Oil and Marble

by Stephanie Storey

  He had been so excited to be in the same room as the maestro. Leonardo’s studio was unlike anything he had ever seen: an infinity of books, sketches, musical instruments, paintbrushes, and models for curious inventions. Covering the walls and ceiling were murals of angels morphing into satyrs traipsing through magical landscapes, presumably painted by the artist himself. A silver lyre, a collection of wooden flutes and lutes, and a bagpipe were stacked in one corner. Hanging on one wall was a drawing of a naked man, arms and legs splayed wide, transcribed in a circle and square, that made Michelangelo ponder the ideal dimensions of a man. And cluttering the master’s desk were a pair of spectacles, hand-drawn maps, and stacks of loose-leaf pages stuffed into leather notebooks. On a pedestal was a live lizard, fitted with fantastical silk wings, horns, and a beard. A magnifying lens enlarged the strange creature, making it appear to be a giant dragon flicking its purple tongue.

  And then there was the cartoon. No wonder crowds were flocking to the studio to see it. It was only a drawing, yet already a masterpiece. Michelangelo had fallen to his knees and pulled out a pad of paper and chalk. Every good student of the arts spent hours copying the masters, and even though he was already a professional in his own right, he still had much to learn.

  Then the man himself had walked up. He was wearing a pink shirt, purple doublet, and golden platform shoes. His dark brown hair, streaked with gray, flowed past his shoulders in soft ringlets, framing his white-toothed smile and gleaming golden-colored eyes. He was the most handsome man Michelangelo had ever seen.

  But everything had gone wrong so fast. It was as if Michelangelo’s very existence had sent Leonardo into a rage.

  Michelangelo trudged into his old neighborhood of Santa Croce, the area surrounding the Basilica of the Holy Cross. A few artists and wool dyers kept workshops there, but it was mainly beggars populating its streets and low-class laborers filling its homes. This was the beating heart of Florence; its hard-working, sharp-tongued residents infused life into the city. He felt much more at ease among these people than amid those stodgy Florentines packed into Leonardo’s studio.

  He breathed in the smells of wet wool and wood-burning fires, his heart becoming heavy. What if Leonardo was right? What if Michelangelo were nothing more than a sculptor of snow people? Leonardo knew about his Pietà, yet had dismissed it as irrelevant. More than that, he’d mocked it. What did Michelangelo have to do to be recognized? Outdo his own Pietà? Was that possible? What if the Pietà was the best statue he ever carved? What if, at twenty-six years old, he’d already reached the peak of his career? What if he wasn’t as talented as he’d always believed? The idea closed around his chest like a collapsing cave.

  Turning down a crooked side street, he arrived at a familiar townhouse. At the sight of that dilapidated facade with the peeling green paint, a bubble of relief popped inside his chest. He jostled open the front door and slipped inside.

  Inside the dim entryway, he shut the door quietly behind him and stepped over the two floorboards that always squeaked. The house smelled the same: a mixture of fresh bread, body odor, and mildewed curtains. As he moved down the hall, he kept close to the wall, hoping to hide in the shadows. He felt like a teenager again, nervous about telling his father about his day’s mistakes, not a twenty-six-year-old man returning from a successful stint in Rome. Approaching the kitchen, he heard the chatter of his family sitting around the table for the evening meal. They were having a spirited debate. He peeked around the corner.

  There was his family, looking healthy and well fed, all of their limbs and eyes intact. His oldest brother, serving in the church, was missing, and the youngest was currently fighting in the war against Pisa, but other than that, they were all there. His two other brothers, father, uncle, aunt, grandmother. When he had been lonely in Rome, he had dreamed of sitting at the table with his family like this, all together. He breathed in the scent of spicy Chianti as a new bottle was uncorked. He wanted to stand there for hours and savor the scene. But the moment didn’t last.

  “Michel!” Buonarroto Buonarroti exclaimed, spotting him in the shadows. Buonarroto was twenty-three, the shortest and handsomest brother, and Michelangelo’s favorite. “Meno male, you’re home.”

