by Lisa Rochon
“Mother and daughter,” said Leonardo, bending over the drawing with Beatrice. He had wanted to use intense lines and dark shading to unite the family as one.
“They look very close. Pressed together, woven together like rope or braids of hair.”
“Do you like it?”
“The way their skirts are draped. I like that. Mostly I like the way it makes me believe again,” said Beatrice.
“Believe?”
“The way Mary is sitting easily on her mother’s lap, and looking with love at her son, Jesus. It makes me believe in family again.”
“A picture is dead, even doubly dead, if it does not affect the viewer,” said Leonardo, enjoying the impact his drawing seemed to be having on the girl. He rarely discussed his work with Salaì, and it was dangerous to invite opinions from clients, whether dukes, priors or the fantastically wealthy. They were never satisfied.
“Am I the viewer?” she whispered, still staring at the page.
“Always. Except when you’re creating. Then you’re the artist.”
“Can you tell me what else you’re working on? Have you solved the problem of how to fly like a bird? Or how to stop the guards from harassing us at the city gates?” She looked directly at him, and he remembered with sorrow the way his cape had been ripped by the guards.
He set his chalk down and looked over at the girl. “I’ve been commissioned to paint a portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo. The wife of a silk merchant. I don’t know much about her. Not yet.”
“Madonna Lisa. I know her!” shouted Beatrice, looking puffed up with her insider knowledge, as if she had been catapulted into the privileged circles of Florence. “Sometimes I go to her mansion with the healer Agnella. By the way, she is a wise woman, not a witch. If she were a man, she would be a doctor.” She strode to the window and looked out, leaning dangerously beyond the windowsill, enjoying the view of the monastery courtyard, perhaps pretending it was her own. “Lisa’s friends have made her vain,” she said, coming back into the room. “They like to paint their teeth and pluck away their eyebrows. But Madonna Lisa is not like them. Not entirely. Her feet are simple, made for foraging in the forests and dancing.”
Leonardo watched the girl clomp around the room in her fine leather boots. Delicately sculpted heels, laced up, likely made from the softest goatskin. Purchased or stolen?
“She requires healing?” He wondered what he was getting into. The women he had painted in the past were all complicated creatures.
“If your little daughter was dying, would you not need some healing, too?”
“I suppose so.”
“You suppose so?” Beatrice shot him a look of disbelief. “You are a great artist. Surely you feel emotions? Can you not understand other people’s pain?”
The accusation in her voice surprised him. She was part girl, part old soul. There was much that burned within Beatrice, a lot of pain with an undercurrent of joy.
“I create paintings to reflect harmonies. Harmonies of color, harmonies of form. Emotion needs to be calculated, as well as a system of logic. When you combine the two,” he said, looking at her, “your portrait will find success.”
“Emotion and logic, all perfectly harmonious?” The girl shook her head, doubt in her voice. “From what I have seen, Lisa is not ready to sit for a portrait. Her pain is too deep. I hope you can understand that,” she said, bowing curtly to the great man. She turned her fine heels toward the door and muttered to herself: “Logically speaking.”
Chapter 19
The river, slow and brown, the smell of stillness and silt; minnows jumping, kicking up silver reflections like coins skipping across the water. The sound of laughter—men jokingly pulling a velvet robe from a friend. Michelangelo looked up and spied the ancient Roman bathhouse, strong and noble as an old warhorse, its fluted columns chipped and calloused, the massive stone lintel spread across its front like a heavy brow on a weary face.
This passage, from nature to ancient architecture, under the cleansing sun, out on the banks of the river, made the destination seem less of a sin. His knees were sore from kneeling in feverish prayer for two hours on the stone floor at Santo Spirito. The river would make everything right again.
Scanning the crowd one last time to ensure he was among strangers, Michelangelo stripped off his boots and linen breeches and sat down on one of the wide stone steps leading up to the old Roman temple.
