by Lisa Rochon
He liked her well enough, Beatrice, had enjoyed kissing her that time in the river. They had resumed their friendship and it seemed better, as if it had aged and matured in an oak barrel. “You, the maker of the giant-man,” she teased him these days, when she switched his old olive oil carafes for new ones and stayed for long visits afterward. One afternoon, they sat outside the workshop on blocks of marble and watched the sun drop into the western sky. Her skin shone in the golden light. To sit and drink as if neither of them had a care in the world was a rare gift. He passed her the jug of wine, offered her some salame and pane and looked over at her. She seemed more at peace now, though he knew the wound of her mother’s desertion would not easily heal. There was something about Beatrice that made him relax, less likely to growl and fight.
“I’ve never seen you smile wide before,” she said, bending down to draw on the Duomo’s foundation wall with red chalk.
“You think I’m all hard work? Your insult wounds me deeply.” He made a ghoulish face with bulging eyes like a medieval gargoyle. She shook her head at him, snorted her laughter.
He knew he had grown too serious. He wanted to be open-hearted like Granacci, or irreverent like Rustici. He wanted to mesmerize like Leonardo. But he could not find the words. The weeks they had spent together in Settignano at Agnella’s home, he had found himself glad to be with her, singing old folk songs badly, terribly off-key. He sat silent, stared at the ground.
“There’s a special council,” she said, filling the silence, no doubt tired of his brooding. “Leonardo will be one of the invited members. Your enemy, I guess. He and a bunch of old men. To decide where to locate your David.”
He looked at her, wounded. Was she speaking the truth?
“It was meant for one of the buttresses of the Duomo,” he said. “But now it’s too big, too heavy.”
“Where do you want it?”
“Leonardo will want it hidden away, no doubt of that.”
“But what do you want?” she shot back.
He appreciated her directness. Forcing him to speak. She helped herself to more wine. He mixed it with water.
“I can’t say. It’s for others to decide.”
“I say it should go to the best part of the city. The main piazza.”
“It will have to be—” He looked all ripped apart.
“Perfect? Good to know. Because it is.”
He looked at her and considered, felt their bond, decided he could trust her. “There is talk that its size, the size of everything, is wrong, that it points to a sickness,” he said, standing up, hands to his head, pacing in front of her. “The Greeks and Romans sculpted nudes to celebrate the human form, its strength and beauty—I studied them when I was an apprentice at the Medici Garden.”
“Lucky you. I study how to stay alive.”
“Now there is talk that the Office of the Night is tracking me, watching my friends. The David, they say, is too much, too naked, too male.”
“For women or men?”
“Anyway, that’s why I went to Settignano, to stay away.”
“That’s why you went to Agnella’s? I thought it was because I—”
“No. Yes. Of course. I wanted to be there with you. But the officers have been hunting.”
“Hunting for what?”
“Evidence of, you know, men, being together.”
For a long time, Beatrice did not speak. Then, “Fuck them,” she said, standing, arms thrown into the air.
He stopped pacing and looked at her, this rebel girl.
“Fuck them,” she said again. “Let them come and arrest you for your love of men, go ahead. You think they’re going to hurt the genius who created the David? Wait until they see it. David will be the hero Florence has been waiting for. The rich need David, the poor need him; Madonna Lisa Gherardini could certainly learn from him, as could my crazy mother, wherever she is. Me? I need him, too. We all do. This naked boy of humble birth. He belongs to all of us.”
He looked away from her, the hot prickle of tears threatening.
“Michelangelo, you are sculpting emotion in three glorious dimensions. Pure emotion, every inch of it.”
Michelangelo shrugged and smiled at her torrent of words. Beatrice was a strange bird, but she had a way of expressing the truth that hit him squarely.
“You think so?”
