During that time when I was forced to share his bed—my bed long before it was his—he complained that I kept him awake with my snoring, that I tossed and turned all night, that I took up too much space. To be sure, I took up more space than he since he was no more than a skeleton. We were both given respite when Donatello said, “Enough,” and took him to his own room and his own bed.
Agnolo began to sleep a little and, with sleep, he managed to eat something at each meal. Over the next months he put on weight and his bones no longer seemed about to pierce the skin. He was clean and well-dressed. He coughed less. He was still very thin but he had regained some strength and talked of returning to his craft of wool-carding. Donatello urged him to stay at home and regain his strength. There would always be time for wool-carding.
* * *
AGNOLO BEGAN TO appear at the bottega late each afternoon to see how our work progressed. He was greatly intrigued by the stone-worker specialists, Niccolò da Firenze and his two comically-named assistants Meo and Pippo. Meo and Pippo were scarcely more than boys, and they responded with warmth to Agnolo’s interest in them. He was known as Donatello’s favorite, after all. They struck up a friendship—Meo and Pippo and Agnolo—and their common jest was who would be first to bed the giantess Ria Scarpetti. Or to scale the Alps, as they called it. Ria Scarpetti knew of this because Agnolo made a point of telling her so and in truth she found them amusing. She fell into an odd companionship with Agnolo. He possessed this incomprehensible ability to interest men and to charm women. In an earlier age, they would say he was possessed by the devil.
* * *
MY ROOM WAS separated from Donatello’s by a thin wall. I had trouble falling asleep nights as I listened for sounds from next door. I could almost hear them breathing. And then the crickets would begin their metallic rubbing and the frogs would croak and go on croaking and I would fall asleep. Sometimes in the night I would wake up to the sound of murmured conversation, light laughter, a sigh or a groan. I listened. I strained to hear their words but I could never make out more than the edge of a word here or there, uncompromising but disturbing nonetheless. The words exchanged in bed are always true.
I had a talk with Agnolo.
“So you are sleeping once again? You get a good night’s sleep?”
“Donatello does not snore. You snore.”
“Nor does he take up all the bed for himself.”
He looked at me as if to ask how I might know this.
“I hear you talking sometimes. In the night.”
“It is the frogs you hear. We do not talk in the night.”
“I’ve heard you.”
“What do we say then?”
“I cannot make out the words. He talks softly. So do you.”
“Do you think it is the sound of love? The sound of passion?”
“I say only that I hear you talking in the night.”
“We do not talk in the night.”
A few days later I tried again.
“Donatello has brought you back to life.”
“In every sense.”
I could think of nothing more to say.
* * *
SOME WEEKS LATER. I had not slept well during the night and I was cross throughout the morning and when I saw Agnolo that afternoon I was filled with deviltry.
“You have struck up quite a friendship with Meo and Pippo.”
“They are rude young men. I like them.”
“How well do you like them?”
“I’ve never touched them.”
“But they attract you? They are comely boys.”
“They are attracted to Ria. They call her the Amazon.”
“They talk of scaling the Alps, I hear.”
“You hear a great deal. It is only a rough joke of theirs.”
“And you fancy them.”
“I fancy her, but not in the way you mean. Ria and I are friends.”
Two anormali, I thought. Two people who never fit in anywhere.
“You are alike in some ways,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, satisfied, as if he had put me to rout.
* * *
THOSE WERE TUMULTUOUS days that led up to 13 June 1450 and the revelation of the finished altar of the Santo. Everyone rejoiced at Donatello’s triumph. There was a great feast in the Piazza Sant’ Antonio and during the feast Donatello was approached by the eminent Palla Strozzi, in exile from Florence, and was congratulated on the brilliance of the statues and the perfection of the bronze and marble carvings of the altar itself. He had come, he said, to make an offer on behalf of the Doge of Venice. The Doge wished a statue of John the Baptist from Donatello’s own hand, freestanding, life-sized, in wood or in marble, whenever Donatello might find the time to execute it. Perhaps sometime within the next year.
