by Karen Essex
Isabella realizes that she was correct about the Magistro: he is in search of the soul. The essence and mystery and beguiling qualities of not just this woman but of woman emerge from within, peek out just enough from the eyes and from the skin’s tiny pores to reveal a touch of the ineffable. What is it that Isabella sees? The power of the feminine? The godliness of the female?
“It is as if he has stolen a glimpse of her soul,” she says to Galeazz, who still stares though he has seen both the picture and the woman many times. “It is pouring from her eyes.”
“That is what the Magistro says, that the eyes are the window of the soul,” he replies quietly. “Knowing the lady, I must say that in this case, he has indeed captured her essence.”
“He must have used layers upon layers upon layers of thin paint to achieve this luminescent quality of the facial skin and that of the long, graceful, bony hand.”
“Madame, no one knows how he performs his miracles. After the initial sittings, he paints alone in secret.”
“She is beautiful and girlish, yet serious. She looks studious, does she not?” Isabella asks, as she cannot help but realize that she has all of those qualities. And she would like to sit for the master who might capture them in a painting.
“Yes, as is the lady herself.”
“And what is the small animal on her lap?”
“Why, you wear it next to your skin all the time. Do you not recognize the ermine in its living state?” he jokes with her.
“Does she have a pet ermine?”
Did anyone?
“No, it’s just that the ermine is one of the many symbols of Il Moro. He wanted it in the painting. Or perhaps it was the Magistro who suggested it. The ermine is a favorite of his. The legend of the animal is that being chased by a hunter, it went to its death rather than run into a hole because it did not wish to get dirty. The Magistro is a fanatic about cleanliness.”
“Perhaps he is also making the point that the duke is a bit of a weasel.”
She can see that Galeazz wants to laugh but does not. “Is that what you think of your brother-in-law?”
“I think he is many, many things.”
“The ermine is also a play upon Madonna Cecilia’s name, which is why the Magistro allowed its inclusion in the picture. Gale means ermine in Greek.”
“I love the cleverness of it all,” Isabella says, “no matter what it means. But I think it might mean that Madonna Cecilia has Il Moro under her palm!”
Out of the unearthly shadows of the painting’s background comes a door, leading to nothing but light. “Where do you think that door in the corner of the painting is leading? It’s strange and mysterious, is it not?” Isabella asks.
“I never thought on it. Perhaps the Magistro wanted to give her a door through which she might escape if she chose to.”
What a startling observation, she thinks. Would her sister have such an exit? That was both the joy and the sorrow of the life of a mistress. You could leave. But you could also easily be told to leave. Now that Galeazz has put the idea in her mind, she is certain that the Magistro inserted this irony into his painting. Finally, she says, “Sir, I believe you are even more brilliant than meets the eye.”
“We must go now,” he says. “She will be back at any moment for her afternoon rest.”
“Ah, but there is the second part of our arrangement, the viewing of la Gallerani herself.”
He sighs. “If we are lucky, she is in the garden below. She is in confinement, you know.”
“Is that because my sister and everyone in Europe is here for the festivities?”
“No, that is because she is about to deliver a child, though I hardly think that Il Moro would be parading her around during the celebrations for his marriage.”
Galeazz leads her by the arm to a window. They do not approach it directly so as not to be seen. He puts her behind him, and leans into the side of the window, gazing below. “We are in luck.” He takes her by the elbows and places her in front of him, but still aside the window, holding her closer than she thinks is necessary, but it adds to the daring of the moment. He is bigger than her husband, bigger even than Ludovico. She feels that she could fall back into him and be in bliss. Does he know how he is making her feel? Taking a deep breath, she sticks to the task at hand.
“Be quick about it,” he warns.
