Even though he had dreamed of triumphing in Rome, he had never imagined compliments from the pope. “His Holiness knows my name?”
“Of course,” Jacopo said, taking Michelangelo’s hand and pulling him to his feet. “Pilgrims will carry word of you and your Pietà all across the peninsula and even to the barbarians beyond. Like the French.”
“And in Florence?”
“In Florence, they’ll throw parades in your honor.”
Michelangelo grabbed Jacopo’s shoulders and kissed both of his cheeks. “Thank you, mi amico. Come. Help me close up my workshop. It’s time for me to go back to Florence.” Honor, after all, was always worth more at home.
Leonardo
Winter. Mantua
Leonardo lit the last fuse. He and Salaì ducked behind a wooden fence for protection as six metal barrels shot out projectiles. The shells whistled into the air and exploded into gold and silver fireworks. As sparks rained down, the population of Mantua cheered. Though it was a cold night, they had all gathered outside the Palazzo Ducale to welcome the visiting Duke Valentinois, Cesare Borgia, commander of the papal armies, to their city.
“That is an extraordinary contraption,” Cesare Borgia said, pointing to the multi-barreled firework launcher. Leonardo had heard the rumors that Cesare’s skin was often covered in purple pox, a sign of the French disease, but he saw no such affliction tonight, not even when the fireworks illuminated his face. The duke was inarguably handsome—tall and muscular with eyes of purest ultramarine blue.
“Well, our maestro is quite extraordinary,” said Isabella d’Este, nestling her hand intimately into the crook of Leonardo’s elbow. She was quite plump these days, even for her. Her husband had been busy on his last extended stay at home, leaving not only Isabella pregnant, but three other local ladies as well.
Leonardo laid his hand over hers. “I gladly accept the compliment from such a beautiful patron.”
Upon fleeing Milan, Leonardo and Salaì knew they could not stay in the countryside for long. It was too dangerous. The Italian peninsula was not a peaceful, unified country, but a collection of battling city-states and kingdoms. The invading French military was marching down the peninsula to lay claim to Naples. In the west, Florence was at perpetual war with Pisa, while in the east, the Republic of Venice was at war with everyone. And Cesare Borgia, commanding his father’s papal army, had recently started his rampage across Romagna. In need of a safe haven, Leonardo set his course for the nearby city-state of Mantua, ruled by his longtime friend, the fiery redheaded Marchesa Isabella d’Este, and her husband.
While living in Milan, Leonardo had become friends with Isabella, who often traveled north to visit her younger sister, Beatrice, wife of Il Moro. Whenever Isabella visited court, she insisted on dining next to Leonardo and discussing art, politics, and nature long into the night. When Beatrice died, Leonardo and Isabella exchanged heartfelt letters of grief.
Since the French invasion of Milan, Leonardo had not corresponded with the lady, but he believed she would welcome him to her city. He was right.
So, for over a month, he had been serving as Mantua’s chief engineer, and on that night had been charged with impressing Cesare Borgia. Isabella was eager to keep Cesare on Mantua’s good side; they didn’t need the pope’s son as an enemy.
“I came up with the idea for this device while composing a song on the harp,” Leonardo explained as Cesare stepped past the protective barrier to inspect the multi-barreled launcher. “I thought, if an instrument can emit multiple notes at once, why can’t a launcher discharge multiple projectiles at once?”
“But I’ve never even seen pyrotechnics launched into the air before …” Cesare said.
Salaì flashed Leonardo a triumphant look. Marco Polo had brought fireworks back from the East over two hundred years before, but they were still considered new and experimental. Most pyrotechnic displays were small and safe: eruptions of sparks that never left the ground. But Leonardo preferred the more dangerous method of launching shells high into the air and watching the colors pour down from the heavens.
“So, now you see the advantage Mantua has gained by employing our dear Leonardo.” Everything Isabella said sounded like a flirtation.
“I just can’t believe you’ve had him here for over a month, but don’t yet have a painting off of him.” Cesare raised one eyebrow. “I wonder if he thinks himself above the patronage of a simple marchesa. After all, he is used to serving dukes and duchesses.”
“My marchesa is much more generous than any duke or duchess I’ve ever known,” said Leonardo.
“You hear that, Duke Borgia?” Isabella hit the word duke hard.
“Besides, why would I waste my time with paint when I can light up Mantua’s sky?” he asked. Smoke from the fireworks still hung in the air.
Borgia turned his blue eyes on Leonardo. “Tell me, then. Do you have other inventions such as these?”
“Of course. I can take you to my studio …”
“I apologize, Duke Borgia,” Isabella said, her eyes as cold and impenetrable as volcanic glass. “Your inquiries will have to wait. I am in need of my maestro’s counsel.”
“Can you believe that man, trying to poach you out from under me?” Isabella’s anger echoed off the walls as she led him up the final few steps of the tower in the old Castello di San Giorgio.
“No one could steal me from you, my lady.” Leonardo followed her into her private apartments.
