I could barely look at him. “No. I cannot.”
“Please, Simonetta. Do not make me beg you.”
I sighed and turned to face him. “I must get home, or else it will not go well for either of us,” I said. “Marco … he would know where to find me.”
Even in the dark I could see the questions in Sandro’s eyes, but thankfully he did not ask them. “Then at least let me accompany you. It is not safe for a woman alone out on the streets at this time of night.”
I shook my head. “No. If we reach my house and Marco were to see you…” I shuddered. “I have never known him to be a violent man, Sandro, but even so I do not want to think what he would do.”
“I do not care about my safety,” he said. “I care only about yours. He will never see me, and I will make sure you are home safe.”
“No!” I cried. I could not tell him the other reason I was refusing so vehemently. If I did not leave now, leave him behind, I was afraid I would never be able to do so. “No. Please, do not ask it of me.”
“Simonetta…”
“No,” I said again. I took his face between my hands. “This has been the most sublime, perfect night of my life. We cannot ruin it with an argument.”
I kissed him, and he kissed me back, deeply. Then I pulled away and made for the door, going back downstairs.
In the dim light of the dying fire in the workshop, I found my cloak on the floor and settled it about my shoulders. Sandro followed me right to the door.
“When will we see each other again?” he asked, cupping my face in his palms.
My eyes filled with tears. “I do not know. I do not know, my love.”
He kissed me one last time, desperately, and then I broke away and stepped outside and into the driving rain, knowing that if I did not do it then, I would never be able to.
38
The rain soaked me to the skin within minutes, and at first I welcomed it, letting it wash the scent of sex and sweat from my skin so Marco would not know where I had been and what I had done. But I began to shiver when I was just out of sight of Sandro’s workshop. It was a chill April night, that time of year when spring is in every ray of sun during the day, but winter still seeks to claw its way back after dark. I began to cough, as though the rain had settled into my lungs and I needed to expel it.
The walk between my own house and Sandro’s workshop had never before seemed so long. When finally I dragged myself onto the right street, I could have wept with relief, yet I did not even have the energy for that. It took me a few tries to pull open the door, as my hands were slick with water and trembling violently with cold.
I managed to get upstairs to my room which, of course, was empty. “Chiara,” I croaked. Just the effort of using my voice caused me to begin coughing again. “Chiara!” I called again, only slightly louder this time.
She came bustling into the room, wiping sleep from her eyes. “Madonna?” she asked, sounding confused. “What has happened? Oh, my…” she said, as she took in my wet cloak, my soaked hair and clothes, my glistening skin. “Dio mio, Madonna, you are nearly blue with cold. Where have you been? Oh, no matter. Come here, we must get those wet things off. Quickly, take that cloak off, and I will get you something dry.” She went into my dressing room and came out with a thick woolen shift. I dropped my sodden cloak to the floor, but that was as much as I could do.
“Oh, Madonna,” Chiara said. With deft fingers, she removed my wet clothes and dried my naked body with a length of cloth, as though I were a child after a bath. Then she pulled the shift over my head and led me to the bed. “I shall get the extra coverlet,” she said. “You shall be warm in no time.”
I only remembered shivering.
* * *
I had thought before that each bout of illness was God punishing me for one of my many sins—for loving a man other than my husband, for desiring that man, for not cleaving to my husband, for vanity. Whether I was right or wrong, it seemed fitting that the worst illness yet would come upon me after my gravest transgression.
Still I did not regret it. In those moments when I was lucid enough to consider it, I knew that I would do it all over again.
It is worth my immortal soul to spend one night with you, Sandro had said. I had not told him then, but I felt the same way. It began to seem as though it had been a mistake not to tell him.
* * *
I spent several days—I cannot say how long—in a haze of fever, sometimes waking myself with the force of my own coughing. I saw flashes of blood, black against the sheets. Chiara’s face, then Marco’s, then Sandro’s, always Sandro’s, came to me. Sometimes when I awoke, I was freezing and thought myself still out in the rain; at other times I burned so hot that I thought I was already in Lucifer’s hellfire.
