Da Vinci's Tiger

by L. M. Elliott

  I looked over Bernardo’s shoulder at Leonardo, whose face contorted with aggravation—I knew he was already halfway through painting the landscape he had envisioned.

  I turned back to Bernardo, whose lips were dangerously close to mine suddenly. “The ship can be sailing toward you, my dear,” he whispered, drawing even closer so I felt his breath on my mouth, “its beloved harbor.”

  I caught his meaning of a ship putting into port. It was an uncharacteristically obvious wordplay to make in front of someone else. Shaken, I stood. “I think a sailing ship a bit too . . . too . . . nautical a theme, my lord.”

  Bernardo sat back on his heels, chuckling.

  My mind raced, trying to come up with a viable alternative. “Oh! What about the verso? Something on the back of my portrait.” Leonardo’s relieved smile steadied me. “Yes, that’s it. An emblem on the back. Maybe a winged horse like your Pegasus, my lord.”

  “Mmmm.” Bernardo nodded. “I have seen paintings with a front and back during my ambassadorship to the Burgundian court.”

  “Perhaps a maiden with a unicorn,” Leonardo suggested.

  I thought of the sketch Leonardo had done in the meadow the day of the race. That certainly would be a flattering emblem. “Oh, that would be lovely, maestro. How kind of you to suggest such a symbol.”

  But something about that exchange annoyed Bernardo. He didn’t like the switch of emphasis away from his horse, Pegasus, which would unequivocally mark his commission. But I also sensed he did not like Leonardo picturing me as capable of taming a unicorn—one of our strongest symbols of the power of chastity to overwhelm even wild, magical animals—or that I was so flattered by Leonardo’s appraisal of me.

  Bernardo stood, crossed his arms, and said rather sternly, “Apt, very apt, for our lovely Bencina. But that says nothing of me, maestro, or the affection between my lady and me.” For the first time I heard a mean-spirited and condescending tone in Bernardo’s voice. “I hope you are able to think of something more specific than that? If not, perhaps I can consult with your master, Maestro Verrocchio.”

  Leonardo fumed.

  Was Bernardo jealous? The situation was souring fast. What to suggest? I paced, definitely not maintaining the self-contained deportment Le Murate had schooled me in. Ah, schooling. I stopped. “Good my lord, let us devise an emblem that signifies both your learning and your generous encouragement of art and literature. Perhaps an emblem you’ve used or might use in the future, perhaps a stamp in the manuscripts you collect.”

  Oh, Bernardo was devastatingly handsome when he was pleased.

  And so the three of us designed a wreath wrapped with a favorite motto of Bernardo’s—Virtus et Honor—for the verso. Bernardo suggested the wreath be made of laurel and palm, both symbols of intellectual honor and virtue. I pointed out that the palm was also associated with victory and innocence, triumph over earthly temptation. Bernardo laughed and murmured, “Indeed, my love, indeed. But let us not forget that Apollo, the god of poetry who often wore a crown of laurel, succumbed to passion once or twice.” He grinned meaningfully at me.

  Leonardo looked back and forth between Bernardo and me. He had the strangest look on his face, a mix of anger and something else. Then he suggested that the background appear to be porphyry, a stone noted for its endurance and resistance to outside elements. “It will symbolize her resolve to remain pure and unsullied.”

  Sweet Jesu, this was idiocy on Leonardo’s part. Was this really concern about my chastity, or simply a rebel’s dislike of authority?

  Bernardo frowned and eyed Leonardo. His lighthearted humor was gone. He spoke to Leonardo with cold imperiousness. “Finish the emblem with a sprig of the ginepro juniper—our symbol for Ginevra—in the wreath’s center. Stretch the scroll carrying the motto across the wreath from side to side. But wrap it once around the stem of the juniper in its center, as I would encircle the waist of my beloved to kiss her. Thus.”

  Bernardo grabbed my waist and reeled me in for a sudden, brusque kiss. Then he let go so abruptly I almost fell backward. It was Leonardo who reached out to steady me.

  For a tense moment, the three of us stared at one another, I in the center of the two men. Bernardo’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Leonardo. Then he bowed to me with great ceremony. “Ciao, bella.” He headed for the door, saying nothing to Leonardo.

