Da Vinci's Tiger

by L. M. Elliott

  My family was included directly behind the Medici. Luigi was among the city’s officials, so I walked on my brother’s arm instead, clinging to him as a shield against my own grief. I would sorely miss Simonetta, her quick affection and her good-natured advice. She felt more like a sister than my younger blood siblings did. Who would I confide in now? Who could understand the complications of my life, my affections?

  Uncle Bartolomeo’s young wife, Lisabetta, walked alongside me, too. She was as nervous and mousy as ever. Normally that would not have bothered me, but realizing this was the type of woman I was left with now that Simonetta was gone, I had to fight the urge to slap Lisabetta’s simpering face.

  Halfway to the church, Lisabetta slipped her hand in mine. “It is all so tragic,” she said. “I am sorry for you, Ginevra. I know you two had become . . . well . . . very close.”

  I swallowed to suppress my sorrow. “Yes, she was a lovely woman. So unselfish, which was extraordinary given her beauty and all this adoration. We can learn from her example of modesty and kindness.”

  Lisabetta looked at me with some surprise. “Oh yes, of course, Simonetta Vespucci was an inspiration to us all. But I was talking about”—she didn’t bother to lower her voice—“about you and the ambassador.”

  “What?” I stopped in my tracks, creating a little avalanche of people bumping into one another’s backsides.

  Giovanni apologized for us and then gently dragged me forward. “No matter what nonsense comes out of her mouth next,” he whispered to me, “keep walking. Uncle Bartolomeo did not wed her for her wit.”

  “Oh, well,” Lisabetta blithered on, oblivious to my growing discomfort. “Of course you will be upset—you and the ambassador were such a romance. All of Florence knows about your sad farewell. How your heart broke when he told you he had to depart for his beloved Venice. How you sobbed like Dido when Aeneas left her shores.”

  “What?” I stopped again, my voice raised this time.

  Again, that ripple of people crashing into one another behind me. Again, Giovanni apologized, before urging me onward. “Keep moving, sister.”

  “Cristoforo Landino has written a lovely poem about your sorrow, commissioned by His Excellency Ambassador Bembo. My husband carries it for you. I know you will just love the verse.”

  I fought the urge to strangle her and squelched my fury at the obvious fact that she had already read something that was addressed to me. I had to wait through Simonetta’s funeral and an hour of tearful eulogies before I was able to ask my uncle for my poem as we left the church.

  He, of course, took the opportunity to lecture me. “You are very lucky to have the affections of such an esteemed man.” He refused to continue or to hand me the verse until I nodded obediently. “The fact that the Venetian ambassador, who has traveled the world, chose a Florentine lady to be his Platonic muse does our great city of Florence honor as well. And raises our family to fame, alongside the Medici, the Donati, and the Vespucci. Only a foolish girl would not see that blessing and act accordingly.”

  Again, Uncle Bartolomeo waited. I nodded dutifully, despite the fact that at this point, my face was burning with anger and embarrassment.

  “Only an ungrateful wretch would cause such a great man—who has lavished such gifts upon her—embarrassment. Or stupidly fuel false accusations again him. If Bernardo Bembo’s star sinks, niece, with the implication that he and Lorenzo de’ Medici were too close in their personal friendship, it makes it much harder for Florence to navigate the waters with Venice, which is a critically important ally of ours against the Papal States.”

  I felt chilled all over. Was my uncle implying that by protecting my virtue and refusing to yield up my body or to be used by a self-aggrandizing man that I had somehow endangered Florence’s foreign policy?

  “This poem will help make it clear that his Platonic courtship of you was as much for state purposes as personal philosophic discourse,” he pronounced, “if you behave accordingly.”

  Good God, I thought, what had my uncle done now? How had he misused me this time?

  Uncle Bartolomeo smirked as he handed me the parchment, the seal broken. Clearly, he had already read and shared the contents with Lisabetta and probably a great many more.