A group of men lounging near the shore were throwing dice. Others were vigorously dousing themselves in the water, splashing it into their mouths and ears, while perched carefully on rocks—most of them could not swim. A couple of teenagers stood naked in the river, fishing for small fry to bring home and make their mothers happy. Watching men at the public bath excited him far beyond observing a model in his studio. He excused his fascination as research on the movement of the body, allowed his eyes to rest on a stocky youth—possibly a woodworker—who was stretching both arms overhead without a care for sin. He turned, eyeing a man nearby with a noble profile. That one, he thought, painfully aware of his erection.
The nobleman had gray stubble in his beard, though he moved athletically, like a young man. “My workshops are in San Martino,” he said by way of introduction.
“Not far from here,” said Michelangelo. He was lousy at small chat.
“We make expensive cloth woven from English wool. Luxury—it’s the only way to make money these days.” He gestured toward the men on the bank of the Arno. “Still, there is nothing more alluring than the naked body.” He took Michelangelo’s hands in his own. “Old hands on a young body. I believe you are a serious sculptor?”
Michelangelo nodded. Leonardo had made “sculpting” a dirty word. But who was he to judge? His Last Supper was flaking off its wall in Milan, and his equestrian monument had been destroyed.
The man reached under Michelangelo’s tunic, brushing his fingers over his stomach and thighs. “A full moon last night—did you see it?”
Michelangelo was ashamed by the man’s hand, the weight of the sin, wanting it all the more. “I saw the stars and”—he recalled hearing the full-moon parades in the streets from his studio—“I heard the moon.”
Smiling at the sculptor’s distracted observation, the man brushed higher on the inside of Michelangelo’s thigh, lightly touching his erection. “May I?” he said, moving closer.
There was a wave of laughter from the river. Michelangelo saw hands caressing the full, rounded buttocks of a man. The offer was difficult to resist, even though the jaws of Satan might devour him. A man of nobility and physical beauty had chosen him. That surprised him. He knew he was not handsome. His nose was misshapen, not patrician. He was a man who gave himself entirely to God, who wanted nothing but a life without sin—
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
There was no denying what he was feeling: a wave of dirty hunger.
“We could go inside,” the man said, touching a hand to his belt’s silver clasp, expensively carved with leaves in the antique style.
Michelangelo looked anxiously from the man’s belt to the crowd. He might be seen giving himself over to the darkest of evils, exposed for a second time in a public square. Homosexuality was no secret in Florence, the city of sodomizers, where older men often took young males from behind. Still, the coin that honored Savonarola, the Dominican friar, flashed through his mind, its vengeful dagger descending from the heavens, warning against the sin of indulging the body.
He had prayed until his knees were blue with bruises, but his desire for sodomy always surfaced; he observed it with disgust from a distance, a snake gorging on the shit deep inside a latrine. And he felt it in his gut, the kind of desire that devoured your senses and made you want to grunt and sweat like an animal. At times it haunted him up close and all around him. Leonardo surely knew about this desire. That old man had been caught out by the Office of the Night and publicly humiliated, yet after all those years toiling in Milan, here he was, returned to Flore
nce more of a dandy than before, strutting around with his rose-pink tunic and matching cap. Michelangelo admired him—for his brain and his abilities, of course, but especially for having courage. Which, apparently, Michelangelo did not possess. He lacked the balls to follow his animal desires. God wouldn’t allow it.
“I’m not sure,” he said, though he wanted badly to go with the nobleman. Somewhere dark, away from prying eyes.
“Michelangelo! Out of your studio and lounging at the public baths?”
It was Lorenzo della Volpaia, the clockmaker. Everything about the man was annoyingly precise and loathsome. Michelangelo wanted to punch him in the face.
“Join me in the bathhouse.” The nobleman touched a hand lightly on his back.
Michelangelo watched his seducer tighten his cloak and take his leave.
“The latest commission is consuming all of my time,” Lorenzo said, oblivious. “A new one, along the lines of the astrological clock I made for Lorenzo de’ Medici, may he rest in peace. This one is without all the planets. The Pazzi asked for a simple timepiece—”
“You’ve told me—a few times.”
“A complex mechanism, extremely complex.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Michelangelo, and rose to walk up the steps. The sound of water splashing, of buckets being filled from pools and emptied slowly over men, grew louder as he approached the bathhouse. He had dedicated his life to his art, to God, and he wanted at that moment to be washed clean, even as he entered a place of sin.
