Tuscan Daughter

by Lisa Rochon

  She could see a crowd gathered outside the baptistery and a monumental table being set by attendants. Agnella slowed her pace, admiring the massive orange dome and, beside it, the tall marble campanile, designed by the artist Giotto, which, she figured, soared as tall as sixty women standing on each other’s shoulders. Across the piazza was the octagonal baptistery, smaller than Brunelleschi’s cupolone—more of a circus tent in white marble—but still magnificent. Between all of these architectural chess pieces spread a public square that gathered the laborers, merchants and craftsmen responsible for the riches of Florence. There was no doubt the Florentines were all about work, not play; they were known for spending little, and always driving a hard bargain, except when it came to baptisms or weddings. As she squeezed her way between two carts pulled by oxen, she thought of the joke that was often told of Florentines: how a couple shared an egg and looked to see how much they could put away for another day.

  Today was not that day. Layers of starched linen tablecloths washed in the Arno had been set with dozens of pewter plates, candlesticks, carafes of wine and water. Many babies would be baptized today, and she absorbed the people’s happiness, the way they looked lit up and delighted to be dallying. She had personally delivered some of the babies into the world, pink-skinned, swaddled and bawling for their mother’s milk. No expense would be spared for the celebratory feast. Agnella expected there might be sixteen courses following the afternoon baptism and the dousing of the newborns into a fount of sacred water by a huddle of priests. The squatters outside the city gates still ate off bread trenchers, but at this party, there were square crystal glasses with gold trim at each place setting, and she could see two roasted pheasants and a peacock on separate platters, their breasts painted with gold leaf, their glorious feathers reattached to their tails. She loved it all: the banquet spilling into the public commons, the violet blossoms floating in silver bowls of water for handwashing, the autumn grapes, pears and apples hanging from a white canvas ceiling, the whole banquet surrounded by large earthenware pots planted with lemon trees.

  Celebrating the birth of a child was just what Agnella needed. She needed to believe in the gifts of the land and its living creatures, in the simple pleasures of cultivating white autumn roses, of eating cena late because the sunset was too spectacular to leave behind, of witnessing a babe survive childbirth and then, against all odds, thrive. That happiness did not come often enough. But Agnella also had a gift, like the Delphic Sibyl, to see into the future. Standing there at the bronze doors, waiting to enter the soaring golden interior of the baptistery, she felt herself in a liminal state, like a fish with a hook in its mouth before being pulled from the water. Something needed her attention. She slipped from the crowd, moving reluctantly away from the fragrance of the baptismal banquet toward Via della Stufa. Her pace quickened and she started to run.

  * * *

  The Giocondo courtyard, like so many Tuscan gardens, was divided into outdoor rooms distinctive for their scents and textures. Agnella found the women not in the orange room, nor the lemon room, but standing in a small field of Roman chamomile that ran below pear trees. Madonna Lisa was cradling Piera in her arms, the cool October air allowing the child to take her final breaths more easily. Beatrice was there, stroking the girl’s head and singing a Tuscan folk tune very slowly.

  Piera was wrapped in a fine wool blanket, her head swaddled in a linen cap. Agnella could see from the blue tinge of Piera’s lips that, deprived of oxygen, she was quickly slipping away.

  Huddled there, the women looked as if they were hiding from the world, from the noise of the commerce in the street, the exchange of goods, the scrutiny of legal documents, the demands of the artisan workshops. Stepping nearer, Agnella saw that they were both weeping. Beatrice reached silently for her hand, and the three of them gathered around the child. Nothing else mattered; only the certainty that they were there together, as sure as the cypress tree that stands tall no matter how harsh the wind that blows.

  This was how Piera died, before the priest and the doctor insisted that she be ushered inside, the covenant of love broken by official duties.

  Francesco was waiting for them, grim-faced, without words. He divided the women, separating his wife from her attendants, and Agnella and Beatrice retreated to the child’s sick room. Beatrice looked at the stone floors and sobbed openly.

  “There is little comfort to be found at times like these,” said Agnella. She cast her eyes around the room, trying to find a measure of hope among its wealthy refinements and wall hangings.

  “I would curse any street musician who dared to play now,” said Beatrice bitterly. “Or any jester who would dance. There is sickness and evil in this land.”

  Agnella placed an arm around her young friend, feeling sad for the loss of Piera and the disappearance of Beatrice’s mother. “There is more than that,” she said, thinking of the joy of the baptism and the raucous gathering of people in the streets.

  Beatrice drew a linen patch from her sleeve and wiped her eyes. Taking a breath, she lifted the edge of a wool tapestry away from the stone wall. Agnella stepped forward and saw a drawing of Piera being pushed in a cart by her siblings, the folds of her tunic spilling out from the edges, a bonnet nearly sliding from her head. Agnella followed Beatrice around the room, watching intently as she lifted another tapestry to reveal a conté portrait of the same little girl twisting to face out, smiling gently while playing with her hair ribbons. There was another of all six of the children lying happily intertwined on their mother’s bed, as they had done when Madonna Lisa told Beatrice to fetch them. The last sketch on the wall was darkly shaded and showed Piera lying peacefully in her mother’s arms.

