by Karen Essex
She hears from one of her correspondents in Venice that the Venetian army has already set march for Milan. As they cross the Adda River, the soldiers are singing, “Now it’s Il Moro’s turn to dance!” Was anything more satisfying to a human being than the downfall of the mighty? She returns home to Mantua, where she gets word that General Trivulzio, the Italian traitor who left Ludovico’s service years ago over his jealousy of Galeazz, is swooping down the Alps with a huge French army upon the castle of Annona, a Milanese stronghold. Galeazz has vowed to hold the northern city of Alessandria, which would cut the French off from Milan. But his soldiers are once again unpaid and half starved and deserting him. His brother, the Count of Caiazzo, a man of war who could more easily than Galeazz allow his heart to hide behind his greater powers of reason, has openly gone over to the French. Men other than Caiazzo who have also dined at Ludovico’s table turn on him, riding to meet up with the French army. The predicted letters fly from Milan into Mantua, begging Francesco to move to defend Milan. Isabella herself makes a plea on behalf of her two nephews, who could lose their lives in the fray, until she finds out that Ludovico has sent them off to the German court, along with a substantial sum of his gold and jewels, and is probably going to flee there himself. Ludovico makes a last appeal to his allies, but none responds.
One by one, the people of the small cities of the duchy of Milan, tired of paying Ludovico’s heavy taxes and encouraged by their patrons, who are tired of not being able to collect on the loans they made to the duke, open their gates to the French. Louis, Isabella is told, is astonished at the reception he receives as he trots across northern Italy. He attributes it to his good looks, his superior lineage as a Visconti, and to Ludovico’s slow drain on his people’s resources for his grand projects. Ludovico sends even more letters via messengers whose horses have been ridden so hard that they die in Isabella’s courtyard. Francesco gets weary of the letters and rides to Vigevano—where Beatrice and Ludovico had lavishly entertained him—and openly starts to fight at the side of Louis. He is met there by Duke Ercole, who had waited patiently in Ferrara, throwing Ludovico’s desperate letters into the hearth until French victory was guaranteed.
Now there is only the small matter of the duke himself, who must surely be trying to flee Milan. She cannot imagine Ludovico putting up a hopeless fight, sword in hand, manning the Castello against the French all by himself. The last time she saw him, he had complained of being afflicted with the gout, which made it nearly impossible for him to mount his horse.
What, she wonders, will happen to her friends in Milan? Cecilia’s portrait still hangs in Isabella’s studiolo, seemingly asking her that very question. Will the French be kind to those who had been loyal to the duke, or will they do what conquerors always do—seize property, rape women, destroy the symbols of power, execute the loyalists, torture the artists, and pick the treasury dry?
There is nothing that Isabella can do for Ludovico without endangering her family and the city of Mantua. But she can help his friends. She does not consult Francesco, but sends messengers to Milan to spread the word that Isabella d’Este is offering sanctuary to those who were loyal to the Duke and the late Duchess of Milan. In the letters, she urges them to flee the city before the French arrive, wearing the plumage of the conquerors. Flying on hooves that barely touch the dirt, the Mantuan riders are sent off with their missives. Isabella makes certain that the messengers know to stop at the Corte Vecchio, the residence of not only poor, disgraced Isabel of Aragon but of Leonardo the Florentine, to let both parties know that they and their households are welcome and will be treated kindly in Mantua, despite the fact—or perhaps because—the marquis seems to now be so very close to the king of France. She prays that they reach Milan in time for Ludovico to hear that she has tried to help his friends. She knows that he must think that she, too, has deserted him. She has written to his brother Ascanio in Rome declaring that she would like to come to Milan and fight the French herself. Ascanio wrote back, sarcastically suggesting that in Milan, they would prefer to see her husband with his army. Ludovico can only have a low opinion of her now.
Francesco hears that she is offering shelter to the Milanese and he sends her a furious letter. I am fighting at the side of Louis XII, King of France, and you are giving sanctuary to those he means to capture? Have you lost your mind, woman? Isabella sends a brief letter in return: Your Excellency, you deal with the King of France in your way, and I will deal with him in mine. Since you are so very close to him at this moment, you may tell him so yourself. If he does not fear a weak woman, he may come to Mantua and see me on the matter. I do not fear Louis, only the French language, but I can speak it if I must.
Is this King Louis not just a man like any other? And does her reputation as la prima donna del mondo, given to her by poets and courtiers from one end of Europe to the other, not already intrigue him? She knows how to deal with Louis. She assembles her staff and starts to put together a gift—no, not a gift but a presentation—to greet the king when he inevitably reaches Milan. The order is simple: pack up the same things we sent to Ludovico in the spring—the fresh garda and carp, the artichokes and flowers—and to it add a pair of our special falcons and a pair of the marquis’s hunting dogs. Have the gifts in their entirety waiting in Ludovico’s palace for the arrival of the King of France. Add this note:
We wish to convey our invitation to His Excellency to come here and visit us. We know that word has reached your ears of us being pro-Sforza. If Your Excellency visits us, he will convince himself that we are true French. We confess, frankly being free of falsehood, that at one time we were very fond of Duke Ludovico, as fond as one can imagine, both for reasons of kinship and because of the affection and honors he showered upon us. But after he began to treat our illustrious consort badly, our affections began to diminish and we found ourselves in accord with the aims of His Majesty, the Most Christian King Louis. Now that he has shown such honors upon our consort, we are indeed a good Frenchwoman. Should Your Excellency choose to accept our invitation to visit, he will find us clothed in fleurs-de-lis.
