Leonardo's Swans

by Karen Essex

  Galeazz stood up straight. He was tall and cut a fine figure, broad at the shoulder, narrow at the waist, strong at the calf. “Madame, in those days jousts were held with rude bats and stubs. I will soon enough show you contest with a lance, the length and breadth of which you shall never forget.”

  His impertinent eyes made his meaning clear, and Beatrice expected a haughty retort from her sister. Instead, Isabella returned his suggestive tone.

  “I am looking forward to that unforgettable moment,” she laughed. “They say you are unrivaled.”

  “I am unrivaled at many things,” he added.

  Beatrice could not believe that her sister, a married woman, was inviting these implications from a courtier she had just met. She wondered if she had misunderstood the reference, or if this was simply the way that married women joked with men. Maybe the marriage bed changed a woman. But so quickly? She had never heard her mother utter such words, but then perhaps one hid these tendencies in front of one’s children. She must learn quickly these subtleties of womanhood before she gave Ludovico, or this marvelous Galeazz who has offered her his service, a reason to think her childish. She must watch her sister for clues, and think on her as a mentor, not a competitor. That was the old model. Now she could observe Isabella quietly and steal her tricks.

  “Captain general of my army. And my son-in-law,” Ludovico said proudly and dryly, presenting the cavalier. Galeazz was betrothed to Ludovico’s daughter, Bianca Giovanna, by one of his early mistresses, though Ludovico doted on the girl. She was only three years younger than Beatrice. Galeazz was waiting for her to come of age so they could marry, but in the meanwhile, he had adopted Ludovico’s surnames, Visconti Sforza.

  “But he is more like a son to me,” Ludovico finished.

  “No one believes that, Your Excellency,” Galeazz retorted, and Ludovico assumed a hurtful look. “Because you are far too youthful to be the father of me.”

  “And now that I shall be married to one who is the essence of youth and all its charms, I will be even more mistaken for a young man.” Ludovico addressed his words to Galeazz but directed them at Beatrice, as if thanking her for performing this miracle of reducing his age.

  Beatrice laughed, but wondered if perhaps they had rehearsed these lines before. Still, she was grateful for the good nature that Il Moro showed with this handsome young man, not to mention the compliment to herself. She liked that he treated his captain general as a family member and an equal. Such a ruler was bound to inspire loyalty—something she had not expected her much-maligned husband to elicit. But between the shouts of the crowd, the assemblage of the nobility come to greet her, the affectionate glances her betrothed threw in her direction, this glorious man before her offering his service and protection, and the absence of anyone known as Cecilia Gallerani, Beatrice wondered if life as Ludovico’s duchess was going to be far from the nightmare she had anticipated.

  LATER that day, when the long procession was over, Beatrice looked through the blurry glass of the arched windows of the library, over the snow-veiled lakes, parks, and gardens of the Castello di Pavia, one of her many new homes. The sun was almost down, but she could just make out the iced-over prongs of Poseidon’s trident, staking its claim in the middle of a frozen fountain. All shrubbery, lawns, trees, and intricate pathways were a seamless blanket of white, fading almost to purple with the dying sun. She could feel the temperature drop as she stood by the window. Tomorrow would be colder still. It was beautiful, though, and she could hardly believe that she would be back here in the spring, when instead of this mantle of white, all would be alive and green and blooming with life, and she, mistress of this castle, would be riding through the expansive parks and grounds on the lovely cinnamon mare.

  The library was a series of rooms with tall vaulted ceilings, dark mahogany woodwork, and marble columns in the ornate, Corinthian style supporting great arches. Shelved were thousands of precious manuscripts that Il Moro had collected from all over the world, decorated with painstakingly beautiful miniature paintings. He was showing one of these to Isabella and Leonora, who looked with admiration at tiny renderings of the Viscontis of the past smiting horrific dragons and other mortal enemies. Ludovico had assembled, he boasted, as complete a collection of the great works in Greek and Latin as exist in Europe, certainly in a private home.