“Don’t live like this, never trusting,” she said. “Keep on being. Keep doing.” She pushed him on the chest to emphasize her point and looked directly at him, forcing his gaze to rest quietly on her own.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her into an embrace, and was surprised by how magnificent it felt. Their bodies pressed and relaxed into each other. He smelled her hair, perfumed with lavender. “Beatrice, my olive oil girl,” he whispered into her ear. He thought about all the sweetbriar pricking the hills of Settignano, its wild red roses bursting from stems of tiny, vicious thorns.
Chapter 32
My recommendation is that the David face the Baptistery of San Giovanni,” said Botticelli. “Set him by the left side of the Duomo.” The senior artist coughed, then took a moment to clear his throat before offering: “It would serve as a blessing to all newborns baptized and bathed there in the holy water.”
Ten of the city’s greatest artists had been called together in the new year to decide where to permanently locate the David. They shifted in their oak chairs in the Great Council Hall, moving their feet below the cold marble table toward the warming braziers.
“Maestro, you raise an interesting point,” said a prominent goldsmith. He wrapped his gold-filigreed scarf around his neck to better ward off the bone-chilling January air and leaned forward. “And I would agree with you if what we were considering was a work of perfection. But the stone is imperfect, and the proportions of David’s hands are wrong.”
“Nobody should argue with the earnest attempt at creating an emotional work of art,” said Leonardo, pushing his chair back and standing to better address the gathering. “Michelangelo pulls on our heartstrings. He wants us to feel that his David is not merely going to battle, but going to battle for us.”
Murmured agreement, nodded heads.
“Truly this exemplifies a noble and virtuous man,” interjected Machiavelli. “To serve not only yourself but also the republic is the most honorable course of action.”
“Wise words from the republic’s great sage and second chancellor,” said Leonardo. “We are all honored to be here in service of this great republic.” He pulled his beard thoughtfully and nodded at the governor, seated at the head of the table. “Our task is not to be taken lightly, for, as my esteemed colleagues surely know, the decision we make now, in 1504, as to where to locate the David will have repercussions far into the future.”
Some of the men pounded their fists on the table.
“David was a great biblical hero,” said Leonardo, walking around the table, sweeping his eyes from one man to the next. “The shepherd clothed in modest garments who dared to battle a giant.”
There was more thumping of hands.
“Though his wrappings were made of the roughest flax, his manhood was, indeed, covered, as befit a man who was interested in doing right by others.” Leonardo bowed his head and stroked the length of his long, elegant beard. Speaking to the distinguished cultural leaders of the city pleased him, and he felt the weight of the moment, that finally he had arrived to claim his rightful place as the city’s cultural titan. “David was a gentleman,” he continued, striding slowly around the grand oak table, looking to the floor and back to the gathered council. “He spoke to the people, and to the ambition of the republic.”
“David was of the republic, for the republic,” exclaimed Machiavelli.
“Sir, he was indeed. David was of the republic, for the republic,” said Leonardo, bowing slightly to Machiavelli, mirroring the chancellor and repeating his words to pacify him so that he might continue with his own speech. “Yet it must be acknowledged that he was clothed. And
so, I believe we must all ask ourselves, why should this particular David be rendered immodestly, genitals exposed with flagrance to all citizen Florentines?” He stopped behind the governor and set his hands on his shoulders. “Is this not a most indelicate interpretation of the benevolent and modest David?”
The room went silent. Only songbirds outside the windows of the great hall could be heard.
“With respect, I . . .” The governor rubbed his hands to warm them and muttered a curse to his gout. “I have seen the David. At Michelangelo’s studio with the second chancellor.” He cleared his throat. “A work of remarkable beauty. Actually, I consider it to be more than what we have become accustomed to—” He glanced at Leonardo. “Present company excepted.”
Leonardo returned to his chair and took his time sitting down.
“As to its immodesty, I appreciate the concern of Leonardo da Vinci, honored Master of the Arts. But I do not think it a sacrilege to the republic. If we look to the great works produced by the Greeks and the Romans, the nude was glorified—indeed, celebrated. I do not think we can attribute any shame to wanting that for ourselves and our own fledgling republic.”
