Page 13 - The Grotesque Children's Book

2.
The book makes its mysterious appearance

When Aurelio came home on the early evening of August 15, 1581, he found a demon
sitting in front of his door. The demon had no legs, so perhaps it would be more accurate to say
the demon was leaning against his door.

The demon wasn’t real. It was painted. It was a watercolor on the cover of a thick folio
of many pieces of cheap paper folded in halves and tucked inside each other: a hastily-
constructed book.

There were no words on the cover; merely the picture of the demon. There were a
number of stories in the folio, apparently, each with an accompanying illustration.

Aurelio knew immediately that this was the work of the young painter Santi del Meglio.
There were only two artists in all of Italy who would have painted such a grinning demon:
Aurelio was one of them, and Santi del Meglio was the other. Santi worked with Aurelio on the
same backbreaking project: painting the ceilings of the new art museum commissioned by the
Grand Duke of Tuscany, Francesco de’ Medici. Aurelio and Santi were among several painters
working feverishly to complete the frescoes on the ceiling before its opening as a museum in
October.

The folio disturbed Aurelio. Santi had not shown up to work all that day at I Magistrati,
which was unusual for him. Usually Santi was at I Magistrati at the crack of dawn, and kept
working until the crack of sunset, driven feverishly to finish the day’s assignment on time.
When it turned mid-morning, Aurelio had begun to suspect that something was wrong. He had
intended to go home, have a light supper, and then pay a call on Santi, whose rooms were a few
blocks away. But now with the strange appearance of this folio, Aurelio had skipped supper and
gone straight to Santi’s.

It turned out Aurelio was right to be worried.

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