by Karen Essex
Isabella was unusually quiet during the meal. She gulped three glasses of white wine from Ludovico’s vineyards in the south, politely answering questions posed by Cecilia, while pondering how strange everything had become in the short time since she had last seen the Sforzas. After the meal, Beatrice announced that she was going to take a rest, and Isabella used the opportunity to ask Cecilia to take a walk with her through Il Moro’s recently landscaped park west of the Castello. He had expanded the castle grounds to include fully three miles of forest and garden, and was in the process of having much of it planted in intricate patterns with flowering trees and bushes lining stone pathways.
Walking arm in arm with Cecilia through the grounds, Isabella was just drunk enough to ask her if she had perceived any recent changes in the relations between Ludovico and his wife.
“Oh yes,” Cecilia said in a low tone laden with girlish mischief. “He confessed to me some months ago that he had suddenly and unexpectedly fallen in love with her.”
“Madonna Cecilia, please do not think me indiscreet, but I must ask: Is Il Moro still in love with you?”
“Your Excellency, I understand your sisterly concern and I assure you that you may put your mind at ease. We have not been romantic in a very long time. I am quite content with my husband, and I adore your sister, whose kindness to me has been exceptional. I will always be indebted to Ludovico for arranging a marriage to such a lovely gentleman as Count Bergamini. I have become to Ludovico what an old lover should be, a friend and confidante.” Cecilia tightened her squeeze on Isabella’s arm and whispered in her ear as if they had been friends for years and not hours. “Anyway, after the excitement of the first bloom of romance, what is the difference between one man or another?”
Isabella did not have the experience to support or argue with Cecilia’s assertion. After all, Cecilia was almost thirty. Isabella had experienced two men in her lifetime, one of whom was her husband, whom she did not think she would be ready to trade away in a few years, and the other, Ludovico, who had removed his attention as quickly as he had bestowed it. Isabella, just nineteen, was still trying to sort out her loyalty and duty to her husband, whose power she shared by day and whose lust she shared in the dark of the night, and her longing for her brother-in-law, with whom she had not only experienced an intense attraction but had shared the contents of her mind by letter for the better part of a year.
But Cecilia had no such conflicts; she allowed that she was devoted to her son now, and to decorating her palace, which she intended to compete with the finest private houses anywhere in the world. She was interested in the comforts of home, writing poetry, and acquiring beautiful things.
“Ludovico showers us with treasures for our quarters,” Cecilia said. “I suppose he wants his son to live in the splendor worthy of his family line.”
“I am certain that it is because you gave him many happy years,” Isabella said. She meant it; Cecilia was kind, gracious, and level-headed, and Isabella found herself wishing that this older woman lived near her and could serve as a mentor in womanly matters. If only she knew her better, she could ask her advice about Ludovico’s sudden attachment to Beatrice and what she should do about the ensuing quelling of his feelings for her after a year of courting her by letter.
But these were topics for a more intimate friend. Isabella gathered her wits about her, shook off the laziness in her body from the food and wine, and decided that she could not let the afternoon end without bringing up the subject of the Magistro.
“Oh, it was lovely to sit for him,” Cecilia said. “Musicians played soothing music while he sketched, and food was served. He wanted the atmosphere to be bright and calming for me. I was very young, and nervous to sit for this great genius whom Ludovico had just stolen from the Prince of Florence’s service. I sat for Leonardo several times, three perhaps. Then he took the painting away and finished it in secret. I am still not certain why it has created such a stir among lovers of art.”
Isabella would love to tell her all the reasons why, but she can hardly confess that she had already sneaked into Cecilia’s quarters just to get a look at it.
“It would be a privilege to receive a visit from Your Excellency, should you desire to see it. Though I must warn you that I have practically doubled in age and size, and it does not resemble me at all.”
“I am sure that you are being unduly modest,” Isabella said. True, Cecilia was no longer the thin, ethereal maiden captured by the Magistro, but she was softer now, more a creature of the earth, and in Isabella’s eyes, no less beautiful. “Were you not asked to sit for the Magistro again?”
“No, but they say he used my face again. Have you seen the altarpiece at the chapel of the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception?” Cecilia asked. She explained that the chapel was in the church of San Francesco Grande, not far from the Castello. “It is an image of Mary and Jesus on their flight from Herod.”
“I have not, my lady. Did the Magistro use you as the model for the Blessed Virgin?”
“No. Oddly, though, the angel Uriel who sits aside the Virgin looks exactly like me when I was a young girl.”
“I must see the picture, then.”
“The monks hate it. In fact, they are suing Leonardo for it. They say that the whole point was to emphasize that the Virgin was born without original sin, but there is no evidence of that fact in the painting. They made a detailed contract with the Magistro, but he honored none of their demands in the painting itself. They wanted everything done with heaps of gold and ultramarine, but the Magistro eschews those qualities of religious painting. He considers them antique. He bases everything on the observation of nature, as you know, and he says he has yet to find bright gold and ultramarine blue in nature. Not to mention the seraphim floating about everywhere.”