“I speak for Venice,” he said, “and for the Doge.”
We knew then that we were seen as foreigners in Padua and we knew that this request from the Doge was in fact a command and we knew they were watching us.
“But Palla Strozzi is himself an exile,” I said to Donatello when he told me of this. “Surely he has no power over us.”
“Palla Strozzi is rich and important. He descends from a noble family and he is an intimate of the Albizzi,” Donatello said. “He is a dangerous man. I will carve him a John the Baptist he will not soon forget.”
* * *
THAT NIGHT WE all retired to our beds and, though it was after curfew, there was still no sign of Agnolo.
The next day was a cool November morning with the slightly bitter taste of fall in the air. Near dawn the last of the frogs stopped croaking and gave over to the roosters. It promised to be a fine fresh day.
I tossed back my covers, splashed my face with water from the basin, and threw on my clothes, ready for a good day’s work. But first, I went outside to empty the night jar into the ditch in the garden. Coming back to my room I paused outside Donatello’s room and looked in through the slightly open door. He was sitting on the side of the bed, his head in his hands. I was filled with shame for him, a man of sixty-four reduced to tears by a bardassa of some thirty-seven years. Or rather by the memory of that boy the man had been, bronze and bold-faced, one hand on his hip and the other on a sword, asking you to admire his naked body, asking you to touch it. I was annoyed, shamed, and I wanted to hurt him. I pushed the door open further.
“So he’s not returned,” I said.
“I fear for him. Greatly.”
“You are well shut of him,” I said. “He is ever in the way. He causes enmity between the workers. He keeps Pippo and Meo from their assigned tasks. He . . .” This was folly I knew, but it was time these things were said and as I spoke my voice grew louder. “He drains everyone’s energy. He drains your energy. You work better without him. I . . .”
“He is my friend.” He gave me a fierce look. “He is my friend.”
I knew that look and usually it would have made me grovel, but this morning it merely made me angry. “Attenzione!” I said and lifted the night jug to him in a kind of toast and went back to my room.
I was at the bottega bent over my account books when Donatello arrived to begin the day. We ignored one another for as long as we could. Finally he approached my little table and asked, “Are we well set for money?”
I was all business. I flipped open the Accounts Owed and Received book and pointed to figures I knew he would not take care to understand. “Here are the moneys received for the Crucifix.” I ran a finger down a long list of numbers, “and here are our payments to the subcontractors for the temporary altar and here are payments to Niccolò for the stonework on the permanent altar. He pays Meo and Pippo from his own income. And here are the statue payments, some directly to the workers, most of them—here, in this column—directly to you. The current moneys are . . .” But here he interrupted. He had heard more than he wanted to know and still I went on.
“But we are solvent? We have money available for an emergency?”
“You are a good man, Luca,” he said. “If only you were not so hard on your brother.”
“He is not . . .”
“Not your brother. I know. But he is mine.”
THREE DAYS WENT by and Donatello had stopped eating and sleeping. He should have been working on designs for the Gattamelata but he sat bent over his worktable, his head in his hands. None of us dared talk to him. He was inconsolable. And then on the fourth day a messenger arrived with news that Agnolo Mattei had been arrested and was being held in the Padua prison. His was not a first offense, they knew, but they had no access to records in Florence and they had only an anonymous accusation from the denunciation box and of course the testimony of the boy he was caught sodomizing. It seemed that, for some reason not clear to us, the authorities wished to make a larger case against Agnolo than they were able to. Nobody was allowed to see him. It was only out of courtesy that they informed Donatello of Agnolo’s arrest.
“A courtesy,” Donatello said and his voice was bitter.
I listened to him and I sympathized and I forced a sigh.
“God will be with him,” I said.
“Don’t be a fool,” Donatello said.
* * *
AGNOLO WAS RELEASED from prison a month later. He was a ruined man, a mere sack of bones. All his vanity seemed to have disappeared. He wanted only to be quiet and, he said, to be left alone. In truth he wanted only to be cradled in the arms of Donatello.
