The Medici Boy

by John L'Heureux

  And then we poured the sword.

  The first day of casting, then, was a great success and we were all pleased at Donatello’s approval. He thanked me especially for my nice care in pouring. Michelozzo had said almost nothing. He had more experience in casting bronze than any of us and in truth he was more skilled than Donatello, but it was his nature to defer to others and to Donatello in particular. So it was enough for me that he looked on and nodded his approval.

  Agnolo was full of joy. He had been allowed to watch and he was careful not to get in the way of our pouring though he was everywhere at once, excited and impatient to see himself reborn in bronze. Now that the first pour was done, he could not wait for the moment when the molds would be cracked open and his new self would emerge.

  * * *

  THE POURED BRONZE rested in the sand pit for the next two days while we made preparations to fire and pour the molds for the rest of the statue. And then at first light on the third day the rested molds were cracked open and the bronze was removed, first the hat and then, with some anxiety, the head. They were rough and for the moment ugly, with the air vents and gates in need of removal, but we had all seen what Donatello could do with chasing and finishing and we had no doubt that here was the head of the David he had carved in wax. We gathered about while the trunk of the statue was cracked open, the body from shoulders to boots. There was difficulty breaking through the shell and we drew back nervously while Donatello worked to free the bronze. It opened at last with a sighing sound and the harsh clank of a chisel on fired clay. Something had gone wrong. The shoulders and the chest were perfect, but Donatello stared in disbelief as he examined the left leg where the bronze had failed to take, leaving a hole the size of a penny in the front of the thigh. Perhaps there had been a bubble in the mix, perhaps the layer of wax at this point had been too thin. Whatever the reason, the result was disaster, I thought. There was a long silence and then Donatello let out a soft moan and sat back on his heels

  He lowered his head and for a moment I thought he was crying. I could readily understand why. The lost wax method of casting was ever a gamble, since once the wax had been melted away the original statue was gone forever and only the bronze remained . . . and if the bronze was imperfect there was nothing to be done except start again to build up the statue from the beginning. I tried to think of something to say, but of course no words were possible at such a moment. Agnolo had at first rushed forward to see the ruined thigh, but even he had the good sense to pull back and say nothing. It was Michelozzo who took on himself the burden of consoling Donatello.

  “It can be patched,” he said softly. “In the end it will be well.”

  Donatello remained bent over the wounded thigh and nodded in agreement. It could be patched but it would not now be the flawless statue Donatello had conceived. Michelozzo helped him to his feet. We all made ourselves busy with something else, anything else.

  David’s thigh was not ruined, but it was badly damaged. But ruin was in all our minds as we continued our work. We finished finally, gratefully, and then we scraped out the inner shell—the clay, cloth, hair and horse dung—that had supported the original wax David. The bronze was ready now for assembly and for chasing. For all the rest of this day we worked in silence.

  * * *

  IT WAS THE second day of pouring and we were well advanced in our task. Pagno and I had poured molten bronze from the crucible into the several separate pieces of the statue—steadily, without feint—and we had stood up well to the test of strength that required. We were exhausted and the sweat poured liberally down our chests and arms, but we had only two more pieces to pour—Goliath’s head and the laurel wreath on which it rests—and we were confident we would finish before nightfall.

  The day grew frigid as the hours went by but the increasing cold offered us little relief. The crucible seemed to grow heavier with each minute and Pagno and I, on either side of the furnace, could feel ourselves weakening as we prepared for the last of the pourings.

  “Are you ready?”’ I had to shout to make Pagno hear above the roaring of the furnace and the shouting among the apprentices.

  “Always,” he said and managed to smile even as he rubbed ash from his eyes.

  Goliath’s head was to have been cast next. Agnolo was eager to be of help and, with one of the apprentices, he mistook the order of pouring and instead positioned the laurel wreath next in line beneath the crucible.

  “The head,” I shouted down to him. “The head is next.”

  Donatello was occupied in conversation with Michelozzo and did not hear me. In truth I did not know if it mattered. I looked into the crucible and I could feel the heat singeing my eyebrows. There seemed to be plenty of bronze left and what did it matter if we did the head last? I shrugged and said nothing more.

  Michelozzo gave us the signal to pour. We tensed and I could feel the terrible strain on my arms as we tipped the cauldron and the molten bronze poured slowly into the mold. The pour was agonizingly slow but—God’s mercy—it went smoothly. We began to tip the crucible back into rest position and as we did so I was seized by a cramp in my right arm. I lost purchase on the control rod I held clenched in my fist. The crucible began to shake and the molten bronze sloshed about freely. And then I lost control of the crucible altogether. But, a stroke of good luck! The crucible fell back into position above the furnace rather than forward into the casting pit. No one except Pagno had seen this happen. And Agnolo, of course, who was everywhere and into everything.

  “Are you all right?” Pagno asked.

  I pretended not to hear.

  “Can you go on?” he said, shouting now. “Michelozzo could take your place.”

  “I can help,” Agnolo shouted. He was standing next to the pouring platform and trying to get a foot up on it.