  The rest of the family turned to see him hovering in the doorway. He wished now that he had stopped to clean up. He knew his family wouldn’t judge his tattered clothes or soiled hair; his father was a critic of regular bathing. If he had floated in on a cloud of perfume, dressed in the trendiest southern styles, his family would have spent the rest of the night hooting at the pretentious braggart come back from Rome high on his own prosperity. That would’ve been something.

  Buonarroto pulled up another chair and beckoned him to sit. “You’re here just in time. Giovansimone is wrong, and I need you to tell him so.”

  Michelangelo glanced toward the head of the table. Though they had not seen each other in four years, his father stared down at his food without looking up. Bald, with sagging skin around his toothless mouth, Lodovico was fifty-six, less than a decade older than Leonardo da Vinci, but looked old enough to be the painter’s father. Michelangelo wondered if this was what he would look like in thirty years. Lodovico’s wrinkles were deep, his brow heavy. He wore the clothes of a former gentleman, faded from too many years of use. The Buonarroti had once been a respected Florentine family, but after several generations of spendthrift patriarchs, including his father, their financial resources and social standing had crumbled. Michelangelo often lamented that he had not been born in earlier years, when the Buonarroti were still a powerful, moneyed clan.

  As he edged around the table, his Uncle Francesco gave him a welcoming slap on the back, and his bony Aunt Cassandra kissed his forehead. Michelangelo slid into a chair between Buonarroto and their ninety-year-old grandmother, Mona Allesandra. “Mange, mange,” Allesandra whispered. Her fingers looked like the branches of a gnarled old tree, but her hazel eyes still shone with vigor.

  Michelangelo dug into the meager meal of bread, curds, and watered-down wine, and tried to catch up on the family’s argument, but they were shouting over each other. He couldn’t follow anything.

  Finally, Giovansimone hopped up and stood on his chair, commanding the family’s attention. Giovansimone was a scrawny, sallow-cheeked, unemployed gadfly who was constantly trying and failing to grow a proper beard, and even though he stood stationary on his chair, he still looked like he was swaggering. “So far, I have me, Papa, and Uncle. But you,” he slurred, pointing a lazy finger at Buonarroto, “you have you, Aunt, and Nonnina,” he said, referring to their grandmother.

  “I also have Mona Margherita,” Buonarroto countered.

  “Servants don’t count. Family only.”

  Mona Margherita, the family’s longtime servant, was eating her meal standing at the sink. She caught Michelangelo’s eye and smiled. Nothing ever seemed to faze her.

  “The decision lies with you, dear brother.” Swaying from too much drink, Giovansimone’s dark eyes fell on Michelangelo.

  Everyone looked expectantly at him. He swallowed a mouthful of bread and curds. “I don’t know what we’re arguing about.”

  “Me or Buonarroto. Which of us is the better son?”

  Michelangelo groaned. “Mio Dio.”

  Buonarroto laughed, and the family exploded into debate again.

  “Don’t answer that.” Giovansimone hopped down from his chair. “You never liked me anyway.” He gulped down the rest of his wine and then raised his empty glass. “It’s a tie. And since I’m the youngest and smartest, I hereby claim me the winner.”

  A chorus of cheers and boos.

  “Michelangelo, say something!” Buonarroto implored.

  “Wait, wait, everyone,” Michelangelo called over the cacophony. “It’s three to four. Five, if you count Mona Margherita. You’re right, Giovani, I have always liked Buonarroto better.”

  The brothers laughed until Mona Margherita brought another hunk of bread to the table and no
ticed Michelangelo’s tattered tunic. “What happened to your arm? And your eye, and your … Let me get a rag.”

  “No, no, I’m fine, onestamente,” he reassured, squeezing her hand. “The Via Cassia is a dangerous road, that’s all.”

  Giovansimone leaned forward on his elbows. “Daverro? That’s your whole story? Dai, you’re with family now, don’t hold back.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Michelangelo shoved curds into his mouth.

  “Oh!” Giovansimone declared dramatically. “You want me to tell them?”

  Michelangelo stopped chewing.

  “What are you saying, Giovani?” Uncle Francesco asked.

  Giovansimone looked around the table with wide, innocent eyes. “I would have thought Michelangelo would want to be the one to tell the family how he was arrested and spent the night in jail.”