“Mark my words, that man wants your talents for himself.” Isabella opened the doors to her studiolo, where she kept her art collection and often hosted lively discussions about humanism, literature, and politics. The room was a magpie’s nest of treasures, including marble and bronze statues, contemporary and aging paintings, stacks of illuminated manuscripts and newly bound books, gold and silver miniatures piled up on ancient tables, and even a selection of dried animal skins, tusks, and antlers. In addition to art collecting, the marchesa had a reputation as an audacious hunter. “Don’t ever let that Borgia monster sink his claws into you, Leonardo. God knows what he would make you do,” she said, as she dropped into a high-backed, gold-plated armchair. “Do you know what upsets me most about tonight? That tyrant exposed my secret. My intentions for you can no longer be denied.”
He held her stare. “You know I will not deny you anything, my lady.” In the confined space of her studio, he could smell her scent of lavender and peaches.
“I had planned to spend a few more months plying your ego, letting you play with my husband’s military toys. But now you must know why I want you here so badly.”
He took a step closer. “For my talents with a lute?”
She shook her head.
“For my legendary dexterity when tying and untying knots?”
She laughed.
“For my fine seat on a saddle?”
“Paint me, Leonardo.” She sat forward in the chair. “I have wanted it since the first time I saw you apply brush to surface.”
“Oh, that.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Your husband has mentioned only towers and moats and stables.” He walked over to a stack of panel pictures leaning against one wall and flipped through them. There he found mediocre copies of masterpieces: Giotto’s St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, Masaccio’s Tribute Money …
“Horses, whores, and wars are my husband’s passions, but not mine. And since he leaves me in charge more often than he is here himself …” She rose and crossed toward him. “Besides, I am carrying the heir to the Gonzaga throne, God willing, so my will is the way.” She had a daughter already, but had predicted this one was a son. “Whenever I pawn a jewel to purchase a painting, it is well worth the sacrifice.”
“Why do you have this rubbish?” He pulled a cheap copy of his Last Supper out of the stack. “My God. By whose hand is this?” He turned to face her. She flushed. “You know more about my fresco than this—this unskilled fool, whoever he is. During your visits to Milan, you watched me develop the
design. You sat there while I applied pigment to the wall.”
She took the copy from his hands. “You did enthrall me.” She’d watched him superimpose geometric shapes over the faces and figures to apply the aesthetics of mathematics. She’d asked him to explain the perspective lines in the ceiling, and the three windows representing the Trinity. He’d even told her about the secret musical score written out in the rolls and plates on the table. “When my sister died, my visits to the north ended. I never saw the final product. This is all I have.” She gave a sudden laugh. “You’re right, though. These figures are wooden, indeed.”
“Let me burn it.” He tried to grab the reproduction, but she was too quick. She laughed and fluttered it behind her as she ran across the studio, darting around busts of Roman emperors.
“How do you do it? The figures you create always look so alive, it’s as if you pay models to sit and pose inside your picture frames all day.” She faced him from behind a table stacked with ancient orange and black pottery. “It’s impossible.”
“After being struck by steel,” he said, moving slowly around the table toward her, “a piece of flint cried, ‘Why are you attacking me? I haven’t harmed you.’ And the steel replied, ‘Be patient and see what wonderful things you can do.’ So the flint patiently let itself be struck again and again until it finally gave birth to fire. And so it is with me. By steadfast patience, I too learned to achieve marvelous results. Nothing is impossible.”
She gazed up at him. “My sister never managed to get a portrait out of you, did she? Why is that?”
“My dear Isabella,” he said, reaching out and tracing her jawline with his finger, “you know I am not at liberty to discuss the private lives of my patrons.”
“A device like that would put you out of work.” Isabella, wrapped in a boar’s skin, lay on the floor of her studiolo. Leonardo had just slipped out of her embrace to sketch her. He didn’t know why he so often ended up in bed with his subjects.
“Perhaps,” he said, leaning against a heavy bronze statue of Apollo and pulling a rug, an heirloom shipped in from Turkey, over his bare lap. “But just imagine: a machine that could capture the image of a person in flash, so true to the real thing that there would be no discernible difference between the person and the picture. Scientists, artists, and engineers would be able to maintain an extraordinary level of objectivity.” He opened his notebook and turned to a page half-covered in sketches of horses, several polyhedrons, and a list of the belongings he’d brought with him from Milan. “I wouldn’t care if I couldn’t make one more soldi as a portrait painter if I could use such a device. Just once.”
“But if machines, and only machines, were responsible for duplicating images, human connection would disappear altogether. Humanity would be destroyed.”
With one line, he captured the curve of her chin. “Getting too close obscures the vision.”
“Keeping such a distance is not only ignorant, but dangerous.”
If only his family could see him now, the country boy from Vinci debating the moral implications of one of his theoretical inventions with the granddaughter of the king of Naples. When he’d started his career, a painter was nothing but a low-class laborer, but he had forced that perception to change. Now a painter was a man whose opinion not only counted, but was also sought after. Unworthy profession, indeed, he thought. “Attaining proper scientific objectivity is key to all understanding, my lady. It’s why I want to fly.”
“To what?”
“Fly.”
Isabella’s eyes widened. “In the air? Like a bird?”
He nodded.
“You’re teasing.”
