Leonardo nodded absent-mindedly while still looking around.
The monastery of the Poor of Jesus, dedicated to Saint Jerome, stood in Porta Vercellina, along the Naviglio. If anyone wished to look for it nowadays, they would go down Corso Magenta until it intersects with Via Carducci (which was in fact once called San Girolamo), then walk along that street until they get to the block between Via Mellerio and Via Marradi, after which they should start digging. Because nothing actually remains of the monastery these days.
“The decision lies with Cardinal Ascanio, il Moro’s brother,” Father Diodato continued. “And if he decides against us, our monastery will become part of a shoemaker’s workshop, and we’ll be left with a church that’s too large for the few souls who prefer it to San Francesco Grande.”
“How many friars does the monastery have at the moment?”
“Almost forty. It’s not big, but it’s not small either. But let’s go back to us, Messer Leonardo. To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”
Leonardo fumbled with his pink headdress, which perfectly matched his salmon-colored garment and clashed violently with the rest of the refectory.
“I’ve come by, Father, to apologize if I offended you and Friar Gioacchino last night. It was not my intention to say anything akin to heresy, as I hope you will realize.”
Father Diodato shrugged. “There’s no need to apologize, Leonardo. On the contrary, it is I who am sorry. Doubly sorry. Firstly, because Friar Gioacchino’s reaction was rash and disproportionate. Secondly, because I was very interested in what you were saying. Friar Gioacchino is unable to tell the difference between reasoning and provocation. For him, there are no degrees or shades, everything is black or white. Unlike your painting. I’ve always been struck by how you make faces emerge from dozens of color glazes.”
Leonardo opened his eyes slightly and raised his head. Receiving constant compliments was tiresome—especially if one receives them in lieu of money—but nothing is more flattering to an artist than to feel valued for the very thing that is, according to the artist himself, his true, genuine singularity.
“Well, Father, a good painter has two things to paint, man and the concept of his mind. When we see a man, we don’t see a nose, a mouth, a row of teeth. We see an intention, peaceable or malign, an object on which he is concentrating, or the serenity he feels when contemplating his own wellbeing. We can see this in the man’s actions and movements, whether these are perceptible or not. A painting does not move, and yet I must make sure that whoever looks at it sees that movement, those intentions.” Leonardo smiled. “It would be a serious mistake to paint all that just with clearly-defined, immutable lines. The boundary between one thing and another, between a face and the wall behind it, changes position if I move or if one of those two things moves, because that boundary doesn’t exist. It’s located only in my eyes and in my intellect.”
“Ah, now that’s the topic I found fascinating,” Father Diodato said after a few moments’ silence. “You maintain that the power of man resides in language, because it allows him to describe things that don’t exist.”
“All languages draw their power from this. Imagine what hard work it would be for me to construct a scene that gives a worthy representation of the Marriage at Cana.” Leonardo pointed to a scene on the surrounding fresco, since that was its theme. “I’d have to get dozens of guests, a table, food, and, finally, be able to turn water into wine. It’s too much for me, and I doubt even Bramante would succeed. But let’s take a brush, a little whipped egg, a few of your excellent paints, and here we are.” With his open palm, Leonardo indicated the wall painted by Zenale. “We’re done. It’s no small feat, don’t you think?”
* * *
“Well, gentlemen, our task is almost done. We have no reason to linger in Milan any longer. I mean no official reason. Do you understand me, Robinot?”
His elbows on the table, the Duke of Commynes was drumming his fingertips against one another. Near the table, Robinot was pacing impatiently up and down.
“I understand perfectly, Duke. As I was saying, Mattenet didn’t return to his lodgings last night, and that’s a good sign.”
“He could have been murdered in the street,” Perron de Basche said, looking up. “Or else he could have been struck by divine wrath. Apparently, it’s dangerous to walk around Milan these days if one is in a state of sin.”
“In that case, this castle should have burned down decades ago, and us along with it. Excuse me, I hear knocking.”
The three men fell silent. A few seconds later, they did indeed hear a couple of quick, almost furtive taps at the door. Robinot strode over to it and asked, “Who’s there?”
“Me, it’s me,” Mattenet’s voice replied.
* * *
“I understand, Father. You are the prior.”
“Precisely, Messer Leonardo. I can appreciate that Friar Gioacchino’s behavior upset you, but I can assure you, you have nothing to fear from him.”
“So he doesn’t mean to write to the bishop and accuse me of heresy?”
“I can’t rule that out. What I can rule out is the letter ever being dispatched.” Father Diodato looked at Leonardo good-naturedly. “No letter leaves here without my reading it, Messer Leonardo. And none reaches my fellow brothers’ hands without undergoing the same fate. When words are written down, they travel far, last over time, and can cause damage. My power, like all power, lies in knowing more than my flock.”
Leonardo and Father Deodato were walking around the cloisters, and had already done the complete circuit a couple of times. When they reached the refectory, the prior stopped, looked at Leonardo again, and spoke in a voice as firm as his footwear:
“There’s something else Friar Gioacchino is wrong about. You see, Leonardo, it’s quite true that my Congregation was founded to oppose the excess of money and commerce, the constant commercialization of the word of the Lord by men of the cloth. That’s why we’re called the Poor of Jesus.”
