Chapter 1001 Future Artists

After a sumptuous dinner, Trini escorted Van de Lantron to a private guest room to rest. The full bathroom facilities would surely satisfy even the most discerning visitor. Pleasing guests from "the center" was an ingrained habit of those stationed at "local" posts; seventeenth-century Dutchmen observed this custom as faithfully as any.

Mr. Leibu Trini returned to his studio—a room that was extraordinarily spacious by any dimension's standards, featuring an extravagantly large glass window that would be considered luxurious even by European norms. This window flooded the space with ample light for Mr. Trini's daily work.

The studio, like all artists' workspaces, existed in a state of creative disorder. The enormous worktable was buried under rolls of paper, with brushes and paints scattered everywhere—many of them European goods shipped from Batavia.

Shelves along the walls displayed numerous plaster heads and statuettes. Easels and stools stood arranged in a semicircle in the center of the room—equipment for Trini's drawing classes.

In one corner stood his sculpture workbench, where a half-finished stone figure awaited completion—an Australian commission. They wanted a small victory monument erected outside Chengmai City. From conception to execution, Leibu Trini bore full responsibility. His orders extended far beyond this single project.

In the annals of art history, the Italian Leibu Trini remained an anonymous nobody. But in terms of both fine arts and applied arts, he had become a "master" figure in Lingao.

The studio housed small coke furnaces and crucibles of various sizes for melting glass and metal. On the tables lay various tools for crafting glass and metal decorative objects. Here he manufactured colored stained glass and all manner of metal ornaments—from the wrought iron decorative pieces inlaid on the Senate's door lintels bearing "S.S.A.E" in ornate Latin letters, to the various medals and coats of arms that the Senate issued...

The Australians' appetite for artworks proved astonishing in its voracity. Trini found that his primary occupation was no longer consular or intelligence work, but rather scrambling to complete Australian commissions.

He settled into his rattan chair, lit a cigar, and smoked slowly, savoring its aroma. Cigars manufactured by the Australians were a local luxury, reportedly reserved exclusively for "Senators." But for Trini, Australian cigars were merely processed tobacco products from the Americas—not fundamentally different from the cheaper paper cigarettes.

Luxuries in this dimension generally possessed two defining characteristics: distant origin and rarity. The two qualities reinforced each other—distance naturally ensured scarcity. Consider Chinese silk and porcelain: in China itself, though not ubiquitous, they hardly constituted priceless treasures. Once they crossed oceans and traversed thousands of miles to reach Europe and America, their value multiplied tenfold or twentyfold. A single ship arriving safely could generate immense wealth. Seeking exotic rarities from distant lands and profiting from long-distance trade—this was the world's most common commercial pattern.

But the Australians invariably transformed things, employing secret methods unknown to others to increase their value. Whether the "Princess of Great Tang" wine they had previously sold in Guangzhou, or the cigarettes and cigars they now marketed—the principle held true.

Strictly speaking, the Australians possessed nothing that Europeans and Chinese didn't have—one could even argue that apart from their weapons, no genuinely "Australian goods" existed. Every so-called Australian product was without exception manufactured locally in Lingao using Chinese and imported raw materials.

After finishing his cigar, the room had fallen completely into darkness. The perpetually stern-faced Dutch servant entered carrying a candle. He carefully lit the gas lamp with its explosion-proof shade in the corner. The entire room was soon brightly illuminated.

After lighting the lamp, the servant withdrew. Trini's spirits began to lift—his apprentices would arrive shortly for their evening studies.

For reasons Trini couldn't fathom, the Australians were enthusiastic about working at night—of course, they possessed the means to do so. The brilliant gas lamp allowed him to clearly view a large-scale oil painting mounted on an easel while seated in his rattan chair. This piece had been commissioned by Lingao Abbey and would soon decorate Bairen Cathedral. The Senate had half-coerced, half-enticed Trini into taking on fifteen students to learn art. Among them, several children who displayed sufficient talent had already become his personal disciples: a twelve-year-old girl had been occupying his fantasies night after night.

Trini appreciated the Australians' attitude toward women. They carelessly permitted females to appear in public, to enter all venues, to work as craftsmen and farmers, to engage in every trade, to interact freely with men. They even allowed girls to attend school and serve as officials. This made the entire social landscape more colorful—particularly since the Australians required all female students to wear scandalously short skirts that exposed their knees. Reportedly, at certain special occasions, women even wore skirts that revealed their thighs. Mr. Trini was no stranger to female nakedness; like all Italian painters, he had painted many nudes. But female students in short-sleeved blouses and short skirts aroused his desires more powerfully than any naked woman.