“What will happen to him? Will he be taken off to prison, or made to redo the painting?” Isabella asked. At this rate, she would never get to sit for the great master.
“Ludovico will probably have to intervene. There is talk that he will purchase the painting from the monks for his private collection. Then the monks will have to pay the Magistro to begin again. It’s a terrible mess and has inspired much scurrilous dialogue between the monks and the Magistro.”
“And yet, the monks display the painting, though it does not suit their purposes?”
“They display it with pride. After all, it is by the great Leonardo. It draws men with deep pockets into their chapel.”
FROM THE PERSONAL FILES OF LEONARDO:
Appendix to contract between Leonardo the Florentine and the Brothers de Predis, and the Franciscan Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception:
Herewith is the list of the decorations to be applied to the altarpiece of the Conception of the Glorious Virgin Mary placed in the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan:
• First, we, the monks of San Francesco, the commissioners of said triptych, desire that everything except the faces of the figures is to be done in fine gold.
• The cloak of Our Lady in the center must be of gold brocade and ultramarine blue. Her gown must be of gold brocade and crimson lake.
• The lining of the cloak is to be gold brocade and green. Also, the seraphim are to be done in graffito work. The angels above are to be decorated and their garments fashioned after the Greek style.
• God the Father is to have a cloak of the finest gold brocade and ultramarine blue.
• In the empty panels there are to be four additional angels, each differing from one picture to the other, namely one picture where they sing and one where they play an instrument.
• In all other sections, Our Lady shall be decorated like the one in the middle, and the other figures are in the Greek style, all of which shall be done to perfection. Any defective carving is to be rectified. No exceptions.
• The sibyls are to be richly decorated, and the background is to be made into a vault for housing the sibyls.
• The cornices, pilasters, capit
als and all their carving—everything must be done solely in gold to the specifications above. No expenses spared.
• All faces, hands, and legs are to be painted to perfection, that is, without flaw.
• In the place where the infant is, let the gold be worked especially ornately.
Please execute this copy below in the presence of a notary of law and return to its originators.
The Monks of San Francesco
Isabella lay down for her afternoon nap, head spinning with wine and information. She slept fitfully, dreaming that she was chasing Francesco across a field, but he was running away from her as if he did not know her. She woke with the late-afternoon sun streaming into the window of her room. The women had forgotten to shut the drapes; no wonder she could not sleep. She turned away from the light and closed her eyes. She fell back asleep for either several minutes or an hour and then woke with a fresh idea and a renewed sense of purpose.
In the morning, Isabella proposed an outing with her sister to visit San Francesco Grande to see the altarpiece by Leonardo. “Though he is difficult, he is the most important artist in Milan, Beatrice, if not all of Italy, and you will undoubtedly be commissioning him to do many things for your family over the years. You said yourself that he and Ludovico are not ever going to part company. You may as well get to know his work all the more so that you may use him properly. It is your duty, my dear. You are duchess to the duke who is known for his love of art!”
Isabella could see that she had used just the right combination of sisterly concern and intimidation; Beatrice readily agreed to the trip.
The Gothic church of red brick and triple arches crowning its façade welcomed the sisters. Isabella had encouraged most of their attendants to remain behind, telling them that she desired private, sacred time with her sister in a house of worship. The chapel of the Immaculate Conception was small, an invention of the Confraternity formed to bolster the idea that the Blessed Virgin not only conceived the Christ child without human intercourse but was herself the first mortal born without the stain of original sin. The idea had come under some scrutiny and question from renegade quarters of the church, and these clergy had organized to protect the reputation, purity, and divinity of Our Lady.
Isabella was instantly struck by the clarity and simplicity of the triptych presiding over the altar. Perhaps seven feet tall, it was painted on wood and encased in a gilded frame, a little out of sorts, she felt, with the painting inside. It was as if the golden frame was made from materials of this world, intending to suggest the celestial, while the painting itself had arrived from out of the ether.
Outside of a gaping hole in the mountains—that, according to the biblical story, had miraculously opened to shelter the Virgin and her Son when they fled Herod’s decree that all the infant boys of Israel be murdered—sat a simple picnic: the Virgin, a sweet-faced young girl with fair skin, ringlets, and downcast eyes that rested on the baby John the Baptist, who offered his hands in prayer to the infant Christ. The Christ returned the gesture of the future saint, pointing at him with two fingers, while sitting in the shelter of the angel Uriel, who was dressed in sumptuous robes of crimson and green, and looking every inch the female—as female as the Virgin herself, and pointing a long, bony white finger at John the Baptist, while glancing nonchalantly into the foreground at . . . what? Isabella could see the face of Cecilia in the angel—the long, triangular features, the sharp but kind eyes, the pert nose. It was as if the Magistro went back in time to Cecilia’s coming-of-age to make this angel’s fair visage. The party sat in desertlike foliage at the edges of Mary’s lush blue velvet cloak. Why Uriel pointed at John and not the Christ, Isabella could not figure. It was as if he were anointing John. The odd fingers pointing every which way made Isabella wonder what these strange hand signals meant, if anything. John, Jesus, and Uriel seemed to be in dispute, pointing their fingers as if to say: You—you are the one. No, you. No, you.