Your Humble Servant,
Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, Marchesa of Mantua
Full of lies, but no matter. It would bring about the desired end—safety for Mantua and for Isabella’s Milanese friends.
Still, every cloud has a silver lining, and in her dark moment, Isabella wonders if Leonardo the Florentine will take her up on her offer of shelter. Does she dare rekindle that desire? But why not? As her father said, we must act in the interest of the living, and she is still very much alive.
Yet she finds that looking at Cecilia’s portrait has become unbearable. The portrait freezes that moment in time when Cecilia was young and lovely, her only care the pleasure of the duke. None of the young woman’s later sorrows can be predicted in her serene face. Surely she suffered when Beatrice came to court and removed her from the home and affections of the man she had known and loved for ten years. Is she, at this moment, packing whatever her horses can carry and fleeing another cherished home? When they are all gone, the lot of them erased from memory, the portrait will still stand as a tribute to beauty, intelligence, and serenity. No one will think of the pain that the sitter endured, only of her beauty and her good fortune in being immortalized by the great genius of her day. All of the pain and sorrow will die with her.
In the end, it will have been the sorrow that was the temporary thing.
For you, immortality is at the end of a paintbrush. For me, it is at the end of my husband’s cock. I will achieve immortality through the births of my sons.
Isabella recalls how shocked she was when Beatrice said those words. It appears now that Beatrice may have been incorrect. Her sons have been whisked off to the court of Emperor Max in frosty Germany, probably pining for their dead mother and the Italian sun. Would they ever be allowed to return to Milan? Which would carry Beatrice on into history: her issue or her images? Would the French smash to pieces the beautiful b
ust by Cristoforo, along with the marble twin tomb Ludovico had commissioned for himself and his wife? Would the walls of the refectory painted by the great Magistro be whitewashed by the next generation of clergy, wiped away as useless and antiquated by a new generation? Or, more likely, would the French not want reminders of the reign of Ludovico and tear the refectory down, perhaps torturing the friars?
Oh, all of them would end up nothing but specks of Italian dirt, churned together with the rest of their dead countrymen, should la Fortuna be generous and allow them to die on Italian soil; just more creatures who walked the earth and left it. What did it matter anyway? Fortune is having her way with them all: with Isabella, who once believed that Beatrice had been dealt the better hand; and with Beatrice, who could always make the best of any hand dealt to her, amazing knights and ladies with her luck. Now the luck has run out. The city of Milan, which was in its early days of greatness when Leonardo picked up the brush and painted the duke’s seventeen-year-old mistress, is about to witness its own end. Everyone who had made it what it was—the Athens of modern Europe—is now running for his life. The great treasures, paid for by the people who finally decided that they no longer wanted to finance the duke’s dreams of beauty, would be scattered to the four winds. Like Pericles, whose people got tired of his vast ambitions and found him guilty of theft, Ludovico would pay for his visions of a grand city.
Suddenly Isabella feels very tired, not fatigued in the body but so heavy in the heart that she wants to sink to the ground. She is weary, not just of the present but of the whole of history, how it continues to laboriously repeat itself. How the cast of characters changes but the scenarios remain the same, as if God were some untalented dramatist who could only write one play. She picks up a long black muslin tarp which she had used to block the sunlight from the windows of her studiolo after Beatrice died, for that is what Beatrice’s death brought—the end of warmth and light and all that was good. She drapes the cloth over Cecilia’s face, letting it fall to the ground, shrouding memories of the innocent past.
To: Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, Marchesa of Mantua
From: Georges d’Amboise, Ambassador to the King of France
Madame,
I humbly beg you to forgive the bad opinion we have held of you. Now that you are a good Frenchwoman, we are your humble servants.
Soon, the much matured face of Cecilia Gallerani, swollen with weight and worry, is standing in Isabella’s parlor. She has fled Milan, along with all of Ludovico’s other close allies, sneaking away as Louis entered the city. She throws her arms around Isabella, who takes in the stale smell of travel hanging on Cecilia’s clothes.
“Forgive me, I am full of gnats and dust,” she says. “But thank God for you, Your Excellency. My husband and I were making desperate plans when your messenger arrived. I have brought my two sons with me. The count has gone into hiding. We thought these arrangements best. On the road, soldiers would be less likely to harm the boys if they are traveling with their mother.”
Isabella sends Cecilia into her quarters to wash her face and catch her breath. She has known that refugees from Milan would begin to arrive and she has ordered several small palazzos just outside of town to be readied for their guests. This news, plus the opportunity to cleanse the grime of travel from her face and neck, cheers Cecilia, and she settles into Isabella’s parlor with a bowl of hot broth and a cup of wine.