The Australians were enthusiastic about naked women in paintings, but Religious Affairs Officer He Ying had explicitly instructed him that when depicting nude women, certain limitations applied—they were restricted to religious subjects, most had to bear wings, and they could only appear in a limited number of specific contexts: before martyrs, in the sky behind Senators, in church icons approved by the Religious Office. Among the saints in the foreground, however, there always had to be one or two bearing certain Senators' faces—for example, the one offering frankincense to the Holy Son was Dean Wu Shimang; the one striking down the six-winged beauty with a flaming sword was the winged Chairman Wen...

Of course, these minor annoyances couldn't shake Trini's love for Lingao. The Australians provided Trini with quality paper, canvas, dip pens, quality ink, and previously unheard-of innovations like fountain pens and pencils.

Trini had developed particular fondness for Lingao-produced art supplies, especially the drawing pencils: various grades in different light and dark shades greatly reduced the artist's workload when creating sketches. As for plaster heads, he acknowledged this was a marvelous technique—many people learning to paint couldn't afford marble reproductions. Using molds and plite plite plaster powder to cast copies allowed easy mass reproduction of the most beautiful sculptural works for study and appreciation.

His four most promising students walked in—three boys and one girl—and bowed in greeting. Following them came a young man in uniform. Trini stood and smiled at his visitors: he still couldn't speak Chinese and could only teach through translation. This serious-looking translator was reportedly a Senator. He came every day to serve as a bridge between students and teacher, rain or shine, never missing a single class. And the students he assisted were all from humble origins—the most ordinary Chinese children. This filled Trini with deep respect for the Australian Senators.

Trini's teaching method for these four students followed the traditional master-apprentice approach. Apprentices performed simple auxiliary tasks within their abilities, observed his actions, and received his guidance. This was the traditional pedagogical method Italian artists had employed during the Renaissance.

"What class shall we have today?" the translator inquired.

"Oil painting class, beginning with the most fundamental preparations," Trini replied.

In seventeenth-century oil painting, the painter first had to be a craftsman. Visiting an art supply store in the old dimension to purchase complete painting supplies and commence painting immediately was impossible in this dimension. Whether canvas, pigments, oils, or even brushes—all required painters to prepare by hand.

In one corner of the room stood many small drawers filled with pigments shipped thousands of miles from Europe. The pigments came not in tubes but as various solid fragments—mostly minerals, supplemented by products from plants and animals. Most peculiar were blue glass shards produced in Venice—used to mix a more common shade of blue. On the table sat mortars and dishes of various sizes.

Trini taught them hands-on how to select pigment fragments, how to crush them to appropriate sizes, then how to grind them. Grinding proceeded in stages: first crushed in larger mortars, then ground fine in smaller ones, until they achieved powder of varying coarseness suitable for mixing.

The students gradually developed interest in the work—first curiosity, then earnest, serious concentration. They helped their master prepare a poisonous solution: dissolving arsenic disulfide and mercuric chloride in alcohol, then applying it to wooden boards to prevent woodworm. Next came the first layer of material, filling all joints and cracks with a mixture of alabaster, resin, and frankincense, then using a smooth grinding iron to level any uneven spots.

Work in the master's hands always appeared easy and swift, as though it were mere entertainment. Trini worked while teaching various techniques for preparing oil painting tools: how to bind brushes—from the coarsest, stiffest hog bristle brushes encased in lead ferrules, to the finest, softest squirrel hair brushes inserted in goose quill tubes. He had experimented with Chinese brushes but always found them somehow unsuitable.

The students were eager to try—though watching the master work seemed simple enough, their own attempts proved clumsy. Trini then slowly heated a pure oil on the stove: extracted from hemp seeds. Due to its mildly hallucinogenic effect, the Senate required them to wear masks when heating it.

Following his instructions, students rubbed the painting board with small pieces of sheepskin dipped in hot hemp oil, allowing the board to fully absorb the oil.

"Rub while it's hot; once cold, it won't absorb," Trini instructed continuously.

The young Senator stood by with evident interest, occasionally translating Trini's instructions and the students' questions, watching their every movement with fascination. He noticed the Italian frequently casting his gaze toward the female student and focusing more intently during her instruction—he smiled knowingly.

(End of Chapter)