She leans forward so that she can see below into the yard. A woman with the same golden hair walks awkwardly, hands low on her hips, great belly jutting out, leaning slightly backward as if to balance herself. She is wrapped in a scarlet velvet cloak lined with fur and her elbows stick out like ungainly wings. She is enormous. She looks up, and Isabella almost darts away from the window, but the woman is merely trying to point her face to the sun to catch its weak January rays. Her face and neck are swollen, whether with childbirth or with age or with weight gain, Isabella cannot know. But even at this distance, in the stark midday light, she can see that bags have crept under Cecilia’s eyes, and that her skin is no longer the quality that it was at the time she was painted. Or perhaps the Magistro was generous in his portrayal. He did, after all, have to please both the subject and the powerful patron who commissioned the piece. Cecilia blows all the air out of her puffy cheeks and into the heavens as if exasperated by some thought or condition. She does not look happy.
Isabella leans back into Galeazz, wishing to remove herself from the window before she gets caught in her spying, but also to feel his strong body once more within the boundaries of propriety.
“I have seen enough,” she says.
Once they are safely down the hall, she asks if Cecilia was ever as lovely as she was in the painting. “Did the beautiful maiden transform into the cow with her pregnancy, like some mythological creature, or did the Magistro transform the cow into the beautiful maiden for the picture?”
Again, he wants to laugh, but his gallantry would not allow anything more than making a smile at her as if she is a mischievous and evil child. “I suppose it is a bit of both, though the painting was done some ten years ago when Cecilia was just your age. She was lovely, though the Magistro performs his magic well.”
And yet she is immortalized as the beauty of ten years ago. No matter what she does from this time forward, she will always have that painting, rendered by a genius, that shows her at the pinnacle of her attractiveness.
Immortal. Was Cecilia aware at the time that the way to immortality was gotten not by being just another mistress of a powerful man but by being painted by the master of masters?
Isabella must have that prize, no matter what it takes. What if the same fate that has befallen Cecilia happens to her, only sooner? What if by this time next year, she is puffed up with Francesco’s baby and has lost her figure forever? What if Francesco planted his seed last night and she is already with child? The idea that once would have made her happiest now makes her shiver with fear. Their mother had been slender and beautiful before the birth of her children too. Now she is still handsome, but portly. No, Isabella wants to be frozen in time now, right at this moment when all men stare at her with that same look of admiration and desire; that gaze of absolute longing to know her and to possess her. This is the very second in time that she wishes preserved, and not just by any court painter no matter how skilled. She must have Leonardo.
Perhaps Galeazz can make that happen for her, be her aide-de-camp in the mission.
Isabella stops walking, turns to Galeazz, and takes both of his hands. She looks up into his eyes, which seem to await her every desire. “I want to meet him.”
LUDOVICO had given the Magistro elaborate quarters in the Corte Vecchio, the old ducal palace, for himself, his household, and his workshop. Il Moro set him up there so that he could use the immense courtyard to work on his colossal equestrian sculpture that was to be a tribute to Ludovico’s father, Francesco Sforza, the great condottiere who won the duchy of Milan by the sword.
“Yet you will see, upon entering the courtyard, that t
here is no horse in sight!” Galeazz says. “Thus adding to the duke’s great frustration with the Magistro’s stubborn procrastination in all things.”
Galeazz fills Isabella in on this and other odd details of the Magistro as he escorts her to the studio in his chariot. They include: The Magistro does not eat meat of any kind because he refuses to let his body be “a tomb for other animals.” He is so empathetic toward all of God’s creatures that when he passes caged birds for sale in the marketplace, he buys them and then sets them free. When he was a youth, a rustic from the hills of Tuscany—some tiny dot on the map called Vinci—he was apprenticed to the great Florentine sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. It is said that after the first time Verrocchio allowed Leonardo to paint an entire figure, an angel in the master’s version of The Baptism of Christ, Verrocchio took one look at it and quit painting. The apprentice had already exceeded the master to the extent that he put down the brush and would only sculpt thereafter. Further, Isabella must not expect for him to treat her like some courtier would do. “Though he is unrivaled for painting the female face, as you saw with the portrait of la Gallerani, he demonstrates no interest in the company of women. In Florence, as a young man, he was arrested and tried on sodomy charges for consorting with a male prostitute. That may be one reason why he chose to leave the city, for there is no better place for evil gossip than Florence, with the possible exception of Venice.
