The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  “Giovanni Bellini? He’s even slower than you are.” A stray twinkle in the maestro’s eye told me he had been aware of this facet of his brother-in-law’s temperament when he made the suggestion.

  “No, no. You are the only artist my esteemed husband wants for this commission. No other will do. And it must be finished by June. What you need, maestro, is encouragement. Perhaps we should take a hostage. One of your children. Your son Orsino . . .”

  “Welcome to him, madonna.”

  “Mmm. Not the best hostage.” She rubbed her nose thoughtfully. “What about her?” pointing in my direction.

  “The girl?”

  “Me?”

  “Not you, Grazia. No, it is Faustina I have in mind. I know how you treasure her, maestro. Sometimes I think you love that stone woman better than you love your own wife.”

  “Better even than that, madonna,” he answered, deadly quiet now. “For she is more perfect than any woman nature can show. The master who made her borrowed from all living women for his creation. She is my inspiration.”

  “She does not seem to have inspired you to work on my triptych,” she answered.

  “You are impatient, madonna.”

  “It must be done by June,” she insisted.

  “Forgive the interruption, illustrissima . . .” My interjection went into the silence as into a void.

  I cleared my throat and tried again. “There may be a way to resolve the problem,” I said.

  “There is,” she answered without looking at me. “The maestro must paint faster.”

  “Impossible,” from the other side. “When I painted the San Zeno pala it took over my life for three years.”

  More silence and murderous looks. Dare I jump into the void one more time? “Maestro Andrea.” I picked him as the less menacing of the two. “There are six panels in the San Zeno altarpiece, are there not?”

  “Three large ones, three small in the predella,” Madonna Isabella answered for him. “Each one a jewel.”

  “That means it took you roughly six months to finish each panel.” I pursued my thought.

  “We do not measure our art the way a pawnbroker counts out his ducats, lady,” he sneered. “How long do you think it took the master who made my Faustina to create such perfection of form? Two weeks? Two years? What matters is that we stand here today, hundreds of years later, enthralled by her. Our measure is eternity, do you not understand that, ignorant fool?”

  Oh, he had a whip for a tongue. But I was quite inured to his lashes by then and went right on with my scheme.

  “I merely mean to demonstrate that it is possible for you to create a single work of genius within six months, maestro,” I answered sweetly. “How large are the biggest panels at San Zeno?”

  The question drove him even deeper into his fury. “Here . . .” He threw a ball of string at me, narrowly missing my eye. “Use this. Take it to Verona. Measure the pala. How can I remember after all this time? Dio, it is at least thirty years since I made the thing. Do you not understand that I do not measure out the works of my hand by the yard?”

  Perhaps not, old man, I thought, but you certainly do charge by that measure. However, I kept my temper and continued in the same bland tone as before. “I am merely trying to make a point, maestro,” I said.

  Meanwhile, as we bickered on I saw Madama turn toward the draped easel. Like a bird dog sniffing her quarry, she quivered a little and began slowly to move in on it. Now I understood Maestro Andrea’s haste to conceal the work. It was on account of my portrait that he had fallen behind. He had been painting me instead of the Madonna of the Victory. Dio!

  “Please, maestro, I beg you to tell me the size . . .” The urgency in my voice must have come through, for he finally responded.

  “Perhaps three braccias in height,” he answered.

  “And the width?” I asked.

  “Some two thirds of that.”

  “The illustrissima’s panel must be larger than that,” I announced. “Much larger. Is that not so, madonna?”

  “I have agreed to nothing,” she answered sternly. “But if I were to consider a single panel . . .” A slight, tight smile crossed her lips. “If I were to agree, as I say, certainly the panel would have to be much larger than any one of the San Zeno panels.”

  “And would not a panel of that size be the largest panel you had ever executed in your long and illustrious career, maestro?” I asked. By now my nervous glances at the easel must have warned him, for he answered quite politely, “Certainly the largest.”

