking accidentally sets off the fire alarm.”
We moved through another set of galleries, already full of visitors who were drinking in the cool, dark interiors where depictions of magical beasts mixed with the severed fingers of saints. I was drawn to these objects, to their strangeness. I stopped in front of a reliquary of Saint Sebastian, a statue of his torso painted cream and red, his sides shot through with arrows. In a little glass box in the center of the statue, his wrist bone—or someone’s wrist bone—was visible.
Rachel had stopped at a glass case full of individually painted tarot cards; one depicted a skeleton on horseback, decorated with gold chains—Death. Another showed a plump, winged child—a putto—carrying the sun above his head, its gold rays cutting across the card. The deck was incomplete, but the wall label next to it indicated they were from the late fifteenth century. And although they were unknown to me, their imagery was familiar—a set of symbols that had haunted the fringes of my research over the years. Images I had always been curious about but never had the time or resources to pursue.
“I’ve been bouncing between The Cloisters, the Morgan Library, and the Beinecke for years now,” Rachel said, “studying the history of tarot. So, like you, I’m not strictly a medievalist. After all, the history of tarot doesn’t really begin until the early Renaissance.” She didn’t bother to look at me before continuing. “The Cloisters makes an effort to elevate works of art like this. Down at the Met, it’s all big paintings and big names. But to work in anonymity and produce something this exquisite”—she closed her eyes for a moment—“is real artistry.”
It struck me as romantic, the way she talked about the cards, as if squares of painted vellum were simply dormant, waiting for us to shake them awake. When she opened her eyes, I quickly looked away, hoping she wouldn’t notice I had been staring.
“This is what Patrick needs help with,” she said, glancing at the tarot cards. “We’re preparing an exhibition on divination. On the techniques and artworks that were used to tell the future.”
I looked down at the Queen of Staves. Clothed in deep navy, her bodice dotted with gold-leaf stars, she sat upon a throne, a knobby stick raised in her hand. I ventured, “It was a period when everyone was fascinated with the idea of fate.”
“Yes. Exactly. Was your fate already written? Was it predestined? Or, could you alter its course?”
“And, did you have the free will to do so?”
“Right. The ancient Romans were so afraid of the power of fate that they worshiped the goddess Fortuna. Fortuna—fate, fortune—was the center of civic, private, and religious life. Pliny always said, ‘Fortune is the only God whom everyone invokes.’ The Renaissance never got free from that obsession, either.”
“Because,” I said, “in a period of constant conflict, knowing the future, or believing that you could, was wildly powerful.”
“That belief can be a burden, too,” said Rachel, so softly I almost didn’t catch it. Then she moved away from the glass case and looked over her shoulder at me. “You coming?”
CHAPTER FOUR
During that first week at The Cloisters, filled as it was with the gentle patter of afternoon rains, the scent of wet stone and blooming herbs, Patrick made it clear how much would be expected of us, of me. His exhibition was only in its planning stages, which meant that the bulk of research—the foundational material that Patrick required to identify artworks and request loans—fell to us. We had only through August to assemble it all, a heavy ask I was eager to prove I could answer. And while Patrick was firm about deadlines, he was patient in the way he introduced me to the material, to the place itself.
“These are the lists you’ll be working with,” he said, setting down a sheaf of papers and pulling a chair close to mine at the library table where we worked. “Rachel, of course, already has copies.”
I leafed through them. They contained divination practices known in the ancient world, everything from cleromancy, or the casting of lots, to pyromancy. Some terms on the list, like augury, I only knew as a word used to describe something that portended or foreshadowed. I would learn, however, that the original definition of augury was the practice of using bird formations—flocks and migrations—to tell the future. There were lists of documents and authors that needed to be pulled from the library and scoured for mentions of divination, as well as a separate section that listed artworks Patrick was considering for the show. I noted several of the works were tarot cards.