The Medici Boy

by John L'Heureux

  I fell comfortably asleep and dreamed that I was an apprentice again in Donatello’s bottega and I had only now completed the sculpting of the putti for the base of the Saint Louis statue. I was pleased and proud of my work—it was honest and honorable like my lord Donatello himself—and then for one terrible moment I saw my work through Donatello’s eyes and the roaring in my brain began and the pain and the blindness and I snatched up a chisel and struck out with it and suddenly I was falling, falling. “Mio figlio,” I heard him say, and “mio tesoro.” His hand was on my shoulder, comforting, consoling, and at his touch I was calm again, at peace in a green meadow, and all my terror fell away. The dream faded and returned once more. And faded. And returned.

  I went on like this, half living, half dead. In the end it was Donatello who cured me, though that was not his intention. He cured me by accident. Out of his own terrible silence and out of his need to share his worry and his grief, he made me his confidante.

  It came about in this way. The boys were playing outside in the neighbor courtyard, Alessandra was spinning fine wool at the front door, and Donatello, who had tried without success to engage me in conversation, sat quietly by the side of my bed. “You need a cat,” he muttered, “A cat can be a great consolation.” After a long while he cast me a sidelong glance and said softly, “I am not a bad man, you know. It is not such a case with me.” He fell silent and then began once more, scarcely audible, as if he were talking to himself. “I am foolish, I am an old man who should know better, but I am good to him. And I make no demands.” He wrung his long hands together. “No demands of the kind you think.”

  He shifted uncomfortably on the stool by the bed. In a voice so soft I could barely make out the words, he said, “I need him.” He muttered something else. “He breaks my heart.”

  I would not hear such things with my eyes open. I closed them.

  “I know about him, you can be sure. I know he was arrested on the Pellicciai and I know why. But what does it matter? I have always known him for what he is. He is not going to change.”

  I tried to speak, to warn him against Agnolo, but I could not get my tongue around the words.

  He leaned against the bed and whispered in my ear. “I love him. What can I do?”

  “Let him go,” I said, and these were the first understandable words I uttered since that day two weeks earlier when I had left them together, cooing, at the bottega.

  He showed no surprise at hearing me speak and answered simply, “I cannot. I will not.”

  He rose and left, saying goodbye to Alessandra. She brought me wine mixed with water and I slept, at peace now, and when I woke she found me able once again to speak, and hungry, and alive. And, most strange to say, happy.

  I lay in bed for a week and then another, strengthened by the good care of Alessandra and the shy visits of Donatello, and then the weather turned mild—it was the beginning of March—and I returned to the bottega.

  I was eager to work and eager to play out my new role as confidante to the master Donatello.

  CHAPTER 24

  AT THE BOTTEGA they took it as natural that I had been ill and was ill no longer. Caterina smiled at me and Pagno said, “Well done”—whatever he meant by that—but Donatello and Agnolo acted as if I had never been gone. I wanted to tell them what a narrow reckoning I had had but they were greatly pleased with each other and had no need to know. Michelozzo alone seemed moved to see me. He gave me a great embrace and said how happy he was at my return.

  I was happy too. Donatello had confided in me unseemly things he had not told others. He was in love with Agnolo. “He breaks my heart.” The thought itself was unworthy, degrading. Here he was, a man of eminence, the most accomplished craftsman in Florence—I place him ahead of Brunelleschi and Ghiberti and, in truth, all others—and this artisan without peer was brought low by desire for this nobody, this Agnolo, brought so low that he was moved to confess to me that he asked no sexual favors from the boy. Still, and this was the great thing, he had chosen me to share his secrets. Me only. I was shamed that he should tell me these things, as if he were some ordinary man who had never sculpted the Saint George or the Louis of Tolosa or the bronze David that was even now coming alive beneath his hands. “He breaks my heart.” In this weakness and pitiless need Donatello was no different than me and he had confessed as much. I was his confidante.