  Michelangelo swallowed his mouthful of mushy curds, as the family erupted. “Arrested?” “What happened?” “Explain yourself!” His father continued to stare down at his plate, his face flushing maroon.

  “How did you know?” Michelangelo asked with a heavy tongue.

  “I know everything, caro fratello.” Giovansimone leaned back in his chair, hands crossed behind his head. “I have friends everywhere.” Ever since childhood, Giovansimone had enjoyed ratting his brothers out, then sitting back to watch the chaos—or using the mayhem as cover for his own capers.

  “I will not have a criminal in my home,” Lodovico said and stood up. The first words Michelangelo’s father had spoken to him in four years. “You can sleep on the streets.” His father and uncle yanked him out of his chair.

  “Wait, don’t! I can explain.”

  They dragged him toward the door.

  “It was a misunderstanding,” Michelangelo sputtered, “about my relationship with Lorenzo.”

  At the Medici name, his father and uncle exchanged a look. The Medici had kept the Buonarroti family from complete financial ruin. When Michelangelo was a teenager and was invited to live and study in the Medici sculpture garden, Lorenzo gave Lodovico a small government post in exchange for entrusting his son’s education to him. Too bad his father never credited him or his art with that position, only the Medici.

  “My name is clear.” Michelangelo wrenched his elbow free from his father’s grasp. “I have not done us any harm.”

  It took Michelangelo half an hour to calm his family down, but his father finally relented. “D’accordo. You can stay.”

  Relief washed over him. After his day, he could not have borne the added humiliation of being exiled from his own home. As they returned to the table, he elbowed Giovansimone in the head and muttered, “Che palle.”

  “At least Giovani tries to provide for us,” Uncle Francesco said, using a serving spoon to scratch his back. “We haven’t seen you in years.”

  From one argument to the next, Michelangelo thought. Welcome home. “Well, it’s nice to see everyone now.”

  “You missed your mother’s funeral,” Lodovico said.

  “Stepmother,” Michelangelo corrected gently. “And I was working.”

  “You abandoned us,” Giovansimone said. “I, unlike you, would never abandon our father.”

  “I didn’t abandon anyone. I went to Rome. To work.”

  “How much money did you bring home?” asked their father.

  Michelangelo’s cheeks burned. “None. A few soldi.” In truth, he had about six lira in his pocket, almost a week’s pay.

  “So much for working in Rome,” said Uncle Francesco.

  Michelangelo sighed. He should be grateful to be reunited with his family, but instead he felt only disappointment. He had wanted them to run into the streets, raise him on their shoulders, and shower him with praise. He had dreamed of being welcomed home as a hero.

  “Now that you’re back, it’s time for you to get married. Have children. Marriage would be good for the family.” Lodovico’s right hand shook as he sopped up curds with bread. Michelangelo had never seen his father’s hand tremble before. He had grown old.

  “My statues are my children, my tools, my wife.”

  “You could get a government position.”

  Would his father’s complaints or advice ever change, or would they be having the same arguments when Michelangelo turned forty? “I’m not working in government.”

  “I have five sons,” Lodovico grumbled, “and yet I do everything myself. I wash dishes, repair roof tiles, bake my own bread …”

  Michelangelo flashed a look at Mona Margherita, already cleaning up the kitchen.

  “With your older brother in the church,” Lodovico barreled on, “you must take on the mantle of the eldest son and support us all.”

  “And I will.”

  “With a proper position.”

  “With my work.”

  “As a gentleman.”

  “As a sculptor.”

  Lodovico banged his hand on the table. “Basta! Do I need to beat that nonsense out of you again?” Even though Michelangelo’s talent had attracted the attention of powerful families like the Medici and wealthy cardinals in Rome, his father still thought sculpting was a disgrace. No son of a landed family, even one in decline, should ever stoop to working with their hands. Every time Michelangelo had said he wanted to be a sculptor when he was growing up, his father and uncle had beaten him. At least he was too old for a lashing now.

  “I have always been a sculptor, and I always will be,” he said evenly.

  “How can you find work here, anyhow?” Buonarroto piped up. “Doesn’t that Leonardo da Vinci fellow get every commission in town?”

  The mention of that name tasted like spoiled butter.

  “Leonardo da Vinci,” his uncle said. “Now there’s an artist you can respect. At least he’s made a name for himself. And he’s a painter. Painters are okay.”

