* * *
FRANCO ALESSANDRO WAS arrested for sodomy—his fourth arrest—and now lay ill in the cellars of the Bargello until the fine of one hundred florins would be paid and names named and the sentence of one hour in the pillory carried out. We were ruined now. We had fifty florins in our savings box and my lord Donatello loaned us another fifty and we paid the hundred florin fine.
Franco Alessandro was released from prison and by the mercy of some jurisdictional accident he was spared an hour in the pillory. No one knew why. A check mark next to his name, a question raised by some City Eminence, some sleight of hand? He was spared the pillory and its torments thanks to Cosimo de’ Medici, but we were not to know this until two years later when Franco was arrested once more and Cosimo yet again came to his aid.
We welcomed Franco home this one last time. Another arrest would mean a two-hundred-florin fine and exile for life. Alessandra was convinced it would come to that. I too feared the worst. I had watched Agnolo’s madness play itself out over all these years and I knew that Franco would not easily give up his reckless way of life. In truth I was torn between rage and anguish. We had lost our two youngest sons to the Black Pest, and our oldest Donato Michele had given himself to God in the Order of Saint Francis, so it was sad to think our one remaining son should be such bitter gall to us. Alessandra felt only love for him but I felt love and hate together, the frustration of all my desires and my hopes. He made me want to cry on his shoulder and cry out against him all at the same time. He was our hope and our salvation, dashed.
We had tried everything, of course. At first we thought his wanton behavior was a lark, a sign of what might happen if your only interests were clothes and how you looked in them. Franco had been a handsome child, sturdy, with strong shoulders and good arms and hands. He might have grown into a carver of marble or a caster of bronze but from his earliest days his great interest was his hair and his clothes and the impression he made. Vanity, we thought, a woman’s vanity, or a preening noble’s, we hoped it would pass.
I was horrified at what he had come to but Alessandra was determined to offer him only love and understanding. She continued on this way after his second and third arrests, telling Franco she understood and she loved him still.
“What is it you understand?” I asked, furious, and when I asked him, “Do you think it makes you loved?” he would give no answer, choosing the silence of the victim instead of confessing his sins and changing his life thereafter, amen.
We did what parents could. We scolded, we cursed, we threatened to throw him out of our house and dismiss him from our family . . . forever. We pointed out the neighbors’ ridicule, we urged a show of manliness in this effeminate world, we called upon the honor of the di Matteo name. He remained dumb. We pleaded and we threatened and we tried to argue reasonably. In the end he agreed, he offered apologies and submission, but then a little time passed and he was once again curling his hair and slipping out at night with his band of young friends, all of them in parti-colored stockings, tight about the backside and the fork in front, an offer clearly on display.
Now he was back after being arrested for the fourth time. He was silent still. He would let neither Alessandra nor myself near him. He refused to see his brother the Franciscan. He would not go to confession. When he had been home from prison for over a week I determined on a firm talk with him. I waited till long after dark and then I entered the bedroom and sat on the edge of his cot. I could tell he was not sleeping but he gave no sign that he knew I was there.
“Franco mio,” I said softly.
He stirred beneath the covers but said nothing.
“Franco. Why?” Of course he did not respond. If he could easily have answered “Why?” he would long since have done so. But I went on talking softly, reasonably, and he listened. When I had run out of new ways to ask the question “Why” and new entreaties that he not do this to us—the shame, the cost, the waste of his young life—he suddenly responded.
In a strong clear voice, with no regard for the time or the darkness, he said, “Do you think I choose to be like this? This is who I am. This is what I am.” And he turned from me to face the wall. I sat there, wondering, and then because I could think of no other response, I repeated Alessandra’s words to him, “I know. I understand.” And for a short while I felt I had spoken truth.
* * *
FRANCO HAD LEFT us. He did not say where he was going. He simply disappeared the morning after our talk and I was torn between relief and fear of what might happen next. Alessandra was already preparing for what she was convinced would happen next.
“I need money,” she said. “I need one hundred sixty florins.”
I laughed at the idea of such a sum. Donatello paid me ninety florins a year, and it is true he gave me generous gifts—the fifty florins I had borrowed were a gift, he said—but that an artisan’s accountant should lay hands on that much money was surely a jest.
“I know it will take some time. We will have to live frugally.”
I was stunned. I fell speechless once again.
“It is not impossible,” she said. “I have saved forty florins myself.”
“That cannot be.”
She lifted a loose flagstone in the bedroom and took out a small leather sack. It contained forty-one florins.”
“How is this possible?”
“I spin fine wool and save every picciolo. And I save the living money you earn from Donato.”
“Forty florins is a fortune. For such a sum we could buy a slave girl or a mule.”
“With one hundred sixty more we can free our son.”
“When he is arrested again, you mean.”
“So.” She looked at me then in such a loving, trusting way that I forgave her coldness in keeping me from her bed. I took her in my arms.
“You’ll try?”
“I’ll try,” I said though I knew that such a sum was impossible.
But still she kept me from her bed.