“Now, he is followed around by a twelve-year-old beauty of a youth who steals and makes trouble. He even stole from the purse of one of my own cavaliers as the man was being fitted for his costume. Leonardo treats the little demon like a son, though he calls him Salai, which I believe is the Tuscan expression for ‘limb of the devil.’ He dresses the scamp in the height of fashion and parades him around like a prize. Everyone suspects that the relationship is sexual. Everyone talks—and not in a positive fashion—about the fact that Leonardo has better-dressed servants than the nobility.”
He is a mass of contradictions, Galeazz explains. “As gentle as a dove, but strong as an ox. He can bend a horseshoe with his left hand, the hand with which he paints and writes.”
Isabella’s head is swimming with facts about the man, so many that she cannot decide upon the attitude with which she will greet him. But it does not matter because when they arrive, an apprentice informs them that the Magistro is not to be found in his quarters.
“He may not return for some time,” says the thin, stringy-haired boy. The boy is probably about Isabella’s age, but his thinness and simple wool robe set against her grandeur make the gap between them seem more than a generation. He appears nervous, but at the same time eager to represent his master to these illustrious visitors, even to appear knowledgeable about him. “We never know when he is going to come or go.”
“And where might he be?” asks Isabella.
“He could be anywhere, searching the city for models for his paintings, or visiting with metallurgists to discuss the nature of bronze, or perhaps he is wandering in the woods behind the Castello. He loves to lose himself in those woods, he says, communing with the very essence of things.”
The apprentice invites them to come into the studio, apologizing for its chaotic condition. They have so many projects, and of such magnitude, that it is difficult to keep order. He tries to find Isabella an appropriate chair, but she assures him that she does not want to sit. Cats and chickens wander in and out of the large, open door, ignoring one another, or perhaps the cold weather makes them indifferent to their natures. Another boy, even younger, lazily plays a lute in the corner, fingertips cut out of his well-worn gloves. When he sees the visitors, he stops, but Isabella encourages him to continue. A younger apprentice stokes a furnace. “For baking pots and shaping metal,” the chatty apprentice offers. “It also has the very practical use of keeping us warm.”
Windows have been cut, the apprentice says, gesturing above, so that the light falls at the perfect forty-five-degree angle the Magistro insists is correct for capturing a subject. The loft above, she thinks, must be where the apprentices make their beds. Big clay molds of what appear to be horses’ parts lie about in bizarre arrangements—a flank here, a head there. The walls are covered with drawings of every kind, some of which Isabella cannot identify the subject, but she is excited when she sees the renderings for the costumes that the Magistro designed for Galeazz’s jousting match. The drawings look even more savage than the men had appeared. Otherwise, she is not certain of what she is looking at in his renderings—men with wings; sketches of dozens of types of legs and arms; a huge page of a variety of types of noses and another of ears; and many mechanical drawings for machines that she cannot identify. Mathematical equations cover the margins of every sketch.
“The Magistro is also a mathematician?” she asks the boy.
“Oh yes, Your Excellency, the Magistro believes that the artist must know all subjects, as well as every creature and phenomenon of nature firsthand, as if he is the very thing itself. An artist must be one with the very motion and rhythm of the universe. Mathematics is a great part of the knowledge. Without mathematics, there is no perspective, and the Magistro is a fiend on the subject of perspective. I am made to study mathematics late into the evenings after we have finished our work.”
