“Listen up, lads, I’ve got a new one for you. You’ll laugh, I promise!” You see? “Now, then,” he says, settling onto the bench, where there is no room for him, but it’s his bench, what does he care. “Matteo the peasant was newly arrived in Milan and found himself—”
But then he is called away to stop a brawl, thanks be to Saint Cornelius, who protects against earache, and we are spared. Later, I learn that the fight was between two pickpockets who each caught the other picking his pocket.
We settle down to drink and laugh and forget that tomorrow, sore heads or not, we will be up at dawn to work. That’s the servants life. A few moments of merriment followed by days of drab duty.
In Milan you are what you are.
And I am a servant.
We are all such good friends you would think, were you sitting at the next table, that nobody could ever part us.
Then Renzo says: “I might be fighting on the other side next year.”
You what??
He sets down his cup.
“Bernardo Maggio has invited me to become his apprentice.”
He picks at a pool of melted candle wax.
Antonio rises from his seat, red-faced, and says, “Talk sense! Where will you find the money to buy an apprenticeship?”
“Maggio does not want money,” Renzo replies. “I can pay him back when I am working. And if I learn well enough, he says, I will one day be working for him.”
“I don’t believe it,” Claudio says. “That’s five years of hard work, Renzo. You hate hard work, or so youve told us often enough!”
Renzo shrugs. “True, but its not hard work if youre learning something profitable. A servants future is decided by his master. A carpenter makes his own, according to his skills and the use he puts them to. What else should I do with my life?”
The rest of us look at one another. Antonio shakes his head, scowls.
“If it was your good fortune, Antonio, I would be shaking your hand,” Renzo says.
But Antonio’s master, the wool merchant Guglielmo di Palma, would no more apprentice Antonio than give a dying beggar the scraps from his plate. And hes had him whipped more than once, too, even if our friend brought it on himself through laziness and scheming.
“Claudio?” Renzo says, appealing to him.
But all Claudio can say is: “Youre leaving us?”
“I’ve made no decision yet. I’m still thinking on it.”
The tavern is so pressed to its sides with shouting and laughter, the beams might crack and the roof collapse. By Heaven, we Milanese know how to celebrate! Yet here the four of us sit with a gray cloud hanging over our heads.
Finally, I swallow enough of my pride to say: “Renzo, we are all grateful to God for your good fortune. We will be sorry to lose you, is all.”
I raise my cup. “To Renzo! Milan’s next Master Carpenter!”
“After a moment, Claudio raises his and repeats the toast. And, finally, Antonio, although he looks the other way while he does it.”
Thanks, lads. But, as I say, I have not given Maggio my answer yet.
“But you must, Renzo. And the answer must be yes,” I say.
I am glad for my friend. Even so, I must struggle to conceal my envy. If only my own master showed as much faith in me as Renzos has in him, I too might achieve the true aim of my life.
I want, I hope I—must become an artist.
IV
I have been asking the Master to teach me ever since the first time I saw him at work on a painting of the Madonna for the altar of the Church of San Lorenzo, soon after I came to his house. And each time the answer has been no, with no explanation given. Unless it is that I do not have the coin to pay him.
Because the Master does give lessons—to the sons of rich Milanese families. Their parents send them to Leonardo da Vinci (whether to learn about art or get them out of the house, I could not say), and in return Leonardo da Vinci is paid money, which he is always in need of, and gets to hear the court news, which he can never have enough of, though he claims to disdain gossip.
He calls them the cream of Milan’s youth. They’re certainly thick enough. Well, look at them—dressed more for a banquet than a drawing class. One wears a purple cape with a hood in pink silk; another comes in white velvet hose with silver lacework (white velvet hose with silver lacework!); the third has a blue brocade cap, an ostrich feather pinned to it with a pearl brooch; and the last one has scented gloves and a codpiece with a lion’s head embroidered on it. Their fingers are choked with rings of garnets, emeralds, and sapphires. There’s scarcely enough room to hold a stick of charcoal! They strike poses, toss their hair, laugh loudly enough to be heard in the next street, and squawk like parrots if ink gets on their hands.
