The Poet Prince

by Kathleen McGowan

I have loved thee a long time

  I will never forget thee. . . .

  God has made us one for the other.

  When Ginevra finished the song, the Master invited the two to exchange the traditional nuptial gifts: small gilded mirrors, which had been found quickly by Ginevra in time for the ceremony. Fra Francesco recited one of the sacred teachings of union as they did so.

  “In your reflection, you will find what you seek. As you two become One, you will find God reflected in the eyes of your beloved, and your beloved reflected in your own eyes.”

  The Master concluded the ceremony with the beautiful words from the Book of Love, those that are also included in the gospel of Matthew: “For no longer are you two, but you are one in spirit and in flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate.”

  He turned to Lorenzo. “The bridegroom may now gift the bride with the nashakh, the sacred kiss that blends together the spirits in union.”

  Lorenzo was weeping as he wrapped Colombina in his arms and pulled her tightly against him. What should have been their most joyous moment was one filled with deep sadness. For while he knew that no one but Colombina would ever be the bride of his heart, he also knew that the dawn would come too soon, and they would be separated by the cruel realities they had been born into. Their marriage would be valid only to them, in their hearts. It would not matter when they left this room. It was a secret for them alone, a little bit of rebellion wherein they could hold on to the truth of their love for each other: no matter what fate forced them into, they would know that they were secretly joined in a spiritual union that only God could undo.

  But there was still some bliss awaiting the young couple. They would

  spend the night in the Antica Torre, the home of the Gianfigliazza family, where the Mistress of the Hieros-Gamos would instruct them both, before closing the door and leaving them to their privacy. The Gianfigliazza were one of the wealthiest and most esteemed families in

  Tuscany, therefore Colombina’s parents did not hesitate when Ginevra had requested that Lucrezia stay with her in their legendary family home for a night. It was a coveted social invitation that the savvy

  Donati would never deny.

  And so it was that Lorenzo and Colombina joined together that night, married in the eyes of God and each other, combining their spirits through their flesh. Both wept with the joy and the ecstasy of their love, swearing through their tears that nothing would ever separate them.

  The Libro Rosso was very clear on the teachings of Solomon and Sheba: “Once the hieros-gamos is consummated between predestined souls, the lovers are never apart in their spirits.”

  The Uffizi Gallery, Florence

  present day

  MAUREEN GASPED AS she entered the enormous salon known as the Botticelli Room, the centerpiece of the Uffizi collection. It was overwhelming, filled as it was with the most exquisite and iconic paintings of the Renaissance. In the middle of the room was an island of ottomans, providing a place to sit in awed contemplation.

  “Remember, today we are not tourists, and we will not try to take in and understand each and every painting in this room. That is a fool’s errand. Each of these paintings deserves many days all on its own, filled as they are with knowledge, intention, and emotion. So as much as you are tempted to wander and take it all in, I beg you not to do so. I promise that we will return every day that you are here and continue the lessons with new paintings each day. You will be better off for this approach. You must believe me.”

  Tammy gulped and nudged Maureen. To be in this room and not see every work of art, even peripherally, would be a type of torture for all of them.

  Maureen said, “In this room you get an awesome sense of how accomplished the man must have been, how committed. To create this much art in one lifetime is astonishing. It seems impossible.”

  “And it is only a portion of what Sandro created,” Destino answered. “He was more prolific than most people know. A truly angelic being in a man’s body. In his life he created close to two hundred paintings. In contrast, Leonardo da Vinci completed perhaps fifteen. And yet the average person will throw Leonardo’s name around as the greatest Renaissance artist! It is a crime.”

  Destino was rarely emphatic, so they all were stunned to hear him disparage Leonardo in this way. “It is our duty to right the wrongs of history, and the lack of appreciation of Botticelli’s true genius is one of them,” the ancient one responded to their incredulous expressions. “I will tell you—and show you—more on this. Come over here.”