  “You have captured so much tenderness and innocence.” Agnella bowed her head and reached for Beatrice’s hand. “Your drawing reminds me, somehow, of Michelangelo’s.”

  They were quiet for a while, and Agnella felt the spirit of the child moving through the room.

  “This little girl lived and she was loved,” said Beatrice. “That is what I wanted to draw. In the end, it’s all any of us might wish for.”

  Part II

  1502–1504

  There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

  —GENESIS 6:4

  Chapter 21

  The rain punished the city for days, causing raw sewage to overflow in the streets, robbing citizens of light, the sun nailed into the gray skies like a single spike. The roof of the Hall of the Pope—the Sala del Papa—where Leonardo was to work on drawing the cartoon for his fresco, started to leak badly and, while repairs to the slate tiles were undertaken, he was asked to make an inventory of the books in the convent of Santa Maria Novella. The governor had already started paying him and wanted him to toil for his keep; he estimated that an idle genius would risk fleeing to another, more industrious city.

  On the other side of town, Beatrice pushed her cart from one covered storefront to the next, finally arriving behind the Duomo at the far entrance, the one used by builders and masons hired to keep the monument in good repair. She was drenched. Stomping the rain from her boots, she opened the narrow wooden door and walked down a hallway. The air was perfumed with frankincense. She moved slowly, breathing hard, the color drained from her face. She was hungry again. But she had not forged through the rain squall to find food. She wanted to escape herself, her existence living in despair in dark woods, with nobody, not even a rat, for a playmate.

  At the door of Michelangelo’s studio, she heard the harsh sound of a mallet being pounded against a chisel. Granacci was waiting down the hall, leaning against the wall. “He won’t open the door.”

  She felt awkward standing there with this friend of Michelangelo’s.

  “No olive oil today?” he said, smiling, looking at her empty hands.

  She wanted to flee. Sh
e stood still in her wet clothes and looked at the ground. The dull, hollow tapping from inside the studio slowed the racing of her heart. Looking over at Granacci, she could tell that his thoughts were turning inward.

  “I used to think he hated me,” said Granacci. “Michelangelo was tough. I was soft, coddled at home by a bunch of sisters. He wouldn’t talk to me. Do you swim?” he asked suddenly, looking over at Beatrice.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I won’t drown.”

  “It was like I was swimming across a wide, deep river to get to him, to make him see me and trust me. Something to swim for.”

  “He likes silence,” said Beatrice. “He told me it’s ennobling.”

  “I thought it was rejection, like he was cutting me with a blade of machismo.”

  “You apprenticed together?”

  “At the Medici Sculpture Garden. He wasn’t like the rest of us,” said Granacci. “Michelangelo’s reputation preceded him before he even arrived for the first day of class. Word spread that imperial blood coursed through his veins—”

  “He likes to boast,” said Beatrice. “He told me he comes from Canossa nobility.”

  This was when Michelangelo had caught her graffitiing the base of the stone fountain in the laneway not far from his studio.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he accused, pulling her sharply to her feet.

  “It’s public property and I need to practice my drawing,” she said, wrenching her arm away from him.

  “We don’t need you to impose your, your—”

  “What, my art?”

  “On the city, forcing people to look at it.”

  “What do you mean? You’re making a massive naked monster of a man to hang off the Duomo.” She remembered feeling both angry and amused by the turn of their conversation. Michelangelo did that to her, made her feel like the center of his world and a loathsome stranger, too.

  “Remember who you’re speaking to, olive oil girl. I am Michelangelo, descendant of Canossa high blood.”

  And then they both started laughing, really hard.

  “We finished the portrait I was working on together, a woman draped in a Roman-style toga,” she said now, looking over at Granacci. “He’s been showing me how to draw somebody twisting slightly from the waist—contrapposto is what he calls it.”

  “I hope he gave you some paper.”

  “He did, but honestly, I prefer drawing on walls.”

  They stopped to listen to the pounding of the mallet and the beating of the rain against the corridor windows.

  “When I was young, I thought of Michelangelo as the prince of sculptors and painters,” said Granacci, smiling wide, relishing the memory. “We left him out of our calcio games rather than risk breaking his fingers.”

  “He must have hated that.”

  “A couple of the boys in the studio—lesser talents—liked to provoke him, see if they could get him to react,” said Granacci, leaning toward Beatrice, confiding in her. “When our teacher, Bertoldo, stepped away, they taunted him a little more. ‘Prince! Lo scalpello! La mazza! Catch!’ and somebody would hurl a mallet across the room. Michelangelo was oblivious, always obsessed by his work. One time, the taunting went to a new level. ‘Lo scapezzatore!’ somebody growled. It was a hefty pitching tool with a broad, blunt edge that could split stone. The tool sailed through the air, just missing Michelangelo’s ear. He didn’t even look up.”

