Painting Mona Lisa aka I, Mona Lisa

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  “You didn’t bring me. I would have come whether you had said yes or not.” With my chin, I nodded at the desk which held the letter. “If I’m in danger, it’s because of who I am now, not what facts are stored in my head. This will make no difference.”

  “I know,” he admitted, with faint misery. “I came to realize that if I truly wanted you safe, I might as well put you under my protection.” He managed a smile. “You’re even more headstrong than I am. At least I know where you are. Do you realize… Certainly you realize… things might get much worse. We might have to leave Florence for a time. I don’t just mean going to one of our villas in the countryside. I’ve sent a number of priceless objects out of the city to protect them… and I’ve even packed away my things, just in case…” He drew back to gaze at me with Lorenzo’s brilliant eyes, yet his held a certain openness his father’s had lacked. “We would go to Rome, where Giovanni has good friends, and we would have the protection of the Pope. It is terribly different from Florence-hotter, and more crowded…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, my voice soft. I took a step closer to him. He stood half a head taller than I, and his chest was broader than I was from shoulder to shoulder. He was still dressed in the fitted red velvet farsetto and wore it with the casual poise of a prince. He was not classically handsome like his agent Leonardo. His upper lip was thin and bore a small diagonal scar from some childhood injury, and his chin jutted ever so slightly forward, a whisper of Lorenzo’s deformity. The bridge of his nose was broad and the end of it upturned; his eyebrows were very thick and dark. When he smiled, a dimple formed in his left cheek. I touched it with my fingertip, and he let go a long sigh.

  “You are incredibly beautiful,” he said. “Even more so because you apparently don’t know it.”

  I put my hands on his shoulders. “We have everything in the world to worry about: your family, my father, King Charles, the Signoria, the Duke of Milan, Florence herself. There’s nothing we can do about it right now, this moment. We can only rejoice that you and I are standing here to face it together.”

  He had no choice but to lean down and kiss me. This time, we did not writhe, panting, in each other’s arms, as we had in the carriage. We were man and wife now and approached each other with a sense of seriousness, of gravity. He settled me carefully on the bed and lay beside me to reach beneath my silk gown and run his palms slowly over my collarbone, my breast, my abdomen. I trembled, and not entirely from nerves.

  Brazenly, I reached up and ran my hands over his velvet-covered shoulders, his muscular chest, and the hollow in its center. And then, wanting more, I fumbled, looking to free him from the farsetto.

  He half sat. “Here,” he said, and proffered me the high neck of his garment.

  Without thinking, I clicked my tongue. “What makes you think I know how to unfasten a man’s garment?”

  “You have a father…”

  “And his servant dresses him, not I.”

  He looked suddenly, charmingly, sheepish. “As mine does me.”

  We both burst out laughing.

  He glanced toward the door. “Oh no,” I said. “You’ve said I am headstrong: Let me prove it again.”

  It was a hard-fought battle, but in the end, the farsetto yielded. And so did Giuliano.

  …

  During my childhood, I had an experience of pure warmth, of opening, of unconditional union. I had been desperately sick, so sick that the adults surrounding me spoke in muted voices about my death. I remember a terrifying weight on my chest, the sensation of drowning in my own fluids, of not being able to breathe.

  They brought up kettles and a wooden trough. They filled it with near-scalding water, and my mother lowered me into it.

  Once I was immersed to my neck in the water, its steam settled tenderly on my face; its generous heat permeated my bones. I looked down at my reddening flesh and-thinking the way a child does-thought that it would melt, yield, and merge with the warmth. I closed my eyes, blissful, and felt my skin dissolve until there was nothing but my beating heart and the water. All weight, all heaviness, dispersed into the air.

  I was alive. I could breathe.

  Being with Giuliano was the same. There was heat; there was opening. There was union. I could breathe.

  “Is Leonardo still going to paint my portrait?” I asked drowsily, after we had worn ourselves out. We were lying naked beneath fine linens and a crimson throw. By then, it was late afternoon and the light from the waning sun poured bittersweet through the shutters.