Leonardo nodded. He knew the story of Colombini, the Sienese merchant who had converted after reading Jacopo da Varagine’s Golden Legend on the lives of the saints, stripped himself of everything, and begun a life of poverty. He was Sienese, just as all the Congregation’s friars were Sienese or Tuscan. Apart from Friar Gioacchino, Leonardo had never known a Lombard Jesuate.
“Money must be shunned, but the true master of Milan is not money. Money is used as a means to power, not for its own sake, as an end. From il Moro, who uses his niece’s dowry to get himself acclaimed as duke, to the lowliest of the municipal secretaries, who acquires his position by buying it from his predecessors. The diabolical form they worship isn’t money, it’s power.”
Still speaking, the prior went through the refectory door, Leonardo following him.
“But this power is an ephemeral, mortal power. Only the Almighty can have true power over men. Man, every man, whatever his place in the world, taunts the Almighty and grants himself rights he doesn’t have, rights that belong only to God.”
“You do the same,” Leonardo said in a low voice.
“Yes, I do the same,” the prior said, looking around. “But I’m aware of that. I know my mortal nature, which is the reason our power is just an illusion. We’re fleeting, we are leaves on the branch farthest from the trunk.”
“Yes, father. It’s something I’ve been thinking a great deal about in these last few days.”
Father Diodato looked at him with the air, not so much of a friar as of a confessor. “You’ve no doubt heard of that poor man who was murdered then left in the middle of the castle, may God have mercy on his soul?”
“His name was Chiti. Rambaldo Chiti. An apprentice of mine whom I was forced to send packing several months ago.” Still looking at the frescoes, Leonardo took a few steps forward. “Perhaps you knew him too.”
“No, I really don’t think so. Wh
y do you ask?”
Leonardo shook his head, as though to dismiss a doubt. “I had the impression he lived not far from here, in a room in San Vittore. Although, admittedly, he wasn’t the kind to attend Mass.”
“From what I hear, Leonardo, you don’t attend much either.”
* * *
“No, I didn’t sleep much either,” Mattenet began. There were deep, dark rings under his eyes, as if he’d had hardly any rest. “It got very late, it was already dark even in the widest streets. I tried to make conversation as we walked, but he was obviously absorbed in other thoughts and had accepted my invitation just to be polite.”
Sitting opposite him at the table were the Duke of Commynes and Perron de Basche. Robinot was walking around the table, with slow but anxious steps.
“We finally reached his house and I asked him if I could come up with him to see what he was working on. I said I was an admirer of his work and his paintings. He replied that he was very tired and wanted to go to bed. So I took my courage in my hands and said, ‘Master, I am here to offer you my body. Do with it as you please.’”
“And what did he say?”
“He looked at me. And smiled.”
And that was when Mattenet had started to wonder. Leonardo’s smile had actually been incredibly sweet. Not lascivious, not mocking, not sensuous; but sweet, sweet and happy, as though amazed by such a stroke of luck. So sweet and lovely that maybe . . . no, I don’t even want to think about it. I like women. I’m here to do my duty.
“And then?”
“He looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. From top to toe. Then he opened the door, took me by the hand, and let me in. What the fuck are you laughing at, scabby head?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Robinot said. “Please continue.”
Mattenet took a deep breath, then rubbed his hands on his pants, back and forth, as though wiping something disgusting off them. “He took me to a room. I think it was his bedroom. There was a bed, and sheets of paper all over the place. He put his hands on my shoulders and slowly unfastened my tunic. He ran his hands over my chest, still smiling. Within a few seconds, I was naked.”
“Naked and not sure what to do,” the duke said, unable to restrain a smile.
“That’s right. Naked and not sure what to do. If I move, I thought, I’ll either hug him or punch him. So I let him take the initiative and he . . .”
“And he? What did he do?”
Mattenet put his hands on the table and clung to it, as though about to confess an unspeakable sin. “. . . he drew my portrait.”
* * *
Perfect proportions, you see, perfect proportions. One seventh, one fifth. But the center isn’t the same, that’s the secret. The center isn’t the same. The square and the circle mustn’t have the same center, or it won’t work. I must write this to Francesco di Giorgio immediately.
Leonardo looked at the paper on his desk. A man with open arms and legs close together, standing inside a square, superimposed on the same man with arms spread wide and legs apart, contained inside a circle. Perfectly. Here it is, the perfection of man.
This is what makes a man a man: proportions. It’s the same distance from the shoulder to the ulna as from the ulna to the wrist. That way the arm can bend and the hand reach everything within its radius, without blind or unattainable spots, which would exist if the forearm were longer, or shorter, than the section before it. Proportions, proportions. Man has perfect proportions, and this sets us apart from the dog or the horse. And without this perfection, we couldn’t. We couldn’t pick up objects. We couldn’t even stand up. Carry our head, the heaviest, most serious part of the body, so far from the ground. We’re the only ones to do that. It’s just a matter of proportions. The fly doesn’t do it, the elephant doesn’t do it . . .
