The Competition

by Donna Russo Morin

  The cheering became a roar. The women curtsied, words of “wondrous,” “a masterpiece” flowing over them like the freshest, most cleansing water, the water of baptism, of rebirth, not as women, but as artists.

  As she straightened, Viviana heard other words, not far behind her.

  “When did they have time to fix it?”

  She whirled, just had she had done that day in June, that day she had first heard of this chapel and its commission. Unlike that day, there were too many words, too many people; she could not tell who spoke them. She would not forget; she could wait.

  Lorenzo de’ Medici stepped into the chapel. The crowd in the church grew quiet as they watched his keen study of the frescoes. His wife walked with him, pulled upon his shoulder, and whispered in his ear. He nodded, turning to the hushed crowd.

  “It is as beautiful as the women who created it. How beautiful do I look?”

  The cheering began again, this time spiced with amiable laughter.

  He raised a hand, calling for silence; it came swiftly.

  “We have all learned something here today, perhaps myself most of all. Take heed, gentlemen; we are no longer the only purveyors of creation. Perhaps we never were, for with God we are created in a woman’s womb.”

  In a far more orderly fashion than Viviana would have imagined possible, all those allowed into the church began to file through the chapel, to gaze upon the women’s creation.

  The Disciples stood just outside it, their families among them now, accepting the accolades with gratitude, not even noticing those who said nothing. The long snake of people once outside slithered slowly through the chapel.

  Soon the crowd began to disperse. They left in pairs or fews or in virulent groups poisoned by their bitterness, swirling whirlpools of frustration and rage. They told Viviana more than all the other words she had heard, that had eddied around her this day.

  Their work was far from over. Perhaps she would not live to see its end.

  She closed her eyes and saw flashes of the years, the pain, the need—named and met. No, she might not see its end—she opened her eyes to look at the fresco—but she had seen the splendor of its beginning.

  Before long, only the Disciples and their maestro remained. Their men and families set off to the trattoria, where they promised a feast would await the women.

  They remained behind, to savor the last moment of possession of their work.

  “The faces are all so different,” Carina said. “Just as they should be, yet we do not see it often enough.”

  “The colors in The Death of Adam could have been richer, deeper,” Mattea said, analyzing work she herself had done.

  “We will do so next time,” Viviana chortled. The others laughed; they were all far too tired to think about the next time.

  They swirled around the chapel, and such words were repeated again and again: what they had done wrong, where they had triumphed. Each had an opinion save Lapaccia, who had not left the corner of the chapel where she stood leaning upon the wall.

  “Dear Lapaccia, we have not heard what you think of the finished fresco.”

  Lapaccia moved her head toward Viviana, but did not seem to look at her.

  “I have not said…because I cannot see it.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  “See what is true; render only that.”

  Beneath a blanket, they huddled together upon her balcony, counting stars.

  Viviana let her hair down, let the crisp breeze and Sansone’s fingers ruffle it.

  “There is something that happens to soldiers after they have won a battle,” Sansone cooed in her ear as he stroked her. “Though victorious, they grieve. Not for those they have slain, but for the excitement that had thrummed through them for so long. That left them when the battle ended.”

  Viviana lifted her head.

  “They were no longer quite as alive,” Viviana slurred, tongue thick with fatigue.

  “It is what you are feeling, I think.”

  Viviana chuckled weakly. “I think you know me too well.”

  He turned her and her chair as if they weighed no more than a butterfly upon a leaf. Sansone’s mossy eyes looked through her, into her.

  “I know you as the most beautiful and courageous woman I have ever known.” He kissed her hands. “I know you as the woman who graces my life as it has never been graced. You have much to look forward to, much to make you once more feel so alive.”

  Viviana slowly leaned down, resting her head upon the knot of their limbs.

  “I know you speak true. You always have. If I have done the things I have, things others have not dared to do, they tell me the past is in the past, and all its remnants should be left there.”

  Viviana raised her gaze to his. Blue and green swirled together as they did in the oceans surrounding the Italian peninsula.

  “If you would still have me, dolcezza mia, I would be honored to be your wife.”

  Sansone did not move, did not blink. Without a word he stood. In the silence, he drew her up and, for a moment, simply stared at her.

  “Sansone, I—”

  He crouched, arms flashing, one gathering her behind the neck, the other behind her knees, and lifted her off her feet.

  As he carried into the house, toward her bedroom, he answered her with his lips upon hers.

  “What of society? What of Fiammetta?”

  “Society has already damned me,” Viviana chuckled. “I feel I do them a service to give them yet another reason.”

  Sansone plunged across the threshold, dropped Viviana upon the bed, pounced upon her.

  “And what of Fiammetta?” He nuzzled her neck.

  Viviana wrapped her legs about his back.