  The naturalness of the deed had surprised me. I had expected to need careful instruction, had expected to fumble, but Giuliano’s confidence and my own instincts had guided me surely. After our exertion, I had grown chilled, and to my embarrassment, Giuliano had summoned a servant to build a fire in the hearth. I sat swaddled and still until the servant departed; only then could I be coaxed to forget myself and lie in Giuliano’s arms.

  “Your portrait?” Giuliano let go a long, relaxed sigh. “Yes, of course. Father had asked for it. Leonardo is terrible about such things, you know. Most of the commissions Father paid him for, he never finished. But…” He directed a wicked little smile at me. “I shall demand it. I shall hold his feet to the fire. I shall chain him in his studio, and never let him free until it is done! But I must have your image with me forever.”

  I giggled.

  Giuliano took advantage of the levity to broach a difficult subject. “I have assigned one of our best agents to visit Ser Antonio.”

  I tensed at once. “There is no reasoning with my father.”

  Giuliano lightly touched the tip of my nose, as if trying to distract me from the hurt. “I know; I’ve met the man. He is far too distraught today to be approached; he’s been shocked and hurt. Give him time. My man will wait for a few days. Until then, we will watch your father to be sure he does nothing rash.”

  Spies, I realized, with unease. Someone was going to sit outside my father’s house, watching him, and report his movements to Giuliano. At the same time that this disturbed me, it also brought relief. At least my father could not fling himself into the Arno without someone intervening.

  “My man is elderly, a good Christian, and will treat Ser Antonio with a great deal of respect. I was unwise to think your father could be tempted to let you go for money or land; he is a man of character. While I don’t share his love for Fra Girolamo, I understand that he needs to be reassured that you have married an honorable, pious man, and that you will not live a life of corrupt luxury, but will instead devote yourself to God and your husband.

  “And Lisa,” Giuliano said very earnestly, turning his face to mine; my head rested upon his shoulder and outstretched arm. “I believe in God and the need for integrity, and if your father requires that we go and listen to Fra Girolamo’s sermons, I will do it.”

  His sincerity touched me, but I let go a snort at his last words. “Then you’ll go alone,” I murmured, though his words gave me hope. If Giuliano humbled himself to suffer through the preaching of the Medici’s mortal enemy, it would certainly impress my father… and all of Florence.

  My gaze wandered to three painted panels that covered the entire wall opposite us. Earlier, my nerves had allowed me to notice only blurs of red, yellow, black: Now I realized they depicted a fierce battle in progress. A wickedly sharp lance impaled a rider through his chest, lifting him from his saddle; fallen men and horses lay dead and dying amid empty helmets and dropped shields. It was a dreadful, chaotic evocation of confusion and rage. I lifted my head from Giuliano’s shoulder and frowned.

  “Ah,” Giuliano said, and smiled. “You’ve noticed the paintings. This is Uccello’s Battle of San Romano, where Florence defeated Siena a century ago.”

  “But it’s so violent… It must have been the first thing Lorenzo saw in the morning, and the last thing at night. Why would anyone want such a disturbing sight in his bedroom?”

  Bright with enthusiasm, Giuliano rose naked from the bed and mo
ved to the central panel. “Father liked it not for its violence, but for the spirit shown by the captain, Niccolò da Tolentino. He was a great hero. See? He’s in the center, leading the charge.” He pointed to a rider-the only one without a helmet-on the front lines, his lance aimed at the heart of his opponent. “He is unafraid. Despite the great army he faces, he is confident of success. And this is a great example of the new perspective. Look here”-with thumb and forefinger, he measured one of the fallen soldiers-“and see how the length of this man compares with that of the captain.”

  I stared. The fallen man was a fraction of da Tolentino’s size. “He is so small!” I laughed. “But it only makes sense; if you face someone lying down, their body looks shorter than it is. And-look there. See how the men here are small, to make them look far away?”