“What has happened to our brother-in-law?” Isabella asks, afraid of the answer. Louis has always hated Ludovico. She cannot imagine that his treatment of the duke would be kind.
“He is on the run. As soon as Ludovico heard that the people of his precious Pavia opened their gates to the French, he realized that the citizens of Milan could not be expected to behave any differently.”
“Ludovico treated Pavia as one of his personal treasures. After all of his fantastic improvements to that city, why did the people turn on him?”
“Trouble has been brewing. The scholars at the University of Pavia haven’t been paid in a year and have been defecting in droves. Taxes kept rising, but nothing improved for the people except Ludovico’s buildings and monuments, which doesn’t exactly put food in the mouths of the poor.”
Isabella feels a wash of shame pass through her body. Her husband, her father, and two of her brothers rode to Pavia to greet Louis. As former friends of Ludovico, they showed the king around his new palace and hunting grounds. A young favorite of Isabella’s in their entourage wrote to her to say that the strangest thing in the whole arrangement was that Ludovico’s name was never mentioned. “Everyone pretends that the duke has never existed.”
“Ludovico finally received word from Emperor Max that he was able to spare reinforcements, and to fortify the Castello until they could arrive. But the duke knew that he could not afford to wait, in the event that Louis reached Milan before the German army. I tried to see him before he left, but I was minutes too late. Oh, everything was in confusion and chaos. He left his treasurer in charge of the Castello and had packed up what he could. I am told that he insisted that his last stop be Beatrice’s tomb, where he knelt for hours, crying and begging her forgiveness. You know that he still carries the guilt from the duchess’s death. Finally, his men dragged him away, and just in time because Louis was riding in from the south.”
Isabella thinks, but does not say, that Ludovico would have enjoyed the demonstration of histrionics at Beatrice’s tomb, but he would be careful not to allow it to interfere with his escape.
“You can’t imagine what happened next,” Cecilia says. “Milan has produced its own Judas. The treasurer to whom Ludovico had entrusted the guardianship of the Castello sent a secret messenger to Louis saying that he would fling open the Castello gates if Louis would cut him a share of the loot. Even the French think the man is disgusting. Imagine Louis’s surprise when that grand fortress was surrendered to him without a blow!”
“It seems that there is no end to the number of trusted friends who will betray Ludovico,” Isabella says sullenly. “I am almost grateful that God, in His wisdom, took my sister before she had to bear all of this. I hardly understand it. We are aware of Ludovico’s defects, but has he deserved this?”
Cecilia leaves the question unanswered. “They say that when Louis entered the Castello, he thought he was entering a fairy tale.”
“I thought the same, all those years ago,” Isabella says, pushing aside her own memories of riding across the grand moat and into Ludovico’s world for the first time. She does not want to cry, not yet.
“The French—those brutish creatures—had never seen rooms of such extravagant size, decorated with our particular Italian grandeur. And the gardens astonished them. The French king has declared it paradise on earth.”
“What will become of Ludovico’s possessions?” She thinks of all the ancient manuscripts shelved in Pavia, wondering if they have been scattered by the French, who would have no understanding of their real value.
“Here is the story I heard. The teller of the tale swears it is true. The French are desecrating the Castello. They’ve no idea how to behave. Apparently defecating in one’s own hallway is a way of life for their soldiers. And fornicating where they can be seen by others—indeed, in the company of other fornicating couples—does not bother them in the least, but is part of the French national character. The halls of the Castello are dung heaps, Your Excellency; its rooms, the whorehouses of corporals and sergeants.”
“What will become of Ludovico’s great paintings? His statues from antiquity? His priceless tapestries?”
“Some of it will be preserved, I am sure. The French king does ardently admire our artists. Louis visited the refectory at the Santa Maria delle Grazie and asked his men to investigate moving the entire wall upon which the Magistro’s Last Supper is painted to France! I’m grateful that my portrait by him is safe with you, for the king would certainly confiscate it if it had remained in Milan. He’s probably going through my rooms, taking whatever h
e wants, as we speak.”
If Louis and his entourage—her father and brothers included—visited the refectory, surely they must have crossed the courtyard to see Beatrice’s tomb. How could they have looked at her marble death mask without weeping in front of the French king? How could they have faced the poor duchess, even in death? Isabella hopes that the experience made all of them sick.
“Louis is looking everywhere for the Magistro because he recognizes his genius—as if Ludovico had not done that eighteen years ago.”
“And did he remain in Milan?” Isabella asks, hoping to find that Leonardo was one of the refugees headed for her kingdom.
“No. Leonardo packed up his household and fled for the hills of Bergamo, where he intends to conduct some nature experiments, or so he says. He did receive your kind offer of shelter and will undoubtedly come here after he wearies of life in a small hilltop town.”
“At least he is safe.” Perhaps she will send a messenger to Bergamo to look for Leonardo, repeating her offer. She has already selected a lovely manor home for him on the Po River, with gardens and a view of the water. Old Mantegna will be jealous out of his mind, but what can one do?
