Second, I must thank you. Your words to Father-about all the good he has done for Florence and the people-were compassionate and wise, and they touched him greatly. No daughter could have been sweeter or offered greater comfort.
So few have taken Father’s true feelings into consideration, even though he, in his final moments, thought only of others. When he knew he was dying, he summoned his dearest friends and did his best to comfort them, instead of permitting them to comfort him.
He was even gracious enough to allow Giovanni Pico to bring the monk Savonarola into his bedchamber. God forgive me, but I cannot help but hate the friar, who maligned my father for his good works. Serving as patron to so many artists, supporting the Platonic Academy, entertaining the poor with circuses and parades-these were pagan things, Savonarola said, and for that, my father would burn in Hell unless he repented. Had I known he intended to say such things, I would never have allowed him audience.
The ugly little monk repeated his horrible accusations, beseeching him to “Repent, for all the blood you have shed!”
In reply, my father turned his face to the wall. Only at my urging and that of several guards were we able to succeed in removing the friar from his presence. How could he have been so cruel as to call my father a murderer-my father, who never lifted a weapon unless it was in self-defense?
Fra Girolamo then turned to me and said, “You would be wise to repent and fall to your knees, for your arrogance-and that of your brothers-will soon bring you there anyway.”
My father called for me then, so I hurried to his side. He had begun to grow incoherent. He asked the same question, over and over: “Please!” he said. “Please, please tell me-where is he?” I told him I did not understand who he was talking about, but if he said the name, I would bring the man at once to his bedside, but he only groaned and said, “Ah, Giuliano, after all these years, I fail you!”
He worsened soon after, and the doctors tried to give him another potion, which he was unable to swallow. He dozed restlessly, and woke, disoriented and much weaker. He called for me many times, but would not be comforted by my presence as I held his hand and tried to soothe him. And then he grew very still, until all one could hear in the room was his struggle to draw breath; he seemed to be listening for something.
After a time, he seemed to hear it, for he smiled, and with great joy whispered: “Giuliano… it is you. Thank God, you have made it to shore.”
Soon after, he expired.
I am now troubled by a suspicion that allows me no rest. I have come to believe that the draughts prescribed by the physician during the last several months of my father’s life made his condition much worse.
Trust that my thoughts are not simply fueled by my grief; I suspect a conspiracy to hasten my father’s death-perhaps even to induce it. My beliefs have been reinforced by the fact that my father’s personal physician, Pier Leone, was found drowned in a well two days after my father died. A suicide, they say, owing to his dismay over his patient’s death.
The Signoria has taken a special vote allowing my brother Piero to take over our father’s role even though he is only twenty. He is terribly distraught and uncertain at this time, hence I cannot trouble him with matters of marriage yet. I must be a support to him now, not a distraction.
My grief is heightened by the fact that I could not speak to you at my father’s funeral, and that I was never able to meet you that evening at San Lorenzo.
It would be wise to destroy this letter; if we have enemies, I would not want you ever to become their target.
Know that I love you always. Know that I will approach Piero at the first opportune moment.
Yours forever,
Giuliano
XXXIV
Over the next few months, as spring turned to summer, my life became an agony of waiting. I heard nothing from Leonardo, received no letters or striking sketches from Milan. Even worse, I heard no more from Giuliano.
His elder brother, however, fueled much gossip all over the city. Piero directed his attention more to sports and women than to diplomacy and politics. It had long been said that his father had often despaired because of Piero’s lack of acumen and his arrogance.
Especially his arrogance, and Lorenzo proved right. Only months after il Magnifico’s death, Piero managed to alienate two of his father’s closest advisors, and most of the Lord Priors. It did not help matters that his mother, Clarice, had been from the noble and powerful Orsini clan, who considered themselves princes; nor did it help that Piero had married Alfonsina Orsini from Naples. For this reason he was considered an outsider-only one-third Florentine and two-thirds self-proclaimed royalty.
Savonarola astutely used this in his sermons, rallying the poor against their oppressors, though he took care not to mention Piero by name. Anti-Medici sentiment began to grow; for the first time, people spoke openly against the family, in the streets and even in grand palazzi.
I, in my misery, no longer had excuses to avoid Fra Girolamo’s sermons. I tolerated them, hoping that my obedience as a daughter would soften my father’s heart and keep him from rejecting Giuliano as a suitor. So I found myself twice daily in San Lorenzo, listening to the fiery little Dominican preach. In late July, when Pope Innocent died, Savonarola proclaimed it another sign of God’s wrath; in mid-August, when a new pope ascended St. Peter’s throne, Savonarola grew red-faced with rage. Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, now Pope Alexander VI, dared to take up residence in the Vatican with his three illegitimate children: Cesare, Lucrezia, and Jofre. And he did not, as most cardinals and popes had in the past, refer to them as niece and nephews; he blatantly insisted that his children be recognized as his own. There were rumors, as well, of whores in the papal palace, of orgies and drunkenness. Here was proof that God’s wrath was imminent.
