by Karen Essex
Beatrice stands quietly, looking at the Magistro’s many drawings hanging on the walls, mostly of ugly, deformed people. Why would such a genius have a fascination with freaks when he is capable of making the beautiful even more so? Cripples, blind men, old men whose faces have been eaten by some horrible disease—could they be drawings of the dead? These are the things that line his walls. Intricate drawings of old, wrinkled, wizened men sit in pairs with heads of young men at the pinnacle of their beauty. The contrast almost disgusts her. The way he has placed these pictures seems to say: What is the use of such beauty? For soon it fades into the decrepit state of the elderly. It is as if he has shared some private joke with God over the arrangement of things. Beatrice does not like this; she thinks he is taking issue with the way that Our Lord has planned and executed man’s fate.
The Magistro sits on a stool, hunched over a drawing that Beatrice cannot see. His focus seems intense. A motto in fancy calligraphy is placed above his working space: OBSTINATE RIGOR.
The others work in this manner too—focused, silent, intentional. It is so quiet that she thinks that she can hear their breathing above charcoal scratching on paper and brushes hitting wells of color. In front of Leonardo is a statue of Leda and the swan, which Ludovico has recently spent great effort to purchase from some dead cardinal’s estate in Rome. Ever since Isabella sent him those two creatures for his pond, he has been obsessed with swans. Beatrice recalls that Ludovico had sent the statue, which was supposed to have dated from antiquity, to be cleaned and refurbished by the Magistro’s workshop. Leonardo does not appear to have done anything to the statue, which is mottled with years of dirt and the droppings of birds, but is now staring at it, and then looking down to his paper.
“Sir!” She finally announces herself. Leonardo turns around, startled. Immediately, he stands, bowing to her.
“Your Excellency. A privilege.”
“What is your drawing?” she asks. She knows that her husband will not be happy to hear that the Magistro is spending the day working on something other than the horse.
The drawing startles her. It is much more suggestive than the statue. Leda of Leonardo’s invention is curvaceous and naked. The swan is huge, almost as tall as Leda, and he cups her body in lavish white feathery protection in a manner as proprietary as any man has ever claimed a woman. Her round hip fits neatly and perfectly into the curve of his wing, which drapes languidly down her thigh and leg. Beatrice cannot imagine how anyone has found eroticism in coupling with this animal, but the Magistro has done it. Leda shyly turns away from the swan as if she is embarrassed to be enthralled with such a creature. Yet enthralled she is. Beatrice feels her cheeks flush as she looks at the picture; she herself has recently been awakened to the look of pleasure and satisfaction that the Magistro has drawn into Leda’s face.
“Ah, the swan,” she says, groping for some innocuous comment. “My husband has a new fascination with the creatures. I am sure that your study will please him, should you ever choose to make a painting.”
“Your Excellency, he has already commissioned it,” answers the master.
He puts down his charcoal and raises his hand into the air ceremoniously. A young apprentice knows this signal and rushes to him with a bowl of water and a slice of lemon so that he may clean the carbon from his long fingers.
“Has he?” Beatrice feels the first pangs of jealousy she has felt in months. Could the obsession with swans signal his ongoing fascination with her sister?
“Do you think it will please him?” the master asks.
“It is beautiful. The swan, I mean.”
“Oh yes. Zeus used the disguise to seduce, of course. The swan is the clever one, the one that cannot be resisted because of its beauty. No one imagines its purpose because it looks so pure.” He adds in a low whisper, “I do not trust it.”
“And the woman?”
“Look at her,” he says. “What does she know? She is lost in her own pleasure.”
Beatrice does not like to hear this judgment upon Leda. Nor is she willing to accept Leonardo’s condemnation of the swan, because that would mean that those two creatures swimming in the pond inside the Castello walls have power over Ludovico, which is perhaps what Isabella had intended when she sent them.
“Can a swan not be pure?” she asks. “What of the tale of the swan maiden whose robe of feathers was stolen by a hunter so that she would remain in female form and be his wife? The swan is blameless for her beauty.”
