Baroque

Warnings: Mentions of blood, Catholic imagery, bad language, slight Spain/underage Romano (for the context of the story).

Thanks go to my betas Redundant Goddess and inkpixel.

Italia Romano had never been a great a painter as his little brother, but he had never picked up his tools as often as he to try and improve himself. There was always something else bothering him, being always kicked around and fought over by others and working in foreign houses until he came to work for that bastard Spain.

Whenever he put a fresh brush to a hastily primed canvas his hand would only guide him, painting the styles and images of things he never wanted to understand; the art of his conquerors. It usually lead to many broken paintbrushes and smashed paint boxes.

But lately his blood was boiling, not with the usual annoyance but something that twisted the centuries of passion into something that needed to come to the surface. He and Venechiano never had the Latin bloodlust of their grandfather, and despite all the nations fighting over his land he just wanted to kick them out so he could live in peace. But now, he almost wanted to cut his hands so he could decorate paper with the images in his mind with the very best vermillion.

On the way to mass he would become almost hypnotised with the churches. They seemed too forced and sterile, none of the blood or passion of the Holy Books or their Orders, complexions of the love of God almost suffocated underneath the dull bright hues and placid stone. He almost could see them change in his mind's eye; buildings warping and remoulding into dramatic twists and spires, gold statues spinning into fine gold arrows ready to pierce with the love of God, reds only for the glistening sacred heart...It was ridiculous, one day he had become overcome and swooned, and Spain had worried over him like a nursemaid before they left the carriage. He was so angry and ashamed he prayed for the salvation of his soul in mass, surely such darkness would never belong in the house of light.

Sometimes he found himself humming notes in a strange way, and his fingers would twitch like that dammed fop Austria when he was playing on his precious clavichord or harpsichord. Like that finger twitches from one of his old diseases, but this time the clumsy twitches matched the impossible notes in his head. Maybe the disease was back, and he was going mad with it.

Yet the torment never ceased! Sometimes he would wake up with half-formed images and notes that haunted him until he found a piece of parchment and scribbled profane yet sacred images, and after his mind quieted he still drew until all the pages he grabbed were full. The images were all darkly shaded, some depicting religion, others the torment of the human mind, and some of bodies plump and flushed with pleasure and passion, all ripe with passion and love for the subject. It made no sense to him, and he always destroyed them when he was finished.

One late afternoon; when the sun's slow golden descent into the evening left long dark cool shadows in Spain's house, that gave relief from the golden heat that the sun had left on bright walls exposed the day, Romano was scribbling his blasphemous images in a small dark room when Spain happened upon him. Romano had not heard him, too deep in the blood fever- tearing off a head—no, cutting? Whatever it was, the idea wasn't fully formed, maybe the creator hadn't thought about it seriously or was too young-to realise someone was approaching let alone entering the obscure room in the great house until Spain looked over his shoulder and commented softly, "Beautiful."

He jumped at the sudden sound and his quill snapped as his hand jolted across the sheet. He jumped up and slapped the Spaniard across the face, leaving a black streak on his cheek from Romano's now ink-splattered hand.

"You son of a bitch, look at what you've done!"

"I'm sorry Lovi, but I had no idea you could draw so well." Spain picked up a piece of paper that had fallen and admired it "so lively," he murmured.

"I can't draw," Romano bent down to snatch up the other pieces of paper on the floor before ripping the last piece away from the older nation "I'm not as good as that stupid Venechiano, I'm not that good at anything." He began to screw up the paper to throw in the kitchen fires later, but Spain's larger, darker hands covered his, stilling his task.

"Don't be so hard on yourself, your little brother's work is pretty but yours is just different, more alive."

Romano's eyes were resolutely focused on the half-twisted parchment on his hands. He would have to get more soon, but supplies were so expensive. Eventually, he muttered "Can ...give me some money you fucker, I'm broke."

"What for?"

"Paper, inks, paints and oils...brushes, linen and some canvas things."

"Ah Lovi," Spain released his hands to bring Romano's face up to meet his "You want to paint, how cute!"

"Shut up," he muttered.

"But I must ask for a kiss for the money."

"What? Why?"

"I know what you're going to do when you're done with your work, so I only want something to keep in return."

