The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series)

by Alana White

  A wry smile lifted the corner of Guid'Antonio's mouth. There had been dissenters who had muttered phrases like “princely ambitions” and “a dangerous departure” when they understood reforming and strengthening the government meant strengthening the position of the Medici circle with Lorenzo at its core. But what would they prefer? Some other family lording it over the city? Some loose cannon? Someone like the Pazzi family? In truth, the creation of the balìa had passed the legislative councils by only one vote. Guid'Antonio took some comfort in that. The Florentine Republic remained a government of men who refused to let Tuscany be entirely ruled by any one man or family. Gowned in robes of flowing crimson cloth, they would argue, accuse, give sway, refuse, and cast their ballots before God and the people.

  He took comfort in a good many things. In September, the hermit who seemed set to assassinate Lorenzo at Poggio a Caiano had failed, praise God in His infinite mercy. Guilty or not, the man had died after being questioned: the soles of his feet skinned, then burnt when his torturers in the Bargello held them in the fire till the fat dripped off. Guid'Antonio's kinsman, Piero Vespucci, was fortunate not to have suffered a similar fate. Instead, at Lorenzo's behest, Piero had been released from the Stinche, and a black mark thus removed from the Vespucci family name. This had come shortly after Guid'Antonio pledged to back Lorenzo's call for a balìa.

  And then in late October in Via di Pinti, Bartolomeo Scala, his wife, and their five daughters had celebrated the safe arrival of Maddalena Scala's sixth child, a boy.

  They named him Giuliano.

  Guid'Antonio stroked Flora's neck gently, grateful for the familiar presence of the solid animal, and inhaled a cold, calming breath. Seriously ill now, Nastagio Vespucci had given Amerigo his power of attorney; one day soon Amerigo would handle all Nastagio's legal obligations. At Guid'Antonio's request, since Amerigo would not be going to Rome this time around, Lorenzo had taken Amerigo into his service. Good. No matter where Guid'Antonio went or how long he was gone, he would have eyes and ears fixed on Via Larga.

  He snugged his scarlet cape close around his body, thankful for the cloak's thick ermine lining. Flora whinnied and stamped, glancing around with a restless eye. Once Guid'Antonio turned toward the road, the blood would heat in his veins and his fingers would thaw. “Hush, Flora. Just another moment.”

  Behind him he heard a scraping and shhhussing sound and twisted in the saddle. One of San Miniato's white-robed monks was making an icy path to the church well, carrying an axe, his formless figure ghostly against the frozen atmosphere. Pocking the snow with huge prints, a darker, fawn-colored shape bounded past the old religious and on around the church in pursuit of what? A squirrel or a rabbit? Guid'Antonio settled back around in the saddle.

  Where had all this left him, a man on a mission for his own salvation? He gazed across the valley, where the cypress trees were skeletons furred with snow and a veil of white lay over the city. At Florence's heart, the Cathedral presided over all, its marble interior gathering the cold to its breast, while close by in Ognissanti, Sandro Botticelli's Saint Augustine raised his hoary countenance toward God, struggling to understand lightness and dark, compromise and truth. Guid'Antonio understood now he could not have saved Giuliano, even if he could have sprouted wings and flown across the sanctuary that cold April morning. What must be must be. This was life. This was history. In the end, he was a man whose head ruled his heart. So be it.

  He touched the diplomatic pouch beneath his cloak and looked around, seeking his sole companion on his new journey. He made a half whistle and broke into a smile when the mighty cane corso Italiano barreled back around the monastery, slobbering, grinning, frisking in the snow, then shaking his giant body vigorously, the silver studs on his wide leather collar shining. What a dog!

  “Come, Peritas. Unlike Alexander the Great, I doubt I'll conquer any cities and name them for you, but I can take you to Rome.” He turned Flora toward the icy road. And then with Peritas at his side and cold air blowing back his hair and the folds of his crimson cape, Attorney General Guid'Antonio Vespucci began the long road south to Rome.

  “Too much knowing causes misery.”

  From A Wood of Love II, by Lorenzo de' Medici

  GUID'ANTONIO

  Guid'Antonio Vespucci (1436–1501) was the oldest son of Antonia Ugolini and Giovanni Vespucci. By the time of Guid'Antonio's birth, the Vespuccis ranked among Florence's leading families, with holdings in rental properties, vineyards, olive groves, silk shops, and wool. Like the sons of all wealthy Florentines, Guid'Antonio would have been educated in Latin, arithmetic, and logic. As a young man, in Bologna and Ferrara, he studied civil law, rhetoric and poetry, the latter two deemed essential for the Renaissance practice of diplomacy. For his profession, he chose Doctor of Law.