It was just now that Alessandra first proposed entering a convent. Such a thing was always possible for rich widows and sometimes possible for married couples if both agreed to it and if the dowry was pleasing to the Lord . . . and to the Mother Superior. But I could not agree to this. I told her I would give it thought and that night I hastened off to the Mercato Vecchio to ease my pain with a whore, Pellegrina, who had become my favorite. She was young and lively and knew how to meet the needs of older men.
To me our marriage was a sacred thing.
MICHELOZZO’S WEDDING WAS the occasion for another of those Medici interventions in the lives of artisans that have produced astonishing works, like Donatello’s bronze David or the frescoes of Fra Angelico or the Madonnas of Filippo Lippi whom Cosimo locked in a room and refused to let out until he had made progress with his painting. These would never have existed without Cosimo’s insistence. And his money.
At the wedding I noticed that my lord Cosimo was more than usually taken with Pagno di Lapo. He always made much of Pagno, greeting him with undue affection and talking with him as if he were an equal. He did not talk this way with me, though in truth I was much closer to him in my appreciation of Latin and Greek manuscripts and in my ability to reproduce them in the Italian hand he particularly favored. Nonetheless, as I say, he favored Pagno, kissing him on both cheeks and letting his hand rest on his shoulders as if he were a favored son.
“The bust of a young man,” I heard him say to Donatello. “And he should wear one of my Greek medallions.”
His collection of rare coins and medallions was one of the wonders of Florence and I understood from what I overheard that Donatello would begin shortly to grant Pagno a kind of immortality, recreated to the life in marble or bronze. The San Lorenzo doors were finished but not yet hung and the Inn of Santa Caterina would soon be destroyed to make way for the new Medici palace, but despite all these pressures of time and work, I proved to be right.
On the very next day I found Pagno sitting for
Donatello while he turned out sketch after sketch of a young man in classical draperies looking off into an impossible future with the gaze of Saint Francis in the presence of the risen Lord. He is in truth a handsome young man, with a mass of red hair and wide gray-green eyes, but if you examine the finished bronze in profile you will see that Donatello has caught the slightly receding chin, the essential weakness of the man. Donatello disagreed with me when I pointed this out. He said that here was the classically perfect chin and he went on and on about the balance of cheekbones and the width of the eye sockets and the turn of the lips; in short he defended Pagno, in statue and in life, as the perfect man. But you can see for yourself that I was right. The statue rests on a grand chest in the main sala of the new Medici palace. It is bronze and, in its way, perfect.
* * *
“I HAVE ARRANGED to buy a little farm, Luca. You must take care of the paperwork for me.”
This was indeed news. Donatello was now some fifty-seven years of age and had never yet shown interest in owning anything, let alone a house or a farm.
“Of course,” I said. “Congratulations!” And I asked him where this little farm was located. I thought perhaps in the Mugello, near one of Cosimo’s country homes or perhaps in the hills outside Florence.
“In Prato,” he said.
Of course. I knew at once. It was for Agnolo.
“And will you leave Florence and live in Prato?”
“When I am too old to work, who knows where I will live.”
“So the farm is for you and not, perhaps, a gift for someone else?”
“The farm is for me. It may be that in time I will make of it a gift for someone else.”
So. It had come to this.
“Do you see him? In Prato?”
“I see him in Florence. And I am buying the farm against the time when I should die. When I am gone, he must have a place to live and he cannot well buy it for himself.”
How could he be seeing Agnolo in Florence without my knowledge of it? Would not Agnolo be arrested if he were found in Florence? Did his exile mean nothing? I was speechless.
“He is with me even now.”
“Here? In Florence?”
He nodded.
“Living with you?”
He nodded again, pleased.
“Is this not dangerous? Would you not be liable to the law if he were discovered here?”
“Who would tell?”
“The Albizzi are gone but Cosimo—my lord Cosimo—still has enemies. And what better way to strike at him than to strike at you? You could be denounced, secretly, to the Ufficiali di Notte.”
“I’ve been denounced already. Three times. But that was years ago and it has come to nothing.”
My mind reeled with this new information. That he could have been denounced three times! And I not know of it! I thought of my appearances before the Ufficiali to pay the fines for Franco Alessandro. The Night Officers were not men to antagonize. I had sacrificed all our savings in fines for Franco Alessandro but that was the least of it. These men held over you the threat of prison, not to mention torture and death. Donatello seemed not to realize this. His infatuation with Agnolo had in truth become a kind of madness.
“I’ll do the paperwork,” I said.
“You did not know I’ve been denounced three times?”
“You must be careful, Donato mio.” I leaned into him and put my hand on his heart. “You should rid yourself of him.” He looked away. “But if you cannot live without him, you should leave Florence. Go to Rome. Or Venice. Or Padua where they ask for you daily. But somewhere out of the reach of the Ufficiali di Notte. I know them. They will be the death of you.”
He placed his hand over my hand as it rested on his heart and he fixed me with that gaze I knew so well from watching him at work.
“You are a loving friend,” he said and kissed me on either cheek. I shuddered with gratitude and pleasure.