I know Marco was there sometimes; I know the doctor was as well. Chiara hovered over me always, bathing my brow with cool cloths and bringing me water and diluted wine. If I awoke long enough to speak to anyone, it was her.
Yet one night when I awoke, it was no mystery what had roused me: two men’s voices, arguing loudly and strenuously.
“I forbid it, do you hear me? You scum who has laid hands on my wife, who has defiled her with your filthy drawings.”
“You may kill me yourself if you like, Vespucci; I care not. Just let me see her first!”
Sandro. Even in the throes of a fever I could not mistake his voice.
“You would need to kill me first,” Marco shot back. “Only when you step over my dead body shall you enter her chamber.”
Slowly, as my wits returned to me, I realized they must be just outside my bedchamber. Sandro must have forced his way in and gotten this far before Marco intercepted him.
“Do not tempt me, signore. You cannot keep me from her.”
“Marco,” I called past my ravaged throat, through dry lips.
Both voices fell silent.
“Marco,” I called again.
He opened the door and stepped inside. “Simonetta? You are awake?”
Even after everything, it nearly broke my heart to see the pain and sorrow on his face. He looked as though he had aged ten years since that night when he had found Sandro’s sketch of me, when we had argued. It was the last time we had really spoken, I realized. “Marco, please,” I said. Over his shoulder, I could glimpse Sandro through the open door. “Let him in. I wish to see him.”
Marco’s eyes hardened. “Simonetta, please. This is hardly—”
“Please,” I said. “This is the last thing I shall ask of you.”
At that, his expression crumpled, and he dropped his head into his hands. “Very well,” he said. Abruptly he turned and stalked out of the room. “You may go in,” I heard him say shortly to Sandro. “She wishes to see you.”
Sandro stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. He rushed to my side, sitting on the bed next to me and taking my hand in his. “Simonetta, my Simonetta,” he said. I could hear the tears in his voice.
I closed my eyes, recalling when he had sighed my name as he moved within me. It seemed like it was decades ago, and yet it was one of the last things that I remembered clearly. If I could have no other memories left to me, I thought, then that one would be enough. “Sandro,” I said, my fingers curling around his. “You are here. You knew.”
“I did, my love,” he said. “I knew. Nothing could have kept me from your side.”
“I have wanted to see you,” I said. “You must promise me something.”
His strong hand tightened on mine. “Anything.”
I opened my eyes, taking in his beloved, handsome face: his wide eyes, his beautiful features, his tousled blond hair. “You must promise me that you shall finish the painting,” I said. “The Birth of Venus.”
“Oh, Simonetta,” he said, his emotions nearly choking him. “I … I do not know if I can. Not without you.”
“You must,” I said, raising my voice. “You must, for me. It will be a testament of our love. So that all the world m
ight know. Remember? So that no one will ever forget. Promise me.”
Tears slid freely down his cheeks. He nodded. “I promise, Simonetta. I swear on my life that I shall do it, for you. So that you may live forever, as I told you once that you would.”
I closed my eyes again. “Thank you. Thank you, my love.”
We both fell silent for a moment, then I opened my eyes when he spoke again. “When I die,” he said softly, so softly that if he had been any farther away, I would not have heard him, “I shall be buried at your feet. It will be my last wish.”
I smiled and let my eyes drift closed. “I shall await you in Elysium, my love. I shall save a place for you. I will wait for you there.”
When I awoke again, he was gone. And I wept.
* * *
I do not know how many days have passed since Sandro came. I wish that I might have slipped away with him there beside me, holding my hand, yet I was denied that comfort. If that is to be the punishment for everything I have done, so be it.
I drift in and out of dreams, though I cannot always tell that they are so. I dream of The Birth of Venus, dream that I stand before the finished canvas with Sandro at my side, and that I weep at its beauty. I dream myself into another life, one where I am not ill, one where I am not the daughter of a noble family from Genoa, one where I am not Marco Vespucci’s wife. In this life, I am a simple Tuscan peasant, and free to marry Sandro for love. I keep his house and tidy his workshop, and we make love every day and he holds me all through the night.