  “How would it compare with your other large pieces such as your Florentine circumcision?”

  “The Florentine panels are small in comparison.” He was clearly onto the game now. “One might almost say inconsequential.”

  That, I thought, was going too far. But contrarily, the answer seemed to please Madama. And the sarcasm in his reply, thinly veiled as it was, escaped her completely. For her it was enough that her panel, should she agree to it, would be larger by twice than the one Maestro Andrea had executed for the Medici family.

  “What will become of the figures in the side panels — the Beata Orsanna and our noble brother-in-law, the Protonotary Sigismondo — if we should agree to the plan, maestro?” she asked. “Can they still be included within the confines of one large panel?”

  “They cannot. Not unless we float them up above the fruit and flowers,” the painter replied with a wicked grin. “Or unless you are prepared to give up your place opposite your illustrious consort at the Virgin’s left hand.”

  “Would you have me floating above the fruit and flowers, maestro,” she inquired with a sour sweetness.

  “It is closer to heaven, illustrissima,” he answered, deftly dodging the arrow.

  “No, maestro. I fear I am slightly too heavy to float. Indeed, if you go ahead with this plan, I will be forced, albeit reluctantly, to relinquish my position at the left hand. Yes, I will be forced to yield to Beata Orsanna.” She paused. “But now I think of it, the place of honor ought more properly to go to that holy woman in any case. For there is no doubt that her intercessions with our Lady were instrumental in bringing about the great victory at the Taro River.” And she smiled a most complacent smile, as if she had won a vital point in a disputa.

  “But will his Excellency, the Marchese, approve?” I asked. “Did he not intend to share the honor with you who stayed bravely at home and conducted the affairs of Mantova so nobly in his name?”

  “His honor on the battlefield he shares with no one,” she answered sharply, as if irritated at being held back in this new plan. “Nor need he share his piety. It was he who entreated the Holy Mother, he whose courage She rewarded with victory. I see now that Fra Redini was mistaken in his program. Neither I nor the Protonotary should be included. Only the saints, the Blessed Mother, and my noble consort. For they are the chiefest actors in this wonderful drama.” She nodded with satisfaction at her own mental process. “It is all quite clear to me now. Not only need I not sit for this portrait, I must not sit. All the honor goes to the commander. I shall send off a letter to him at once explaining our inadvertent insult to his glory. I am sure he will understand.”

  Then, without taking a breath, she turned to Mantegna and asked, “What are you hiding under that sheet, maestro? Something you do not wish me to see?”

  “It is a portrait of Faustina,” he answered, truthful to a point. “Not yet finished.”

  She stepped forward and grasped the corner of the sheet between her thumb and her forefinger. “Not even a peek, maestro?”

  “I cannot forbid my princess,” he answered, suddenly altogether a courtier. “But I guarantee she will not like what she sees. And I beg her humbly not to look. For I prefer to show her only works that bring her joy and satisfaction.”

  “Very well then. I will wait.” She dropped the cloth. “But,
mark you, I will return one month from today to see how far you have progressed with the Madonna of the Victory. And I will send a message to Beata Orsanna to expect you at the convent tomorrow.”

  “At the convent?”

  “Surely you do not expect the sainted woman to come to you for her sitting?”

  “Of course not.” He knew when he had been bested.

  “Very well.” She turned to me all haughty once again. “My regards to Maestro Daniele, and tell him how pleased we are that he is recovered enough to run the banco.”

  “But he is not recovered,” I answered. “Not at all.”

  “Really?” she drawled. “Then who takes care of business?”

  “I do, madonna.”

  “In that case, if I were you I would stick closer to my tasks at the loan bank. It is not seemly for a young woman to be sprawling about with her hair down in an artist’s studio. Believe me, no good will come of it.”

  And with that she swept out, leaving both the maestro and me on notice that we shoemakers had best stick to our lasts: he to his altarpieces, I to my counting table.