The setting was the most disturbing part of the painting. The Magistro had put these holy personages not in any recognizable earthly place, ignoring the Italian craze for portraying the Holy Land as the Tuscan landscape; nor did he try to depict them in a heavenly setting. No, these figures sat before great tall rocks that jutted into the expanse of the cave. Light came from the fore and from behind. Why were these peaceful figures placed against this stark, desolate background? Perhaps the Magistro was trying to evoke the danger of a family fleeing the kidnapping and slaughter of its Holy Child. Stepping back, she also noticed that the four figures formed the shape of a cross and wondered if that was intentional. Isabella pondered all these facts and could not help but think that the Magistro might be a heretic and was not afraid to insinuate it in his art. He seemed to care nothing for the traditional ways in which biblical narratives were portrayed in paintings. No wonder the monks were suing him over the commission. Where were the magisterial symbols used in all religious painting to glorify Christ and his mother? This painting had the same quiet simplicity—with the addition of the disquieting finger-pointing—that she had observed in the painting of the toothless Madonna that she had seen in Leonardo’s studio.
But she also understood why the monks displayed the painting in the chapel; it was unlike anything she had seen by another artist. Looking at Leonardo’s paintings was like dreaming. Isabella knew that Leonardo had collaborated with two other artists on the altarpiece, the de Predis brothers: Ambrogio, an artist in his own right, and Evangelista, responsible for the woodcraft and the gilding. Now she saw those men’s contributions, or so she thought. The painting was flanked by portraits of two long-haired angels playing musical instruments, more conventional representatives of Divinity, and entirely out of character with the unearthly scenario at the center.
Isabella did not think it wise to point out to Beatrice that Uriel bore the face of Cecilia. Not at this time, when she did not want to enforce any connection in her sister’s mind between her husband’s former mistress and the Magistro. She had come to suggest another connection and she was waiting for the right time. But truly, there was Cecilia—ethereal and angelic, the most divine part of herself revealed by the great man once again. Isabella was almost sick with wanting the same honor. Did the most glorious, highest part of her—her very soul—not cry out for expression? Was Leonardo not the only artist on earth who could accomplish such a thing? Only Leonardo could capture that part of Isabella that she wanted to announce to generations to come that she had been on this earth; she had lived, she had reigned, she had loved, she had mattered.
Beatrice was on her knees in prayer. Isabella waited for her to look up. She did not want to disturb her sister’s communion with God. Finally Beatrice raised her face and stared straight ahead at the painting. She cocked her head to the side as if to ask a question. Isabella knelt quietly by her sister and touched her arm. Her sister looked positively saintly, skin gleaming in the cold light of the chapel.
“The Virgin looks as if she is still a child. A beautiful child,” Isabella said. But Beatrice was not about to make conversation in the house of the Lord.
Beatrice made the sign of the cross and stood. Isabella followed her sister’s cue, but got the distinct feeling that Beatrice was saying goodbye to God, while Isabella was saying goodbye to Leonardo’s work. Beatrice dug several silver coins out of her purse and presented them to the monk waiting for them at the church’s entrance. He took his craggy fingers out of his coarse wool pockets and accepted the money silently, bowing to the royal ladies, opening the door, and letting them out into the autumn sunlight. Beatrice raised her face up to the sun. Isabella stretched her arms out in front of her as if to embrace the fresh air; the church had been very cold, and she was happy to once again be outside.
Beatrice took Isabella’s arm as they walked to their carriage. “The Virgin is exquisite, is she not? They say the Magistro used the face of Lucrezia Crivelli when she was only thirteen. Have you seen her? She is one of the ladies in my service. She’s twenty-two
now, and an awesome beauty. She is not warm, though. She keeps her distance from me as if she fears me. Though why would anyone fear me?” Beatrice asked.
“I don’t know,” Isabella answered. “You are too sweet to be feared, Beatrice. Perhaps she is shy.”
“I don’t think so. She is newly married. Perhaps she is preoccupied with her husband, though he is old and, I fear, unsuited for her. He is rich, though.”
“Can you not dismiss her?”
“No, that would insult her family, and Ludovico says that they are of some consequence or another. I told Ludovico that she made me uncomfortable, and he said, ‘Oh, think of her as ornament.’ ”
“It doesn’t seem fair that she, a lady in your service, and not you, has had the honor of her beauty being celebrated in a painting by the Magistro.” Isabella let her statement hang in the air between them.
Beatrice unlinked her arm from her sister’s. “Why do you think that it is necessary for me to be celebrated by the Magistro?” she asked. An uncharacteristic tone of sarcasm tinged her pleasant way of speaking.
“Beatrice, I said something to you that I regret. I told you that being painted by him would put you on par with Ludovico’s mistress, but I was wrong. It was a cruel thing to say. The Magistro paints all manner of women, including, as we have just seen, the Blessed Virgin. My words were foolish. I want to retract them, so that if you wished to be immortalized by the brush of the Magistro, you should not be denied the honor.”