I see our children, beautiful and golden-haired, the children that we would have had together, the children I was never meant to have with Marco. I see them grow up to be artists and poets and statesmen, and there are tears in my eyes, tears of pride and of sorrow for these magnificent children that never came to be.
I pose for Sandro, and he creates the greatest works of art that the world has ever seen. This last I know, at least, is true.
And now I have woken from these dreams, from these other lives I’ve lived even as I am dying, and I am alone, save for one figure. For Death is beckoning to me at last, and I see now that he is blind: blind to my beauty, blind to my youth, blind to what my destiny should have been; blind to all but my soul and, no doubt, the sins that mar it. But I am not afraid.
Sandro promised me that I would live forever.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci died on the night of April 26, 1476, at the age of 22 or 23 (her exact date of birth is not known) of consumption, which we today call pulmonary tuberculosis. She was indeed regarded as the most beautiful woman in Florence and, according to some, in all of Italy. Thousands followed her funeral procession through the streets of Florence, where her open coffin was carried so that the populace could view her famed beauty one last time—a fact that strikes me as incredibly morbid. She is buried in the Vespucci’s parish church of the Ognissanti, which still sits on the bank of the river Arno and is open to the public.
Marco Vespucci remarried shortly after Simonetta’s death. He was a cousin of Amerigo Vespucci, the famed explorer who gave his name to the New World.
Clarice Orsini de’ Medici also died of consumption, in July 1487. While her relationship with Lorenzo is nowhere described as being a particularly loving one, they did have ten children together, six of whom survived to adulthood. Their son Giovanni de’ Medici would go on to become Pope Leo X, the first of two Medici popes.
Nowhere in my research did I come across any explicit evidence that Clarice and Simonetta were close friends, but they would certainly have known each other, and so I took the liberty of making them so in my story.
Lorenzo de’ Medici was, as I have described him here, a true patron of the arts and of learning, cultivating the careers of many artists and writers—Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti being the most notable among them. His political genius was perhaps unmatched in his age, and all these factors combined to give him the nickname of “Magnifico”—or Lorenzo the Magnificent. He reigned as the de facto ruler of republican Florence until his death in 1492, at the age of just 43. Like his father Piero, he was plagued by ill health in his later years, notably by gout, which ran in the Medici family.
Lorenzo’s eldest son, Piero, attempted to take the reins of power after his father’s death, but he lacked his father’s sharp intelligence and political savvy. Piero and the rest of the Medici family were soon driven from the city of Florence altogether for a time by the Dominican friar Savonarola, who had for years been preaching against the Medici family in particular, as well as against the sinful excesses, artwork, pagan learning, and decadence of Florence—in essence, against everything that made the Renaissance what it was. In the absence of the Medici family, he briefly ruled Florence as a theocracy, and famously hosted Bonfires of the Vanities, in which citizens were encouraged to throw their worldly goods on the flames: clothing, works of art, books, jewelry, and furniture were among the things Florentines burned at Savonarola’s behest. Sandro Botticelli himself burned at least one of his own paintings on such a bonfire. In true Florentine style, however, the people soon grew tired of living without their books and fine clothes and artwork, and Fra Savonarola was eventually ousted—with a little help from Pope Alexander VI, who had the friar burned at the stake for openly defying and preaching against the Vatican on more than one occasion.
Oddly enough, Giuliano de’ Medici died exactly two years to the day after Simonetta’s death—April 26, 1478. He was stabbed to death during Mass in the Duomo, as part of a plot that became known as the Pazzi conspiracy. The Pazzi were a rival Florentine banking family, and after a series of political and business-related slights at the hands of the Medici, they decided to eliminate their rivals once and for all—with the tacit blessing of Pope Sixtus IV, who had long been feuding with Lorenzo. The assassins succeeded in dispatching Giuliano, but were not able to kill his brother, who was their true target. Lorenzo escaped with only a few wounds thanks to his friends and supporters who managed to fend off the attackers, and in the days following ruthlessly punished those who were found to have any part in the plot.