Zalumma sat beside me in church with lowered lids and a distant expression. Clearly she was not contemplating the prophet’s words, as one might believe; I knew she was somewhere else in her imagination, perhaps in the beloved mountains she had left as a girl. I was elsewhere, too. In my imagination, I conjured the villa at Castello, and the glories housed there, or resorted to the memory of my tour in il Magnifico’s study, recalling the brilliance of a great ruby or the smoothness of Cleopatra’s chalcedony cup.
Those memories sustained me as I listened to Savonarola’s words; they sustained me as I dined each evening with my father and Giovanni Pico, who drank far too much wine and often wound up weeping. My father would take him to his study, and they would talk quietly late into the night.
Fall came, then winter, and the new year. At last, Zalumma smuggled me a letter bearing the Medici seal, and I tore it open with a mixture of desperation and wild joy.
“Madonna Lisa,” it began, and with those two distant words, my hope was crushed.
I am at wit’s end. Piero has steadfastly denied me permission to wed you; he seeks for me a bride who increases the family’s standing and better secures his position as Father’s successor. He thinks only of politics, not of love. My brother Cardinal Giovanni is determined that I should wed an Orsini, and will hear of nothing else.
I will not have it. I tell you such things not to discourage you, but rather to explain my long silence and assure you of my frustration and my determination. I will be matched to no one else. My inability to see you has not cooled my desire; indeed, it has fanned it. I think day and night of nothing but you, and of a way for us to be together. I am committed to designing that way.
I will be with you soon, my love. Have faith in that.
Giuliano
I let the letter fall to my lap and wept inconsolably. I had no faith-in God’s kindness, in Savonarola’s merciless teachings, in Giuliano’s ability to escape the demands of duty and station. I was only a wool merchant’s daughter that Lorenzo had taken a foolish interest in, that Giuliano had been silly enough to develop feelings for-feelings that certainly would pass with time.
I wanted to feed the letter to the lamp, to shred
it into a thousand pieces, throw them into the air, and watch them settle like dust.
Fool that I was, I folded the letter carefully and put it away with other keepsakes: Giuliano’s medallion, and that of Cosimo and the Medici crest; the drawing of me by Leonardo, and his letter; and Giuliano’s letters, including the one he had expressly asked me to burn.
XXXV
The year 1493-the year after Lorenzo’s death, the first full year of Piero’s reign-passed grimly for me. I began my monthly bloods and did everything possible to hide the fact from my father, bribing the laundress not to mention the stained linens. Even so, Father began to speak of potential husbands. He had kept his promise to my mother, he said; it was not his fault that Lorenzo had died before giving his opinion on a match. And my fate could certainly not be trusted to that dolt, Piero, who had already proved useless as Florence’s marriage broker-he had allowed several pairings that provoked the disapproval of old noble families. No, my father had in mind a distinguished man, well placed in Florentine society but nonetheless godly, and when the time was right, he would receive him as my suitor.
Fortunately, I was still young, and my father’s talk of a husband remained simply that. Despite our uneasy relationship, I knew my father loved me, and that he missed my mother terribly. I was his one connection to her, and so I believed he was reluctant to part company with me.
That same year, the legend of the papa angelico-that unworldly pope who would be chosen by God, not man-merged with a second old story, that of the coming of a second Charlemagne, who would cleanse the Church. This Charlemagne would then unite Christendom under the spiritual rule of the papa angelico.
It did not help matters that the French king was named Charles, or that he listened to such legends and took them to heart. Nor did it help that he set his sights on Naples, deciding that the southern principality by the sea rightly belonged to him. After all, it had been wrested from French control only a generation earlier by old King Ferrante’s father, Alfonso the Magnanimous. Barons with French loyalties still dwelled within the city and would gladly raise their swords in support of their true ruler, Charles.
Savonarola seized on these ideas, merging them with his holy vision. He was shrewd enough never to suggest directly that he was that angelic pope, but he began to preach that Charles would wield the Lord’s avenging sword. Charles would scourge Italy and bring her to penitent knees, and the faithful should welcome him with open arms.
Perhaps Fra Girolamo and his most devoted followers were eager to see a foreign king invade Italy, but everyone I knew was unnerved by the thought. A sense of gathering doom hung over us all. By the end of the year, everyone in Florence was aware that Charles was making plans to invade Naples the following June.
“O Lord,” the prophet cried, during one of his Advent sermons, “You have dealt with us as an angry father; You have cast us from Your presence. Hasten the punishment, and the scourge, that we may more quickly be united with You!” He spoke of an ark that the penitent could enter to be protected from the fury that was coming. And he ended each speech with the phrase “Cito! Cito! Quickly! Quickly!” urging the faithful to seek refuge before it was too late.
But with the passing of another year, the spring of 1494 brought-for me, at least-new hope. Long after I had surrendered my dream of seeing Giuliano again, Zalumma dropped another letter bearing the waxen Medici seal into my lap.
My most beloved Lisa,
Perhaps now you will believe that I am a man of my word. I did not give up, and here is the result: My brother Piero has at last given me permission to ask for your hand. My heart rejoices; this Earth has become for me no less than Heaven.
