Chapter Text
⧫ Ars Longa, Vita Brevis ⧫
“The aim of art is to represent the outward appearance of things,
but their inward significance ”
― Aristotle
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AUGUST 29th, 1496 CE
20 x 6 meters.
His magnum opus would be the grandest thing known to man, whether they be living or dead, vampiric or mortal. Even if it took him a thousand years, Caius would gladly toil away before the muses, brushes and chisels in their hands as they shaped him and his work. Let them be his torment now that all was said and done, shadows banished to the corners of the Palazzo and beyond. Though he had no true need for it he exhaled, fumes from the fresh pigments in, immortal chill out.
Besides him Elpis gnawed at her newest toy, freshly ripped from a calf earlier in the morning—the scrape of her canines against marrow and bone comforting in a twisted sense. A gentle nip at the nape of his neck nearly had him crumbling, hand shaking as he ground up the carmine.
No.
The wolves only snarled at him through paper and ink.
And so he continued on, the only sound filling the studio that of the mortar and pestle as he nearly broke the small bowl—the fourteenth this month. The morning had been spent grinding the pigments, thirty of them one after another as he measured every ingredient with fine precision. It was the one day of the year he spent by his lonesome self, hidden away in the workshop he had expanded three times already. Hundreds of paintings had passed through here, every single one of them a perfect little window into the lives he had lived.
Teeth nipped at him again, but this time it was Elpis.
Canvas or panel? While the former had become better in quality, could it truly outlast something as solid as wood. Something he could keep from rotting? Could he make this last?
Afton had procured the most beautiful of malachites, perfect for this particular piece. The luster would blend well with the trees, the opaque quality of the oils only possible through his own labour. While the mortals needed sleep, he could work night and day to perfect his blend—no mortal body to consider when the mixtures grew toxic.
Linseed or walnut oil?
His hands or blades?
So many choices.
One thing was certain however; he would use the brushes made from The Children of the Moon. Their bones would keep his hands steady, their fur perfect for this particular kind of detail work. Now Caius inhaled, and with it came the all too familiar scent of his wife in the air— the woman had slipped inside while he was mentally preparing himself.
“Do you see the shadows?”
Caius smirked.
“Only the ones Elpis cast when she tires of sitting still at my side.”
He felt Athenodora move about the room, his focus on the next pigment as he continued the ritual of preparing his paints. A fresh batch of saffron had arrived in Venice the week prior, and now he was mixing it with linseed oil and allowing it to suspend. Arms encircled his neck, and Caius allowed a moment of quiet to befall the two of them, both looking to the piece of art hung right above his work station. An unfinished portrait, for he did not know what her visage would have been in adulthood—as beautiful as her mother had been he imagined. Even so, the faceless woman sat prim and perfect in her frame, staring back at them even without eyes.
“… Your work should be hung in the Palazzo’s of Tuscany—”
“Like the ones of the so-called visionary working in Santa Maria?”
“Are you jealous, husband?”
A soft snort escaped him, enough of an answer in itself. “... Of a man commissioned to build the grandest equine statue in the world?” he questioned in return, sounding more amused than he had been in years, decades even. Then Elpis raised her head on to his lap, on instinct his hand moved to the top of her head—fingers gently scratching behind her right ear.
“Aro let one of his be auctioned, that Machiavelli purchased it—“
“ No. ”
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Ars Longa, Vita Brevis — Latin for “Skillfulness takes time and life is short”. Often mistaken as “Art lasts forever, while life is short”. A translated aphorism from Greek, attributed to Hippocrates, a physician and philosopher.