  “He goes into a different world when he’s sculpting. He needs to, so he can trust his intuition, but it means shutting everything and everybody out.” She walked to the door and knocked with her little fist. “Selfish man, bring yourself here! Idiota!” From inside, she heard the unmistakable sound of a sculptor hard at work. She kicked the door with her boot this time. “Michelangelo, I brought you some sausage,” she shouted, lying.

  The hammering stopped. There was a long pause, then the shuffling of feet. The click of a latch and the door swung open. Michelangelo appeared, his face haggard and drawn. Beatrice could see a cloud of dust hanging inside the studio. She could taste the dryness, feel the grit on her tongue.

  “Got any tallow?” asked Michelangelo. “The light is no good.”

  “Sculpting by feel?” she asked. “That’s got to be stupid.”

  “Touch and feel,” said Michelangelo. He reached out for Beatrice’s arm, as if seeing her for the first time. “Amici.”

  “I know, don’t tell me. When you’re sculpting, you forget all about your friends.”

  “Though your friends don’t forget about you, Michel.”

  Beatrice rolled her eyes at Granacci. There was no need to be a bootlicker.

  The studio at the back of the Duomo was enormous and grandly arched, though it looked like a storm had blown through. Heaps of dusty blankets and linens lay thrown into a corner. A half-eaten chicken had fallen to the ground. One of her jugs of olive oil was leaking onto a pile of knives and chisels. It occurred to Beatrice that the perfume of frankincense had been overwhelmingly replaced by the smell of rank, rotting meat.

  “I can’t take it,” said Granacci, moving to a window and pulling the sash open. Outside, the rain was bucketing down on the terracotta rooftops.

  Beatrice gazed at the colossal sculpture, her mind flicking back to the rough bozzetto she had seen over a year ago at Michelangelo’s small studio. David had certainly grown up.

  “It doesn’t look like David from the Bible. More like a giant boy pretending to be a man.”

  “He is whatever a person needs him to be. A duke. A soldier. An artist. A shepherd. A warrior ready for war.”

  “Give me some coins and I’ll go buy some food,” she said quietly. Her leather boots were soaked through and she was chilled, but seeing Michelangelo’s face helped to revive her spirit. That much she was able to admit.

  “I brought some food for us,” said Granacci.

  Michelangelo shrugged, looking back at the David. Beatrice watched him rub his hands and bend his fingers back. She was sure his hands were sore and cramped from hours of using the chisel and something he called a riffler-rasp. With its shaped end, the tool could access tight, complex areas. He shook his arms and a cloud of dust went up into the gloaming.

  “So, I convinced a stonecutter from Settignano to pose,” he said. Beatrice noticed he was telling the story to her and the timber rafters of the workshop. “His body was good, but a little thin. For the clay model, I expanded his waist and chest to be more athletic, more heroic.”

  Beatrice wondered if she knew the stonecutter. There were plenty of them in Settignano. But she didn’t want to interrupt Michelangelo. He rarely spoke more than a few words at a time.

  “And then you started on the marble?” Granacci stood close, eyes wide with the telling of the story.

  “I cut away from the parts that projected the most to show the head, the left hand, then the left knee, before cutting deeper into the marble. From there, it’s easier to know where I am and where I have to go with my flat-blade chisel.”

  Granacci was pulling food from his leather bag. “Pane? Salame?”

  “Not hungry.”

  Beatrice was. Very. But she held her tongue. No amount of pane and salame was worth trading away this conversation, this golden moment in art.

  Michelangelo strode over to the colossus and looked up at it. “You can see that the head and the upper body are starting to come out of the rock. The consuls of the Wool Guild are paying me to make a shepherd—”

  “To guard the sheep,” said Granacci.

  “Not a lion, or an ancient Roman,” continued Michelangelo.

  Beatrice stepped to Michelangelo’s side. “The marble has streaks of blue and gray running through it. It reminds me of the river coming down the hill in Settignano, the way it changes color when the water runs over the pebbles. Do you know the place? In the clearing without the shadows of the willows.”

  “I do not. But you can take me there.”

  “They say this marble slab lay untouched fo
r twenty-five years,” said Granacci, arms folded across his chest, keen to be part of the conversation.

  “I want nakedness. I want a boy warrior,” said Michelangelo, ignoring him.

  “You could give the people, the popolo minuto, a hero that belongs to them,” said Beatrice. “The people standing outside the city gates. They have nothing. They have no one.”

  Nodding his head slightly, Michelangelo went back to work, and Beatrice slumped against a wall, peeled off some of her wet outer clothes and watched him knock off unwanted chunks from the marble. A miscalculation of force would mean scarring the slab of stone badly. She watched as he set his point chisel and struck it with a heavy wooden mallet; then he reset the chisel and struck again, connecting the wedge of the tool to the stone. With every second came another precise blow. The stone was neatly pitched off, like unwanted fat.

  Granacci slid down the wall beside Beatrice. They watched and did not breathe a word as Michelangelo sent the energy down into the stone, then cocked his wrist to twist the chisel. Hammer, twist. Hammer, twist. Hammer, twist. Michelangelo’s eyes flashed with the intensity of the work. His shoulders and arms thrust back and forth with the exacting rhythm of a scalpellino, rising up again to make another strike.