Whenever they drop something—and they do, often, and on purpose—it is my job to retrieve it. Then they kick my behind. Or pinch it. But I may not leave the room. It is my duty to be in attendance during the Master’s lessons, to hand out more paper, a new quill pen, another stick of costly red chalk from the hills of France (wasted on them) and, most importantly, to refill the cups with wine. The only reason we keep wine in the house is for the students; my master never touches it. They probably wouldn’t come if we didn’t.
And when he is called away, even for a moment, they start on me. Their leader, Tommaso Bentivoglio, opens the attack. He is tall, handsome, and a brute. A spiteful, bullying brute. And he can afford to be: his father is Milan’s Chief Magistrate. And he is a spiteful, bullying brute, too, by all accounts.
“Giacomo,” says Tommaso, “come here, will you.” Forthwith there is silence. “Must I ask you twice, boy?”
“What do you want, Tommaso?”
Someone sniggers.
“To be your friend.”
Yes, you always say that, Tommaso, you hold out your hand, but when I am near enough, you seize me and punch me in the side.
“Then prove it,” I say.
“Yes, prove it, Tommaso!”
“Show Giacom-in-o just how much you like him!”
More laughter, and the chanting begins: “Giacomo! Giacomoooo! Giacomo! Giacomoooo!”
Then my master comes back into the room, just as Tommaso is advancing towards me with an evil grin.
“Now, gentlemen,” he says, “back to your seats, please! I want you all to have finished at least one drawing to show your parents, or they will say I have taken their money falsely.”
“Why, Master, never falsely!” says Marcantonio, the youngest son of Count Something-or-other. “My mother says that your lessons are worth ten times what you charge.”
“Is that true?” my master says, grateful for the praise. Poor fool.
“Indeed it is,” Marcantonio replies, “for it is the only hour in the week when she knows for certain where I am!”
And everyone breaks into laughter, even my master, eventually, who must pretend to be amused for the sake of his business. But behind his smiling eyes I can sense that he is pained by the haughty youth’s response. Milan’s greatest artist humiliated, and nothing to be done. It makes me mad.
You would think, then, that he would be glad to have at least one student who wants to learn from him more than anything else in the world. Me.
But I am the last person in the world he wants to teach.
I don’t let that stop me.
I listen with intent to everything he says and try to remember what the students so easily forget. And when the lesson is done, I hasten to my room to begin my own studies. I long ago resolved to teach myself, if he was not going to. Everything I needed was in the house, after all.
At first I worked on a little panel of fig wood, about two hands square, that I had seen him use for quick sketches, when paper was much dearer than it is now. He left it in the storeroom, so I did not think he would mind if I used it. I cleaned the panel and made it smooth. On it I spread a thin layer of finely ground chicken bones, which Caterina brought back from the market; we burned them in a pot over
the kitchen fire, and I mixed the ashes with my spittle. Then I spread it all over the panel and watched for it to be dry. Finally, I took a thick silver needle from Caterina’s sewing box, and I started to draw on the surface. When I had filled the panel with my scratchings, I wiped it down and started again. My efforts were childish and unpleasing at first. Sometimes I became angry and shouted at myself. Once, I even threw the panel at the wall. But it was not the panel’s fault that I could not draw. I did not do that again. I determined, instead, to practice all the harder.
That was four years ago. Now I use charcoal, red and white chalk, and paper, white or tinted—whatever is left over after the students’ lessons. It is my job to clean up, and clean up I do. Everything that is not used by them is used by me. And for a drawing board I use a piece of wood that Renzo took from Bernardo Maggio’s workshop. With his master’s permission, of course. That’s what he told me, anyway.
And I draw.
I draw and I draw and I draw.
First of all, I copy the drawings in the Master’s sketchbooks.
You wouldn’t believe how much drawing my master has done.