“And she left the one who loved her at the first opportunity. Besides, that is a tale suitable for children, nothing more. There are many others. I watch the creatures myself, you know. I see how they transfix those who observe their grace. And yet, if they are threatened in any way, they can be brutal attackers. What is one to make of beasts of this dual nature?”
“What of the story of the swan who sees its reflection in the pond and knows that it is dying and so begins to sing to its fellow creatures to console them for mourning his passing?”
“Do you suppose that creatures of nature may be as foolish as we human beings?” he asks gently, a tiny, woeful smile appearing on his face. “The swan knows when it is his time, knows that all things of this world are but an ephemeral gift. This inescapable fact evades only the human. No sooner is the poor mortal secure in his power and success than he is destroyed by forces larger than he.”
“Do you mean that Our Lord destroys us just as he creates us?” Beatrice asks. She hopes that she does not sound huffy. She wishes Isabella were here to help her engage in this sort of dialogue. Isabella would know just the correct profound retort to such a pronouncement.
“I do not, Your Excellency. I mean merely that nothing is permanent. All is as fleeting as our emotions. Only man’s delusional state of mind prevents him from seeing this inevitability.”
Beatrice would like to get off of the subject of swans and mortality because it is adding to the anxiousness of being in this workshop. She, who is so sure-footed and grounded, is feeling a whirling vertigo. She does not want to look either up or down for fear that she will faint.
“That is a very sorrowful observation, sir,” Beatrice replies, gathering her wits. “How might one retain one’s good humor if one contemplates such thoughts? Man may soon turn to dust, but does he not leave greatness in his stead? The tales of Homer or the treasures of ancient Greece and Rome attest to this fact.”
“Your Excellency, forgive me for saying this, but only the rare and extraordinary man leaves something behind on this earth other than his excrement.”
He must have been startled by the shocked look on her face, because he adds quickly, “Your Excellency and the duke, of course, being the most notable exceptions, what with your generous patronage of great works.”
“But you will leave behind many beautiful things,” she counters quietly.
“Paint flakes from the canvas, much as skin falls from the flesh. Man destroys his own creations. Nature takes care of the rest. What survives does so by accident.”
Beatrice turns her face away from the Magistro, but finds no comfort in the face of Leda, or in Leonardo’s drawings, or in the motion of the apprentices as they go about their chores.
“I understand we are to have a sitting, Your Excellency,” Leonardo says, interrupting Beatrice’s search for a soothing place for her focus to fall.
“Yes,” she answers in a low voice. She wants to get out of this room in the worst way. She will agree to anything and then change her mind later. If his reputation is correct, he will never make the time to paint her anyway.
“First yourself, and then your sister, the illustrious marchesa. Please explain to her that I know that I am not worthy to receive the commission to paint her likeness, and I am greatly flattered by her letters. But I have awaited the instruction of His Excellency, your husband. And he has finally granted her wish, with the caveat that I make your portrait first, as is only proper.”
The room begins to spin as the informat
ion makes its way into her head. So that is the game. Isabella and Ludovico have not seen fit to play their cards for Beatrice, but the Magistro has revealed all. Ludovico has no desire to have Leonardo make a painting of Beatrice, but he cannot, in good conscience, have the master paint the sister without first doing homage to the wife. Oh, they are good players, but even the best eventually become transparent.
Anger and determination set in. Beatrice feels the vertigo leave her head. She looks down, surprised to see such elegant, buckled velvet slippers on the feet of an artist. She almost wants to giggle. Suddenly, she feels the power that comes with knowledge.
“Thank you for showing me your drawing,” she says, looking back at the Magistro’s intense face. “We shall be in touch, you and I.”
Leonardo seems surprised that she is taking leave so quickly, before any arrangements or artistic considerations for her portrait have been discussed. She does not know why she is afraid of him; he has such kind eyes. But she does know that she has no intention of ever entering this studio again.