  As Guid'Antonio once said, he believed in the maintenance of legal order and the utilization of the abilities of the cities' most able citizens. Thus, from the first days of his career, like his father before him, he supported the Medici family in its private administration of the democratic Florentine government. In his early thirties (when Lorenzo's father, Piero de' Medici, was the de facto, or unofficial, ruler of Florence), Guid'Antonio served as one of the Florentine Republic's nine Lord Priors (the state's highest-ranking council). From 1469 (the year of Piero de' Medici's death) onward, Guid'Antonio's close bond with Lorenzo saw them through Lorenzo's troubled ascendancy as the prince of the city until Lorenzo's untimely death in 1492 at the age of forty-three. During those years, Guid'Antonio and Lorenzo survived the Pazzi Conspiracy (1478) and the ensuing war, with Guid'Antonio traveling to Rome and France and back to Rome again as Florence's/Lorenzo's diplomatic agent.

  When Guid'Antonio was about thirty-four, he married his second wife, Maria del Vigna, and, as in The Sign of the Weeping Virgin, they had a son, Giovanni. Of all his nephews, Guid'Antonio seems to have been particularly close with Amerigo Vespucci, who did, indeed, accompany Guid'Antonio to France as his secretary in October 1478, eventually spending almost two years with him at the court of King Louis XI. Back home in Florence, Amerigo went to work for Lorenzo, then for Lorenzo's cousin and former ward, Lorenzino de' Medici, finally sailing west and into the pages of history, while his uncle Guid'Antonio played his part as one of the most influential and powerful personages of his time until his death on Christmas Eve in 1501.

  Together, they lived in an age when Italians already spoke of the “rinascimento,” an era in which a new spirit of rebirth in life, art, and literature prevailed. Nowhere was this more evident than in Florence, a city of about 50,000 souls at this time in history. Within the town's walls, Guid'Antonio and Amerigo rubbed elbows with their neighbors, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Paolo Toscanelli, and so many other Renaissance luminaries while at their heart there stood the controversial, charming, and brilliantly talented poet and statesman, Lorenzo de' Medici . . . justly called “The Magnificent.”

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Many of the characters in The Sign of the Weeping Virgin are real people, and the story draws on major events in their lives. On 26 April 1478, in a plot driven by Pope Sixtus IV and his nephew, Girolamo Riario, Francesco de' Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini murdered Giuliano de' Medici in an attempt to rid Florence of its two unofficial heads of state. Given Lorenzo de' Medici's escape that bloody Sunday, the plot failed, and the course was set for war between Florence and Rome. Giuliano did leave behind a son named Giulio, the future Pope Clement VII. Lorenzo's son Giovanni became Pope Leo X.

  Botticelli did finish his Saint Augustine in Ognissanti Church in the summer of 1480, just as Guid'Antonio and Amerigo returned home from Paris. Giorgio Vespucci commissioned the fresco; restorers discovered the dialogue Botticelli wrote at the top of the painting in recent times. Today in the church visitors may see the fresco, as well as Botticelli's tomb marked with the Filipepi family coat of arms in the floor of the Cappella San Pietro d'Alcantara in the south transcept. Botticelli's workshop and home was located on the side s
treet near the Vespucci Palace and Spedale dei Vespucci, the Vespucci family hospital. The palace is no longer intact, but the hospital where Francesca Vernacci would have practiced medicine is still on Borg'Ognissanti near the church. Botticelli's Primavera, as well as other paintings by him, lives in Botticelli Hall in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

  The painting called the Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta resides in the Cathedral of S. M. All'Impruneta, in the small town of Impruneta, near Florence, and has done for centuries. In his diary (A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516), druggist Luca Landucci describes the painting and the miracles it performed for the good of the people. Luca notes proudly how his brother, Gostanzo, won the palio riding his horse called “il Draghetto” (the Little Dragon) on several occasions.

  Readers familiar with Florence will notice how in some instances I have used present-day names for buildings and streets, while in others they retain their fifteenth-century names. Today the Medici Palace is Palazzo Medici Riccardi; Benozzo Gozzoli's Procession of the Magi in the Medici Chapel is available for viewing by the public. Palla Palmieri's police headquarters and jail is today called the Bargello, and I have used that designation. Now a national museum, the Bargello houses Florentine Renaissance sculpture, with rooms dedicated to the works of Michelangelo, Andrea del Verrochio, and many other artists.

  For an introduction to the Medici family, interested readers might begin with Christopher Hibbert's The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici. For my research on the Vespucci family, I drew heavily on Amerigo and the New World by Germán Arciniegas, and then on materials gleaned from Italian Renaissance scholars, whose work has been invaluable to me.