  “Ambassador?” Leonardo called after him.

  “Yes?” Bernardo turned and squared himself with the swagger a younger man might adopt right before throwing a punch. “What is it, signor?” His voice was dismissive.

  “There is the matter of payment. Painting the reverse will require more color powder, resin, and oils. It will take more work, more of my time.”

  Bernardo smirked. “Yes, of course. Craftsmen do require payment.” And then he was gone.

  20

  “SIMONETTA!” I CRIED. “HOW GOOD IT IS TO SEE YOU.”

  I was sitting for Verrocchio as he began real work on my sculpture portrait. He had already hammered away angular corners of the slab, and now a smooth forehead peeped up over the top of white stone, rounded elbows protruded from the chipped and chisel-scratched sides. As he explained what he would carve away next, Simonetta came in on the arm of Giuliano, there to see the progress on Leonardo’s Madonna of the Carnation.

  Oh, what a terrible difference there was in her from the last time she and I had really talked at length, at the Feast of St. John’s palio, many months earlier. Then she had been so full of vivacious, playful humor. Now La Bella was still, but pale, her exquisite face grown thin, her enormous amber eyes entrenched in dark circles. She smiled when she saw me, but that was quickly followed by a shaking cough.

  Shielding her mouth with a handkerchief, she reached out her other hand. “Dearest Ginevra, come sit with me a moment, while Giuliano speaks with the maestro.”

  Leonardo was nowhere to be found, so Giuliano went to inspect the painting with Verrocchio. Simonetta and I retreated to a quiet corner in that busy studio and settled down in a thick waterfall of dark- and light-blue skirts. I noticed one of the apprentices stop dead to look at the pretty picture our dresses, and certainly Simonetta, made.

  “How are you?” I asked. Simonetta had been ill enough that she had rarely left her home, so I had heard only worried rumors about her. “Your cough?”

  “I fear it is phthisis.”

  “Consumption? Oh no! What can be done?”

  Her smile was wan. “They have bled me several times to rebalance my humors. And Giuliano has doctors scouring manuscripts from Hippocrates and Pliny to find some ancient antidote. But”—she shrugged—“my life is in God’s hands. I have faith in his mercy and judgment, whether to keep me here or take me to him.” She took my hand in her feverish one. “I would rather talk of you. I tire of discussing my illness.” She leaned toward me and whispered, “Now tell me all.” Her eyes still danced merrily despite the dark shadows under them.

  “About?” For her amusement, I smiled mischievously and arched my eyebrow.

  “Aha! Then it is true! You blush with love, my dear, and are even more beautiful for it since last we met. How is it with the ambassador? All of Florence is talking about his adoration of you.”

  “There is talk?”

  “Of course! You two are the subject of many dinner conversations at the Medici palazzo, great philosophizing, sighs and dialogue about the power of pure, chaste love, and how beauty and a godly soul can inspire others to find the divine.” She leaned closer and whispered in my ear, “And speculation, of course. Particularly among some of the ladies, who would give anything to be so lauded. They are jealous.”

  “Speculation?” I asked, taken aback. I don’t know why the news surprised me, but it did.

  “Yes, my dear. What did you expect?” Simonetta patted my hand. “But do not let it bother you. The things people have said about me and Giuliano . . . well . . .” She laughed. “Legend brings good and bad reports, truth and lies. You must learn not to worr
y over it, now that you are thus elevated.”

  “I am hardly elevated.”

  “Oh my, that modesty of yours is so endearing, Ginevra. Not elevated? You have had a painting, a statue, and many poems commissioned about you from some of Florence’s most gifted minds and hands. Lorenzo the Magnificent spends hours conversing with your ambassador about Plato’s dialogues and Petrarch’s sonnets and how they apply to you and Lucrezia Donati. It is quite the bond between them now. So much so that my dear Giuliano grows envious and feels displaced in his brother’s affections.”

  She continued, lowering her voice. “Especially since Lorenzo has made large unsecured loans to your Bernardo Bembo, in part to pay for all the art and poems he is commissioning to celebrate you. Lorenzo listens less and less to Giuliano on matters of business. So yes”—she gave a gentle laugh and then a tiny cough—“you have been much elevated.”

