Oil and Marble

by Stephanie Storey

  Her husband stood in the hallway.

  Leonardo, not wanting to alarm his patron, bowed to the lady. “Thank you for your time, Mona Lisa. You have given me more than enough to begin my work.”

  “You once told me,” Leonardo said from the doorway of Machiavelli’s office, “that you would always owe me because you drove me out of Florence and into the arms of that monster, Borgia. Was that, at least, true?”

  Machiavelli nodded. He was once again dressed in the fine clothes of a gentleman, instead of the stolen, tattered jacket of a dead soldier. “I meant it.”

  “Then I’m here to collect. It is time for me to defend my homeland.”

  Michelangelo

  August. Florence

  Michelangelo understood the risk he was taking when he knocked his chisel into the soft curve of David’s bicep. If he hit the chisel a bit too hard or struck a fraction off center, he might break off part of the arm, and he could not simply paint over his mistakes. The thought of adding an extra piece of marble to correct the error never occurred to him. A single colossus was the ideal for every sculptor and, for him, the only way. Once a piece of stone was gone, it was gone for good. Because of this risk, other sculptors ditched their hammers and chisels at this stage of the process and used more precise instruments, like files or rasps, to carve the finer details, carefully shaving off the stone, layer by delicate layer.

  For him, the risk of not using a chisel was greater than the risk of using it. Shaving off marble using a file was safe, but the process flattened out every curve. As long as Michelangelo struck true, a chisel allowed him to cut deeper, carve more dramatic angles, and create abrupt changes in lines. David’s elbows could fold dramatically. His muscles could cave into dark shadows and then push out toward the light. Michelangelo had used his hammer and chisel right up until the end of his Pietà to create dramatic lighting effects and a sense of movement. In that statue, the stunning visual effects came from the undulating layers of the Virgin’s gown. Here, they would arise from David’s rippling muscles.

  Michelangelo rhythmically drove his hammer into the marble until he could swing no more. Arm exhausted from the repetitive motion, he switched to his arco. He climbed to the top of the wooden scaffolding and placed a tapered metal rod against David’s head. Much like using a stick and bow to start a fire, when he moved the bow back and forth, the rod spun and the drill bored into the marble, creating precise holes that would form the foundation of David’s thick curls of hair. As he carved, hour after hour, Michelangelo’s body became one with the stone, and he began to sing his own psalm. “David with his sling, and I with my bow, Michelangelo.”

  “Michel!”

  Michelangelo froze. Who said that? Was it David? “Talk to me,” the sculptor whispered to the marble. “Tell me what you need.”

  A thumping sound.

  He put his ear to David’s chest. “Is that your heartbeat?” The thumping grew until it shook the walls of the shed, but it was too loud to be a heartbeat. It sounded almost like footsteps. Was it Goliath marching toward them to begin the battle? Michelangelo’s hands turned cold. It was too soon. David wasn’t ready to fight. The footsteps grew louder, as if they would stomp right over the shed and crush them both.

  “Open up. Michelangelo!”

  He spun toward the door.

  “I’m not leaving until you let me in.”

  Buonarroto.

  Hopping down from his scaffolding, Michelangelo tried to shake off his confusion. Had he actually feared his brother’s knocks were Goliath’s footsteps? Perhaps Granacci was right. Perhaps he was working too hard.

  He brushed marble dust out of his scruffy beard and opened the door. White sunlight blinded him. His eyes watered. When was the last time he had gone outside during daylight? He couldn’t remember.

  “What took you so long? I’ve been banging on the door for a quarter hour,” Buonarroto complained.

  “I didn’t hear you.” Michelangelo rubbed his eyes. “Sometimes I’m working so hard, I don’t hear anything.”

  “Well, it’s time to go. The city is calling every Florentine to the piazza immediately.”

  “I don’t hear the bells.” He thought back to his conversation with Piero Soderini. If the gonfaloniere wanted the bells to ring, why not ring them?

  “Forget the bells. It’s an emergency.”

  Michelangelo looked past Buonarroto. Sure enough, cathedral workers were dropping their tools and scurrying into the streets, where a flood of Florentines were hurrying toward the square in what could only be described as mounting panic.

