Signora Da Vinci

by Robin Maxwell

  “I was seventeen, Mama.”

  “Sixteen when you went to Milan as a proxy at the wedding of the Duke of Sforza’s son . . . ,” she insisted, “and on the way, investigated our banks in Bologna, Venice, and Ferrara. And you are quite right, my darling.” She smiled at Lorenzo. “You were seventeen when your papa sent you to Rome to wrest a concession from the pope for our family to work the alum mines in papal territories.”

  “Your brothers advised me all the way,” he said to his mother. He seemed embarrassed at the praise being heaped on him in front of me. But Lucrezia was not finished.

  “Well, my brothers were not present when you visited that appalling creature in Naples.” Lucrezia addressed me directly now. “Don Ferrante, the ruler there, is renowned for his extreme cruelty and violence. He is positively determined to rule the whole of Italy. My husband sent Lorenzo to discover the man’s intentions.”

  “And I never did,” Lorenzo demurred.

  “But you fascinated the man. Charmed him. And came to an understanding with him that has held Tuscany in good stead with Naples ever since.”

  “Please, Mama,” Lorenzo begged her.

  “I know how to silence her,” Giuliano said with a wicked grin.

  “No, son,” she pleaded, appearing to know what was coming. She began to flush pink.

  “Our mother,” he began, “is the most accomplished woman of the century.”

  “A noted poetess,” Lorenzo went on, pleased that the conversation had veered away from himself. “She has written in terza rima a life of Saint John the Baptist, and a brilliant verse on her favorite biblical heroine, Judith.”

  “That big-boned woman in the garden about to decapitate Holofernes,” Sandro told me.

  Lucrezia, sincere in her modesty, sat with downcast eyes, knowing she could not quiet the boys and their litany of her accomplishments.

  “She is a friend and patron of artists and scholars,” Giuliano boasted.

  “And a businesswoman of some merit.” This was Piero who had chimed in. “Do not forget the sulfur springs at Morba that she purchased from the republic and turned into a successful health resort.”

  “Enough! All of you! I shall never brag about any of you ever again,” she announced with comic solemnity. There were murmurings of mock approval all around the table. “Though it is a mother’s right,” she added, as if to have the final word.

  I smiled inwardly, agreeing with her entirely. It was indeed a mother’s right to brag about her children. To glow with the pride of their accomplishments. But here at this table I was witnessing a remarkable happenstance—children that were reveling in their mother’s achievements.

  I suddenly noticed that despite Piero’s enjoyment of this family banter, the patriarch’s eyes were closed. Giuliano, too, had observed this.

  “Papa!” the younger son cried. Piero’s eyes sprang open. “Why were you sitting there with your eyes closed?”

  He smiled sadly at the boy. “To get them used to it,” he said.

  There were cries all around of “No, Papa!” “Don’t say such a thing!”

  Lucrezia grabbed his sore-knuckled fist and bit her lip. She looked at me imploringly.

  “Have you anything for pain, Cato? All of my husband’s physicians have thrown up their hands with it.”

  I looked around, momentarily unsure about talking of so intimate a subject at this table, but I could feel all around me the raw love and concern of family for family, and no less affection in Sandro Botticelli’s eyes than in Lorenzo’s or Giuliano’s. Manners be damned, I thought. I leaned toward Piero.

  “Is there a repression of urine?” I asked, and he nodded yes. “Frequent fevers?”

  “Almost every day,” Lucrezia answered for him.

  I was silent for a time, recalling a decoction my father had once made for Signor Lezi’s condition, one that closely resembled the Medici patriarch’s. It had not cured the gout, but had considerably lessened the man’s fever and suffering.

  “If your sons”—I smiled at all the young men, Sandro included— “will come to my shop tomorrow, I will send them home with something that I promise will help you.”

  Lucrezia bit her lip and blinked back tears of gratitude.

  “Thank you, Cato,” Lorenzo said. “We all thank you.” He grinned. “First thing in the morning we’ll be descending on your apothecary like a pack of hungry dogs.”