  I could tell at once that something had changed since that evening when I had watched Donatello take Agnolo by the hand and lead him to his privy chamber. Things were different between them now. Work on the statue was well advanced and there was no longer any need for Agnolo to pose. In truth, there was no need for Agnolo at all and yet he continued to hang about. He could not understand that Donatello had moved into his own mind and heart, that he was bent now on one thing only: the making of this statue. The unformed David had become more real to him than Agnolo in the flesh.

  “Go ask Caterina for a task,” he said, and Agnolo went away to bother Caterina.

  It was a joy to see the master wield his shaping tools. The clay had been brought to the necessary finish and the wax had been laid on thinly, then thicker, until it was exactly the right depth for carving. Donatello had roughed in the features of the face and now, with a sharp knife, was bringing them to a keen perfection. I watched him as he disappeared into his work.

  Agnolo returned. “She has nothing for me to do.”

  “Grind colors for her.”

  “She says I do not grind fine enough.”

  “Go ask Pagno for something to do.”

  “Pagno says I should pose for you.”

  Donatello sighed. “In a while,” he said. “Sit there and wait and after a time I will need you to pose again.”

  Agnolo stood by, watching him as he worked.

  But, watched in this way, Donatello was no longer with the statue. He found himself half at work and half in love. He made a gash in the wax lip and threw down the knife. “Go!” he shouted. “Go home and let me work!”

  We all pretended to be busy while Agnolo put on his cloak and hat and, without a word, left the bottega.

  This is how things stood between them: Agnolo had become the supplicant, Donatello the desired one.

  Nonetheless, Donatello left the bottega at once in pursuit of the boy.

  DONATELLO PRETENDED NOW and again that he needed Agnolo to pose for him: to refresh the mind, he said, to reaffirm the design. Agnolo fell in gladly with his requests.

  In mid March the winter suddenly ended and mild weather settled on the city. Michelozzo had just returned from Trebbio with the plans for Cosimo’s castello and I rose to greet him at the door. In a moment Donatello left off his work and approached us joyfully, welcoming Michelozzo with a shy embrace.

  “It went well?” he asked.

  Michelozzo began to talk of Siena and the bronze panel for the Baptistry and I seized upon this opportunity to give them privacy while I engaged once again with Agnolo. Since my return to the bottega I had made daily efforts to become his confidante as well as Donatello’s.

  “Your work goes well,” I said.

  Agnolo relaxed his pose and sat down on the little resting stool Donatello had provided him. Agnolo was still not sure he should trust me.

  “Your posing pleases him.”

  “He likes to have me near at hand.”

  “He is a happy man these days.”

  Agnolo nodded.

  “He is happy because of you.”

  He covered his privy parts with his hand, casually.

  “You are good for him, I think. He trusts you.”

  “He asks nothing of me. I only pose for him. It is not what you think.”

  I assured him once again that he posed well and that he made the master happy. I returned to my accounts, annoyed. Any stranger in the street could have him, but he would be won over by me only with the greatest patience.

  Donatello returned from his talk with Michelozzo. The Feast of Herod for the Siena Font had b
een accepted by the Cathedral with great thanks. Final payment was to follow immediately. Donatello was in good spirits. “Make a note,” he said to me, “and let me know when the payment is made.” He rubbed his hands together and anyone seeing him at that moment would think he cared about the money when in truth it meant nothing to him.

  “Our David,” he said and at once Agnolo stood and assumed the pose of David in triumph, proudly naked, his foot resting on the head of Goliath.

  * * *

  THE MESSENGER WORE a uniform of black and silver. He was a young man with the newly fashionable long hair and short doublet. He stood at the passway door to the bottega and waited for someone to come to him. Pagno approached him and asked his business. He must present a summons, he said, to one Luca di Matteo of the bottega of Donato di Betto Bardi, Orafo e Scharpellatore of Florence. It was a summons to appear before the Ufficiali di Onestà.