  He moved the group to stand before Botticelli’s Annunciation. Annunciation paintings were very popular in medieval and Renaissance Italy, capturing the moment in the gospel of Luke wherein the archangel Gabriel appears to tell the Holy Mother that she is going to give birth to the Son of God.

  The Madonna in Botticelli’s masterpiece was graceful beyond reason—elegant and strong, yet clearly filled with humility at the moment of divine annunciation. The archangel Gabriel, exalted though he might have been in heaven, was on his knees before Mary in honor of her grace and position.

  “Stand in front of this painting, just here.” Destino guided them all to the best place in which to feel the essence of the image. “Allow yourself to feel the power of this moment. Don’t admire this art with just your eyes. Admire it with your heart and your spirit. Let it whisper to your soul. It was created in such a way as to do all of those things, for those with ears to hear.”

  They all stood before the Annunciation, experiencing it in this new way. Destino watched them all closely, noticing that Roland and Maureen immediately connected. Both of them had tears in their eyes as the enormity of the moment, captured perfectly by Botticelli, began to move through them. Tammy and Peter were not far behind. In a matter of two minutes, all of them were in different stages of weeping.

  “Art is experience. When it is created by an angelic force, it transcends the visual and becomes entirely visceral. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Maureen whispered, still caught up in the moment expressed in the art before her, the moment when a woman accepts the enormity of her promise to bring forth the savior of the world and all that will mean to her—and to mankind.

  “Now while you are in this state of bliss, follow me carefully into this next room. We shall perform a comparison.”

  They moved across the Botticelli salon and into the adjacent Room 15. On the far wall was another annunciation painting. It was beautiful, undoubtedly, but of a very different nature than the Botticelli piece.

  “Now stand here, before this painting, and tell me what you feel.”

  They all admired the beautiful piece but were unable to reclaim the sense of bliss and connection they had felt from Botticelli’s art.

  “I feel nothing,” Peter said. “Intellectually, I see that it is beautiful and I can admire it as an accomplishment, but it evokes no feeling

  in me.”

  The others nodded. Maureen added, “It lacks emotion. The Madonna here is beautiful, but she appears to be made out of marble. She is cold, disconnected. I don’t feel anything from her.”

  In this version of the annunciation, Mary had a book before her in a stand, and her hand was resting on it as if to hold her place in the passage.

  Tammy observed, “It looks as if she is more concerned about losing her place in the book, as if the angel interrupted her and she is just waiting for him to leave so she can finish her reading!”

  “It is also missing the reverence for Our Lady,” Roland commented. “Here, Gabriel appears to be a stronger character, or at least her equal. There is no sense of Mary as the focus of grace here.”

  Destino nodded. “One cannot communicate what one has never felt. This artist did not revere women and did not have any kind of emotional attachment to the idea of the annunciation. And so while it is executed perfectly in terms of technical merit, it does not teach you anything, it does not affect you emotionally or spiritually, nor does it move you.”

/>   “Whereas with Botticelli,” Maureen interjected, “You feel his love for the subject and for the woman he is painting.”

  “Sandro loved and revered women. He was passionately committed to celebrating the divinity of femininity. This is part of what you feel in his work, but why this other artist’s work leaves you cold.”

  “Who is this artist?” Tammy and Maureen asked at the same time.

  Destino delivered the point he had begun to make in the Botticelli room. “I have shown you the art of Sandro Botticelli and the work of Leonardo da Vinci. One was a technical genius, the other was an angelic master. Now you know the difference.”

  Destino shepherded them all back into the Botticelli room and now took them around the perimeter, indicating a series of different Madonnas, all of which had the similar tilting of the head, porcelain skin, and light hazel eyes. A glass case in the center of the room contained two small paintings of the life of the Old Testament heroine Judith, after she had slain and decapitated the giant called Holofernes who terrorized her people. The same beautiful girl had clearly modeled for the fierce Judith in this work.