  “Perhaps the Vatican has a few more,” he said, trying, Beatrice thought, to sound modest. “But I spend many days sending letters to those who can make the collection more complete. So much has been carried off in the past, what with wars and the like. They’ve been scattered to convents, monasteries, and dilettantes and such who do not even know what they possess.”

  Leonora had already told the duke about her own library in Ferrara, and now was expounding on her husband’s particular interest in translating the knowledge of ancient civilizations into the native tongue.

  “A worthy pursuit,” he agreed. “So you see that your daughter will not be deprived of knowledge, even though she is leaving the company of her learned parents. I assure you that I will continue the tradition in which you raised Madonna Beatrice. Her smallest desires will receive my greatest attentions.”

  “All that you have shown me here, as well as your assurances, give me great comfort,” Leonora said to her son-in-law, whom Beatrice knew her mother had been prepared to dislike.

  “Madonna Beatrice!” Ludovico’s voice called Beatrice to turn around, though she had been enjoying listening to them converse as if she were not present. “I hope you will be able to spend many happy hours here, reading at your leisure and according to your interests, for I know they are many.”

  “My sister is the connoisseur of literature,” Beatrice offered, wishing to be seen, if not as lettered, then as generous. She hoped to divert any questions Ludovico might throw at her about some ancient Latin text or another. Let Isabella show off if she must.

  “My sister is too loose with her compliments,” Isabella replied, appearing even more generous. “When you see her riding a fine horse in the open countryside, you will know that your wife is not only unique but superior among all women in the world.”

  “Madame, I am certain of that fact already. Her youthful loveliness overwhelms.”

  The three of them stared at her as if she were a pretty little babe in the cradle. Oh, she could understand her mother’s wistful gaze, but Isabella was only one year older than Beatrice, a mere sixteen. Why did she seem so much more the woman? Was it her full breasts to Beatrice’s small chest? Was it the intellect that gave her the confidence of a man in conversation? Whatever the cause, there could be no doubt that Isabella already had a distinguished, mature manner, whereas she, Beatrice, had the more anonymous face of a little girl.

  “And now I imagine you ladies will want to rest,” Ludovico said.

  He had already announced that despite the rugged, half-starved, sleepless voyage they had just endured, they would only have one day before the marriage ceremony, which was to take place in the chapel at the Castello di Pavia. Then, days later, everyone would travel to Milan for the feste honoring the new couple. The duke’s astrologer, Messer Ambrogio, thought by him to be infallible, had singled out the day after tomorrow as the most fortuitous for the wedding.

  “Nothing is done here without his advice,” Ludovico said. “Three years ago, I was near my death, and his medicine, administered at the most propitious astrological times, of course, saved my life. They had all given me up for dead. Some had hoped, I’m afraid. But here I am, and I never ignore his counsel.”

  The astrologer and medick was not present. He had already been sent to Milan to gauge the timing of all aspects of the marriage celebrations to take place in the capital. Along with him went Magistro Leonardo, who had been studying anatomy and architecture in this very library, but who was in charge of the theatrical decorations and other details of the days of feste to come.

  “But we have just missed him?” Isabella looked forlorn at the mention that the
Magistro was gone.

  “He spent the summer and most of the fall here. I gave him access to this library, and also to my scholars at the university. A mistake,” said the duke.

  “But how could it be a mistake to allow such a man to study?”

  “The man is in my employ as a painter and an engineer. But, oh, to get him to paint! He has a thousand other pursuits that come between himself and his brush.”

  “One must be understanding but persevering with the artists in one’s employ,” Leonora said, the voice of experience. “Duke Ercole and I have a game we play with them. He makes me out to be the most demanding of creatures in these matters. Then, feeling sorry for the duke that his wife is so troublesome, they produce the desired thing.”

  “Madame, that is a brilliant technique. Perhaps I will be able to engage my own wife in employing it here. Perhaps even on the Magistro, though he is an especially difficult case. I tell you, he would spend all of his time dissecting human and animal cadavers if I left him to his own pursuits.”