  Bernardo’s propensity for extravagance and now taking on further debt—because of me—was alarming. I started to ask Simonetta what she knew of the loans. I also longed to tell her about my last encounter with Bernardo. It had been so . . . well . . . there was nothing courtly or tender about that kiss in front of Leonardo. It had frightened me. But Simonetta interrupted me by putting her arm through mine and laying her head on my shoulder. “I am so weary,” she said. “May I rest here a moment on your soft shoulder?”

  Closing her eyes, she shuddered with a suppressed cough. “Tell me of your artist, Ginevra. I only sat for Leonardo da Vinci a few times, but I found him so intriguing. Full of ideas.”

  I felt a sharp stab of jealousy as I wondered if Leonardo had shared his inner thoughts and dreams with her as freely and eloquently as he had with me. If he had stared at her face and the coloring of her cheek, hung on her stories. Simonetta was far superior in her beauty, her feminine decorum, and her gentleness. He might decide I was a lesser subject. “Did . . . did he talk a great deal?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, my dear, hardly at all.”

  I sighed with relief, even as I felt an idiot for doing so.

  “But when he did open his mouth to speak,” Simonetta continued, “I found myself questioning all sorts of things.”

  At that I laughed. “Indeed, I have had the same experience.” I paused. “He has opened my eyes to so many things. Wondrous things. You know, he has such insight into women and our possibilities. It has been quite . . . liberating.”

  Simonetta tilted her head back a bit to gaze up at me. “Oh my, Ginevra. You must hide that.”

  “What?”

  “That affection.”

  “But you say it is the talk of the city already.”

  “Not for the ambassador. I am not talking of that.” Simonetta sat up and took my face in her two fragile hands. “For your painter.”

  I pulled back and frowned. “I have no affection for . . .” But at that moment I realized—with some dismay—that Simonetta might be right.

  She nodded sympathetically. “I understand.” She nestled back against me. “Despite my love for Giuliano, I have similar feelings for Sandro Botticelli. It is the deepest of romance to have someone study you so closely for hours to find what is noblest in you and then capture it in paint. There is nothing else like it. And yet, my dear, there is nothing to be done beyond that.” She sighed. “But that is enough. Enough to cradle to your heart for life.”

  I was reeling with conflicting thoughts and the recognition of a dangerous, muddying undercurrent in my emotions when one of Verrocchio’s apprentices ran into the studio, shouting for him. “Maestro!” The boy turned round in confusion, trying to locate his master. “Maestro, where are you?”

  Simonetta sat up, and she and I both pointed within. The agitated apprentice darted inside. “Maestro! Maestro! The tamburi!”

  I gasped, remembering Leonardo’s anger at a man who’d dropped a letter into the box for denunciations, the box known as “the mouth of truth.” His fury back then hinted that Leonardo was somehow familiar with the letter’s accusations—or perhaps feared it was about him. A letter in that box was usually cause enough to haul a person in front of the dreaded Ufficiali di Notte—the tribunal in charge of purging Florence of what it claimed to be vice and sin.

  There was a torrent of worried explanation of something that Simonetta and I could not make out. But then there was a large crashing within as someone threw and then kicked several objects. “God’s blood!” Verrocchio shouted. “I warned him to be more careful. The fool!”

  Verrocchio appeared looking red-faced and furious, and charged out of the studio without even glancing our way. His anxious apprentice dashed behind to keep pace. Then Giuliano appeared, worry marring his usual jovial handsomeness. “Come, my dear.” He gently helped Simonetta to her feet. “I must take you home. And then tend to this trouble.”

  “What has happened?” she asked.

  “It seems my cousin, Leonardo Tornabuoni, has been arrested on charges of sodomy along with three other men—all accused of being Florenzers and corrupting a young goldsmith apprentice. One of those denounced is Leonardo da Vinci.”

  21

  “WHAT HAVE YOU FOUND OUT, SANCHA?” I GRABBED HER hand to hurry her into the cellar, where we could whisper without fear of being overheard.

