The Ruby Ring
Page 38
And to tell the world publicly that, in the end, he had disavowed her.
When Giulio had told her the truth, that Raphael, with his final breath, had approved an order to protect her, she simply gazed blankly out the window that faced onto yet another cobbled piazza with its splashing stone fountain. Then she walked alone down the stairs, prepared to find her fate in a convent she had never seen, with women who would never really know her. There was no voice left in her to change that. There was nothing left for her to say.
AS A HEAVIER RAIN FELL now across Rome, Cardinal Bibbiena watched with quiet satisfaction the exhumation of his niece’s coffin from the little cemetery inside the Vatican walls. The hem of his cassock rippled like crimson waves and yet he stood stone still—eyes fixed on the goal. What a stroke of good fortune it had been that Raphael’s strumpet had found the good sense to lock herself away in a convent. Clearly, it was where the girl belonged, her comely face hidden from the rest of the world. It truly was the first decent thing she had ever done.
“Where will we be taking the body, Your Grace?” asked the grimy, gray-bearded man, leaning on the handle of his rusty shovel, and mopping a sheen of perspiration from his brow.
“To the Pantheon, of course,” he declared with a pious smile. “My niece will rest beside her beloved, the magnificent Raffaello. They shall be together now for all eternity. At last things are as they should be. In time, my ring shall be returned to me, and the world shall forget there ever was a baker’s daughter. It shall be as if La Fornarina never existed at all.”
Author’s Note
LIKE THE CLOSING OF A BOOK, THE DEATHS OF SEVERAL important figures in Raphael’s world came swiftly after his own. Agostino Chigi died suddenly four days after Raphael. Francesco Luti was dead by June. Pope Leo X perished the following year, and Cardinal Bibbiena died a mysterious death twenty days after the pontiff, thus taking many of the true keys to this moment in history with them.
In 1529, Elena di Francesco Guazzi at last became the wife of Giulio Romano. Romano went on to have a distinguished career of his own following Raphael’s death, until his own demise in 1546. Of the many artists who trained in Raphael’s workshop, Romano is considered by scholars the most noteworthy, his style and brilliance so like the master’s that many of their works are still disputed to this day as being by the hand of the other. His own works—including the portrait of Joan of Aragon—hang in the Louvre in Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other major museums. Sebastiano Luciani, Michelangelo’s student and Raphael’s great rival, is better known historically as Sebastiano del Piombo, the title he received in 1531 after he was appointed to the office of piombo, or keeper of the papal seals, by Pope Clement VII—formerly Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, cousin to Pope Leo X.
The purported bakery of the Luti family on 21 Santa Dorotea in Rome remains standing and is, today, a restaurant. The only potential confirmation of the fate of Margherita herself was uncovered in 1897, when historian Antonio Valeri described a sheet he viewed, torn from a ledger and later destroyed, containing the name of postulants at the convent of Sant’Apollonia, now gone, with the entry, “Today, August 18, 1520, Margherita, daughter of the late Francesco Luti, a widow, was received into our institution.” After that entry, Margherita Luti disappeared forever from the annals of history. And Maria Bibbiena, not Margherita Luti, lies buried in the Pantheon in Rome beside Raphael Sanzio.
A Readers’ Guide
THE YEAR IS 1514. RAPHAEL SANZIO, THE DARLING OF THE Italian art world, has grown accustomed to having Pope Leo X wrapped around his talented little finger. Raphael’s innovative portraits, altarpieces, and frescoes have so enthralled Rome’s elite art collectors, in fact, that his archrival, Michelangelo Buonarroti, has stormed off to Florence to lick his wounds. Yet trouble is brewing for the mastro. With dozens of commissions from imperious, impatient clients piling up in his bustling studio, Raphael’s energy is flagging. Exhausted and bitter from churning out one masterpiece after another on demand, he yearns for the inspiration and creative freedom he enjoyed before fame wreaked its havoc on him.
Meanwhile, Margherita Luti, a baker’s daughter, dreams of a gilded life outside the stifling confines of her family’s humble reality. When a walk along the Tiber River brings her face-to-face with the legendary master artist Raphael Sanzio, her predictable life lifts off its axis and is recast inalterably. For four years, the mastro has scoured Rome in search of the perfect model to sit for a painting of the Madonna to grace the new Sistine Chapel. In Margherita, Raphael finds at last the timeless beauty he craves. So begins a fraught courtship that will blossom and consume them both—sending shock waves through the upper echelons of Rome’s clergy. For Raphael is ensnared in a politically charged betrothal to a senior cardinal’s niece, and his attempts to end the engagement not only enrage the pope and his powerful cronies, but place his beloved muse, Margherita, in mortal danger.
The following questions are designed to direct your group’s discussion of this haunting story of illicit passion and political manipulation: The Ruby Ring.
1. Like Margherita, Raphael idealizes his dead mother, “whose loss had forever changed his life.” How is his obsession with the Madonna image linked to this tragedy? Does his sense of abandonment abate once he is involved with Margherita?