  “But why?” Beatrice asked. She and Isabella suddenly huddled together, as if it would give them protection from this grisly news.

  “Why, to learn of organs and veins! That is what he says. He says that if he had been allowed, he would have devoted his life to learning the workings of the body’s interior and not the glorification of its exterior. Thank God he was born a bastard not allowed to study either law or medicine. If his father had not been an indiscreet youth, this great artist would be lancing sores on the legs of plague victims!”

  “He paints the exterior,” Beatrice offered. “Why must he study the interior?”

  “He is a medical man at heart, my dear. Oh, he is many things, but especially that. He has spent far too many hours drawing replications of organs, veins, limbs, and even one of a baby dead in the womb, when he should have been giving his mind to making the Castello at Milan a marvel for your eyes at our wedding.” Ludovico smiled at his young bride, giving her a little nod. As he lowered his face, she felt his eyes roam the length of her from tip to toe. It was a suggestive glance, the first indication of romance to come, or so she hoped. “You must see some of these drawings, for they are as extraordinary as they are macabre.”

  “I do not think I would like to see such things, Your Excellency,” Beatrice said. She cannot think of what else to call him. When in public and in letters, her parents used such titles with one another as well. “Death comes to too many babies in the womb. It cannot be good luck to look upon such a thing.”

  She wanted him to know that she would never jeopardize a child of his in her womb by looking at a dead fetus.

  “Perhaps in exploring the interior of the body, he is searching for its essence, that ineffable thing that animates the eyes, the expression, the gestures. Perhaps he is looking for the soul,” Isabella offered.

  Ludovico paused, cocking his head to the side, giving Isabella’s idea what seemed to Beatrice like a very long consideration. “Madame, when you meet him and speak with him, and when you see his paintings, I believe it will give confirmation to your theory. He is as much a philosopher as he is an artist or builder or man of anatomy. It would be just like him to open up a body in search of a soul.”

  Beatrice did not like the way that Ludovico kept looking at Isabella as if she had just forged some pathway in his mind, had illuminated a road of thought for him that he had been trying to find on his own. Beatrice could see by some uncomfortable change in her mother’s face that Leonora had observed this too. How could this be? There was no Cecilia Gallerani in sight, but it was as if her own sister was trying to usurp her. Just a few hours ago, Beatrice believed that she had captured her husband’s attention, and now it was seeping away, leaving her cold, as if the hot draft that had begun to warm her bones was suddenly redirected toward her sister.

  FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF LEONARDO:

  You have named painting among the mechanical arts! Truly, if painters were as equipped as poets to praise their own work with the written word, I doubt whether painting would ever have to be so defiled with such a description. You call it mechanical because it is by manual work that the hands represent what the imagination creates. Aren’t you writers setting down your words with the pen? Is that not mechanical? If you call it mechanical because it is done for money, who is more guilty of this error—if indeed it is an error—than you writers? If you lecture for the schools or academies, do you not go to whoever pays you the most? Do you do any work without monetary reward?

  If you say that poetry is more everlasting than painting, to this I would reply that the works of a smith are more enduring still, since time preserves them longer than either your words or paintings; nevertheless, they show little imagination, and painting, if it be done upon copper in enamel colors, can be made far more enduring.

  We painters are the grandsons of God, the grandchildren of Nature. For all visible things derive their existence from Nature, and from these same things is born painting. So therefore we may justly speak of it as the grandchild of Nature and as related to God himself.

  The next night, Beatrice lay in bed, head spinning from wine and dancing. She had not consumed so much wine since she was a child, thieving it with her gaggle of playmates at Naples as the adults passed out, and drinking it until they vomited all over the nursery. As the hands of her ladies had dressed her for the first night in her marriage bed, she had prayed that she would not give a repeat performance of her childish pranks for her husband.

