Standing up to Pontormo’s Ghost

A poem on restoring the artist's Veronica

I’ve gotten many profound sensations when I worked up there on the scaffoldings in those cold dark places, but never like the time I was alone restoring the vault in Santa Maria Novella’s military quarters in Florence where Pontormo, one of Tuscany’s most impassioned artists, showed his genius through his Veronica. It was quite a while ago, but the memory is so vivid I recently wrote this poem remembering the experience:

His phantom breathed down my neck –

I smelled his pungent manhood,

grimy crusts on his pant thighs 

he was no faint knight – his fortitude

held a madman in artists clothing.

I could see it in the swipes eroding

at his angel’s feet - a brush thick 

as the Fire-eater’s brow – swift 

with a dab of his thumb’s bravado 

he created Veronica’s smallest toe.

I felt the energy of his prime, a storm

conjuring Veronica’s purest form - 

womanhood enticing him, betrothed 

under her spell when holding the cloth

of Christ’s Imprint, or perhaps his own.

I hesitated then to be up there alone

with the rumble of traffic below

stripping us bare of time. I let go 

my brush so as not to touch 

the Veronica he guarded so much.

His stormy emotions blew me down

numb on the cusp of the scaffold board –

my legs dangling as his breath pushed

through his love’s stare and his own glare –

My Veronica is not to be touched.

But his lunatic ghost had no powerful stand

over time’s clutch. I finally stood and began 

my fearful cleaning of centuries’ dust

and history’s grime holding on 

to the last stroke 

of his hard caressing brush.

{This is the only photo taken of me on the job when my future husband snuck up there and took this unauthorized shot. It was a long time ago, but sometimes you just gotta do some unauthorized stuff, ya know? Look at that rickety little stool - not to mention the scaffolding! Restorers today have a bit more luxuries and safety precautions, but the ghosts remain. You just have to feel them out…}

(The poem “Restoring Pontormo’s Veronica”, by Lily Prigioniero, first appeared in the Ekphrastic Review, 2022)