  “Andiamo,” Michelangelo said, locking the shed behind him. “Let’s see what all this commotion is about.”

  “The pope is dead!” the jowly archbishop cried from the cathedral steps. A gasp surged across the crowd and then crashed into an anguished sob. Voices repeated the news all the way to the back of crowd, an echo rising up from hell. “The pope is dead, the pope is dead, the pope is dead.” The crowd waved their arms and wailed in grief.

  Michelangelo dropped his head into his hands. He’d lived his entire adulthood under Pope Alexander VI’s reign. While living in Rome, Michelangelo had personally witnessed the corruption and violence spread by the Borgia pope. But Alexander was still man’s connection to God, and he was gone.

  “Where is our family?” Michelangelo whispered.

  “Together.” Buonarroto shrugged without looking into his brother’s eyes.

  Michelangelo nodded. He understood without being told. Not even a dead pope could convince his father to forgive him.

  “Now that the daylight dies away,” a girl’s voice rang out, singing a wailing dirge. Her song rang miraculously over the thousand wails. “By all Thy grace and love, Thee Maker of the world, we pray to watch our bed above.”

  “Maria,” Buonarroto whispered.

  “What?” Michelangelo asked. Was his brother pleading with the Virgin Mary to protect him during this time of chaos?

  “Let dreams depart and phantoms fly, the offspring of the night.” The song continued, clear and melodious, as if coming from the angels guarding the gates of heaven.

  “That is my Maria’s voice,” Buonarroto said. “I would know it anywhere.”

  Michelangelo craned his neck. Finally, he spotted her. A beautiful girl, mouth open wide, projecting her mournful tune across the piazza. Her hands were raised toward heaven, and sure enough, they were dyed red, as Buonarroto had said. “The color of her silk, the color of my love,” his brother had sighed. The singing woman was the girl his little brother wanted to marry.

  As a tear dropped off Buonarroto’s cheek, Michelangelo slung his arm around his shoulders. With Italy turned upside down, fathers would be even less likely to marry off their daughters to penniless sons of former gentlemen. “What does this mean for Cesare Borgia and his army?” Buonarroto asked, his face pale with fear. “Are we saved?”

  Michelangelo didn’t have an answer. In his lifetime, there had only been three popes: the great art patron and builder of the Sistine Chapel, Sixtus IV; the zealous persecutor of witchcraft, Innocent VIII; and the corrupt Borgia, Alexander VI. But every time a pope died, another one had to be elected, and Michelangelo had heard the stories of cardinals bribed, blackmailed, and poisoned for their votes. Politicians and common people always talked more of Armageddon and war, as old families jockeyed for control and the dead pope’s confederates made one final grasp at the threads of power.

  Cesare Borgia might become even more volatile. He had not only lost his power, he had also been stripped of his duty to obey his father. Now, his own conscience would be his only governor.

  May God help Florence, Michelangelo prayed, because the future of Italy—of every person in that piazza—was, in that moment, wholly uncertain.

  Leonardo

  Autumn. Florence

  “Tell me, dimmi, dimmi, dimmi,” Leonardo murmured, sitting in a shadowy corner of Santissima Annunziata’s sanctuary.

  He wa
s watching Lisa, kneeling alone in a small side chapel. Fingering a rosary, her face half-bathed in light, half-shrouded in shadow, she was the perfect picture of a faithful Catholic wife. He could not have painted her better.

  Leonardo wished he didn’t have to spy on her, but since she refused to sit for him, he had no other choice. He needed to see her. For the portrait, of course. Sometimes he hid in the market to watch her visit her husband’s stall, or sat across the street from her house to catch a glimpse of her through a window, but his favorite place to watch her was here, in her church, praying in her family’s chapel.

  A man slipped into a chair next to him. Leonardo looked over to see Machiavelli staring at him with a sly smile. “I was surprised when your assistant told me I could find you here.” The diplomat leaned over to whisper in his ear. “Are you angling to get your old altarpiece back?”

  “I wouldn’t move back into these old walls even if the friars begged. No.” His eyes lingered on Lisa’s folded hands. “I’m trying to get closer to heaven.”