LUDOVICO is waiting for her to have a light supper in their apartments. He gives her a great innocent smile as she enters the room and sits opposite him.
“What, no kisses for your lord and master?” he asks, his dark eyes lit bright by the candles.
She gets up and gives him a perfunctory kiss upon the cheek.
“Did you have a nice visit with the Magistro? Did you make a time to sit for him?”
Beatrice affects her most earnest face. “No, my lord, I did not. The man gives me a feeling of disquiet. I am not comfortable sitting for him. I feel that he will steal my soul. That is what they say he did when he painted Cecilia.”
“My dear, I observed Cecilia for ten years after she was painted by the Magistro, and I assure you that she was still in possession of her soul.”
“Still, my lord, I do not think it wise for me to put myself on parallel with one who was your mistress. It would be unseemly.”
Beatrice wishes with all her heart that Isabella could hear the words she used to manipulate Beatrice turned back against her.
Ludovico looks slightly anguished by her decision. “If that is how you feel. But you should consider that he is in our service and is the greatest master of our day. Do you not wish to be painted by such a man? Even your most illustrious sister has said that she would like to be immortalized by such genius.”
“Oh no, my lord,” Beatrice says, hoping that her face projects a sincere look of horror. “We cannot allow my sister to be put on the same level as one of your former mistresses. We can’t let her risk her reputation that way. You know how people talk. Already your innocent kindness toward Isabella has been interpreted wickedly in certain quarters.”
“You make too much of it, my dear,” he replies. “Isabella has a mania for good painting. That is all there is to the wish to sit for Magistro Leonardo.”
“I would love to see my sister happy,” she says, cocking her head to the side wistfully, pretending that she is forming these thoughts as they come out of her mouth. “But we cannot allow it to happen. Having the Magistro paint another woman so close to you—about whom rumors have already spread—would fuel those wagging tongues. It would reek of adultery.”
“What do we care what the gossips say? We are certain of our affection for each other.”
“But my lord, we must be more careful in our actions. Oh, not on my behalf. But I believe that we might be expecting an addition to our family sometime early next year.”
Ludovico stands, fingers white and tense on the table. He appears to be balancing himself. His lips slowly spread into a smile.
Beatrice raises a finger, signaling him to listen to what she has to say. She continues: “This would be the time to present ourselves in the best possible light, as an entirely devoted family, impenetrable and unable to be breached from the outside. This news will certainly strengthen your position with the people of Milan. I mean, what with a legitimate heir on the way.”
Ludovico shakes his head. “You are a wonder,” he says, rushing around the table to embrace his wife. She loves this feeling of being engulfed by him; loves smelling the scent he uses imported from eastern lands that makes her think of incense and spices; and loves crushing her face against the soft velvet of his robe. She feels that, for the first time, he is hugging not just her but the life that is stirring deep inside her.
“Let us wait a few more weeks before making an official announcement, my love, just to be certain that it’s true.”
“Very well,” Ludovico says, “though suppressing such news will be difficult.” He raises his hands as if issuing a proclamation. “Well then, the matter of sitting for the Magistro is closed.”
Beatrice wonders, however, if beneath the surety, he is already trying to invent the excuses he will have to give to the persistent Isabella. “Perhaps,” he begins ponderously, as if he is making an agreeable argument for himself, “if we do not distract him with portraiture, he will set his mind to completing the horse.”
Chapter Five
III * L’IMPERATRICE
(THE EMPRESS)
JUNE 1493; IN THE TERRITORY OF MANTUA
ISABELLA sits in the June heat gently rocking in the bucentaur at the intersection of the Po and Mincio rivers, wondering what reversal of fortune has brought her to the point where her sister has risen so far above her that she cannot deign to stop for a few days to visit Isabella’s home, but insists on dragging her out into the river in order to get a glimpse of her and catch up on the latest news.