“There is much to admire about antiquity,” said Leonardo, offering his words like perfectly ripe fruit, “yet there is also much about its hedonistic ways that some of us find to be repulsive.” He looked at Botticelli, whom he knew to be deeply religious.
“Your recommendation, honored sir?” said Botticelli, urging him on.
“Place the David under cover within the Loggia dei Lanzi of the Piazza della Signoria. Place it within a black niche against the far wall, where they hang the tapestries, with ornamento decente, and in a way that will not spoil the ceremonies of the officials.”
“Hide it away, in other words?” retorted the governor, and his words contained a measure of bluster. “Here is a dish of bitter pie!”
“Not bitter, no,” said Leonardo solemnly. “I am only advising that we act with caution. To erect a naked giant that stands some seventeen feet is to impose a monstrous phallus, testicles and corona of pubic hair on all Florentines.”
“Sir, what do you mean by decent ornament?” asked Machiavelli.
“An undergarment,” said Leonardo. Some of the gathered hooted, and he overheard Machiavelli’s loud whisper to his seatmate, the painter Cosimo Rosselli: “I’m not surprised that a prudish recommendation comes from Leonardo, one of our city’s accused sodomizers. Naturally, it’s in his interest to deflect the appetite for the male body to his young rival.”
Finally, amid repeated calls for order, the crowd quieted down.
“Something elegant,” continued Leonardo, sweat prickling on the back of his neck from the humiliation. “Perhaps a garland in bronze.”
“If I dared to change the position of Christ’s hand in The Last Supper,” challenged Machiavelli, “would that not offend your individual right as an artist?”
“I paint people with their clothes on, and they are beautifully draped.”
Machiavelli shook his head and sat back down.
“Gentlemen, may I suggest we cast our ballots so that we may determine a course of action?” said the governor.
Leonardo rose from his seat, pleased with his performance, for art was as much about the cult of the personality as it was about the work, even if the work remained unfinished. What he admired about Michelangelo had very little to do with the David, with or without decent ornament. He admired his guts. For he was about to expose his very soul to the adoration and wrath of the fickle public.
Chapter 33
He watched as she half walked, half floated across the courtyard. His shoulder ached from hours of painting, and still he stood at the window for a long time, his arm raised in a gesture of farewell. The driver whistled sharply to the team of horses and the carriage drove off, and she never looked back. Leonardo lowered his arm. Night descended, shuttering the daylight, darkening the poplar board propped on the easel, the brushes still glistening next to the palette of oils.
That afternoon, when they had been together, after the musicians had packed up their instruments, he had felt the kindness, the abundance of time, with vast horizons and no shoreline. Now he felt its devouring pulse and he gave himself over to troubled thoughts: I am without son or daughter. I lie down with a beautiful creature who is more child than man. And, something he would never write down in a notebook: This woman, Mona Lisa, transfixes me.
She had arrived late in the afternoon when rainclouds lay like skeins of wool pulled over the sky. He preferred to paint portraits in gloomy weather, when it was possible to discern grace and sweetness in the faces of men and women. It was raining lightly when she asked him what he wanted from her portrait. “Am I to become just another Florentine lady that the great Leonardo has painted?”
“Just another Florentine lady?” He wasn’t sure he appreciated the tone of her voice.
“Leonardo, I mean no offence. I’m only wondering how far you will go with this painting.”
She had surprised him by knowing about some of his earlier work, his Lady with an Ermine (“That girl looks icy to the touch”), his Madonna of the Yarnwinder (“Your Christ child was a stubborn one”). Because she and her husband, Francesco, occupied elite social circles in Florence, her knowledge was more reliable than common gossip.
“My friends tell me the marchioness of Mantua is growing impatient waiting for her young Christ,” she had said, wagging a finger at him. “But I also know that your drawing of Neptune has pleased one of Botticelli’s patrons.”