  I heard my name and approached them. I confirmed I was that same Luca di Matteo, at which the messenger handed me a thrice-folded card that said inside in a florid script, Citazione, with a time and place designated, and next to Purpose was the single word Interrogatorio. Pagno leaned in to read the card but I folded it quickly and asked the messenger, “When?”

  “Yesterday,” he said, “but I found you neither at home nor at work, so I have been sent again today. A third time and the guards will be sent to summon you.” He seemed pleased at this bit of news.

  I told Donatello I must leave, but he was by now deeply involved in shaping wax for the left arm of the David and only nodded his assent. Agnolo, naked and content, smiled at me. I could see how greatly I would be missed if I disappeared into the dark cellars of the Bargello.

  The walk to the offices of the Onestà took only a few minutes and the young messenger chattered the whole way. He was new in the job, his father had arranged it through a friend, a relative of the estate manager of Rinaldo degli Albizzi. He prattled on but all I heard was the name Albizzi, the bitter enemy of the Medici.

  He led me through the same doors and down the same corridors I had traveled in my search for the disappeared Agnolo. All at once we stopped before the door with a plaque that said Ufficiali di Onestà and beneath it, in smaller script, Ser Paolo Ruggiero, Conservatore di Legge. The messenger pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger, winked at me, and thumped the door soundly. Ser Paolo himself poked out his huge bald head and said, “Yes? Yes?” and beckoned me in. He waved away the messenger with the back of his hand—the young man laughed, mocking—and urged me to sit down.

  I was assaulted by the stench of urine. He must be ill, I thought, with some dread disease. And so fat! In a city of fat men, he was gigantic.

  He took my summons, glanced at it shortly, and went back behind his desk where he began to shuffle papers and notebooks until he found the one he wanted. Then he examined my summons carefully, compared it with the pages he had opened in his notebook, and sat back satisfied.

  “You are Luca di Matteo. Also called Luca Mattei.”

  I nodded.

  “A common name.”

  “Yes.”

  “A name also held by Agnolo Mattei. No relation, you say.”

  “No.”

  “He claims to be your brother.”

  “He is no relation. His father took money from my father to raise me.”

  “A complication, but not a relation. You are a bastard then?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know your father?”

  I gave his name and Ser Paolo nodded and wrote it down. He went on like this for some time, asking questions he had asked in his previous interview, and then he said, “There are discrepancies. You said you were visiting from Prato. You said you were an engraver. You said you were in the employ of the great Ghiberti—I underlined his name—you said you lived in a rooming house in Santa Croce. Near the Basilica.” He paused and looked hard at me. “Why so many lies? Truthful men do not lie.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Agnolo Mattei, that youth who you say is not your brother, has confessed to a single crime of sodomy, but he is beneath the age for punishment and besides he is self-confessed, and he has given your name as well.”

  “But I am not a sodomite.”

  “No. He did not say that. He said you were his brother and you worked as an assistant to Donato di Betto Bardi”—he paused significantly—“famous for his works of sculpture.”

  “Yes.”

  “Donato di Betto Bardi has not been denounced as a sodomite.”

  “No.”

  He stared at me with his squinty eyes to see my reaction.

  “Is he a sodomite?”

  “No. He is not a sodomite. He is a very great artisan.”

  “He is, without doubt, a great artisan. That does not mean he is not a sodomite.”

  “I know him well. I have worked for him for many years. I know him to be a man of honor and decency.”

  “And yet he is not married, though he is a good age.”

  “He is married to his work.”

  “So are many great artisans, I notice.”

  He paused then and looked at me hard and long. I waited.

  “You are known to the great Cosimo de’ Medici.”

  For a moment my heart stopped and I could not breathe. It was not good for small people to be named with the great in this way.