  I waited until I was safely home in my bedroom with the door locked before I opened the verse. I could see my uncle’s handiwork immediately. I just couldn’t believe Bernardo would be that cruel, that he would hide behind my skirts this way. The poem made it seem that Bernardo had had to refuse my over-ardent hopes and desires rather than the other way around, that I had misinterpreted what had been purely a courtly intent on his part:

  Moreover, Bembo, Ginevra weeps at your departure,

  and she protests that the gods are deaf to her prayers.

  Alas, Bencia weeps that the deaf gods despise her pleas,

  and that she is deprived of her chaste pleasures.

  Therefore you will go, happy to see your beloved relatives

  and your sweet children and your pious wife;

  for finally, now that your great service has been performed,

  your lustrum completed, you may rest at your ancestral home.

  . . . the Venetian Senate will learn

  of their citizen’s great gifts,

  what his envoy to different cities will have given to his country. . . .

  I did not read the rest. I crumpled the verse and threw it into the piss pot.

  25

  HUMILIATED AND FURIOUS, I PUT ON MY BROWN DRESS AND my scapula and marched to Le Murate. I pounded on the outer door. Of course, Sister Margaret would have to be the one to answer. “It is close to Vespers, you may not enter now.”

  “Vespers? Wondrous. The perfect time for me to say my prayers in the chapel my grandfather built for you.” I felt no shame or hesitation in throwing my weight about that evening. I wanted sanctuary, a place I could think through what I would do next, without men telling me what it should be.

  Sister Margaret pursed her lips but grudgingly stepped out of the way.

  “And after Vespers, sister, I will be spending the night, perhaps the week, in the Benci cell that my grandfather also paid for and Abbess Scolastica promised would always be open to me and my kin.”

  Sister Margaret’s face darkened like a squall line, but there was no arguing with that either.

  I ended up staying for weeks. Juliet and I fell back into our schoolgirl friendship, a lovely balm to the wound of losing Simonetta as my confidante. Juliet and I talked of Ovid, Virgil, even the playful Boccaccio. I could only wonder where she had procured copies of his stories, as the bawdy romances must surely be forbidden to nuns.

  I prayed. I read. I thought. I wrote—which I had failed to do when distracted by the intrigue of Bernardo’s courtship and the excitement of the studio and conversation with Leonardo. The poems that came out of me in those first weeks were often angry, yet were still filled with a certainty about the majesty of the human soul.

  I think that was Scolastica speaking to me. It was some of the best verse I’d ever written. I sent them to no one, other than one daring sonnet—about a mountain tiger—to a court musician who had been a dear friend since childhood. He was in Rome. I asked him if he could get a rosary blessed by the Pope for me. I thanked him by sending him the verse. He had been bragging to the ladies of that court of the witty banter and literary abilities of Florentine women and needed something to prove it. I hope the sonnet did so.

  As more and more poems spilled out of me, I realized the outside world—especially while gossip swirled about Bernardo and me—did not offer me the quietude or freedom that allowed my heart to sing out clearly, unaffected by others and their opinions or desires. So I found myself lingering in Le Murate.

  I sent word to Luigi that I was not well and that rest and prayer seemed to be helping. His reply was polite and concerned, supportive of my staying. After our conversation about Leonardo, I assumed Luigi would be fine with my being away for a while.
Perhaps he might fill the time with other company now that our marriage offered him a protective screen. He certainly took advantage of my absence to argue that his taxes be lowered, noting in a letter to the revenue collectors that his wife had been very ill for a long time.

  I wrote to Leonardo, explaining my sequestering myself and expressing my gratitude for his painting and dialogue and all that both had inspired in me. I missed him. Enormously so.

  Did I miss Bernardo? The affection I’d once had for him had been sullied by our last encounter and his—or my uncle’s—public manipulation of our farewell to suit Florence’s and Bernardo’s political needs. Certainly Landino’s verse guaranteed that Bernardo would be saved the embarrassment of people knowing I had spurned his advances. Who would believe me now after that poem had made the rounds of Florence’s elite? If I stayed in the silence of the convent, I did not have to hear the speculation or pontificating about us. I could remember the self-confidence Bernardo had helped engender in me, the enlightening conversation and delightful banter around the Medici table. All that had been so gratifying, so expanding.