I hope that my long silence did not make you doubt the depth of my feelings for you, and I pray God that your own feelings have not changed toward me. I must in good faith warn you: We Medici have heard the grumblings against us, and the unfair accusations against Piero. Public sentiment has turned; and if your father and you accept my proposal, be aware that you might well be marrying into a family whose influence is waning. Piero remains confident that all will be well, but I fear a different outcome. He has received a letter from Charles’s ambassadors demanding that the French army be given free passage through Tuscany, as well as arms and soldiers. Piero feels he can give no clear answer; he is bound through family ties to support Naples, and Pope Alexander has issued a bull proclaiming Alfonso of Calabria king of that southern realm. His Holiness has also threatened to withhold our brother Giovanni’s benefices as Cardinal should Piero fail to protect Naples from Charles’s advance.
Yet every member of the Signoria is required by law to take an oath never to raise arms against France, and Florence has always relied heavily on her trade. And so my eldest brother finds himself in an impossible situation. It does not help matters that his advisors give him conflicting advice. Show the people that all is well, one man tells him, and so my brother kicks a football in the public streets, plays a game in full view of the citizens, to give the impression that life goes on as normal. What is the result? Ne’erdo-well, the people call him, and Zuccone, pumpkin-head.
I cannot help but think that he is the victim of a concerted effort to discredit and bring down our house.
Ponder this before you write me, love, and give me your answer. Let me know whether your feelings toward me have changed. And if you give me word: I shall come! Once I have received permission to call on your father, I will inform you of the day and hour.
I count the moments until I see you again. My happiness now resides in your hands.
Whether yea or nay, I remain
Yours forever,
Giuliano
I dropped the letter into my lap and raised my hands to my burning cheeks. Zalumma was, of course, standing over me, eager to learn what the letter contained.
I stared up at her, my face slack, my tone dull with the deepest amazement. “He is coming here to ask for my hand,” I said.
We looked, both wide-eyed, upon each other for one long moment, then seized each other’s shoulders and giggled like children.
XXXVI
I responded immediately to Giuliano. So great was my hope that I refused to remember my father’s railing against the Medici, or his threat to marry me to a godlier man. Instead, I clung to Giuliano’s promise that he would find a way to strike an agreement. He was after all il Magnifico’s son, skilled at diplomacy and the art of compromise. I trusted him to achieve the impossible. And because I was dangerously unskilled at diplomacy-especially when it came to my father-I held my tongue and said nothing to him of Giuliano’s intent.
Lent arrived. On the first Friday of the season, Savonarola took the pulpit. He preached that a “new Cyrus” was preparing to cross the Alps-not the Persian king of ancient times, but obviously Charles, who would be forced to do so on his southern march into Italy.
If the people had watched Fra Girolamo with awe before, they now looked upon him as a demigod, for he had-in their minds-predicted two years earlier what came to be known as “the trouble with France.”
“God is his guide,” Savonarola proclaimed of this new Cyrus. “Fortresses will fall before him, and no army will be able to resist him. And he who leads Florence will behave as a drunken man, doing the opposite of what should be done.” Having criticized Piero, the preacher targeted the Borgia pope: “Because of you, O Church, this storm has arisen!” Again, he spoke of the Ark, where the righteous could take refuge from the coming deluge ending his sermon again with the cry “Cito! Cito! Quickly! Quickly!”
During this time, King Charles moved his court from Paris southward to Lyons-uncomfortably close to Tuscany. Every Florentine citizen grew anxious; those who had formerly scoffed at Fra Girolamo now began to listen.
A few weeks before Easter, upon a morning gray and overcast with clouds, Zalumma and I arrived home quite early from market; a light drizzle hung in the air and had settled on my face and hair. My father had announced earlier that he would forgo not only mea
t for Lent but fish as well, and since we were all obliged to join him in his piety, I had no need to stop at either the butcher’s or the fishmonger’s.
As our carriage pulled round to the back of our palazzo, I spied there a second vehicle-one bearing the Medici coat of arms on its door. It had not been there long; the handsome white horses were still breathing heavily from their trip across the Arno. The driver, sitting at his post, smiled amiably in greeting.
“God have mercy on us!” Zalumma uttered.
I climbed down and gave our own driver instructions to take the food round to the kitchen. I was at once furious at my father; he had obviously arranged a meeting with my suitor at a time when I would be absent. At the same time, I was surprised that he had even agreed to speak with Giuliano. It rekindled my hope that my intended could convince not only his brother, but my father as well.
My anger turned to terror as I took stock of my appearance. To quiet my father, I had taken to wearing very plain, dark clothes, and even maintained the outdated tradition of wearing topaz, a gem reputed to cool the flames of Eros and help virgins keep their chastity. That day, I had chosen a high-necked gown of dark brown wool, which went nicely with the topaz necklace: I looked the part of a devoted piagnona. My veil of black gossamer had failed to protect my hair from the dampness, and a mutiny of frizzy locks peeked out from beneath.
I seized Zalumma’s hand. “You must find a way to hear their conversation! Go!”
She needed no further prompting, but set off almost running, while I walked more slowly, with what little decorum I could muster, into the house.
The door to the great room stood open, further proof that my arrival had not been expected.
Painting Mona Lisa aka I, Mona Lisa Page 21