IMAGINE MY HORROR then when a messenger arrived at the bottega with a notice that Donatello must present himself at once to the magister of the Ufficiali di Notte to respond to charges, unspecified and made anonymously.
1443–1453
CHAPTER 34
DONATELLO MOVED OUR entire bottega from Florence to Padua, a cause of wonder to everyone who knew him and a great disappointment to the Operai of the Duomo who concluded now that they would never see the bronze doors they had long since commissioned for the sacristy. Donatello chose Padua over Rome or Venice because of the promise of a great commission to erect the largest bronze equestrian statue in the modern world, a monument to Gattamelata, the great warrior general who had died earlier in the year. This was the official reason he offered. Michelozzo and my lord Cosimo de’ Medici alone knew the real reason for our sudden removal to Padua.
The summons to appear before the Ufficiali di Notte had come as a great blow to Donatello. To be summoned and interrogated about the most intimate details of one’s life was a nuisance to my Franco Alessandro and a danger to Agnolo Mattei, but to Donatello it was a disgrace and more; it was proof that he had endangered not only his beloved Agnolo but even Cosimo de’ Medici himself. There was no benefit to anyone in striking out at Donatello. He was a beloved figure in Florence; his unusual fondness for his apprentices was well known and accepted; his sculpture was justification for any eccentricity. But to strike out at Cosimo—anonymously, mightily—was pure profit. The nobles who had supported the Albizzi in their time of power were now supporting Cosimo, but not all of them with equal devotion. There remained always that group of ancient wealthy families who saw Cosimo as a newcomer, a vulgar banker who exercised absolute power in the Republic by reason of his wealth and whose overthrow would be a welcome relief. And what better way to overthrow him than to undermine his moral credit by summoning his favorite sculptor and personal friend to answer charges of sodomy.
On the day of that dreadful summons the first thing Donatello did was send me running to his house to tell Agnolo to leave Florence at once. At this time Prato was under the legal sway of the Florentine Republic but it was hard to believe that the Ufficiali di Notte would pursue sodomites beyond the city limits and so Agnolo thought he would be safe in Prato. The second thing he did was send Pagno di Lapo to Michelozzo and then to my lord Cosimo with news of his summons to appear before the Ufficiali.
Michelozzo shook his head in sadness that he could do nothing, but my lord Cosimo, in his circuitous, anonymous way, took immediate action.
That night Cosimo moved against the Ufficiali di Notte. In a matter of days the charges against Donatello were dropped and the magister of the Night Officers sought occupation in another branch of the law. Nonetheless the Ufficiali guarded the anonymity of their sources in such a way that all of their files were protected as official and confidential. Thus the charges against Donatello remained on record to be held against him in case of any further denunciation. Cosimo could go only so far in subverting the law.
And so we began our ten-year residence in Padua, bitter weather in winter and scalding hot in summer, and the grim and endless croaking of frogs in spring.
Alessandra remained in our little house in Florence with Franco Alessandro and once again urged her petition to become a Sister of Saint Dominic. A lay Sister. A servant. Again I refused and, lacking my consent, the local Bishop refused as well.
Michelozzo began work on the destruction of the Inn of Santa Caterina and the erection of the Palazzo Medici in its place on the Via Larga. It would become the handsomest private residence in all of Florence.
Agnolo returned to carding wool in Prato, leaving us to wonder in what ways his next folly would complicate our lives.
As for us—all of us, save Caterina—we were for Padua and whatever wonders it might offer.
* * *
BUT FOR ME Padua and its wonders would have to wait. We had scarcely arrived in our new city when a message came saying that my Franco Alessandro had been arrested for the fifth time. He was eighteen years and
still fell under the sodomy laws for minors, but these would not protect him from a public flogging and the two-hundred-florin fine that Alessandra had been saving against. Meanwhile he was locked, shivering, in the icy cellars of the Stinche. There was nothing for it but that I go.
I arrived in Florence and found—to my astonishment—that the matter was settled. Franco had been released without a flogging and was now condemned to exile—anywhere outside the Republic of Florence—where he must remain for the rest of his life under penalty of having his right foot cut off should he return. I detected here the intervention of Cosimo and I was not altogether wrong.
Giacomo, my lord Cosimo’s body servant, had been arrested in actu with Franco Alessandro in an alley behind the construction works for the new Medici palace. When the Ufficiali discovered whom they had arrested, they were at a loss what to do. You did not arrest the body servant of the most powerful man in the Republic and yet there he was, in prison, beside his partner in sin. They dithered. They discussed. They waited for something to happen.
And then came a message from Cosimo to the magister of the Ufficiali and they were both released, the boy Franco and the man Giacomo. It had been a misunderstanding. Apologies were made. There were no fines, no punishments. All the paperwork was made to disappear.
Months later we would learn that Franco Alessandro had agreed, in segreto, to go into voluntary exile—wherever they might send him—and to return never.
But now, in our ignorance, Alessandra and I celebrated with a great feast and much wine. I toasted her good health and happiness and promised I would pose no objection to her entering the convent. And then, though in her gratitude she offered me her bed for this one night, I politely declined and went out in search of the whore Pellegrina.
The Medici Boy Page 25