  I certainly had not intended it to have this effect, but my cloistering played well in the court society surrounding the Medici. Lorenzo wrote me two sonnets, calling me a “devout, gentle spirit,” “a lambkin,” and praising my turning my back on a city “aflame with every vice.” He alluded to “suspicion, disdain, envy, and anger” and told me to “let them talk. Sit and listen to Jesus.”

  I wrote back to thank him, never mentioning the rumored affair Florence gossiped he had just begun with my young aunt, wife to my uncle Donato. I couldn’t help but wonder if Lorenzo’s poetic praise of me was a way of trying to insure my favorable opinion, or loyal silence, regarding that dalliance. I had come a long way in my understanding of the secular world since my first sojourn at Le Murate. I decided to remain there indefinitely.

  As a conversa laysister, I was free to come and go from the convent. The person I visited most was my brother. One afternoon, he led me to a small chamber off his bedroom. “I have something to show you in private, sister.”

  There was my portrait.

  “But why did Bernardo not take it with him to Venice? Did he not want it?” His leaving it behind bruised my ego.

  “I don’t know,” Giovanni said. “But Leonardo insisted you be sure to view the back of the portrait. He was adamant about it.” Giovanni turned the panel so its reverse showed. “Curiosity is killing me, sister. What is so special about the back side?”

  I smiled. Oh, what a clever stroke for my honor Leonardo had parried. He had changed the motto on the ribbon from Virtus et Honor—a saying Bernardo claimed as an emblem for himself—to Virtutem Forma Decorat. That line could be translated two ways: “Beauty adorns virtue,” or the one I preferred, “She adorns her virtue with beauty.”

  The motto now was entirely about me and my choices, the focus on my character and my mind, with physical beauty being almost an afterthought, a casual adornment, like a necklace I might don at the last minute to complement my natural appearance. Leonardo had used the word forma, which implies intellect as well as beauty, instead of the more typical Latin word used to describe a woman’s prettiness, pulchritudo. It was an even sweeter shade of difference, because I knew Leonardo was struggling to teach himself Latin and such nuance bespoke careful thought, a true insight to me.

  And I could guess that the change of the motto might have so annoyed Bernardo that he wanted nothing more to do with my painting.

  I went back to the convent that evening, happy, and knowing exactly which man I truly missed, whose company I ached for and why.

  26

  Spring 1478

  CLAIMING I NEEDED SOLITUDE TO RECOVER, I REMAINED AT Le Murate for almost two years. I alternated between sequestering myself to write, reminiscing about my time in Verrocchio’s studio and the Medici circle, and visiting home. Mostly when I left the convent, I attended Florence’s special holidays and masses or went to see my brother. During this time, political alliances within and without the city were shifting. Often my conversations with Giovanni were full of gossip about Lorenzo’s troubles with the Pope—troubles that the Pazzi family stirred and kept simmering.

  “So, what news is there, brother?” I asked one day, as I settled down into his rooms for a dinner of sea bass, potatoes, and mussels in piecrust. I have to admit such splendid food was another reason I liked to visit him. The convent’s fare of broth and bread grew tiresome.

  Giovanni leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Well . . .” He paused and grinned at me. “Are you sure your feminine sensibilities are strong enough for men’s politics?”

  I bit into a dried fig and made a face at him.

  “I do miss teasing you, sister.” He laughed, and then grew serious. “Politics and diplomacy have become far more complicated and fraught with dangerous personal vendettas. I told you that Lorenzo refused to let his bank loan the Pope the monies he wanted to purchase the town of Imola for one of his nephews. The nephew is a cardinal, and the purchase was clearly part of Pope Sixtus’s plan to expand the Vatican’s powers geographically as well as spiritually. Honestly, the man acts more like a duke than a pontiff. So Lorenzo asked all Florentine banks, including the Pazzi’s, to deny the Pope’s request—for the sake of Florence’s sovereignty in Tuscany, to prevent the Pope garnering too much political influence in our region.”

  I reached for some sweetmeats. “And? Lorenzo pressuring others to his will within Florence’s governance is nothing new.”