  Without any discussion we agreed that work on the portrait must cease at once. “But never fear, Madonna Grazia,” the old man assured me, with a touch of courtliness he must have had left over from his encounter with Madonna Isabella, “I am no Leonardo da Vinci. I finish what I start. You will yet see yourself immortalized by the greatest master in Italy.”

  36

  The year 1496 began with a series of bad omens. In the midst of a hailstorm it had rained blood over the gates of Siena. In Ferrara, Duke Ercole, seized by a late-in-life burst of religious fervor, once again ordered the Jews to wear the obnoxious yellow circle on their breasts. This time, the dei Rossis were not excluded. To Mantova, an early spring thaw and freeze brought ruined crops and the threat of empty stomachs; while upstairs in our fine house my father began to refuse food, a step in his slow separation from those of us who loved him.

  God must be on holiday, I thought, to permit so much misery all at once. However, it was not God but the Gonzagas who launched the final thunderbolt at our sorrowful household. The telling blow was delivered by two gentlemen of the court, a friar and an architect. They oozed in through the door of the banco one morning, the friar thin and oily, the architect fat and twitchy.

  “Maestro Daniele?” The friar spoke in a high whine.

  “My father is ill,” I answered. “I am Grazia dei Rossi. What can I do for you?”

  “We are here to see Maestro Daniele.” The other spoke this time. “These papers are for his eyes only.”

  “I am his eyes,” I answered. “And his ears and his hands as well.”

  “Is there no man in the family? An uncle? A brother?”

  “I am the manager in my father’s stead. Please show me the document.” It was all I could do to be civil. Blackmailers and pirates who hide themselves in holy garb bring out my worst.

  “Very well then.” The friar turned to the fat one. “Messer Ghisolfo, the document.”

  While the fat one was fussing with his case, the priest explained, “Messer Bernardo Ghisolfo is the Marchese’s architect.”

  Architect? What a strange person to dun us for money, I thought.

  “And you, Father? May I know your name?” I asked.

  “I am Fra Redini. Fra Girolamo Redini of the Eremitani order. Adviser to the honorable Protonotary, Sigismondo Gonzaga.”

  So this was Redini, the inventor of the program for the Madonna of the Victory; also, I suspected, the author of the plan to get Daniele dei Rossi to pay for it. He certainly had the face for chicanery: a mouth like a viper and a tongue that worked constantly. And when he held out his cursed document I could tell by the proprietary way he handled it that he had devised this new ruse, and shuddered to think what we were in for.

  The document was short and clear. Daniele the Jew was to be honored once more. His house had been chosen as the site for a small chapel to house the Madonna of the Victory, an altarpiece being made even now by Maestro Andrea and dedicated to our Lady by Her grateful son Marchese Francesco Gonzaga, in praise and gratitude for his glorious victory at Fornovo.

  “Our house . . . this house . . . is to be a chapel?” I stammered, for I did not completely understand what was intended.

  “Not this structure, lady,” the architect explained. “Merely this site. The house which stands here now will of course have to be razed to accommodate the new chapel. Razed to the ground.”

  “Razed to the ground?”

  “It would hardly redound to the glory of our Lady to worship Her image in the house of a heretic Jew, now would it, madonna?” The sarcasm fairly dripped from the friar’s thin lips.

  “But this is our house,” I mumbled stupidly.

  “No longer,” the friar replied. “As of this morning, the twelfth day of April, it belongs to the Holy Virgin. But you seem not to be sensible of the honor.”

  “To have our house razed to the ground is an honor?”

  “To provide a shelter for our Lady is more honor than any Jew ought to expect in a lifetime. You should be down on your knees thanking the Marchese for allowing you to make such a noble contribution in his cause.”

  “I am honored,” I answered, hardly aware of what I was saying. “I am truly honored. We are all truly honored. And where would you suggest we take our honored selves and our honored business, having given over our house and shop in the Marchese’s cause?”