Heads. Pages of heads, nothing but heads, heads, heads: young, old, ugly, beautiful, with curly hair, straight, long, and short hair, hair in tresses, hair unbound…
Angels. Angels flying, angels pointing, angels sitting on clouds…
Flowers. Single flowers, flowers in bunches, fields of flowers…
Horses. Dogs. Cats. Lions. Dolphins. Dragons!
Saints. Saint Jerome in his study, Saint Sebastian pierced with many arrows, Saint Francis with the birds, Saint Chiara with her bell, Saint Anthony holding a lily…
Battles. Pages and pages of battles. Men on horses. Men in armor. Men with pikes, swords, shields, lances. Archers. Foot soldiers. Knights on horseback…
Clouds. Rivers. Trees. Lakes. Rocks. Mountains. Seas. Plants. Roots. Stems. Leaves. And buds!
The Master has used up hundreds of sketchbooks; the old ones are kept in stacks in his study. If we ever ran out of wood, they would keep us warm a whole winter!
And one sketchbook has drawings that I look at again and again, of a boy who resembles me so much that at first I thought the Master had been drawing me in secret. But it was dated 1476, when the Master was still a young man in Florence, so it couldn’t have been me. And then I saw at the bottom of one of the pages, in very small script: Fioravante di Domenico is my most beloved friend.
I have not forgotten his face.
To do that, I would have to forget my own.
Sometimes I draw far into the night, using the light of the moon through my small window, long after the candle has burned down to a warm pool of wax. If the Master is away, I draw in the kitchen or the front room or the garden. I draw the flames in the fire and the pots on the boil. I draw Caterina’s hands, her eyes, her face, even though she tells me not to, it makes her blush, and blushing attracts the Devil. I draw the table and the bench, and whoever comes in to sit on it: Mazzini, the rat catcher, perhaps; or Lucio Vati, the dice player; or Margareta, the housekeeper from next door (all good friends of my Caterina). I fill up every corner of the paper.
And soon—but not yet, I am not good enough yet, not by half—I will show the Master what I am capable of. And then, when he sees that I have taught myself to draw, he will surely teach me to paint.
But drawing comes first. Painting without drawing is like a bird without wings: it will not fly, although, like a chicken, it may make many an ungraceful attempt.
Drawing teaches you to look. It teaches you how to map the shape of an old man’s head and a young woman’s shoulders, of elm trees and elder flowers, of a baby’s chubby arms and laughing smile. It teaches proportion, so that a man’s body will correspond in all its parts, as God intended when he made us. It teaches perspective, which creates the illusion of distance, which gives a picture natural depth. And it teaches light and shade, without which a work of art lacks all refinement. Drawing is honest. It is easier to lie to a priest in confession than it is to pretend a bad drawing is good. And I intend to be good. Very good.
I will have to be to win over my master, whose own drawings are incomparably fine. For him to teach me, I must show him just how much I have accomplished without his help, and how much I might achieve with it.
V
To live, even the great Leonardo needs to eat. But when I ask for money for food, the great Leonardo tells me to ask the shopkeepers for credit. So I do. And then they come to me for payment, and I go to the Master—and he tells me he has no money. And we all go round and round and round.
Many of them have not been paid for months. And there are rumblings. The name of Leonardo da Vinci is not as welcome as it once was. How long before they cease all dealings with us until we pay what we owe?
Money! Were always short of it, never sure of it. Have been ever since I can remember, and it’s not just because Leonardo da Vinci spends so freely on clothes and books and a fine horse and, well, everything else—it’s because the Duke never pays him. Here’s how it went: My master came to Milan fifteen years ago to work for the Duke. And the Duke gave him plenty of work, too. But then he didn’t pay him on time, so the Master fell into debt. And the Duke still doesn’t pay him on time, or even the full amount agreed, always keeping something back, knowing that my master won’t leave Milan without it. The Duke seems to think it is his right, as my master’s benefactor, to treat him badly! To stay here longer can only make matters worse, but to go now will mean the end of the Duke’s patronage—and no money at all.