  They both settled into silence for several moments. From a distance, he thought, they must look like two devout men engaging in their afternoon prayers.

  “I have done what you’ve asked me to do,” Machiavelli finally said in sotto voce.

  “And you swear this time I’m not a pig being fattened up by a farmer who intends to have me for his dinner?”

  Machiavelli looked offended. “You come to me, ask for my help, and yet you still doubt me?”

  Leonardo raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “I swear on the Holy Bible.”

  Leonardo was silent.

  “On my wife? … All right, I swear on the Republic. May it fall to the Medici if I’m lying.”

  “Then why”—Leonardo leaned forward in his chair—“aren’t I talking to the Signoria now? Why this strange meeting in the shadows of a church?”

  “Because I wanted you to hear the news from me. Directly. No games. No surprises. I came to find you before the rumors reached you. And I know that in your studio gossip runs rampant like rats in summer.”

  Leonardo looked down at the ground. He wanted to believe Machiavelli, but the earlier betrayal lingered. He wouldn’t be taken for a fool again. This time, he would make the diplomat speak first.

  “The pope’s death has thrown the Signoria into chaos,” Machiavelli said. “It is a natural transfer of power, and yet the people, the government, Soderini, they are panicking. Don’t repeat this, but Cesare Borgia still commands the papal army, and he is refusing to allow the conclave to meet until the cardinals promise to elect a Borgia ally. Soderini fears that if the next pope backs Cesare, Florence will fall.”

  Leonardo nodded. “A lioness, when defending her young against hunters, keeps her eyes on the ground, so she’s not frightened by the spears. Florentines would be best served by not looking at the spears.”

  “True, but at least their panic has been good for your cause. It wasn’t easy to convince them at first. Diverting the Arno sounds ludicrous—and expensive. But once I showed them your plans, they began to see the beauty of the design. Now they’re more determined than ever to take back the mouth of the river. They know we’re vulnerable as long as the Pisans control our access to the Mediterranean.”

  “And they’re comfortable with it being me?”

  “They have their doubts. But I convinced them that with Borgia on the run, you’re our best asset. You know his plans better than anyone. In time, they’ll learn to trust you as much as I do.”

  “Thank you, Niccolo,” he said, watching Lisa gaze up at a statue of the Virgin Mary. He wondered if she were praying for the protection of her children at that moment. “If the city comes through on this, you have more than made up your debt.”

  “I may still owe you, maestro. I’m afraid my negotiating skills fell short this time.”

  Of course, it could never be simple with Machiavelli, he thought.

  “While you’re under the employ of the city, they want you to, well, provide a small additional service …” A bead of sweat collected on the diplomat’s pale forehead. “It was the only way, I assure you, to convince them to hire you for the Arno project. I tried to talk them out of it, told them you would refuse, but … they want”—he broke eye contact—“a fresco.”

  Machiavelli went on, speaking quickly. “It is only a small picture depicting Florence’s victory at the Battle of Anghiari. You have been to war, studied it, made drawings. You could dash off such a painting in a few short months, I’m positive. And in return for this one, simple picture, you’ll have full financial backing to change the course of a river.”

  Leonardo swallowed a laugh. Did Machiavelli believe he hated painting so much that he had to be convinced to take on a new commission? “And where would this little painting reside?” he asked as though annoyed at being asked for such a trifle. Better to leave Machiavelli thinking he was still in debt to him than the other way around.

  “In the Sala del Maggiore Consiglio.”

  Leonardo turned away to hide his mirth. The Sala del Maggiore Consiglio was the largest gathering hall in the city. Located inside of the Palazzo della Signoria, the chamber had been commissioned by Savonarola to house his all-powerful, five-hundred-member Grand Council. The committee was dismantled when the friar was burned at the stake, but the salon remained. Machiavelli was not asking for a trifle. He was asking for a masterpiece.

  Leonardo shrugged. “Well, if I must do the painting in order to get the Arno project …”

  “So I’ll tell Soderini the good news,” Machiavelli said, the lilt of a question lingering.

  “I suppose I will do what I must,” Leonardo said with a tone of resignation. Machiavelli was right. There was a special kind of joy in deceiving the deceiver.