  “All Colombina?” Maureen asked. When Destino nodded, Maureen asked, “Why is it that we never hear of her? Someone who inspired so much of Botticelli’s work? These paintings obviously depict the same model when you look closely at them.”

  “Two reasons,” Destino replied. “The first is that everything about our Colombina was too controversial for history to record. The second is that Botticelli later discovered another, more famous muse who overshadowed all others.”

  He moved them all to stand before one of the most iconic paintings in the history of art. In The Birth of Venus, a naked goddess of beauty arrives on earth, standing on a scallop shell as her golden hair floats over her body.

  “My friends, allow me to introduce you to a sister from the past, Simonetta di Cattaneo Vespucci. But you may call her Bella, as we all did back then.”

  Genoa

  1468

  IN A FAMILY renowned for the beauty of its women, the young Simonetta Cattaneo was the crowning glory. There had never been a girl so lovely, so exquisite of both feature and coloring. Her hair was the one element of her appearance that everyone remarked upon: by the age of ten, it hung to her waist in thick, apricot waves, a stunning golden peach color, not quite red, yet not blond in any traditional sense. Like all else about the young woman who was known by the nickname of la Bella, “the Beauty,” her eyes also complied with God’s command that everything about Simonetta be unequaled by any woman alive. They were a nearly translucent blue with coppery flecks, and they sparkled with the sweetness of her good humor.

  Simonetta’s skin was uncommon for an Italian woman, even one of such storied lineage. It was the color of rich cream, dotted gracefully with soft freckles in strategic places on her body and face. Her family referred to these as “angel kisses,” for they were like sweet punctuation marks that highlighted the beauty bestowed upon her by the divine. She was tall, even as a child, lithe of limb and slender, moving with the grace of a willow tree in the first breezes of spring.

  And yet for all her physical perfection, Simonetta was equally flawless of character. She was a gentle girl, and deeply sensitive. For many years into the future, her mother would tell the story of hearing her daughter crying on a spring afternoon, then searching for her with rising desperation as she heard Simonetta’s sobs increase. She found her daughter weeping uncontrollably in the rose garden, as she sat amid a sea of colorful blooms. Roses in sunset shades of reds and oranges blossomed all around her, set against a sea of smaller white blossoms. There were butterflies in the garden this day, large yellow wings with black patterns flitting over Simonetta’s head. The scene was idyllic and beautiful, and the lovely young woman with the gleaming apricot hair had her face lifted to the sun. She wept uncontrollably.

  “What is wrong, my child?”

  Madonna Cattaneo ran to her daughter, wrapping her arms around her as the girl’s body shook against her own. The girl fought through her tears to speak.

  “Is . . . isn’t it so beautiful?” Simonetta cried, pulling away from her mother to gesture around the garden. “The flowers, the butterflies. All that God has created for us. Could anything be more beautiful than this? How blessed we must be for God to love us so much!”

  The child Simonetta wept with the joy of God’s creation, and for the beauty of the world. She remained pure in her appreciation of the precious nature of life on earth, every day of her existence. That loveliness from her inner being radiated, shining forth as a beacon of light that would one day touch the world, influencing millions for centuries into the future. But on that day in the garden, Simonetta’s role as the future muse who would represent the Renaissance was being decided for her.

  Her parents had just the night before been weighing their options for their daughter’s marriage. She was a Cattaneo, which was enough to command a strong match anywhere in Italy. But that she was exquisitely beautiful with it was a benefit beyond florins and jewels. Beauty was necessary for landing a marriage within one of the strategic Florentine families. Marrying into Florence was no easy task for a foreign family; it was a culture that demanded beauty, intelligence, and wit in their women, in addition to hefty dowries and family connections. It was easy enough to marry off a plain girl into Rome or the outer regions of Lombardy if the money and paternal influence were there. Not so in Florence.