  “Puah,” Viviana giggled. “Fiammetta is only jealous, for Patrizio does not perform as he once did.”

  Together they laughed. Once more, their laughter became part of their lovemaking. Viviana hoped it would always be so.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “For all that longing is appeased, there is always more to long for.”

  It could have been a day like any of so many that had come before. But it was not.

  They were all there, all working, busier than they had ever been, all save Lapaccia.

  Yes, busier than they had ever been, but not with projects of their own choosing. The commissions flowed in—portraits and landscapes—enough to last as far as their vision could reach. The original Disciples became the teachers; Carina and Patrizia came to the studio as much as, if not more than, they did. Viviana saw it in their eyes: the desire, the longing, the need to know, to learn, to create. She knew that look, for she had seen it upon her own face for years.

  They had done what they set out to do. They had become what they had always dreamed, a true, working studio occupied and populated by women.

  Leonardo had returned to Milan. Verrocchio and Botticelli visited often, always entering by the back door.

  Their chatter was as lively as ever. Until Mattea stood and retrieved the overstuffed satchel from the corner. Fiammetta stood with her. Their merriment drained away as surely and completely as if the ocean called to it all the water of the Arno River.

  “Are you sure, Mattea?” Isabetta asked. “Is there no other way?”

  Mattea tilted her head with a lopsided grin. “There are other ways, but they are all too dangerous. I will not put Andreano’s safety in peril.”

  “But is it necessary—” Natasia began.

  “I must find him,” Mattea said, stifling Natasia’s pending objection with her resolve. “He must know of his mother. He must be by her side. She must see her son’s face before she cannot see at all.”

  “What have the physicians to say?” Viviana queried gently.

  “It is the clouding,” Mattea said woefully. “Her sight is limited to but a few inches before her face and it dwindles still.”

  “But where will you look?” Carina asked.

  They all gathered round her now, gathered
as close as they could before she traveled so far.

  “To the north. It is as much as he has told me. Venice, I believe. I have always wanted to see Venice.”

  She smiled at them, though sadly. Each one embraced her in turn. “Come back to us,” Viviana whispered in her ear.

  “I will.” Mattea nodded. “We will.” She turned to Fiammetta. “It is time.”

  “Patrizio and I take her as far as Ferrara. We go to hear the Friar Savonarola speak again,” Fiammetta informed them.

  “You go often these days,” Natasia said. It was as much as a question as a statement.

  “I do.” Fiammetta shrugged. “I am compelled. There is a different sort of solace in his words, though I cannot tell you what it is. He speaks to the me I am now.”

  There was no need for her to elaborate; all knew her ever-descending status in the community plagued both her and her husband.

  “And there is also something magnetic about him, something that makes one listen.”

  “Perhaps we will all hear him speak someday,” Viviana said.

  Fiammetta brightened, eyes radiating with a manic glow. “Oh, I am sure you will. I hear he is being transferred back to Florence.”

  La fine, quasi

  (The End, almost)

  What Is Historical Fact and What Is Not

  “Upon a soft pillow rests a clean conscious.”

  The murder of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s brother Giuliano, and with it the betrayal of so many Lorenzo thought were his friends and colleagues, did forever change the benevolent man. His revenge upon them was fearsome, as accurately portrayed in book one of the Da Vinci’s Disciples series. His actions plunged the city-state of Florence into war with not only the Vatican but also the King of Naples, whose forces first attacked the outlying regions in Tuscany under the rule of Florence. The ill effects of the war upon the people turned many against Lorenzo. As the pain and rage of his brother’s death diminished—it would never leave him completely—Lorenzo knew he had to salvage the situation, realizing his wrath, his pain, had taken him out of control and had put his people in danger, a danger he knew they resented him for.

  In the most bold and daring move of his life, Lorenzo—without the knowledge or blessing of the Florentine government—traveled by sea to Naples, placing his life and the fortune of his city in the hands of King Ferdinand I (Don Ferrante). According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, “Ferdinand was gifted with great courage and real political ability, but his method of government was vicious and disastrous. His financial administration was based on oppressive and dishonest monopolies, and he was mercilessly severe and utterly treacherous towards his enemies.” Among the many interesting hobbies the king participated in, hunting was one of his favorites, both of the four-legged and the two-legged sort. And like those that lived in the forest, were this king to successfully make a kill, he would have his prize stuffed. Dead, embalmed, and dressed in the costumes which they wore in life, his deceased enemies lived on in the king’s “museum of mummies.” This was the man to whom Lorenzo entrusted his life.

  The gamble proved fruitful; Lorenzo charmed and persuaded with great acumen, convincing Ferdinand that it would do great harm to all of Italy to be divided by a war such as the one beating upon their doors. With the gift of peace in his hands, Lorenzo returned to his homeland, received with the open arms of the people and the great joy of all. At least for a time.