  “And,” Giovanni spoke emphatically, “the Pazzi seized upon Lorenzo’s refusal as a way to weaken and wound the Medici. The Pazzi went straight to the Pope and gave him the florins he needed. They also informed His Holiness that Lorenzo had tried to collude with other moneylenders to thwart the Pope’s desires. The Pope was furious. He has removed the Vatican accounts from the Medici branch bank in Rome and deposited them with the Pazzi.”

  Now that was potentially devastating to the Medici fortune. I knew that much from growing up listening to my father. Rome was the mainstay of the Medici banking empire.

  “The Pope also retaliated by appointing an archbishop for our region who is decidedly anti-Medici, ignoring all the candidates Florence suggested. It’s a particular insult because the Pope has ignored Lorenzo’s campaign for Giuliano to become a cardinal. Lorenzo and the Signoria struck back by refusing to recognize Francesco Salviati as archbishop.”

  “Ahhh.” I began to see the trickling effect of all this into the lives of ordinary Florentines. “So that is why Florence was threatened with excommunication by the Pope. All the sisters in Le Murate were terrified about not being able to receive communion and being damned eternally.”

  “Indeed.” Giovanni sat up and took his goblet of wine. “Lorenzo has finally acknowledged the archbishop, and things seem to have settled down. But you know how these things fester in Florence. Lorenzo has made new enemies for himself, and the Pazzi have grown stronger and bolder.”

  I thought of Simonetta’s concerns for Giuliano’s honor and safety, her hatred of the Pazzi. “But isn’t Lorenzo’s sister married to a Pazzi man?” I asked. “Surely that built a healing bridge between the two families and will keep them from open conflict?”

  Giovanni smiled at me. “Ah, sister, you of all people should know that marriages aren’t always the answers we think they will be.” He patted my hand. “Now, enough of that. Tell me what you are writing. What poems do you have to share with me?”

  I did not think much about our conversation again, and my next forays outside Le Murate’s gates were uneventful. Until the fifth Sunday after Easter, April 26, 1478.

  That day happened to be the second anniversary of Simonetta’s death. I wanted to attend mass in the Duomo and be among her family and friends. Le Murate was also atwitter with the news that the newest cardinal, a beautiful seventeen-year-old nephew of the Pope, was attending the service at Lorenzo’s special invi
tation—which I assumed was part of the Medici’s resumed courtship of the Vatican to heal the rift Giovanni had told me of. Amid blushes and giggles, the young penitents and convent-school boarders begged me to go see and return to tell them what the youth really looked like.

  The Duomo was packed. The April weather was beautiful and balmy, allowing many people to travel in from the countryside in anticipation of the coming week’s Feast of the Ascension. As the Medici family waded through the thick crowd toward the front of the nave, stopping to greet friends and dignitaries, Lorenzo’s mother spotted me where I stood with Giovanni. Luigi, as usual, was with his guildsmen. Lucrezia de’ Medici reached out to take my arm. “My dear, it is so good to see you. I understand you have been ill. You are better, I hope?”

  I thanked her and said I was.

  “I also have heard you have been writing a great deal. I would love to see your verses, child. We never really had the chance to share our poetry, did we?”

  I was too pleased at the invitation to wonder what spies in the convent might have passed along that information. When invited to the Medici palazzo during Bernardo’s and my Platonic courtship, my hope had been to share my poetry, but I had been too impressed and intimidated by the art contained in the household and the debate among the men surrounding the Magnifico to do so. Now I would far prefer to chat privately with this aged Medici matron, poet to poet, even though our writing was sure to be different. Despite my hours in Le Murate, my poems were not exactly devotional in nature.

  The choirs began to sing. The Medici moved on. Lorenzo went to stand just to the right of the high altar.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a patch of a salmon-colored tunic and a gold-brown mane of curls. I caught my breath. It was Leonardo. We had seen each other a few times because Giovanni was lending space within his rooms to Leonardo to paint. But there was bashful awkwardness between us then. Leonardo had left Verrocchio’s studio and lived and worked on his own now. Oh, if only somehow I could happen upon him after the service. I stood on my tiptoes to watch where he ended up. But he was already lost in the wake of other bodies.