It was a relief to disappear into the near-darkness of the ancient inner rooms, to settle in a quiet niche. Where had the man with the silver belt gone?
Attendants glistened with sweat and moved silently. One, naked save for a white loincloth, threw a bucket of water on a pile of burning wood, sending a cloud of steam to the ceiling. Another, carrying a clutch of thin olive branches and a large ceramic pot, gestured for him to turn onto his stomach. The attendant struck him gently, to invigorate the skin.
Michelangelo raised a finger, and the man hit harder, thrashing his body. He turned his face toward the simmering fire and saw, across the domed room, his would-be seducer sitting with his back against the wall. Hot steam rose, causing the man to disappear.
Michelangelo turned his face to the wall. “Forza!” he ordered, and succumbed to the beating. Swallowing the pain, he felt his commitment to God renewed. “Forza!” he ordered again.
He wondered at what he had become. In childhood, he had nicknamed his young friends the Stick, the Basket, the Friar, the Woodpecker. The names stuck because they were honest. He was a serious boy, known for his loyalty, for his Florentine virtù.
“You’ll join us at Maiano,” his comrades would say, lounging under the shade of cypress trees whenever he visited his family’s farm in Settignano. Michelangelo would always deny it. He hadn’t feared the harsh, dirty work of cutting and dressing stone in the quarries of Maiano. But his dream was to liberate what was trapped inside the stone.
He grimaced as the olive branches struck him—and cursed himself for being a sinner. He had almost given in to his hungry ghosts. That’s what Agnella had called them that day at his studio. He had nearly succumbed to the very desires that Savonarola and all the priests shouted must be repressed. His back throbbed. Sin and shame and injury. Agnella said he needed a wife.
He longed for the innocence of an earlier time, dry-laying stones for Agnella’s wall with his father. Her stonemason husband had died of white dust poisoning in his lungs, and they had wanted to lend a hand while she walked and keened in the gorsy valley below the village. Or when he sculpted a snowman in the Medici gardens during that bizarre storm when the entire city lay blanketed and hushed by the snow. Then he had been merely a wild-haired youth who enjoyed playing and running races with boys his age, who loved wrestling them to the ground until somebody would cry out to Archangel Gabriel or San Giovanni to release them from a strangling grip. Whether he was more attracted to boys or girls never bothered him then. Though he had to admit, his feelings were aroused most often by the boys. And he would call on God to help soften his cazzo when it would grow hard during early-morning swims in the creek with his friends.
The olive branches came down hard on his back once more. He winced and saw the face of his almost-seducer push forward again in his mind. Why was it that a man could arouse him more than the fearless olive oil girl, Beatrice, who stole figs and understood his obsessions?
He resented Agnella for exposing his sexuality, forcing him to think about marriage. All he wanted was to be left alone to work in his studio.
What good were any of these thoughts; they only distracted him. He must pick up his chisel and begin the sculpture—the savage taking away. Energized by this thought, Michelangelo gestured to the bath attendant to leave him. He dressed quickly and left the bathhouse. “Stop thinking about David as a slab of marble,” he muttered to himself, jostled among throngs of churchgoers released into the freedom of the streets. He must instead think of the colossus as a monument to the will of a man. Under his touch, the bare left leg would angle up from the pedestal, brazen and unprotected, and reach out toward an imaginary Goliath. The right would take the weight of the body, flexing every muscle, exposing veins in anticipation of the kill. Michelangelo would create a youth in motion, turning to face the enemy. God could see all. God would bless the work and forgive him for his sins.
Lost in his own thoughts, he was suddenly knocked off his feet by a horse being trotted in the opposite direction. His temper flared as he recovered himself enough to grab the reins of the great white horse, forcing it to a standstill. “You ride with your balls, not your brain,” he shouted, pulling down hard on the bit in the horse’s mouth.
“Step lightly or I’ll have you arrested,” came the voice from the saddle. The man peered down, and they recognized each other at once. “Michelangelo, you would do well to keep your hands for sculpting rather than for fighting in the streets.”