  In 1481 Battista Frecobaldi, along with two others, members of the Baldovinetti and Balducci families, did conspire to assassinate Lorenzo de’ Medici, once more planning to take his life on Ascension Sunday. Their enterprise was not so stealthily managed; friends of Lorenzo learned of the plan ahead of time. The three were quickly arrested, and even more quickly executed.

  The Medici family did claim Averado as their ancestor. A seventeenth-century manuscript now in the Biblioteca Moreniana records a story crafted to elevate the origins of the Medici legacy and its coat of arms. This tale offers a certain Averardo de’ Medici, a name that recurred in the family between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as a founding father of the clan. Averado served as a captain in Charlemagne’s army, the emperor and “founder” of Florence. As the legend has it, the valiant Averardo, while battling the Longobard’s invasion of the Tuscan territory, defeated a giant called Mugello who terrorized the area of the same name, located in the upper valley of the Sieve. During the violent confrontation, the giant Mugello dented, with either a spiked mace or the balls of a flail, Averardo’s gilded shield. The indentations made upon the knight's armor came to symbolize the heraldic emblem of the balls or palle of the Medici escutcheon. As traceable genealogy attests, the first Medicis, from whom Lorenzo descends, did in fact live in Mugello.

  By this time, Leonardo da Vinci had indeed become dissatisfied with his life in Florence. He was not receiving as many commissions as Botticelli, Verrocchio, and Ghirlandaio, and those he did receive he struggled and faltered with, leaving many unfinished. His highly active mind had turned elsewhere, primarily to science and invention. A letter exists, written by da Vinci himself, to the Duke of Milan, wherein he offers his services as a military engineer to the duke. It is unclear if this letter was ever actually sent.

  Ludovico Sforza, and Milan and its strategic location, were often part of military contentions within the states of Italy. A primitive war tank and a chariot with scythes upon its wheels were just a few of the many military designs da Vinci created during his time in Milan. Initially, the duke brought da Vinci to Milan to cast an equestrian monument in honor of the duke’s father. Leonardo da Vinci’s actual first completed work in Milan is the masterpiece known as The Virgin on the Rocks. Da Vinci returned to Florence in 1489.

  Piero della Francesca did complete a fresco of the entire Legend of the True Cross in the main choir chapel, the Cappella Maggiore commissioned by the Bacci family, in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo in 1447. It was not only his largest work but it is also considered by many to be his finest. The descriptions of those frescoes included in this work that form the entire pictorial of the legend are factual. Though there are a number of frescoes in the thirty-eight chapels of Santo Spirito, The Legend of the True Cross is not one of them.

  The process of artists hearing of and receiving commissions is accurately depicted here. Though in truth, most often there were far more competitors. The contract Da Vinci’s Disciples signed is written to match as closely as possible the contracts that existed at the time.

  Fillippino Lippi was, in fact, one of the first to use real models, excluding portraits, when painting figures.

  The story of Emiliano Soderini is a true one, though his first name is fictionalized. The man was proclaimed an illegitimate child, though exactly where the designation originated has not been unearthed. This man did claim to have found documents that refuted his illegitimacy, and presented them to the government of Florence. The government, run in part by the other branch of the Soderini, proclaimed these documents fraudulent. He was executed for his attempts to bring honor to his family name. Natasia’s father, Crispino, is a fictional character, though the “illegitimate” Soderini did marry and have children.

  All the street names and building names are as they were in the fifteenth century. To walk with Da Vinci’s Disciples is to walk upon those very cobbles. Such authenticity of geography was made possible through the work of R. Burr Litchfield and his students at Brown University.

  And, as always, the direct quotes, the bread crumbs of wisdom Leonardo da Vinci left behind, must be acknowledged:

  “Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.”

  “Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.”

  “It seems that I was always destined to be deeply concerned with vultures; for I recall asthat in one of my earliest memories, that whi
le I was in my cradle, a vulture came down to me, and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me many times with its tail against my lips.”

  “Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.”

  “When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes skyward, for there you have been, and there you long to return.”

  “It has long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

  “Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.”

  “Make your work in keeping with your purpose.”

  “I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ’Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.”

  Acknowledgements

  “It is far better to ask for help than to lose your way.”

  The writing of a book is a solitary affair. Bringing the book to the world is anything but. To those who helped me bring this book to the world I express my undying gratitude: Shannon Hassan, my ever-dedicated, ever-supportive, and encouraging agent; Randall Klein, my understanding, insightful, and expert editor; and the entire marketing, design, and sales teams at Diversion Books for their terrific support and covers that are truly works of art.

  For their technical and historic advice, I must thank and acknowledge the team at the Palazzo Medici Ricardo and the Castello Sforzesco, for their depth of knowledge and their willingness to share it.