“Rigorous, indeed,” says Isabella, strolling to the one large, coherent work in the studio, a painting on wood, which leans casually against a white wall, the light falling upon it, illuminating the faces and highlighting the Magistro’s play of shadows upon radiance. The panel rests against the wall, almost as if someone had discarded it. It is the simplest of mother-and-child scenarios, but it happens to be a painting of the Blessed Virgin with the baby Jesus in her lap, holding a flower that the two of them examine. Isabella does not think she has ever seen the two portrayed in such a manner, so casual and uncomplicated. No marble thrones, elaborate columns, cherubs, angels on high, or soaring doves of peace clutter the scene. The identities of the subjects are given away only by delicate halos. The Madonna looks like a toothless Italian peasant girl, and the baby, her chubby son. Isabella wonders what the Magistro is trying to accomplish with this painting: Is the girl some Tuscan rustic he knew in his youth? His own mother, perhaps? It’s an odd picture. The Madonna looks very young, as childlike in appearance as Beatrice, yet her hairline recedes like an old man’s. Artists inevitably model the Madonna after the goddess Venus, or at least after the most beautiful, virtuous-looking women in Italy, or the pallid, ethereal women from the land of the Flemish.
“If this was a commissioned work,” Isabella whispers to Galeazz, “I imagine it was rejected.”
“It is almost sacrilege to portray the Blessed Virgin so pitifully,” Galeazz says. “Like a coarse girl.”
“I thought the same,” Isabella says. “Though her dress is lovely enough, and she wears a nice jewel at the chest. And what attention the Magistro has given to the folds and drapes of her skirts. Look at this velvet; it is as if you can touch it and feel the soft texture.”
“But there is a lack of elegance to the face, is there not? Why make the Blessed Virgin look like an ugly, toothless girl losing her hair.”
Yet there is beauty to it, she wants to say, but she does not want to argue. Not the kind of beauty the Magistro had given to Cecilia Gallerani. This is just a mother and baby, in a simple setting, much as the Virgin Mary must have inhabited. Surely she and Joseph did not live with thrones in their houses and cherubs flying over their heads, as she is customarily portrayed. With all the magisterial symbols absent, it is as if the artist is saying that the act of a mother playing so gently with her child is in itself Divine. All the traditional signs of glory are replaced by the simple feeling between the two.
There is something Platonic about both of the paintings, Isabella thinks; some quest of Leonardo’s to arrive at a kind of pure feeling, some absolute truth about feeling, rather than the sloppy and specific human emotions laid bare for all to see. It is as if he is attempting to surpass ord
inary and commonplace feeling for the essence of Feeling. Is the expression of that essence a mortal attempt to evoke the Divine? All the religious painting in Italy represents the sacred as separate from humanity. Leonardo, it seems to Isabella, is expressing the impersonal sacredness within the mortal form.
There again, too, is the mysterious illuminated opening in the corner of the picture.
“Look, Galeazz, how as in Cecilia’s portrait, there is the window in the background, which has no landscape behind it, but only light.”
“Perhaps it is unfinished,” Galeazz says. “Perhaps the teeth and the grounds outside the window and the rest of the Virgin’s hair are yet to come.”
“Let us not insult him by suggesting it,” Isabella warns. She walks away from the panel both comforted and disquieted by it.
“What are those sketches on the table?” she asks the apprentice, pointing to a sheave of pages strewn about a workbench. All she sees are wings, spreading, flapping, and jutting about, some wrapping themselves around nude female forms.
“These are the Magistro’s swans,” says the apprentice. He spreads out the pages so that Isabella can see the many renderings of the creature. There are black swans, white ones, swans large and tiny, swans with their wings spread as if in attack mode, swans sliding peacefully on the water, and several sketches of swans copulating with naked women.
“He is preparing for a painting of the legend of Leda and the swan,” the boy says. So that explains the odd cracked eggs at the naked woman’s feet. Isabella has always loved the story because of its bizarre elements. Zeus, god of gods, possessed of epic sexual urges, in his untamable desire for Leda, the mortal queen of Sparta, turned himself into a swan in order to appear less threatening to her, for he knew that young girls were enchanted by the creatures. The two coupled—thanks to the god’s inimitable trickery. But instead of having children the normal way, poor Leda laid two eggs. All was put well again when the issue turned out to be two pairs of twins, Castor and Clytemnestra, and Pollux and Helen, of Trojan fame.