Yes, I thought, but only wait until he is well again and see what a cruel turn he will do you.
CHAPTER 39
DONATELLO LOST ALL interest in the Gattamelata. By 1451 he had completed the design for horse and rider—he had spent weeks studying the anatomy of horses—and he had made a rough sketch of the immense pedestal on which the bronze figures would stand, but now that it was time to make a cast, he turned over the work to bronze experts hired for this purpose and gave his attention solely to the John the Baptist requested by the Doge of Venice.
He was still wavering between marble and wood when good fortune brought him a huge trunk of native walnut, fine grained and with an even texture, perfect for carving the most delicate detail. He sketched Pagno di Lapo and discovered at once that Pagno was all wrong for the Baptist. Donatello’s vision was a Baptist burned by the sun and bent under the burden of his message. A desert saint for whom all worldly needs had passed away, the ghost of a man made spirit by the slow disintegration of his flesh and bones. His vision was of Agnolo, not Agnolo the dying bardassa but an Agnolo who had been rescued from his excesses, haggard, beaten, and now at last sanctified.
It seemed clear to all of us that Agnolo was dying. His month long imprisonment had failed to finish him off only because he was released in time for Donatello to provide him a doctor’s care and good food and a lengthy period of rest. Months passed and he gained back some weight and his cough became less troublesome. He rested much of the day, walking a little in the cool of evening but remaining always close to home. He was ever anxious, looking about in the piazza as if without reason and without provocation he might again be arrested and thrown behind bars. Though Pagno asked him once and I asked him repeatedly, Agnolo would not talk of his time in prison and he would not say how he came to be released.
He was eager to pose again for Donatello though he found it hard to remain in position for very long. He placed a three-legged stool on the posing platform and, with apologies and sighs of regret, he would sit on it when he could no longer stand.
“I am of little help to you,” he said.
“You are fine. You are excellent,” Donatello said.
I said nothing, but listened and waited for the moment when the change in Agnolo might assert itself. As it assuredly would.
Donatello had finished making sketches and as I looked them over I was astonished to see that he had caught the ghostly eyes in Agnolo’s dying face in a way that transformed hunger and lust into a holy austerity. But I wondered if this miracle could survive the transfer to a block of wood. Would not Agnolo by his very nature remain simply Agnolo?
* * *
WE WALKED TOGETHER in the evening. It was May and there was always a cool breeze and the air seemed to help with his breathing. The frogs had begun to croak and the night crickets rubbed out their crackling music. Clouds scudded before a sickle moon. It seemed a time for trading confidences.
“You are posing well,” I said. “Is it not a strain for you?”
“A small matter if I can be of help to Donatello.”
“You are a great help. The sketches are miraculous.”
“Donatello is miraculous.”
This chaff was getting us nowhere.
“He has saved your life.”
He said nothing.
“You are free once again. Did you fear never to be free again?”
Still he said nothing.
“You can trust me,” I said. “We are almost brothers.” There was a silence between us and I added, “My own son was imprisoned for . . . as you know.”
“I fear for Donatello,” he said.
Now, at last.
“Yes?”
“Because they wish him ill.”
“They? Who are they? Do they have names?”
“The Ufficiali di Notte. The magister of the Ufficiali.”
“The Albizzi? Palla Strozzi?”
He cast me a sharp glance. “You know of this?”
“I know they conspire against Cosimo. And what shorter route to Cosimo than through the heart of Donatello?”
“But what could be gained by ruining Donatello?” He paused to study the stones at our feet. “It makes little sense.”
“But you agree that someone wants to ruin Donatello,” I said. “By any means.” I did not say, By means of you. “They are canny and we are simple workmen,” I said. “Is it not so?”
“They want me to watch him,” Agnolo said. “I promised nothing.”
“Watch him? What did they ask? What exactly did they say?”
“They say nothing. They hint at everything. They want only that I should spy on him.”