  I had been sitting by the window, watching for her return from Florence’s town hall, the Palazzo della Signoria, where I had sent her to discover whatever she could about Leonardo’s arrest. I’d hidden myself behind a thick curtain, knowing that exposing myself at a window might really spark rumors of my heart wandering astray now that there was gossip about Bernardo and me. Of course, anyone witnessing the mad flurry in which I hurtled down the stairs once I spotted Sancha might have gossiped that I was a half-wit, possessed by the devil.

  “Tell me!” I tugged on Sancha’s hand.

  “He is lucky, my lady. He will likely be released in a few days. It seems powerful arguments are being made for that. Someone important is pushing to get Leonardo and the other men out fast before too many questions can be put to the group.”

  I nodded. “That would probably be Lorenzo de’ Medici. One of the men arrested includes a Tornabuoni, a cousin from his mother’s family.”

  “Well then, my lady, you probably need not worry,” Sancha said. “Unlike common folk, anyone connected to the Medici can usually evade any law.”

  But would that political favor extend to Leonardo?

  “Because one of the group is a nobleman,” Sancha continued, “they have all received food and a decent cell. No harsh inquisition.” She paused a moment, thinking. “That painter of yours, he is very odd. The jailer told me he refused the meat given them—which no other prisoners are granted, believe me. They live on slop. Anyway, your painter said he ate nothing that had blood in it. Only vegetables and bread.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “Imagine.”

  I frowned. “Tell me of the charges. I don’t care about what he ate!”

  Even in the gloom of the cellar, I could see Sancha scrutinize me. “I would not let him matter so much to me, if I were you, my lady. I thought him quite pleasing to the eye myself. But—”

  “Go on, Sancha.” I could tell she had learned something important.

  “Well”—she chose her next words carefully—“I think there might be some truth to the charge. I think your painter may prefer the affections of men to women. And once the dye of love sets in the tapestry of a man’s soul, it is rarely rewoven. I am sorry if that disappoints you.”

  I pulled away from her. “It’s nothing like that. The man has painted my portrait. He is a very talented artist. I am concerned for his well-being, that he is not hurt or mistreated. That’s all. And”—I fished for another plausible reason for my concern—“because he is painting my portrait, his reputation being sullied by an arrest, no matter what it is for, can affect this house’s honor as well.”

  I don’t think Sancha believed me for a minute. But she pretended she did and reported the facts she’d sweet-talked out of a g
uard. The name of the person making the denunciation was secret, of course, but it was likely someone in the neighborhood because of the letter’s exact description of streets and houses. It accused Leonardo, the Tornabuoni cousin, a goldsmith, and a doublet maker of consorting with a seventeen-year-old boy named Jacopo Saltarelli. Jacopo lived in a goldsmith shop on the Vacchereccia, in the Santa Croce quarter. “Not far from here,” Sancha pointed out.

  I noted that it also was not far from Verrocchio’s home, which Leonardo still shared with him and other apprentices.

  Sancha continued. “Your painter may have used the boy, Jacopo, as a model for his art. My friend says there is a terra-cotta head of Christ as a youth that your painter created that looks very like this Jacopo. So they probably do know each other.”

  “That is not conclusive of anything, just because the apprentice modeled for Leonardo. I have sat for him myself, you know.”

  “The boy is reputed to solicit the affection of men, my lady, and to receive gifts and florins in appreciation of his . . . his beauty.”

  Nodding dumbly, I took it all in. What an idiot I had been to think there was a fledging attraction between Leonardo and me. Why should I care, anyway, when a handsome ambassador loved me as his Platonic muse and I thrilled to his courtly attentions—it was the stuff of poetry. And yet, I had seen something in Leonardo’s eyes the day I told him the Pygmalion story. Something. Our conversations felt as I had always imagined lovemaking would be—moments of delight and surprise, self-affirmation as well as generosity to the other person, an exciting, all-encompassing mutual dance of discovery, an intimacy of the souls.

  I tried to shake off my hurt—it was silly, wounded conceitedness on my part. And greed. Yes, greediness that I wanted Leonardo’s affections, too. My real worry should be Bernardo, I reprimanded myself, and if Leonardo’s arrest would affect his wanting or paying for the portrait. Yes, Leonardo needed that commission, but I also wanted the statement about me, about women, that Leonardo was capturing in my gaze to be completed.