The argument had drawn a crowd, ever hungry for blood and fury. Michelangelo released the horse, his ego bruised, his backside freshly throbbing. “Forgive me, I am not myself, Chancellor. Please, let me clear the path.” He gestured for Niccolò Machiavelli to go ahead.
He knew as well as any Florentine that Machiavelli would rather suffer the boils of syphilis than have his days restricted to a desk in the confines of the Palazzo Vecchio, where city officials toiled. Urgent acts of diplomacy were what he preferred. It was often told that the chancellor had ridden post for days, sometimes covering hundreds of miles, collecting a fresh horse at every inn and roping himself down hard in the saddle to keep from falling over from exhaustion. He once rode seven hundred miles, chasing down the French court for the Republic of Florence, mud caked on his leather boots, climbing the grand sweep of marble stairs to meet Louis XII. The rumor was that his job advising Governor Soderini had become focused on ensuring that the talents of Leonardo da Vinci made Florence the envy of the other Italian states.
“Your impudence will be overlooked this time,” said Machiavelli, casting his eyes down at Michelangelo. “I must not delay. You may be interested to know that I’m rushing to negotiate a new commission with the city’s genius, Leonardo da Vinci.” He lifted his chin, enjoying the admiring gaze of the crowd. “Someday, if you keep your stumpy hands off my horse, you might see some fresh work come your way.”
One cheek, the other cheek, thought Michelangelo grimly. Humiliated once again in the streets. He endured the barbs as a man might bear the crack of a whip while strapped to a mast, without crying out for help.
Machiavelli stepped his horse as if to take his leave, but a man from the crowd, raising a muscular arm, shouted: “You pledged to create an army of real Florentine men instead of hiring mercenaries.”
“Nothing has come of it,” yelled another, whose teeth were crisscrossed over each other. “Florence remains undefended.”
“These things take time, but I am working on a fresh plan o
f defense for our city,” said Machiavelli.
“Birthing a baby takes time, but something always comes out,” called an unseen woman, provoking raucous laughter from the crowd.
“Some of us work. Others push around paper and live a quiet life of inconsequence,” said another man grimly.
“Today I enlist the services of the great Leonardo da Vinci,” Machiavelli said loudly, interrupting the jeers, beaming from his saddle.
“At long last. Da Vinci has been in Florence for some time! Will he lead the army?” A wave of sniggering rose from the crowd.
“He is to paint the Battle of Anghiari for the Great Council Hall.”
“For what purpose?” somebody asked.
“We must celebrate our triumphs if we are to believe in the greatness of this city. We laid waste to the Milanese in that battle. Four thousand Florentines fighting together with four thousand papal troops. There were twice as many soldiers from Milan, but we beat them badly,” the chancellor instructed the crowd, high color cresting his cheekbones.
“Though Leonardo rarely finishes anything he starts,” shouted someone Michelangelo could not see—someone obviously well educated and well traveled. “Everybody knows that. His Last Supper was badly frescoed. Master of the Arts? It’s already showing stains.”
“Leonardo is far too loved,” a young woman yelled. “Stop fawning over his talent. Let him fear you instead.”
Machiavelli turned his attention on Michelangelo. He appeared to have endured enough from the crowd. “Show your worth and make something fine of the David. We are all waiting to see it.” With that, he gathered the reins in one hand and whipped his horse with the other.
Michelangelo put his head down and pushed his way through the crowd like a young, ornery bull.
Chapter 20
Agnella rushed along Via Ghibellina on foot, her long hair twisted back with leather and gold silk ribbons. Her bracelets jangled, her sleeveless giornea fluttered in the wind. She pushed past guildsmen and old market women with sour, yellowed faces. “Per cortesia,” she called. “Posso passare?” Everybody from the highest to the lowest rank had a right to move about the city, and she was thankful for its straight, broad streets; she could not be late for the baptism. She turned right on Via del Proconsolo, then went left, skirting a small flock of sheep to be sold at the wool market, then took another right before emerging into the grand Piazza del Duomo. The cathedral’s dome always dazzled her. What an act of architectural daring in a city of low-slung buildings made of golden-brown sandstone. Most of Florence looked tethered to the land and shaped by the sand of the Arno. The dome? More like God had floated the round mountain of Fiesole on top of the cathedral.