  Pleased, Giuliano smiled. “If you weren’t a woman, I’d say you should be an artist! I didn’t know you were so clever. Yes, that’s the magic of perspective. And Uccello was one of the very first to use it. Father had a wonderful eye. Piero and Giovanni haven’t a clue about the amazing art that surrounds them. It’s a shame, really.”

  I shared Giuliano’s smile. “Ser Lorenzo must have loved you greatly to have taught you such things.” I thought of Lorenzo, sick and beset by enemies, taking courage from the image of the long-dead warrior.

  Giuliano nodded, a bit more serious. “Of his family, I understood him best. And he understood me. Piero, he is more like Mother, and Giovanni-” He gave another short laugh. “I’m not sure who he resembles in the family. Perhaps our great-grandfather Cosimo. He is very shrewd at promoting himself.”

  Dusk had brought its gloom; he lit a pair of candles using the fire in the hearth, then returned to the bed and settled beside me with a sigh of pleasant exhaustion.

  “Why would the piagnoni want to work with the Duke of Milan to oust Piero from power?” I asked softly.

  His good humor fell away. He propped himself on his elbow and rolled toward me, his face in shadow. “I’m not sure exactly,” he said. “But I know they want our family’s downfall. Father did many unwise-even illegal-things. He stole from the city’s dowry fund to buy Giovanni’s cardinalship. And, in his younger years, he treated his enemies without mercy. He was willing to do anything to shield the family. There are many people, many families and groups, who had reason to hate him.

  “But he had an uncanny knack for protecting himself, for making allies, for knowing-especially in his later years-when to yield, and ignore those who threatened him or spoke ill of him.” He paused. “Piero and Giovanni… they’re intelligent in their own ways, but they aren’t Father. They don’t understand the importance of how the public perceives them. They don’t know how to be… humble about their position. And Piero… he gets conflicting advice from his counselors, and becomes so confused that he does nothing at all.

  “I told him to go to Sarzana-the way Father went to King Ferrante in the hope of preventing a war. But I wanted to go with him. ‘Don’t listen to your advisors,’ I told him. ‘Let me guide you.’ But he wanted to prove he could do it himself, without my help. It’s-well, Father never kept it secret that I was his favorite. He always told Piero that when he finally became the leader of the family, he shouldn’t do anything without consulting me. And Piero’s always been jealous of that. I don’t blame him, but…” He shook his head. “It was a mistake, handing over Sarzana and the other two citadels. I know Piero; he doesn’t know who to listen to, so he listened to no one and acted out of sheer nerves. So now the Signoria is furious, and they’re sending Fra Girolamo to talk to the French king. It’s all a mess. I just hope Piero will listen to me about how best to straighten it out.”

  His frustration was clear; he had Lorenzo’s quick mind combined with his namesake uncle’s sweetness. An accident of birth had stolen from him the position for which he was naturally gifted-and because of it, everything might be lost. “So the piagnoni,” I said, trying to lead him back. “Does Savonarola have political aims? Does he want Florence for himself… and maybe Milan, too?”

  He frowned at me. “It’s more complicated than that. I have agents working on it…”

  Of which Leonardo was one. “How complicated? I have time-”

  We were interrupted by a knock at the bedchamber door, and a male voice. “Ser Giuliano?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your brother has returned from Sarzana. He is waiting for you in the dining hall.”

  “Tell him I’ll be there shortly.”

  I had already leapt from the bed and was pulling on my camicia. Giuliano looked at me, then at his leggings and farsetto, lying in a heap near the hearth, then at me again. “Send Laura and my valet,” he called. “We need help dressing.”

  XLIV

  Once we were dressed, Giuliano led me downstairs through the vast, quiet palazzo; our steps echoed against the shining marble. The corridors seemed emptier than I remembered: Much of the art had been spirited away.

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t go,” I hissed, my arm linked with his. “Piero will want to discuss political matters.” In fact, I was nervous about the prospect of meeting him. Despite Giuliano’s reassurances, I was not at all certain that the eldest Medici brother had agreed to our marriage with enthusiasm. I had already had a painful encounter with my father and was in no mood for another with Piero.