“Spying is betrayal. Spying is detestable,” I said. “Judas was a spy.”
“I promised nothing,” he said.
I pursued this line of questioning further but without profit. He had confessed enough, however, for me to understand the grounds of his release from prison: in return for his freedom he would spy on Donatello.
But there was nothing to fear, I told myself. For many years now Donatello had had no sexual interest other than Agnolo and Agnolo would scarcely give reports against himself.
“I will keep your confidence,” I said.
WHEN I TOLD Pagno what I had learned, he was appalled.
“Spy on Donatello? To what end?” Pagno asked.
“To destroy Cosimo.”
“Agnolo destroy Cosimo? It is too fantastic,” Pagno said. “You read too much in Boccaccio.”
* * *
THE CARVING PROCEEDED well. The walnut trunk was immense, close in grain and smooth in texture, and Donatello worked with firm control and a sure hand. He cut with the grain in strong clean strokes. He moved from chisel to chisel as if he had never left off working with wood. It was a wonder to see him carving again, perfectly, even with his imperfect eyesight.
Agnolo posed for him with a rare patience. He tired quickly and he had trouble breathing but he never complained. Nor did he object to being portrayed as ugly. Donatello had dressed him, as he imagined the Baptist would look, in a long, ragged tunic, shredded at the bottom to resemble a tattered animal skin. About his shoulders he wore a rough scarf to shield him against the night cold. His legs and feet were bare. In his r
aised right hand he clutched a small reed cross and in his left he held a parchment scroll. His matted hair hung in clumps. There was no trace left of that beautiful youth of the Medici boy.
John the Baptist gradually emerged from the walnut trunk while all about Donatello and Agnolo the giant equestrian statue was coming to life as experts in bronze created a giant bozzetto from Donatello’s designs. Now and then he left off the Baptist to give instructions on the rough casts for the horse and rider, but his first concern remained his wooden statue of the Baptist.
IN THIS YEAR, 1451, tensions between Venice and Florence grew worse and as a result we Florentines were daily less welcome in Padua. Venice closed Cosimo’s banks. Cosimo opened new ones in Milan. Venice ended all trade with Florence. Milan took up the trade that Venice left off. Threatened by the Holy Roman emperor, Cosimo decided he had no choice but to request the aid of the king of France, the ancient enemy of the emperor.
My enemy’s enemy is my friend.
Cosimo sent ambassadors to France and won a guarantee of trade between the Republic of Florence and the kingdom of France, conceding only that Florence would remain neutral should France some day decide to pursue its claim to the kingdom of Naples. But in the year 1452 that is exactly what France did and the king of Naples marched north against Florence to punish Cosimo for his pact with France. The Neapolitan army swept everything before it as the soldiery penetrated the countryside and harried the outlying villages, plundering and looting. All of Florence trembled under the imminent attack.
Cosimo de’ Medici, an old man of sixty-four, took to his bed, broken.
And then when all hope seemed lost, the ferocious French army appeared on the northern borders hastening south to defend the Florentine republic. The Neapolitan army fell into retreat as the citizens of Florence drew a deep breath and offered prayers of gratitude in all of its many churches. For the moment Florence was saved. Cosimo left the city for his fortified villa in the Mugello.
* * *
DONATELLO’S JOHN THE Baptist possessed a soft silken glow before he painted it in brown and gold. In its silken state the statue was ethereal: here was a man no longer of this world. But painted, it became something new, unlike anything Donatello had yet done, unlike anything any of us had seen. At first glance it was supremely ugly: the portrait of a dying man whose flesh was desiccated and whose limbs were mere bone. Sunken eyes. Gaunt cheeks. What in Agnolo Mattei was the wasting of a human being became in John the Baptist the triumph of the spirit over flesh. In him humanity approached the awesome nature of divinity. Ugliness became a new kind of beauty. Weakness became a source of perfection. His statue was an act of faith: Donatello had revealed in it what happens when you draw too close to God.
The Medici Boy Page 28