The exact nature of Giuliano de’ Medici’s relationship with Simonetta Vespucci is unknown. Some sources say that she was his mistress; others that he was her lover only in the more chaste, courtly sense; and others simply concede that we will never know for certain. For my story, I made the choice that I thought made the most sense based on how I had written Simonetta as a character.
And writing about Simonetta was both a joy and challenge. Very little information is available about her; she is quite literally a footnote, or mentioned in only a sentence or two, in many books on the period or on the Medici family. At times this was very frustrating, as I could not confirm certain simple facts one hundred percent—where her wedding to Marco took place being one such example. However, this was also very liberating in many ways, as I could build her story around those few facts and events that I did know for certain—the joust where Giuliano carried a banner of her painted by Botticelli did actually take place, for instance—and fill in the blanks with my imagination. In those instances where I was presented with conflicting information I simply chose the version I liked best or that best suited the story. This book is, after all, a work of historical fiction, and with fiction comes many freedoms.
Sandro Botticelli, of course, went on to paint many of the great masterpieces of Western artwork, including, of course, The Birth of Venus and Primavera, which are no doubt his two best known works. He was also one of the artists commissioned for the paintings on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. The women in many of his paintings look alike, and so it is speculated that he went on painting Simonetta his whole life. That she is the woman pictured in The Birth of Venus is accepted as fact by many, though some art historians disagree and claim that this is nothing more than romantic nonsense. Obviously, I thought it made for a pretty good story.
All of the artwork described in this novel is real, except f
or the scandalous portrait of Lucrezia Donati that Botticelli was said to have painted for Lorenzo de’ Medici—that is a juicy rumor of my own invention (though Lucrezia Donati was in fact Lorenzo’s mistress). In the novel most of the artwork is in its original place as well—the Donatello statues of David and Judith did grace the Medici family’s courtyard and garden, respectively. Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi was indeed commissioned for the church of Santa Maria Novella and was placed in a chapel near the entry there. Where I have taken liberties, though, is with the timeline of when some of Botticelli’s works were painted. The first painting for which Simonetta poses is Botticelli’s Portrait of a Lady (which is also widely believed to be of Simonetta Vespucci) and which was not, in reality, painted until sometime between 1478 and 1490—after Simonetta’s death. As well, The Birth of Venus was not completed until 1484, as I describe in the novel’s prologue. Whether Botticelli ever asked Simonetta to pose for the start of such a work during her lifetime is unknown, but I like to think that he did, and that she accepted.
Sandro Botticelli did in fact request to be buried at Simonetta’s feet, and on his death in 1510 his wish was granted. Many visit his burial place in the Church of the Ognissanti today and leave flowers, messages, and notes, without knowing that his great muse is buried just feet away.
When I originally had the idea to write about Simonetta Vespucci, it was going to be a story about her as Botticelli’s muse and Giuliano de’ Medici’s mistress. Yet some preliminary Googling led me to the above fact—that Botticelli had requested to be buried at her feet, and actually was—and immediately I knew that this was the story I had to tell: that of her relationship with Botticelli, whatever the truth of it may have been. That he is buried with her certainly suggests more than a simple artist‒muse attachment, but we will never know the truth for sure. And that, of course, is where historical fiction comes in.
* * *
Many of the paintings described in this novel—The Birth of Venus, The Adoration of the Magi, and Botticelli’s two panels telling the story of Judith—are located today in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, along with many other Botticelli paintings and the works of other Renaissance masters. I absolutely recommend visiting the Uffizi if you are able, as its collection is absolutely unparalleled and contains some of the most beautiful works of art in the world. For my American readers, if a trip to Florence is out of the question, I highly recommend paying a visit to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. They have an incredible collection of Italian Renaissance art, including many paintings by Botticelli, the only Leonardo da Vinci painting in North America, and busts of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici. And, as the gallery is part of the Smithsonian, admission is free. I happened to visit with a friend while working on this novel and didn’t know much about their collection; I was in Italian art history nerd heaven when I walked into that wing and saw the embarrassment of riches on the walls.
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