  “Excellent. And please accept my apologies that the sermon is over,” Machiavelli said as he stood. “I hope I have not ruined your prayers.”

  What sermon? Leonardo wondered, as Machiavelli waked away. He looked back over at Lisa’s chapel.

  But the lady was gone.

  For once, Machiavelli had been telling the truth.

  On September 22, the College of Cardinals elected Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, a supporter of Cesare Borgia, as Pope Pius III. A week later, Florence hired Leonardo to divert the Arno and paint a fresco inside city hall. They paid Leonardo a generous salary, hired a team of assistants, and provided him with lodgings on the top floor of Santa Maria Novella’s monastery, in rooms usually reserved for popes and kings. As Salaì explored the lavish new studio, he remarked, “Now this is proper employment, Master.”

  And just as Leonardo suspected, the fresco was no trifle. The mural of the Battle of Anghiari, which was to depict the great victory in 1440 when Florence vanquished Milan and secured her stronghold on the central part of the peninsula, was never intended to be a small painting that could be dashed off in a matter of months. It was a monumental work that would span the entire eastern side of the Sala del Maggiore Consiglio. The chosen wall was enormous, taller than five men standing on top of each other’s shoulders and wider than twelve men lying head to foot. It was the largest blank canvas Leonardo had ever been given. That expansive wall, he thought with a smile, was the masterpiece he had been waiting for.

  Over the next several weeks, Leonardo’s mind fired with possibilities for the fresco. He made hundreds of drawings of soldiers and horses struggling to survive amidst the chaos of war. In between drawing, he obsessed over the Arno. The two projects bounced off of each other like hail crashing in a storm. One design fed the other, until the pebbles of hail were the size of snowballs, and then boulders.

  Then, one day, while standing on the banks of the Arno talking to Colombino, the foreman of the river diversion project, Leonardo saw a lady approaching. Her orange and red skirts swished around her like leaves on an autumnal tree. At first he thought she was an apparition, but as she came closer, he realized she was no mirage, but the real Madonna Lisa del Gioc
ondo. He hadn’t had a proper encounter with her in six months, not since her first sitting, when she accused him of being a traitor.

  “Leave me for a moment, Colombino,” Leonardo said. As the foreman returned to work, the lady strode up to Leonardo, stood next to him, and surveyed the riverbed, where a hundred workers sawed wood, hauled boulders, and built scaffolding.

  He didn’t know when he would have another opportunity to study her up close. So, as if trying to identify the characteristics of a fine wine, Leonardo took dozens of sips of her face to drink in her details: her forehead made longer by her plucked eyebrows, the curve of her almond-shaped eyes, the shadow on her neck cast by her jutting jaw, the hint of cleavage rising from the top of her gown. His fingers itched to pull out his sketchbook and draw, but he didn’t dare, for fear of scaring her away.

  After a long silence, she spoke. “You work for Florence now.” He hadn’t heard her voice in months. The sound was as smooth, sweet, and rare as whipping cream.

  “I do.”

  “By changing the course of rivers?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Allow me to show you.” He offered the lady his arm, hoping she would accept it.

  She did, tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow, her fingers tapping out a rhythmical tune on his bicep. For the next hour, Leonardo gave her a tour. The site was located in the western part of town, at the edge of the city walls, so Florentine guards could help protect the workers from attacks by Borgia men or Pisan mercenaries. The men were building levees out of large boulders. Once complete, the dam would span the width of the Arno, preventing the river from continuing down its original path. The water would then be forced to flow into a ditch the men were digging that split off from the old riverbed. This alternate canal would lead down to a dry natural creek bed that fed into the Mediterranean south of Pisa, thereby diverting the river around the enemy city. He wasn’t personally in charge, he explained; the foreman was overseeing construction, but Leonardo loved stopping by the river to check on progress. Work on his city hall fresco was slow, as always, his ideas taking time to percolate. His designs wouldn’t make it onto the wall for months or years. The Arno project, however, was already ticking ahead. “I have been studying the behavior of water since I was a child,” he said, “when I used to swim in the currents of this very river.” He bent down and put his hand in the Arno. “The water you touch in a river is the last of what has passed and the first of that which is to come. Just like time.”