  “God will provide,” he answered airily. Then, in a more urgent tone: “You must be out by Tuesday next. Five days from now.”

  “The work of demolition begins on Wednesday,” the architect chimed in. “The date is registered with the guild.”

  “Over my dead body,” I answered, without thinking. Then added quickly, to cover up my lapse: “My father is ill, gentlemen. Very ill. He cannot be moved.”

  “Sick or well, he will rejoice when he knows the purpose of his removal. He may even rise and walk from his sickbed a new man. I have seen it happen. God works in mysterious ways. And do not forget, madonna,” he reminded me gaily, “that on the sixth day the bargello’s men will be at the door with their pikes. You have five days.” Five days to pack up a business, a household, and a dying man.

  I kept the visit and its purpose to myself all day, but at sundown, with no solution in sight, I decided that I must consult my father. So, while the others were sitting in the sala, I excused myself and climbed the stairs to his room.

  As always he smiled at the sight of me. “Take my hand, Grazia,” he invited me. “Tell me what happened today in the world.”

  I would never get a better opening for the terrible story I had brought to him, so I took a deep breath and began to report the events of the morning as I have told them to you. And he followed my words most attentively, like a child listening to a cautionary tale, never interrupting, not even to ask a question.

  When I was done, he nodded sadly and said, “I see.” That is all. “I see.”

  “What shall we do, Papa?” I asked at last. “Please help me. Tell me what to do.”

  Not a word from him. Only a tear at the corner of his eye. Then another. Then a blink. Then a flood onto the pillow. He was weeping silently. Where was my sense? How could I have put this burden on him?

  “I am so sorry, Papa.” I took him up in my arms. He felt lighter than a feather tick. My husky father, his once-ruddy skin now as transparent as parchment and his once-sparkling eyes cloudy behind the tears.

  “Only one thing, Grazia . . .” He spoke haltingly.

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Let me die here. In my own bed. In my own house.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Don’t let me die on the street, daughter. Or in the house of strangers. That is all I ask. Let me die in my own bed.”

  “Yes, Papa.”r />
  “Will you swear it?”

  “Yes, Papa.” What was I swearing to? How could I swear it?

  “Listen to me, Grazia . . .”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “You must not cry for me.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “I am not afraid to die. Or even sorry. My life — what I have made of it — is not such a field of roses. My best days are behind me . . . the days with your mother when you and Jehiel were young and we used to ride together. Do you remember?”

  “Oh, Papa . . .” How could he think I would forget?

  “No tears. Do you hear me, daughter?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Life has been good to me. I have had many good times. I was given two fine sons. And you, my treasure, to stay beside me at the end. No man could ask for more than that.” He stopped, opened his eyes wide, and then, looking deep into my eyes, spoke in a much stronger voice. “But I do ask for more. I ask for this one thing. Only this. To die in my own bed. Not in the street, Grazia. Do not let me die in the street.”

  I wrote to Madonna Isabella that night requesting an urgent audience, and charged our porter to be at the gate of the Reggio when it opened in the morning to present my petition.

  What I wrote would have choked your throat with bile. So servile was I. Such a sycophant. I named her saint, angel, Diana, Minerva, every flattering epithet in both the Christian and pagan lexicons. A man’s life was at stake, I wrote her. And only she — the illustrissima, the Celsitude, the beneficent — could save him. That much at least was true. She was my last chance.

  I waited all day Thursday for a reply. Early Friday morning I received my answer, a letter from Madama by the hand of her private secretary. The message, in sum: She did not hold court on Saturdays. However, on account of her love for our family, she would audience me privately in her suite the following morning. Be early and wait patiently, she advised. Your petition will be heard.

  I entered the illustrissima’s presence much more of a soggy rag than I would have liked. She on the other hand appeared radiantly cheerful and almost happy to see me. Perhaps it was simply the prospect of an admirer for her new camerini, the suite of “little rooms” she had moved into in the Domus Nova since my last visit.