Normally Romano would have hit him again and stormed out, but his fingers had begun to twitch again and he knew he would have another sleepless night without doing whatever he needed to do. Blushing but grumbling, he stood on his tiptoes slightly and leant forward to kiss Spain on the cheek, but the elder turned his head and caught him on the mouth. Romano pulled away quickly and wiped his mouth quickly to show his disgust, but the coppery taste of Spain's mouth stayed on his lips long after he gave him the coins and he had run into town to buy the supplies before the shop closed.

.

In the small hours of the next day, Romano left his bed just as the sun was rising and went straight to his workroom without eating changing out of his nightshirt. Spain said he could use one of the bright and airy unused rooms, so he missed dinner last night clearing the room assembling and priming several canvasses far into the night.

In the creeping dawn light, he rolled back his sleeves and got to work. He sat on the floor by one of the windows and opened his fresh sketchbook, and picked up a charcoal from a tin of new sticks. By noon he was on his third stick and the book was half full before he had an idea of what needed to be done.

It was almost second nature to mix the pigments with just the right amounts of cold and boiled linseed oil like how Venechiano had showed him years ago. When he nearly scalded himself on the hot safflower oil as he was taking the pot from the kitchen to the room, he swore and spat, but carried on pouring the oil in the smaller jars already full of the coloured clay and minerals. He almost forgot to add the beeswax, but managed to melt enough to mix in with the warm paints just in time to prevent them darkening too much.

By dusk, the canvas was fully sketched and half shaded, the models a composite of the people he had seen in Spain's house and on the streets; fleshy, scarred and tanned, blood in their cheeks. When a servant girl brought him a meal when he realised it was now too dark to draw without light. He asked her to bring him some candles, and while she was gone he devoured the chicken and bread with grubby fingers and left streaks of grease and charcoal on the wineglass. When she returned he was done and wiping his hands on his now ruined nightshirt. As he was lighting the candles he had placed by the canvas, the girl, a pale little blonde thing, lingered by the door until the candlelight showed the sketched work, at which point he heard her gasp and leave the room. Romano would have wondered if that meant whether she loved or despised his work, but he was already preoccupied of thinking of how to make tendons and muscles stand out on a fleshier and older figure.

The first stroke of paint on the whitened canvas was like a benediction, the relief of almost feeling the Holy Father blessing his work cleansing his agony like an icy cold cloth pressed to a feverish forehead. But his fever to work stayed, and he agonised over every minute of the work, sometimes using a knife to scrape away hours of work to slop onto the floor like garbage to start afresh, it had to be perfect. Eventually he had finished the detail, then moved onto the next canvas, sketching and painting until he was done, and repeating the processes with the last two, smaller canvases. Finally, he rested his finer, nearly bald brushes into a large jar of linseed-safflower oil to clean, and picked up hogs bristle brushes and the pots of darker hues of red and browns; the colours for his backgrounds. The brushes gave broad strokes but Romano still worked with care; the rest of the canvas would not dry for at least another day. He found that the darker backgrounds made with layering and shading made the subjects stand boldly from the canvas; the fruits swollen and glistening, bodies full of life, cloths rippled boldly in the wind, even the waxy pallor of the corpse seemed livelier than the images he had seen at church. They were almost bloody in their beauty.

When Romano lifted his head from the last canvas and realised he was finished, the sun was shining outside and he was not alone. He turned, and Spain was looking at one of the canvasses as if he believed he could step into them, reach through and run his hands through the cloth or the Saint's hair.

"I like them, no, I really love them Lovi," Spain's eyes were lingering on the blood on the sheets and the glint of the blood-splattered crucifix, a strange eager smile on his face "What do they mean?"

South Italy gave an aggressive half shrug, the fever was cooling and now he was beginning to feel the burning soreness of his hands and shoulders, the tug of his empty stomach and the exhaustion of two nights without rest. He just wanted to strip off his ruby splattered nightshirt and bathe.

"I don't know, something new." He gave it a last look at the pieces before casually tearing down the sketches and canvases and throwing them in the fireplace.

A nation cannot create, they can only inspire their people, so Romano could only think that something new was coming.

Something that was his.

Notes: I wanted to be an artist long before discovering writing. On holidays I took many pictures of pictures and architecture and few of my family, and I still have a bedroom full of art and photography in my walls and in books. Baroque to me is quite special because it seemed to be the first kind of art movement in Western art history that really made paintings seem alive, as it known for realistic models, detailed settings, and the widespread use of oil paints that gave brighter images in paintings.

