The man sitting at the back of Carolyn Moore’s class looked nothing like her usual students. Starting with the fact that he was male, since most of the students in Renaissance Art History 201 were women. Then there was the fact that he was a full-grown adult male, not a kid who'd barely reached drinking age. Not to mention the additional facts of his size and appearance, which were big and imposing. Attractive, one might even say, if broad shoulders, intense dark eyes, and black leather jackets were your thing.
A peaceful art history teacher like herself should certainly not find someone like him attractive. But he actually reminded her of a painting she loved, a Bronzino portrait of a man aiming his smoldering gaze directly at the viewer. So to be completely honest with herself, the mystery man did push a few of her buttons.
But she could deal with that kind of unsettling stare a lot better in an oil painting than in the back of her classroom. He'd slipped in midway through her lecture on the technique of chiaroscuro and immediately thrown her off stride.
She cleared her throat and checked her notes. "Does anyone here know the precise meaning of the term chiaroscuro? Any Italian speakers in the house?"
A few students volunteered words like "cappuccino," and "Prada," which made her laugh. The blond kid in the middle row looked lost in a dream, as usual. One student surreptitiously checked her phone.
"No Google," Carolyn said with a smile. "We can figure this one out. Let's start with the last part, "scuro." What other words contain that root?"
Again, no answer.
"I'm thinking of a common word, very familiar, not at all…" She dragged it out as a teasing hint.
"Obscure!" someone exclaimed.
"Exactly. Obscure means hidden, hard to find, because it's … what?"
"In the dark? Scuro means dark!" A student in the front row bounced in her seat, thrilled that she'd come up with the answer, then slouched back down. They were always so anxious about playing it cool, sometimes it made Carolyn sad. Was there something wrong with getting excited and passionate? She always tried to encourage that in her students.
"Yes!" She stepped away from the podium where her laptop was set up with slides and high-fived the student. "You're correct, scuro means dark. So you can probably guess what chiaro means as well."
A brief silence followed, interrupted by the man at the back of the class. The man in black.
"Light," he said in a voice so deep and resonant it sent a chill down her spine. It brought to mind the image of the last dregs of black coffee in a pot that had been left on overnight. Late nights, rough times, danger, adventure, somehow it was all there in that one softly spoken word.
In the middle row, the blond boy—Aiden something—craned his neck to see who had spoken. Then he wheeled back around and slouched deep in his seat. The girls in the class looked too, so Carolyn found herself responding to an array of turned heads.
"Correct. Chiaro, in this context, means light."
She pretended to check her student roster, but she certainly had no need to. There was no way this man had enrolled in her class midterm. "I'm sorry, are you a student here?"
"I'm just visiting the campus." He moved his jacket to show his stick-on visitor's badge. "I'm sorry to interrupt."
"No problem." Although, eyeing him more closely, she wasn't entirely sure that was true. She could spot several potential problems, or at least distractions. The width of his shoulders. The sensual fullness of his lips. And most especially, the way he was looking—or glaring—at her. Wary. Suspicious. Curious. Hot. Or some heady, confusing mixture of all of the above.
"If you were a student, you'd get a high five." She smiled at him brightly, determined not to allow a dangerously attractive visitor to disrupt her class. Tapping her laser pointer on the podium, she brought her students back to attention. Or tried, anyway. Several were too fascinated by the stranger to get back into Renaissance painting mode.
"Chiaroscuro is the treatment of light and shade. It's a technique that uses strong contrast between light and dark to create a three-dimensional effect. It was developed during the Renaissance by masters of oil painting like Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt. They were looking for drama, for impact—we might call it the ‘wow’ factor today. These masters figured out how to manipulate the effect of a light source falling against a solid dark object. I'm going to show some slides now, and I want you guys to look for where the light is coming from and how it helps illuminate the subject of the painting."
She tapped a button on her laptop to play her slide show. Then she looked up and realized that the person closest to the light switch happened to be the solid dark object of the man in black.
"Sir, would you mind hitting that light behind you?" she asked him.
He twisted around to locate the light switch. Her eyes widened at the sight of his powerful torso and big hand reaching for the wall. He turned his head at the last minute, so the last thing she saw before the room went dark was that intense gaze of his. Wowza. It really packed a punch. Everything about him did. He was like a truckload of TNT plopped into a meadow of college-student flowers.
With the room in darkness, she let out a long breath, calling on some yoga breathing to regain her cool. Just because she spent most of her time with kids under the age of twenty didn't mean she couldn't handle an adult. Even if it was an intensely male sort of adult.
She too was an adult, after all. Granted, an adult who'd gone quite some time without any intimate contact with a man. Also known as sex.
Sex. Bad thought. Don't go there. Look at the slides. Talk about Caravaggio. Yes.
"Notice how you don't really know where that light comes from or what's producing it? It doesn't matter. It's only there to create the dramatic contrast that enables us to get the full impact of this portrait. In case you were wondering, this technique isn't confined to Renaissance oil paintings. Can anyone tell me who else uses chiaroscuro?"
"Black-and-white photography?" someone suggested.
"Yup. Exactly." She drew in another deep breath. Thank goodness, she was back in the groove now. The stranger was just a minor, temporary glitch. This was her class, she was in control.
She switched to the next slide. "Now not everyone was in favor of chiaroscuro. This portrait of the Queen of England is set in an open meadow with no sources of shade anywhere nearby. As you can see, the effect is serene rather than dramatic. Does anyone have any theories about why chiaroscuro would be controversial?"
Silence while the students gazed at the pleasant portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. She looked at the back of the class. The stranger, head tilted, was surveying the slide with a thoughtful expression. Talk about chiaroscuro … his eyes were deep pools in the minimal light cast by the projector.
Suddenly she wanted to hear what an adult man would say instead of a twenty-year-old. It wasn't really fair. He was a visitor, not a student paying for his education. But no one else seemed eager to step up with their thoughts. So she addressed the man in black.
"You in the back, by the light switch. Why do you think chiaroscuro would find opponents in the art world at that time?"
His gaze flicked to her, as if in surprise. But he didn't hesitate. "Some people would rather not deal with the shadows. You might even say most people."
A shiver passed through her. That was exactly why she'd wanted his reaction, to hear someone with experience speak. But at the same time, his words hit close to home. Unintentionally, of course. He knew nothing about her. But still, it was enough to give her a little chill.
"Right. Here's a quote from the artist who painted this portrait. "Seeing that best to show oneself needeth no shadow of place but rather the open light…Her Majesty chose to sit in the open alley of a goodly garden where no tree was near, nor any shadow at all. So…" She turned back to the students. "What say you, young members of the twenty-first century? Do you prefer the more open lighting in this painting, or the chiaroscuro effect in something like this famous Rembrandt portrait, An Old Man in Red? Are the subjects revealed more by direct sunlight or by the use of shadows?"
Finally the students seemed to get it. Discussion erupted as they looked back and forth between the two examples.
Carolyn grinned happily. There was nothing she loved more than when her students stopped daydreaming or looking at their phones and actually engaged in the material. And really, she had to thank the man in black for that. He'd been willing to dive in with an answer despite not even being enrolled in the class.
She looked toward the back of the room to offer some kind of "thank you" to the mystery man.
But he was gone.
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