He left the window and walked back to the easel. Her words—“just another Florentine lady”—came floating back to him. In the painting, he had placed Lisa sitting high on a balcony, with a vast emptiness behind her. He needed to begin the landscape in the background. To honor a woman with emotional depth, who would listen but not tell and, finally, also reveal. Had she been a quilter, she would have ripped up a length of tattered silk and patched it with hemp and linen to make it new again. His left hand reached for a brush, which he dipped into lake white, then into a glaze of walnut oil. He tapped away the excess liquid and pressed the brush against the wooden palette. In the top right corner of the poplar board he began to paint a monumental range of mountains belonging to an ancient, frozen time. Moving quickly, seized by inspiration, he dropped the brush and picked up another with thicker, horse-mane bristles. Now he traced a shimmering aqua lake beneath the mountain, with a rugged cliff and valley falling away below it, time itself eroding, thousands of years swept away, leaving a landscape transformed. To the left of the great lady, he sketched another vast body of water, belonging to another geography and era, with a river curving mightily, its watercourses mirrored in the sinuous patterns of the woman’s sleeves. He wanted to signal an earth in flux, the way it shifted and morphed, just as people might walk through fire and emerge to see the light—maybe, ultimately, becoming the light. No detail. Not yet. Not for a long time.
The studio was cast in velvety shadows by the time he set down his brush. From across the commons came the clop of hooves as donkeys pulled home market carts, the bleating of lambs going to slaughter, the trill of birdsong, two monks pruning trees in the garden below. He felt his own silence, the weight of his body. Dear old Leonardo da Vinci, how useless and cumbersome you have become. As compared to the light efficiency of a bird. Aged fool, he thought. How to explain his desire to make something to outlast him? A painting for the ages; an understanding of how to fly.
And for what? To buy ongoing admiration? Or to stave off death, as if he—not God—could decide his own mortality? “La vita,” he whispered. Pressing his hands on the cold stone of the windowsill, he turned his face toward the indigo-blue sky. Far above him, he saw in the clouds the delicate curves of a horse’s head, the arched wings of a swan, lifting, defending its territory.
Chapter 34
The weavers deposited the woolen blankets gently at the foot of the David as if they were bearing gifts for the Hol
y Child. Stepping back, they made room for the Sangallo brothers, architects of renown, who unfurled the drawings of the mobile scaffold they had designed for the transport of the David. The conveyance would be pulled, they explained, huddling in close to Michelangelo, “by men moving at the delicate pace of caterpillars.”
Giuliano, the elder Sangallo, wiping his brow in the warm spring sun, added that it would likely take four days to travel the half mile to the David’s place of honor in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, from which Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes had been moved. Michelangelo had learned of the designated site by way of a messenger on horseback who, days earlier, had trotted his mount along the artists’ back lane, handing him the message without bothering to dismount.
Leonardo’s opinion, as he had heard it, had not held sway.
At least, not entirely.
The message on the parchment also indicated that the David would be required to wear twenty-eight copper leaves to cover his genitals. As if the body were blasphemous. The dictate was like a punch in the face, and Michelangelo had looked desperately for a friend in the lane, longing for somebody—Granacci, Attilio, Beatrice—to save him from collapse. He’d staggered back alone into his studio, and kicked the door shut.
“Horses cannot be trusted,” said the younger Sangallo, eyeing the David. “One nervous lurch and the colossus might topple.”
Forty men had been enlisted to pull and push the statue, housed in its wooden cage on rolling logs, through the streets. The men were assigned to shifts: two hours on, two hours off, hauling day and night, under heavy guard.
“Va bene,” said Michelangelo grimly, nodding his approval. His stomach clenched in anxiety; he had barely eaten over the last two days.
Six men raised sledgehammers and waited for the command to expand the opening of the workshop. One hour later, the prior appeared, swinging a vessel of frankincense. Smoke wafted out of the newly created gaping hole.