  “The lord de’ Medici is a close friend of your master Donatello.” I continued to look at him, horrified and silent, and he went on. “You know this?” He turned toward me a little book bound in red leather. I shook my head, no. “It is a collection of foul epigrams that celebrate the sinful pleasures of sodomy. Hermaphroditus . . . by one Antonio Beccadelli. This Beccadelli is a sodomite. He has dedicated his book to Cosimo de’ Medici, praising him for his openness of mind and his easy acceptance of the luxuries of sin.” He leaned toward me. “And Cosimo de’ Medici has accepted the dedication.” He waited. “With pleasure, it would seem.” He waited again. “The lord Cosimo is a friend of your master Donatello, you have said it yourself.”

  “I have not said it.”

  “But it is true.” He sat back, satisfied. “It is true nonetheless.”

  I sat there, confused, frightened.

  “Do you have anything you want to say? Anything?”

  I assured him I had said everything I could and should.

  “But if you had information, you would offer it?” He was silent for a long moment. “I am not suggesting you become a spy. But should you see where danger lies, you would act to prevent it.”

  I only looked at him.

  “It would be sad to see harm come to the great Donato di Betto Bardi through his association with others who themselves are not . . . careful.”

  Still I said nothing.

  He dismissed me then and from the corridor outside the door I could hear the torrent of piss and the sharp cry of pain as he relieved himself.

  I resolved to tell no one of this, not even Alessandra.

  * * *

  “HE ASKS NOTHING of me,” Agnolo said. “I wish he would ask.”

  “Do you offer?”

  He paused, silent, unsure if he should trust me. Then he decided we had become friends.

  “I do offer. I offer and he says no. He says it is not like that between us.”

  I listened and a great peace spread through me.

  “Good,” I said, but then I thought of my interrogatorio with Ser Paolo and his determination to discover if Donatello was a sodomite and I went cold.

  “Only take care,” I said.

  * * *

  DONATELLO ASKED ME to stay after the others had left. He locked the door and led me to his privy chamber where he lit a rushlight and poured a cup of wine for me and another for himself.

  I had been in the chamber once before, insensible, and I had glanced inside many times when the door was open, and I knew it to contain his most valued things. There were several books in Latin and even some in the native language, there w
ere paintings by Uccello and Massolino and designs for projects too important to be left outside among the pile on his great work table—I noticed drawings for the new Medici castello—and there were projects abandoned for a time but too weighty to be abandoned for good, there were letters and contracts and a Brunelleschi crucifix. A small table stood next to a cot, and there was a stool and several jugs of wine.

  Donatello sat on the cot and propped himself against the wall. I took the stool and did my best to conceal my excitement at this new intimacy. He drank his cup of wine and poured another. Finally he looked at me and said, “It is your brother, Agnolo.” He gave me a half smile. “He is driving me mad.”

  “He wants to be needed,” I said.

  Donatello put down the cup and covered his face with his hands. He sat that way for a long moment and then he uncovered his face and he had become an old man driven to despair.

  “What can I do?” he said. And to my joy and shame he told me everything. “He does not understand. He can’t. He won’t. He is a satyr. He throws himself at me like a wanton and it is my fault, it is all my fault because of that night you know about, you remember, when I had him here on this same bed, three times over, in my lust and my rage for him. He remembers that lust and he thinks that is what I want. And I confess to you it is, I want him, but there is a love that I want still more, and he does not understand. Sometimes I ache for him, I want him so. He comes at night into my bed and he is young, and his smooth body is so yielding, and I want to take him in my arms and hold him hard, hard, until our bodies melt into one another and we are but one thing and I devour him.” He put his hand to his forehead and rubbed away the thought. “No, not devour him. Did I say devour him?” He rubbed his brow again. “That may be what I mean. I want to possess him whole. Is it so wrong? You have been a Franciscan brother, Luca, tell me, is it so wrong?”

  “We are weak men. We know what is right but we do what is wrong.”

  “Do you understand what I mean when I say I want his love and not just his body?”

  I understood but, jealous, I said nothing.