What gave me the idea for this? I'm not sure, I had been writing one of my Hetalia fics earlier in the day, and then was watching a BBC documentary in the evening and wishing they would show the 'Baroque! - From St Peter's to St Paul's' miniseries again, and the idea fell into my lap. I had to do it.

Baroque - The Baroque movement was born in Southern Italy in the early 1600s, with its most notable early artists Caravaggio and Guercino. The movement grew to include marble statues architecture (particularly churches and palaces), music, literature and theatre. It spread throughout Europe and was particularly loved by Catholic countries, not very popular in Protestant Britain but flourished in its one way in the Protestant Netherlands, where the most famous Baroque painter was Vermeer. The art was possibly not popular in Britain because it was 'too Catholic', as the Roman Catholic church loved the style and graphic religious iconography, and even the non-religious images was deemed too full of Catholic passion, as well as Baroque being popular in the ttime of the reformation.

South Italy – I'm not sure why Himaruya stated that Romano can barely draw, when so many artists and styles came from Southern Italy. Strange man. Anywhoo, in this story I imagined him to be about fourteen in this, reaching eighteen with the rise of the Kingdom of Italy in the 1860s and ageing relatively quickly to his present age within a century.

Venechiano's showing him how to make oil paints was due to it being fully developed as a normal paint medium in Northern Italy a few decades earlier. Da Vinci would later start to add 5-10% melted beeswax to the boiled linseed oil to lighten colours, as boiled linseed and the powdered paints alone make very dark colours.

The concept of 'A nation cannot create' is borrowed from a Prussia/Austria fill fic from hetalia_kink, where a nation cannot actually create things, but can channel the ideas into inspiration. Romano's blood fever here is the muddled ideas of what is to become Baroque, and his sketches and paintings are really just clarifying the ideas, realising them on paper before the clearer inspiration goes to his people. He burns his work after because really his part is done, it's up to his people now and he know that they will do much better, so he's stopped caring once the fever is gone, and so they are trash.

Blood – I'm sure a lot of you notice that there are a lot of mentions of blood and flesh in this story. This almost obsessive preoccupation with blood is to do with the importance of blood in the Roman Catholic Church (communion, spilled blood of sinners etc), and South Italy (particularly Naples) was going through a bloody time. The core of Baroque is religious and earthly passions, not cold perfection, so blood, whether spilled or giving colour to flesh, is very important. A good example of this is Caravaggio, I do loves me some Caravaggio.

Choreia – According to his Hetalia wiki page, Romano suffered from Choreia as a child, hence the finger twitches I mentioned, which has made him clumsy. According to Wikipedia, "Choreia is an abnormal involuntary movement disorder, one of a group of neurological disorders called dyskinesias...Choreia is characterized by brief, quasi-purposeful, irregular contractions that are not repetitive or rhythmic, but appear to flow from one muscle to the next... These 'dance-like' movements of choreia (from the same root word as "choreography") often occur with athetosis, which adds twisting and writhing movements... Twenty percent of children and adolescents with rheumatic fever develop Sydenham's chorea as a complication.

Spain – As we all know Spain was in his Conquistador phase at this time. If he seems a little mentally off in this it's because he's between conquests, holding back his blood thirst and slight mania for Romano's sake. Again, I've taken some inspiration for Spain's character from another fill fic from hetalia_kink (This time Spain/Romano, named 'Humors' I think) in which Spain has a secret blood fetish. I think it really fits the character considering his history, especially in this time, so his darker personality is influencing Romano.

The Spanish Empire's part in this story is very important. Baroque was born under Spanish rule in Naples, which had a lot of Spanish sailors and merchants, and so there was also Spanish art which was considered darker to influence artists. Baroque was loved by the Spanish church and courts, and many Baroque and Roccoco (Baroque's successor) churches and monasteries can be seen as far as Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Mexico today.

Clavichord or Harpsichord– Ancestors to the modern piano, these were popular until the 19th century.

Additional A/N: I love your reviews and feedback, every piece of constructive criticism helps me to become a better writer. If you think it's good, needs some work, or so bad it needs the cleansing touch of fire, let me know! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!