2. As the story opens, Raphael has lost the “heated passion toward creation” that once fueled his painting. His artistic block is already well known to his increasingly impatient patrons. Why, then, does he attempt to keep it a secret from his assistants? Is he motivated by pride, or by kindness?
3. Francesco Luti urges his daughter to take the plunge and accept Raphael’s extraordinary invitation to model for him. “Look beyond your nose,” he argues. “There is a whole wide world out there, and none of us has ever had the chance to see any of it.” How does his advice echo the advice pressed upon Raphael by his own father? What are both fathers trying to protect their children from, and what counterargument do both Margherita and Raphael offer in response?
4. Margherita’s stubborn refusal to succumb to Raphael’s advances stems from a deep cynicism about the entrenched social hierarchy in Rome: “A man who breaks bread with dukes, kings, and the Holy Father himself does not make a wife of the woman who bakes that bread!” she insists. Does she ever fully transcend this sense of social inferiority beside Raphael?
5. Raphael is surprisingly compassionate toward his enemies. Even when Sebastiano Luciani hires thugs to break Raphael’s hand, Raphael rationalizes, “He is desperate, and desperation can all too easily cloud the mind of wisdom.” Is Raphael too soft for his own good?
6. It is common Vatican knowledge that Cardinal Bibbiena cares deeply about the happiness of his niece, Maria. Yet when she begs to be allowed to call off her agonizing and embarrassing engagement to the unfeeling Raphael, the cardinal refuses her this relief. Why?
7. What does Antonio stand to gain by telling Agostino Chigi that Margherita is the cause of Raphael’s deteriorating work pace? Does he achieve it?
8. With his dedication to his commissions flagging, his distaste for the hypocrisies of the Vatican growing, plenty of wealth amassed, an interested clientele in France, and Margherita with whom to build a new life—why doesn’t Raphael simply throw in the towel and set himself free from the constant pressure that plagues him in Rome?
9. At the beginning of the novel, Margherita makes it very clear that she is too savvy to be bamboozled by the likes of Raphael. Why, then, does she allow herself to be charmed by the sleazy Sebastiano Luciani, even going so far as to dismiss Raphael’s warnings about him: “Raphael must be wrong about him . . . Sebastiano simply could not be guilty of those . . . awful things.” Why does she sit with him, unchaperoned, at the pope’s party?
10. When it becomes clear that the kidnapping plan has backfired and Raphael has not resumed his prolific work pace, Agostino Chigi suggests to Pope Leo that it’s time to confess the plot to Raphael. Is C
higi motivated by compassion here, or by the same self-interest that motivates Leo and Bibbiena? Why does the pope agree to do it?
11. Only when Raphael lies dying and Margherita is in dire straits do we discover that her relations with her family have deteriorated to the point where “They did not want her back now . . . she could never go home to the bakery or the life she once had lived there.” Why do you think the author skips over the potentially juicy story of the Luti family’s disintegration?
12. Margherita’s motivation for destroying Raphael’s new will—which leaves everything to her—and replacing it with the old one, which bequeaths Raphael’s estate to Giulio Romano, is left a mystery. Can you decipher a meaning behind Margherita’s self-punishing decision?
13. How does Donato gently reveal to Margherita both Antonio’s duplicity and Raphael’s genius? Why does he betray his brother’s secret?
14. Why does Raphael blame the supposed celibacy of the clergy for some of his troubles?
15. Why do you think the author includes the subplot involving Maria Bibbiena and her chief guard? Does the guard’s attention and tenderness humanize Maria in your view? What point is the author making about unexpressed attraction?
16. What parting advice does Leonardo da Vinci offer Raphael about how to handle his relationship with Margherita? Is it wise?
17. Does Raphael’s pervasive self-doubt and the episodes of self-pity that verge on wallowing—bemoaning his life “with no family, no love, no reason even to exist, but only to paint and work to the point of exhaustion and blindness! To create only for the desire of others, on and on . . . day after day, then return home completely alone!”, for example—make him a more accessible character? Why or why not?
About the Author
DIANE HAEGER is the author of five previous historical novels, including My Dearest Cecelia and The Secret Wife of King George IV.
Also by Diane Haeger
Courtesan
The Return
Angel Bride
Pieces of April
Beyond the Glen
The Secret Wife of King George IV
My Dearest Cecelia
Copyright 2005 by Diane Haeger
Reader’s Guide copyright 2005 by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
THREE RIVERS PRESS and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haeger, Diane.
The ruby ring : a novel / Diane Haeger.1. Luti, Margherita, 16th cent.—Fiction. 2. Raphael, 1483–1520—Relations with women—Fiction. 3. Raphael, 1483–1520—Death and burial—Fiction. 4. Artists’ models—Fiction. 5. Rome (Italy)—Fiction. 6. Convents—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.A32125R83 2005
813'.54—dc22
2004016396
eISBN: 978-0-307-23779-8
v3.0