  Giuliano seemed to read my thoughts. “It’s true, my brother would not hear of my marrying you-at first. But I persisted. I convinced him it made great political sense. After all, the people were grumbling about the fact that Piero was the son of an Orsini woman, and had also married one. I told him, ‘You’ve already made a strong alliance with the noble Orsinis-and Giovanni is a cardinal, which makes the Pope and Church our allies. It’s time for us now to tie ourselves to the people, to show that we don’t consider ourselves royalty, as they say.’ He finally listened. And while Alfonsina and Giovanni disagree-well, I have no doubt your charm will win them over.”

  We stopped at last in front of a tall door of carved and polished dark wood. Giuliano pushed it open, then gestured for me to enter.

  Warmth and light greeted me. On the opposite wall, a huge fire blazed in a massive hearth; on the long dining table, a candelabrum bearing more than a dozen burning tapers exuded the smell of heated wax. Every wall was frescoed with pastoral scenes-of Bacchus and his grapes, of nymphs and satyrs cavorting while Pan played his pipes.

  Two men occupied the room. The first paced in front of the fire, arms gesticulating wildly. He was dressed like a prince, in a tunic of sapphire velvet with purple satin trim. A great amethyst hung from his thick gold necklace, and the diamonds on his fingers glittered with reflected firelight. His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, and his leggings revealed powerful thighs and well-muscled calves. One could easily imagine him out in Florence’s streets, kicking a ball.

  “How dare they insult me so!” he raved bitterly. “How dare they, when I have just saved the city! I deserve a hero’s welcome, and instead-” He glanced up, scowling, at our interruption.

  The second man sat at the table. His manner was impassive as he meticulously carved the meat from the bones of a roasted pheasant. He wore a scarlet cardinal’s gown, a red silk cap, and a ruby ring; as we entered, he half turned in his chair to get a better look at us. He was thick fingered, thick lipped, with a large, broad head and an even broader chest. He set down his fork and knife and rose. “Giuliano! Who is this?” He was surprised but not impolite. His voice was deep and arrestingly handsome, despite his plain face and small, suspicious eyes. At the sight of me, he rose.

  “Who is this?” Piero demanded, echoing his brother. He stepped into the candelabrum’s light, revealing a face very like his mother’s, his lips thin, his chin weak.

  “Piero, you remember. This is my wife, Madonna Lisa di Antonio Gherardini. Lisa, this is my brother Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici.”

  My husband’s answer left Giovanni aghast. “Antonio the wool merchant? Is this your
idea of a joke?”

  “Do not insult my wife,” Giuliano replied, his tone menacing. “The Gherardini are a good family. Piero gave us permission to marry some time ago.”

  Piero dismissively waved a hand. “I gave you permission. But now is hardly the time to meet the young lady, when we are set upon from all sides…” He bowed cursorily to me. “Forgive us, Madonna; we have urgent and private matters to discuss. Giuliano, you can introduce us to your intended later.”

  “She’s not going anywhere, brother. She is family. The priest married us this morning.”

  Piero let go a faint gasp. Giovanni dropped back into his seat and put a hand upon his barrel of a chest. The latter was first to speak, in that melodious voice which, despite its owner’s agitation, was pleasurable to hear. “You’ll have to get it annulled. You can’t waste Medici seed on a commoner.”

  I flushed, angry enough to forget my nervousness.

  Giuliano spoke, his tone heated. “She is no commoner. She is my wife and she is staying here, under her husband’s roof. The marriage has been consummated, and I will not tolerate talk of an annulment again.” He turned to Piero. “As for our conversation-she already knows everything, so she will stay. You are both going to give her a kiss and welcome her into the family.”

  Giovanni rose and gave me a curious look as he stepped toward me and took my hands; his own were soft and fleshy. With abrupt offhanded charm, he smiled and said, “I will give you a kiss because you are so beautiful, Lisa.” Then he lifted a brow and, with a swift glance at Giuliano, added, “But I can easily make arrangements…”