  As for the shadowy villain of the piece, Lorenzo de' Medici had Girolamo Riario watched from the time of Giuliano's murder in 1478. In April 1488, almost ten years to the day, Girolamo was himself assassinated while at home in Forli. His widow, Caterina Sforza, married the younger of Lorenzo's two wards, Giovanni de' Medici, brother to Lorenzino, who figures in our story. Caterina then went on to do battle with Cesare Borgia. This is the Italian Renaissance, whose tapestry of relationships is so colorful and tightly woven it seems almost to defy belief. Almost.

  THE SIGN OF THE WEEPING VIRGIN READER'S GUIDE

  Questions for Discussion:

  Guid'Antonio and his nephew, Amerigo, have returned home to Florence after a two-year diplomatic mission to France. What are Guid'Antonio's expectations upon their arrival in the city? What happens to deflate them?

  Guid'Antonio was one of the most powerful men in the Florentine Republic, both as a lawyer and as a politician. At the same time, Lorenzo de' Medici, poet and patron of the arts and known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, was the acknowledged “prince of the city,” ruling the government behind the scenes. How might life have been different for Guid'Antonio if he were not a Medici man? Do you think he had a choice in backing the Medici family, and how strongly do you think he actually agreed with their guiding principles?

  Guid'Antonio and Lorenzo make much of their friendship. Do you consider them friends? What do you make of their rapport?

  When Guid'Antonio visits Lorenzo at the Medici Palace for the first time since coming home from France, Lorenzo reveals to him his dead brother Giuliano's illegitimate young son. How does Guid'Antonio respond to the child? Do you think Lorenzo is manipulating Guid'Antonio? If so, how and why?

  Lorenzo de' Medici is considered by some the light of the Italian Renaissance, by others a hard-boiled politico who kept his family's death grip on Florence. One of his near contemporaries said, “If Florence had to have a dictator, she couldn't have had a better one.” What do you think of him?

  A young boy has witnessed the painting of the Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta weeping in Guid'Antonio's family church. Why have Mary's tears caused such fear in the city? Do you think Guid'Antonio is justified in investigating them? Do you think this means he is a nonbeliever?

  Guid'Antonio observes that Florence is “married” to miracles. What leads him to think this?

  Although Giuliano de' Medici died two years ago, Guid'Antonio sees him now on several occasions. Why do you think this is, and how do you feel about it? What other possible interpretation is there for Guid'Antonio's visions? What do you think about his final exchange with Giuliano in the Cathedral?

  Guid'Antonio and his wife, Maria, have a stormy relationship. He says he loves her. Do you believe him? Does she? Why did he marry her in the first place?

  Several times Guid'Antonio thinks about Maestra Francesca Vernacci, the doctor at the hospital Guid'Antonio and his family built and own. What do you think about the reason Francesca gives Guid'Antonio for not marrying him? Were you surprised at the passion his feelings for her arouse in him? What does this reveal about him?

  Discuss the role of women in the society of Renaissance Florence. For example, women did not generally attend funerals.

  Florence at this time has a small-town air. Within these gated, stone walls, everyone knows everyone, or, at least, knows who they are, from Guid'Antonio and Amerigo Vespucci to Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Lorenzo the Magnificent to the people in the street. Do you believe that this time and place are rightly considered the heart of the Italian Renaissance? How is Florence different from Rome and Naples?

  Regarding his decision to assume the role of leadership in the city when he was only twenty, Lorenzo de' Medici later wrote in his journal that he agreed to do so reluctantly, since it fared ill in Florence with anyone who was rich but who did not have any share in government. Why do you think Lorenzo believed this?

  What is the role in the story of the popolo minuto, the “little” people in the street, who toil from sunup to sundown to eke out a living? How does the stray, starving dog, Peritas, represent the populace? Discuss the irony of Peritas's presence in Guid'Antonio's life at the close of the story.

  Lorenzo wrote, “Too much knowing is misery.” What do you think he meant? Do you agree with him?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Alana White's passion for Renaissance Italy has taken her to Florence for research on the Vespucci and Medici families on numerous occasions. There along cobbled streets unchanged over the centuries, she traces their footsteps, listening to their imagined voices: Guid'Antonio Vespucci, Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, Lorenzo de' Medici. Alana's first short story featuring real-life fifteenth-century lawyer Guid'Antonio Vespucci and his favorite nephew, Amerigo, was a Macavity Award finalist. She is a member of the Authors Guild, Sisters in Crime, the Women's National Book Association, and the Historical Novel Society. Alana loves hearing from readers, and you can contact her at www.alanawhite.com. There, you will find Guid'Antonio's likeness as Domenico Ghirlandaio depicted him in the Sistine Chapel, along with other images and tales of 1400s Italy.