I would most willingly visit you at Mantua on my way home from Venice, but my husband is extremely anxious for me to return to him. I must beg you to let me enjoy the sight of you in the bucentaur. You must not insist that I take the time to land.
The ostensibly innocent words might as well have been sent with one hundred arrows straight to Isabella’s heart. It seems that, these days, Beatrice cannot deliver enough slights to her sister. Whether or not it is intentional, each triumph in Isabella’s life is immediately overshadowed by Beatrice’s latest victory. Isabella does not want to be disagreeable toward her sister. Perhaps her sensitivity is a result of her pregnancy, for Isabella is finally expecting a child. But it is only the second month, and she wakes each morning with a queasy stomach and the absence of desire to leave her bed. She should have insisted that Beatrice come to Mantua instead of agreeing to this damned river meeting. Though the Po is calm, every ripple of the gentle waters threatens to make her sick. But Beatrice was adamant that the sisters had to meet and talk, and that it had to be in this inconvenient and hurried way.
Isabella’s woes with her sister had started a year ago when Ludovico had seemed to fall in love with—of all people—his own wife. The first sign had arrived in the form of a letter from him at the summer’s end, giving Isabella all manner of reasons why he could not arrange for Magistro Leonardo to paint her.
You know how I live to please you, my dear, but I am having tremendous difficulty moving the Florentine to work on the horse commission, much less interest him in portraiture. I broached the subject of making your portrait with him, and he replied that he was in the midst of a study on the human eye and would return to painting faces once he has finally understood the mechanics of sight! You know how difficult he is . . .
This nonsense was preceded by a summer of letters from Beatrice, describing in great detail how close she and her husband had grown in recent times; they were despondent when absent from each other’s company, even for an hour. She wrote on and on, ad infinitum and ad nauseam, about how they spent day after day in the pursuit of the various pleasures that Ludovico had designed for them—hunting, fishing, riding, falconry, and buying extravagant things just to make me smile, Beatrice had written most cloyingly. It seemed that Ludovico could not fulfill just one of Isabella’s small requests anymore, so busy was he showering his wife with affection and finery. Isabella wrote to Ludovico asking him to send the sculptor Cristoforo Roman
o to Mantua to make a bust of her. He had done a lovely bust of Beatrice a few years ago, making her much more beautiful than she had ever appeared. Isabella did not say that she wished for Cristoforo to be her consolation prize for having to delay being painted by Leonardo for God knew how long, but she hoped Il Moro would have seen it that way and would send the sculptor to her immediately. But suddenly, Beatrice decided that she wished to make a short trip to Genoa, and she could not do so without the company of her favorite singers, Cristoforo being the most treasured member of her choir.
Finally, after this supposed summer of bliss that the two lovebirds spent together, Beatrice delivered the coup de grâce, writing to announce that she was pregnant and wishing for the company of her sister—as if Isabella, who had yet to become pregnant, wanted to see Beatrice in the exalted condition of carrying Ludovico’s first legitimate child.
It was all very puzzling to Isabella, with whom Ludovico had been conniving for the better part of a year to arrange a visit so that the two of them could be together. She wondered if this newfound affection between husband and wife was a figment of Beatrice’s hopeful imagination. She would have to find out for herself. After a hundred delays—most of them curiously furnished by Francesco—Isabella left Mantua with her extravagant new wardrobe. She’d spent the previous year pestering Francesco into spending the money for its construction, and watching it being packed into trunks, felt the enormous sense of satisfaction one feels in persevering to achieve one’s goals. She kissed Francesco goodbye and, days later, was all the way to Cremona when she realized that she’d forgotten her most fetching plumed hat. She promptly sent a sulky messenger back to Mantua to retrieve it. She was not about to ruin the effect of a fine, bejeweled costume by wearing a mismatched headpiece. “You’d better sneak it out of my rooms,” she had told him. “I do not want the marquis to think I am frivolous.” But what she really did not want her husband to know was that she paid a man several days’ wages so that she could have the right hat, at the right time, on her head.