  With perfumed kisses and knowing smiles, the women had laid her upon the most sumptuous bed she had ever seen—so soft that when her small body sank into it, she wondered if she would drown in its feathers before Ludovico made his appearance. Lions and serpents carved into the canopy above stared at her, and to take away her fear, she stuck her tongue out at them, giggling. The reds and golds of the brocade fabrics draping the bed began to run together, making her dizzy, and she closed her eyes. Nestling deeper into the bed, she ran her hands up and down the white silk nightgown, feeling the small mounds of her breasts and the strength of her stomach muscles. The cold fabric titillated her skin, giving her gooseflesh.

  The marriage ceremony, she reflected, had come off spectacularly well. Most of the decorous lords and ladies who had come to Pavia to welcome her had returned to Milan, where the celebrations were to take place in the Castello. But Ludovico’s intimates, as well as representatives of the Houses of Este and Gonzaga, had remained for the ceremony in the Visconti Chapel within the Castello di Pavia. Upon entering the chapel, she was greeted with a whirlwind of faces, almost none of which she recognized in her nervous state. Niccolò da Correggio was present, happy to take advantage of Francesco’s absence so that he might have Isabella all to himself, though, since every man sought it, no man ever had her sole attention. Galeazz di Sanseverino had appeared with four of his brothers, who all had gleaming smiles despite their martial appearance, and were no less dashing than he. Other faces she could not associate with names, at least not at this moment.

  Isabella and Leonora each took her by an elbow to lead her to the altar. She was sewn into a brilliant white robe, embedded with a thousand small pearls. Streams of sapphires and diamonds met in sharp angles in the tight bodice. She had insisted upon keeping her long plait, into which was woven white and silver ribbons lined with pearls. Beatrice was used to formal gowns, but she had never worn one as heavy as this, and she had to walk slowly, feeling weighted to the mosaic floor of the chapel. She was in no hurry to get to the altar. This was her moment, with the faces of all those who were important to her husband and to her family glued to her as she walked past them like a bejeweled angel.

  The Mass seemed to pass very quickly, her mind whirling with thousands of thoughts and images, none of which she could remember after the ceremony was over. It was all a blur until Ludovico had taken her left hand and placed upon her finger a ring with a huge square diamond at its center, surrounded by the tiniest pearls she had ever seen, strung
on wires. It was so heavy that, had he not been holding her hand, it would have dropped right to her side. Would she have to wear it all the day long, she wondered? Then he was walking her away from the altar and the rush of faces came at her again, and she just smiled and smiled.

  After the ceremony in the chapel, dinner for the hundred or so guests had been taken in the immense dining hall, with tall ceilings painted in glittering gold and ultramarine, the paint of which Ludovico told her had been made from thousands of crushed lapis lazuli. The walls were covered with frescoes of the Visconti men and women of the past who had built this royal house. Beatrice searched their faces for similarities to her husband; he explained, however, that alas, he resembled the Sforza side of the family. She believed him. Everything about him was strong, the literal meaning of Sforza.

  Each of the arched windows high above were set in triangular marble shafts. Coats of arms from the Visconti, the Sforza, and the House of Savoy, into which Ludovico’s family often married, decorated the empty spaces in the walls. Never had Beatrice seen such grandeur, not even in her grandfather’s court at Naples. Perhaps the Pope lived in greater splendor, but she was certain that even those fabled Turkish sultans, or the doges of Venice, could not possibly live in more magnificent surroundings.

  Beatrice did not remember eating anything from the platters of meats and delicacies that came in an endless parade from the kitchen. She tried to take a bite or two, but she had gone through the entire day without being able to feel her body. All she could manage was to keep picking up various goblets of gold and silver and drinking whatever was inside. It was always wine—sometimes red, sometimes white, sometimes sweet, sometimes dry. After a while, she could no longer taste it at all. She could feel the weight of her dress and her ring, and she could feel the cold air hit her face as they left the dining hall and entered the courtyard, but there was a strange absence of her corporeal self.