  The Cattaneo family was the royalty of the ancient city of Genoa. They were descended from a storied Roman dynasty, one in which the women played a secret yet powerful role. They were teachers and healers, prophetesses with a hidden legacy of prayer and traditions that harkened back to the earliest days of Christianity. The Cattaneo women wore a symbol woven into their clothes and etched into their jewelry to represent this legacy. It was a pattern of stars set in a circle, dancing around a central sun. It was the symbol of Mary Magdalene, called the Magdalene’s seal, and it had been used by women in the Order of the Holy Sepulcher for almost fifteen hundred years.

  The family were members of the Order descended from the legendary early Christian leaders, Saint Peter and his many granddaughters named Petronella. It was this element of their family lineage that influenced the Cattaneos’ decision. Simonetta’s husband must come from Tuscany, where the Order was strongest, but more specifically from Florence. The Master had been consulted, of course. And while they

  had all considered marrying Simonetta into the Medici dynasty, Lorenzo was on the verge of a betrothal and Giuliano was being held in reserve for possible leadership within the Church. Thus it was

  determined that Marco Vespucci, the soft-spoken son of a wealthy and noble Tuscan dynasty, would be the best match for Simonetta. He was gentle, as she was, and a scholar. His family fortune and properties would ensure that this unique Cattaneo treasure would be well cared for and protected. Any children from the pairing would be of the most noble combination of bloodlines and likely to be both beautiful and intelligent.

  And so it was that on the day that Simonetta Cattaneo wept for the beauty of God’s creation, her parents made the decision to send her to Florence. She would study there with the Order and with the Mistress of the Hieros-Gamos, Ginevra Gianfigliazza, in preparation for her marriage to Marco Vespucci. The Cattaneo family were happy to discover that Simonetta would not be entirely alone during her preparation. A daughter of the Donati family, also renowned for her beauty of both body and spirit, would be waiting to greet their Simonetta as a “sister.” With the grace of the Father and Mother in heaven, the girls would become friends and the Cattaneos’ precious daughter would not be lonely so far away from the flowers and butterflies she loved so

  much.

  La Bella Simonetta.

  Even her name is art, one that I whisper as I paint even all these years after she has left us.

  Will I ever capture her as she deserved? Perfectly and totally as the pure, yet real, living example of beauty that she
was?

  I remember the first time I saw her, at the Antica Torre, in the celebration that the Order created to welcome her to Florence. I could neither breathe nor speak when I looked upon her for the first hours that I was in her presence. Surely such ethereal magic could not exist in flesh and blood. And make no mistake, this was not mere physical perfection, although she was all of that and more. It was her radiance, her divine sweetness, that I knew would haunt me until the end of time, until I captured it perfectly.

  It is a quest without end. Capturing Simonetta is the goal I will never accomplish and will never cease to pursue.

  And yet that night in the castle built by the Gianfigliazza family, I saw her not as singular perfection but as the completion of a trinity of the divine feminine essence that I had come to worship. On that magical evening I watched as Simonetta danced with Colombina and Ginevra. I sketched them as they moved together, more grateful than I had ever been in all my years to have my sketching tools with me.

  I saw that these three women each represented an aspect of female divinity and then sketched them as such: Simonetta was purity, Colombina was beauty, and Ginevra was pleasure. Together, they were the three graces, dancing hand in hand as sisters, representing love in its earthly forms.

  I would never forget that night for as long as I lived, and I vowed to paint the three of them together like that in some way that would capture the magic these women bestowed upon us. Lorenzo was in attendance, as was Giuliano, and both were equally entranced by the beauty that surrounded us. We were a family of spirit, immersed in the mission we were devoted to, while delirious with gratitude for the perfection of the world.

  How fleeting such beauty is, how temporary. All the more reason for us to love it, revere it, and celebrate it in any way we can while it is with us.

  I remain,

  Alessandro di Filipepi, known as “Botticelli”

  FROM THE SECRET MEMOIRS OF SANDRO BOTTICELLI