  “Years ago, painters were as inferior as stonecutters,” Michelangelo said. “Just another artisan trade. Leonardo is the reason painters have gained respect. Can’t you see I want to do the same for sculpture?”

  Lodovico reached across the table and clasped Michelangelo’s hands, rough and covered in calluses. “My son, with the hands of a common laborer.” He sighed. “For my sake and for all of us, I forbid you to cut into another piece of marble. You deserve more than the life of a glorified stonemason.”

  Without responding, Michelangelo pulled his hands away.

  For the rest of the evening, the conversation turned to usual chatter. Giovansimone told a hilarious tale, which might or might not have been true, about fighting off one of Piero de’ Medici’s mercenaries, and Buonarroto read a love poem by Petrarch. Lodovico complained about his aching gout, while Mona Margherita kept the wine flowing.

  Michelangelo joined in the repartee again, taking barbs and dishing them out like always. On his way there, he had fought off outlaws, been robbed, arrested, tortured, and mocked. His shoulder was busted, his ego bruised, and he had lost all his money. This was no welcome parade, but at least he was home.

  That night, Michelangelo slept on the floor of his old bedroom, while Giovansimone and Buonarroto shared the bed and bickered over blankets. A full moon shone through curtained windows, illuminating the doodles he had sketched on the walls as a child. He could still remember drawing that chubby baby Jesus wriggling in the arms of his mother, and how his father had chased him out of the house when he saw it.

  Michelangelo closed his eyes. “My Lord, I am your humble servant.” As he spoke to his heavenly Father, he empathized with his earthly one. Lodovico only wanted his children to be happy and didn’t understand how working in a dusty, dirty sculpture workshop could give anyone joy. To him, sculpting was an ignoble craft that could only bring a respectable family shame. His father was so old and set in his ways, he would probably never change his mind, so Michelangelo prayed for a change of his own. He begged God to give him the ambition to do what his father wanted. He prayed for the drive to procure a government job or become a resp
ectable banker.

  God did not answer his prayer. Instead, the desire to carve marble only sang louder. If he followed his art, couldn’t he, somehow, raise up the Buonarroti name?

  “Michel?” Buonarroto whispered. Giovansimone had finally fallen asleep and was softly snoring. “I met a girl.”

  Michelangelo smiled. His younger brother had always been a romantic. “Fantastico,” he whispered back. “Who is she?”

  “Maria. The weaver’s daughter.”

  “Pretty?”

  “Bellissima. Her hands are always dyed red, the color of her wool, the color of my love. And she sings, mio fratello, she sings like an angel.” Michelangelo couldn’t see Buonarroto’s face obscured in darkness, but he could picture the earnest look in his brother’s eyes.

  “And does she love you?”

  “Oh yes. She has already begged her father to let us be betrothed.”

  “And will you? Marry her?”

  “Her father won’t consent until I have proper work. I’d like to sell wool, but I need my own shop.” Michelangelo understood his dilemma. The family had enough money to survive, but not enough to afford the costs for a wool stand. His brother’s dream of opening his own store must seem impossible. “But at least she is young. She won’t need to marry for two or three years, so I have time.”

  He should be more worried, Michelangelo thought. Two or three years would pass quickly. That was the amount of time it had taken him to carve his Pietà, and now that felt like a temporary flash. His brother must hurry if he wanted to take a wife in two years. “Don’t worry, Buonarroto. I’ll get you the money for that shop.”

  “Would you, Michel? That’d be nice. Because, well, she’s all I want.”

  Michelangelo rolled onto his back. He needed a way to make money as a sculptor. He needed a commission.

  Leonardo’s leering face flashed in his mind. If Michelangelo stayed in Florence, he would have to compete with the master for jobs. It would be so easy to run out of town and find someplace where he wouldn’t have to do battle with a famous artist. He could go back to Siena and focus on the cardinal’s altarpiece. Or ask God to lead him to a new city where the money would fall like manna, but instead, he begged for the strength to stay. He wouldn’t let that painter chase him away. Leonardo had been educated in Florence, but so had Michelangelo. This was his city, too. This street was his street. This house, his house. That moon, his moon.