Leonardo shook his head. “King Louis understands the value of such an achievement.” He held up his left hand and wriggled the massive bejeweled bird ring. “He gave it to me off his own finger. It is encrusted with jewels from the royal collection.” If he were willing to sell it, it would bring thousands of ducats. “The king said it was his way of showing his support for my ambitions, and he hoped that once I did learn to fly, I would bring the art to France.” The ring was his good-luck charm; as long as Leonardo wore it on his finger, he had no doubt he would one day fly. “Of course, if you and your valiant husband supported my experiments, I would never give the invention to the French, my lady. You have my word. It would be all yours.”
“You are not a bird. You are a painter.”
“I am much more than just a painter.” He quickly captured the way her lower and upper lids cupped her eyeball like an oyster holding a pearl. “Why else would God give me such a yearning to ask questions about everything: body, mind, light, water, numbers, stars? My interests don’t distract me from my art, but feed it. Music feeds math feeds science feeds painting. The only way to create something unique is to make connections between seemingly disparate things. If I focus only on art, my art will die.”
She picked up a thin gold crown from her collection and placed it on her head. “But I cannot bear to have you fall from the skies and die while working for me. Besides, of all the people I know, you might actually achieve such an impossibility, Maestro Leonardo. And if you do learn to fly, you might decide to fly away from me. So, on the orders of your marchesa, no more flying. Just paint. It’s what you were meant to do.”
“I will never settle for such a trifle. I want more. I always will. From up there”—he pointed toward the heavens—“I could study the trees, the rivers, the earth, all of humanity. And the best way to truly see and understand something is to study it from a proper distance.”
“You and your obsession with objectivity,” she said. “If you insist on keeping your distance from everyone and everything, how can you ever hope to feel love?”
“If I ever do find myself in love, signora, I will break myself off from it so I can study it objectively, I assure you.”
“And by doing that you will kill the very thing you are trying to study,” Isabella said, letting the boar skin drop off her shoulders. “Love cannot exist at arm’s length.”
After Isabella left to entertain Cesare Borgia again, Leonardo was alone in her studiolo. It was a beautiful room, filled with beautiful objects. If he stayed, he could become like one of those collectibles, well polished, adored, and much talked about. He could be fat and lazy, painting picture after picture and enjoying intimate liaisons whenever Isabella’s husband was away. It would be an easy life.
The next day, Leonardo and Salaì quietly packed up their things and left Mantua. He thought of going to Venice, where he could design a fantastic city on those canals. Or what about Rome? It was a snake pit of corruption and war, but at least in the Eternal City, art grew out of the ground like weeds. Then he thought of Florence.
Yes, the city was at war with Pisa and wilting under the threat from Cesare Borgia, but it was also one of the wealthiest city-states on the peninsula and home to some of the greatest thinkers in history. Leonardo had spent many years in Florence, apprenticing and beginning his career within her walls. He had not been back in nearly twenty years, and when he’d left, he had sworn he would never return. But Florence was the one city with enough money, creativity, and freedom to launch him off the ledge and into the skies.
1501
Florence
Michelangelo
Spring
From the crest of a grassy hill, Michelangelo could see Florence: a glittering mosaic of white, yellow, and orange buildings, divided by the snaking Arno River, and topped by the soaring terracotta dome of Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral. The tallest unbuttressed dome in the world, it seemed as though God himself were pulling the cupola up toward heaven. Florentines loved Il Duomo. Those who were gone too long often reported having such a desire to stand under the cupola again that they suffered severe fevers and hallucinations. After an interminable four years away, Michelangelo had such a longing to feel Il Duomo’s shadow on his face that his skin flushed and his heart thundered. The disease of the Dome was upon him.
After unvei
ling his Pietà, it had taken him more than a year to make it back to Florence. He had to close up shop in Rome and settle his accounts, and then Jacopo Galli tried to convince him to stay down south. But finally Michelangelo said arrivederci to Rome and trekked north, up the pilgrimage route on the ancient Via Cassia. The road was dangerous. He skirted around the French army and nearly got caught in a skirmish between Cesare Borgia’s soldiers and a rebelling principality to the west of Perugia. Then a band of renegade mercenaries wearing the Borgia coat of arms attacked him. Never one to retreat from a brawl, Michelangelo fought back, but the bandits gave him a purple eye, sore rib, and swollen knee. They also stole his moneybag, leaving him with only a few lira hidden in his boots. At least his sculpting arm was unscathed.
After the skirmish, he stopped to recover in Siena, where he received a commission to sculpt an altarpiece for the powerful Cardinal Piccolomini. But the job was an uninspiring slog. The cardinal gave him strict orders for exactly how to carve each statue, allowing him no creative input. So, leaving assistants in charge of the Piccolomini altar, he decided it was finally time to return home. In Florence, he could surely find work worthy of his talents.
He had sent a letter ahead to his family, telling them he was returning. He prayed it had reached them in time to plan a proper festival in his honor. He pictured a parade of adoring Florentines, throwing sunflower petals and playing trumpets, leading him to a feast of bloody meats and red wine. His father might even let him sleep in the large, down feather bed in front of the fire.
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