  I pushed him away.

  “I’m fine,” I said to Pagno. “My hand slipped from all the sweat.” I wiped my hands on the towel around my neck. “I’m fine.”

  By now the assistants had moved the mold for the laurel wreath from the casting pit to the sand pit and replaced it with the mold for Goliath’s head. They steadied the head beneath the crucible and checked to see that it was braced firmly in place. Pagno and I waited for the signal to pour. I flexed the muscles in my right arm to shake out the cramp and I worked my fist open and closed. I could see Pagno watching me.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  Michelozzo heard me and looked to see what I meant. He saw me flexing my fist and judged that I was ready and that Pagno was ready and he gave the signal to pour.

  We tipped the crucible slowly, steadily, and the molten bronze began to flow into the funnel opening. This would go well, I could see. I glanced over at Pagno who was all concentration. Goliath’s head was the last piece to be poured and then we would be done and never mind the heat. An ash stung my eye but I blinked it away. The bronze was flowing into the mold, evenly, beautifully, when suddenly—again—my right arm tensed and my hand shuddered on the control rod. My arms shook. Sweat poured down my face and I tried to shake it away when suddenly Agnolo leaped onto the platform.

  “Let me help,” he shouted. “I can help.”

  He grabbed my wrist, and pressed hard on the rod I held. The crucible tipped violently and at once the molten bronze shot from the crucible and overflowed the funnel and poured down into the pit. Michelozzo shouted a warning and at the same moment there was a scream of pain from one of the apprentices as the molten liquid splashed on his naked arm. Donatello leaped to my aid and pulled Agnolo from the platform and then turned to the stricken apprentice who continued to scream in pain and terror. Michelozzo hugged the apprentice to him, murmuring, “Yes, yes, it hurts, I know, I know,” and he rocked the boy back and forth in his arms.

  Donatello turned back to Agnolo and, in the silence that followed the uproar, he fixed him with that terrible look and shouted, “You whore! You stupid, stupid whore.”

  Agnolo recoiled and s
eemed to shrink into himself.

  Donatello moved toward him, his hand raised in anger.

  “No!” someone shouted. It was Pagno.

  Donatello stopped and said softly, “Get out. Just get out.”

  Agnolo fled.

  Donatello turned once more to the apprentice who lay crying softly now in Michelozzo’s arms. “Piccolo mio,” he said. “We’ll take care of you.” He stroked the boy’s hair and laid his hand on his cheek.

  Pagno was dispatched to find a doctor.

  So ended the second casting of the David. The apprentice would recover, with only a nasty scar on his arm to recall the day. Donatello would recover as well, at least for a while.

  But for Agnolo this day had seen the great betrayal from which he would not recover. Donatello had called him a whore, before everyone. So much for his professions of love.

  * * *

  BY A STROKE of luck Goliath’s head was cast to near perfection. The molten bronze had overflowed the mold, but somehow that had not proved the disaster it might have been. The plumes in Goliath’s helmet would serve to mask the imperfections caused by the sudden gush of bronze and Donatello’s expertise in chasing and finishing would take care of the rest.

  The casting in truth had not been a total success. There was a small hole beneath David’s chin and, though most of us failed at first to notice, there was a piece of finger missing below the second knuckle of the hand that held the sword. But the main problem was the hole in the left thigh. It would require a patch and no matter how perfectly the patch was applied there would always be evidence of an imperfection. “Good,” Michelozzo said. “Otherwise they would think you were God.”

  * * *

  DONATELLO AND MICHELOZZO worked together cleaning the bronze pieces, getting rid of all traces of holes and stems left by the gas vents, and then welding the clean bronze pieces into the finished statue. They patched the hole in the left thigh and the smaller hole beneath the chin. They disguised the imperfections in Goliath’s head. They tested the statue for weight and balance. This took over a month. The raw bronze was then hand polished and ready for the patina.

  Applying the patina took a matter of weeks. It was a shade so dark that in the shadows it seemed nearly black and it lent to the bronze a luster and a warmth that seemed like flesh itself and made the viewer want to lean forward and touch it.

  During all this time Agnolo never appeared in the bottega. Donatello worked with his usual concentration, lavishing all his care on the bronze boy he was daily bringing closer to perfection. And then one day it was done.

  Donatello stepped back and for a long time gazed at what he had accomplished.

  Cosimo too gazed—in wonder and gratitude—at what he had accomplished.

  Agnolo came to the bottega and looked upon the statue and smiled. “A whore,” he said, “and no doubt stupid, but he defeated Goliath, didn’t he.”

  Agnolo would not forget and he would not forgive.

  Before the week was up he left Donatello’s house and bed, vowing never to return. And, to my astonishment, Donatello did not seem to care. It was as if having captured the boy in bronze, he had no further need for him in the flesh. Such are the limits of love and art, I told myself.