“Leonardo!”
“I’m upstairs, Caterina.”
“Can you come down and give me a hand? The eggs need collecting and I’m on my own!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.”
She won’t leave me alone, not even once.
* * *
“Not even once!”
Slap.
“Not once, I say!”
Another slap.
“Not once, not once, I say, do you manage to do what you’re asked!”
The Duke of Commynes was standing there, blue in the face. In front of him, motionless, Mattenet and Robinot, being assailed by the duke’s outburst, as he yelled like a third-division coach, underlining his words with terrifying slaps on the table instead of exclamation marks.
Sitting, or rather, slumped on the table, next to him, Perron de Basche was laughing. He, too, was slamming his fist on the table, tears in his eyes.
“And you, de Basche, stop laughing, for heaven’s sake!”
“I can’t help it. How could anyone be so dumb—”
Slap. Not on the table this time, but on the back of Perron de Basche’s neck, making him slam his gums on the table.
“Enough, fuck it! Enough of this laughing! And enough messing about! Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow at the latest, we have to leave. We have no reason to extend our visit, it’d arouse suspicion. So I want that notebook tonight. Do anything you like, but bring me that notebook!”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
“Even . . .”
The Duke of Commynes brought his face much closer to Robinot’s, to within a distance that manners or esthetics would have considered an overstepping of the bounds. “Listen, rock head, and keep my words in your mind. If you don’t bring me the notebook, I’ll cut off your head. You have to bring me the notebook, and any damage you do to Leonardo I will do to you. Do you understand?”
Robinot slowly turned to look at Mattenet.
This time it really is your problem, Mattenet’s eyes said.
* * *
“Leonardo . . .”
“Hmm?”
“Leonardo, is it true?”
Leonardo was sitting at the kitchen table, a sheet of paper in front of him. Hearing his mother’s voice for the second time, he had turned and instinctively covered the paper with his right hand. Then he had lifted it and resumed studying it, answering his mother without looking at her.
“Yes, Caterina.”
“I didn’t even ask you what!”
Leonardo turned again and looked at his mother, laying his left hand on the paper and scrunching it up. The sound seemed to be keeping time with the fire crackling in front of the table. “Something you’re worried about, Caterina. You’re worried about me. And since I’m worried too, I’m saying yes, it’s true. There’s good reason to worry.”
“Oh, Blessed Mother of God!” Caterina replied, making the sign of the cross. “Did you really have to say those foolish things to a man of the Church?”
“Foolish things? Church? I don’t understand, Mother.”
“Today, Friar Gioacchino said in his sermon that yesterday, while he was a guest in a noblewoman’s house, listening to music, a man who thinks himself a great genius but is nothing but a little fool said that God gave men the power of speech only so they could lie, and that God’s greatest gift is the lie.”
“Listen, Caterina—”
“Yesterday, you went to listen to music at the house of Countess Bergamini, the one you call Gallerani, il Moro’s favorite—”
“She was il Moro’s favorite—”
“—and I bet it was you who uttered those absurd blasphemies. Or am I wrong, Leonardo?”
Leonardo stood up from his desk, slowly, the scrunched-up paper in his hand. “You’re wrong, Mother. You’re wrong, just as he’s wrong.” Leonardo took the ball of paper between his fingers and threw it into the fire. “Friar Gioacchino da Brenno is so enlightened by Our Lord that he’s sometimes blinded and makes mistakes. I was spea
king figuratively, and he took me literally.”
“Go on, Leonardo, be clever. In the meantime, you’re worried too, and rightly so. The man could denounce you and get you into trouble with the Holy Church.”
“Of course he could. In fact, he probably already has.”
“So what are you planning to do to defend yourself?”
“Me? I don’t have to do anything, Mother. Friar Gioacchino can blab all he likes, but we’re not in Florence here, Mother, or in Rome, where they burn men as if they were firewood. This is Milan, the home of Ludovico il Moro.”
“Then why are you worried?”
Leonardo looked at the fire without seeing it. “That’s why, Mother. Precisely because we’re in the home of Ludovico il Moro.”
“I don’t understand you, Leonardo.”
Leonardo went up to Caterina, put his hands on her shoulders, and squeezed them gently. “I know you don’t. It’s better that way, trust me.”
* * *
Caterina stared at the door for a moment after Leonardo had left. Then her eyes drifted back to the fireplace, where the flame was licking at the scrunched-up paper her son had thrown in the direction of the fire, narrowly missing it.
Why had he scrunched it up? Because he’d written something improper on it. Something that could have gotten him into trouble. Like that time when he’d written that the sun doesn’t move. It was Salaì who’d told her how he and Marco d’Oggiono had teased him for a long time and asked him if by any chance it was the earth that moved, and Leonardo had smiled and shaken his head.
Caterina instinctively went to the fireplace and with a rapid movement lifted the ball of paper out of the hearth. She returned to the table and opened it, spreading it on the table top.
Drawings. A mouse, a cat, an elephant. And a few handwritten lines, which for her were an impenetrable secret. Caterina couldn’t read when things were written the right way around, let alone backwards.
The Measure of a Man Page 15