So what do we do? Nothing. And the debts pile up.
The Master says that the Duke’s purse strings are drawn tighter than the hangman’s noose, and he can no longer breathe for them.
And today, while Caterina and I are at the market in the main square, and I am trying to decide which shopkeeper to fool into giving us more food now for a promise of payment later, I overhear two wealthy gentlemen talking about my master. Not just talking, either. Insulting him. And loud enough to frighten the birds from the city walls.
“Leonardo lives on partridges and quince jelly,” announces the older gentleman, who wears a red cape with a white fur collar, “stores his money in three banks, and has pillows stuffed with goose feathers.”
This baldpate is wrong about the partridges: my master is a strict vegetarian, he never touches fowl. All meat is foul to him. And he may have three bank accounts, but there is no money in any of them, that I will swear. As for the pillows, I couldn’t tell you; I can only say that my pillow is like sleeping on a doorstep.
“The story is that you can never find him when you need him,” continues the old fellow, “which seems odd to me. A painter must be somewhere—he has to stand in one place to paint!” Then he starts laughing, a sort of bullfrog’s croak.
“But that’s just it—he doesn’t!” says the younger man, toying with his long curled hair (quite the fashion, nowadays). “He still has not finished the Last Supper after two years!”
“Well,” the old fool says, “if Leonardo can’t do it, I’ve heard that the Duke will give the commission to another man.”
He what? Give the Last Supper to another painter? No!
“Giacomo,” Caterina says to me, tugging my arm. “We still have our provisions to buy.” She can see my face reddening. If there’s one thing I will not suffer, it’s somebody speaking ill of my master—and if it’s two somebodies, that’s twice as bad. For them.
I gently remove Caterina’s restraining hand and walk up to them. They look at me as if I have just been scraped off the privy wall.
“You know as little about my master as you do about art,” I say, “which is nothing, and I counsel you to hold your tongues, or the Duke will have them out and served to his dogs between meals.”
That stopped them. But only for a moment. The older one says: “Do you know who I am, boy?”
“Someone who defames my master,” I say. “And that makes him, whoever he may
be, a damnable villain. And his long-haired son a knave!”
At this the young man draws his rapier—
“You dare…? Father, let me run the urchin through!”
My own hand seeks out the knife I keep hidden under my jerkin. A servant is not allowed to carry arms (at least, no more than the two God gave him), but only a fool walks the streets of Milan without a weapon, even if it is only a slim-bladed dagger.
However, the older man raises his hand to stop his son.
“Who are you to rail thus against your betters?” he says to me.
“I am the servant of Leonardo da Vinci, who has no betters. And who are you, sir, to make mock of Milan’s most famous painter?”
A crowd is gathering. Caterina whispers: “Giacomo, we must go before—”
“Make way for the Duke’s man!”
A member of the City Guard now forces his way through the assembly, hand on sword hilt. He plants himself between me and the two gentlemen.
“What’s going on here, then?” he says.
“Captain,” the young man says, “I am Rinaldo Giachetti, and this is my father, Messer Alphonso, the armorer. You know our name.”
“No better than you know mine. What’s the complaint?”
“This servant has dared to speak against us,” the father says, “and we will not suffer it. We want him taken away and flogged!”
“And you,” the captain says to me, “what have you got to say in your defense?”
“I was defending my master, not myself. I may be a mere servant, but I will not have the name of Leonardo da Vinci sullied by these clods!”
“You see, Captain, he still insults—”
“I see, all right,” the guardsman says. “You pup’s tail, I’ll teach you to wag where you’re not wanted!”
And so saying, he takes hold of a clump of my jerkin with his fist and prepares to haul me away.
And then Mistress Fortune yawns, opens one eye, and smiles on me, because at that very moment the cry goes up: “Stand aside! There’s a horse loose!”
Leonardo’s Shadow Page 3