  1437–1443

  CHAPTER 30

  ON THE SECOND day of July in the year 1437, my two youngest sons were carried off by the Black Pest. Renato Paolo was ten years of age and Giovanni Carlo a tender eight. Oh my sons, my sons! What did they ever do to merit such a cheerless end? Or what did I do to cause it? Even now in my oldest old age I weep for them. One day they were fine young boys—stout and sturdy and of a sweet nature—and the next day they were racked with fever, their armpits and groins purple with buboes, and the deathly smell! In the night they died, even before the Pest had begun to sweep through the city.

  I held Agnolo to blame, for he had visited them earlier that week and brought the Pest with him. Two years had passed since he left Florence for Prato, vowing never to return again. He pretended then that he had been betrayed by Donatello who had called him whore before his entire bottega but in truth he had been betrayed by one of his patrons, a known sodomite, who saved his own neck by naming Agnolo to the Ufficiali di Notte. Brought before the magister Agnolo claimed to be seventeen years of age and so not responsible, but this was his third appearance in court and so they fined him fifty florins—Donatello paid—and urged him strongly to leave Florence for a more benign climate. Two years had passed and he was back in Florence . . . in need of family, he told Alessandra, but as always he was in need of money. He was more than twenty-one years by my reckoning and still able to trade on his youthful looks but he was beginning to see his empty future and—I know him—he hoped to insert himself in my family. He had the good sense, and the wiliness, to approach me through Alessandra.

  “I’ve come to see you,” he said. “And to flee the Pest in Prato.”

  “Who is the pest this time?” I asked. “Another soldier?”

  “The Black Pest,” he said, though he paused to smile at my little jest. “There have been many deaths.”

  I had come in from work on commissions for the sacristy of San Lorenzo and found him sitting on a stool next to my wife with my two youngest, Renato Paolo and Giovanni Carlo, seated one astride each knee. I did not like the look of this and said, “Get down!” and to make my chiding seem less angry I tousled their curly hair. They climbed down, obedient as always, and went to stand beside their mother. Franco Alessandro, who at twelve was attentive beyond his years, sat cross-legged on the floor looking up at Agnolo. Franco had grown into a vain young man, concerned always with his shirts and his stockings and the length of his yellow hair, so it displeased me that he was much taken with Agnolo. My oldest, Donato Michele, already half-Franciscan, sat at the table, watching.

  “I trust you’ve not brought the Pest with you,” I said.

  “Agnolo has been ill,” Alessandra said, and it was true he looked even thinner than I remembered and he had an annoying cough. I had only lately seen the bronze David in Cosimo’s garden and marveled that such a skinny wretch could have inspired so perfect a statue. I breathed a silent curse, for which may God forgive me, though I meant it and mean it still.

  “What illness?”

  “In my breathing. I cannot well breathe.”

  “You had best learn how or your life will be short indeed.”

  “I am well once again, thank you.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Does my lord Donatello know you are in Florence?”

  He said no.

  “And do the Ufficiali di Notte know?”

  There was another awkward silence, which I made worse by asking how much money he needed this time. He lowered his head and looked into his empty hands. He coughed and muttered something I could not hear and I asked him to repeat it.

  “Our mother has died and I owe burial fees,” he said.

  “She was never my mother.”

  “She is dead all the same. And buried.”

  “Luca,” Alessandra said, pleading for him.

  “And I am apprenticed to a wool carder. In Prato.”

  “Apprenticed? At your age?” Nonetheless I was impressed.

  I went to the other room where we kept the money box and took out ten florins. Donatello paid me nearly ninety gold florins a year, but our two older boys were at school with the Franciscans and the cost of food was ever higher and it is an accepted truth that you spend however much you earn, so I felt I could not well afford this. Nonetheless I gave him the money and, cheered by such easy wealth, he accepted Alessandra’s invitation to share our supper.

  Less than a week later my two youngest sons were carried off by the Pest. They were so young and so tender, loving in their innocence, and they would have been a comfort for our old age, for Alessandra and me. Instead they were taken away, cruelly, on a dark day. I cursed Agnolo and I must allow that for a time I cursed God as well.

  I have s
aid before that I cannot imagine God sending me to hell—I am not important enough for him to notice—but cursing God is another matter. He does not wait for death to catch you up. I know, since this day marked the end of all comfort in my life and I began to glimpse now and then—in tiny flashes, caught by candlelight—the narrow cubbyhole prepared for me in hell. This cannot be, I thought, and turned my mind away. I had a wife still, and two fine boys, and I knew—for my two youngest—that it is natural to die.

  Yet even now I blame Agnolo for their deaths, just as I blame him for betraying Donatello and corrupting Franco and driving my wife from our marriage bed into the convent. And for my own discomfortable imprisonment, miserere mei Domine.

  CHAPTER 31

  SEPTEMBER THAT YEAR was a long patience. The days were hot and the nights airless. We lay abed, unable to sleep and unable to stop thinking of our two youngest boys carried away by the Black Pest. We still had our oldest, Donato Michele and Franco Alessandro, and they were a great consolation to us, but the loss of our two youngest was still very much with us and, instead of bringing us together in grief, seemed to thrust us apart. I blamed Agnolo for this, as I blamed him for everything, and Alessandra seemed to blame me.