  Now everyone was smiling. Even Piero looked hopeful.

  “Forgive my tardiness,” I heard from one of the garden archways. We all looked up to see a sweet-faced man of perhaps thirty-five, hurrying to take his place across the table from me, next to Clarice.

  Lorenzo nodded at me. “Let me introduce you to our beloved tutor and longtime family friend, Marsilio Ficino.”

  I was startled, to say the least. Ficino was a legendary scholar, one of the greatest writers and translators in the world. “Silio,” Lorenzo went on, “meet our new friend, Cato the Apothecary.”

  I detected pride in this introduction, and was pleased that my new identity was more than accepted. I sat a bit taller in my chair. This evening that had begun as extraordinary was becoming fantastical. I, at the Palazzo Medici offering medical advice to the patriarch of Florence, and now meeting Marsilio Ficino! Would my father believe me? I wondered. Then I remembered what he had said when he’d given me his cache of precious books—that I would need them when I was in the company of great men. How had he known?

  My mind had wandered momentarily, but when I refocused it on the table I found that the discussion had turned to a most fascinating subject, and I prayed I had not missed a single thought. Lorenzo was speaking in the most reverential tones of an ancient text recovered six years before that had been given to Ficino to translate.

  “Do you remember how eager my grandfather was to have the translation finished?” Lorenzo said to his tutor.

  “‘Eager,’” Ficino began with a gentle smile, “would never begin to measure Cosimo’s desire for the completed manuscript. He was rabid.”

  Botticelli, Lorenzo, and Lucrezia chuckled at the memory.

  Piero nodded more solemnly. “He was determined to read the entire Corpus Hermeticum before he died, and you, Silio, realized that dream for him.”

  The Corpus Hermeticum? By its title I knew this to be a Hermetic text, but it was one my father had told me nothing about. I wondered if he knew of it himself.

  “How long did it take you to translate the Greek into Italian vulgate?” Lorenzo asked with a wry smile. “Six months?”

  “Four,” Ficino answered, then became more serious. “We all knew he was dying. How could I disappoint him?”

  “Forgive my ignorance,” I said, “but I am unaware of the Corpus Hermeticum.” All eyes turned in my direction.

  Lorenzo spoke up, addressing the group. “Cato has read the Asclepius . . . in Greek.”

  Ficino nodded at me, pleased. I felt heat rise in my neck. I hoped it would not rise further, causing me to blush like a girl.

  “It is not yet published,” he told me. “But if you know the Asclepius , then you know the words of its author, Hermes Trismegistus. The Corpus is a before-now-uncovered text of that same great Egyptian sage.”

  The astonishment must have been apparent on my face.

  “Like the Asclepius, it illuminates the magical religion of the Egyptians,” Ficino explained.

  “Though it goes more than a little further into it,” Lorenzo added.

  I had to work to keep my mouth from hanging agape. It shocked me that these high men so openly discoursed on a subject the church insisted was heretical.

  Sandro Botticelli interjected with great animation, “Hermes goes into quite some detail about the use of magical images and talismans for spiritual development. He talks about statues that can be made to speak.”

  Clarice cleared her throat so loudly she might have been choking. When we turned to her she was flushed with indignation.

  “Well?” Lorenzo dem
anded. “What is it you wish to say, wife?” I did not sense much affection in his voice.

  “Only that . . . all this talk of magic and astrology and talking statues . . . ,” Clarice began.

  I realized that these conversations must be commonplace around this table.

  “. . . is blasphemy!” Lorenzo’s wife looked to her mother-in-law for help. “Is it not?”

  “Clarice is quite right,” Lucrezia said with a stern edge, but I sensed a patronizing note as well. The mother of this family was famous for her religious piety, but first and foremost she was an indulgent mother. It was proving difficult for her not to smile when she said to her boys, “You all do have a whiff of sulfur about you.”

  There was laughter at that.

  “All we wish for is intuition of the Divine without the aid of a savior,” Ficino insisted.

  “That is more than a touch heretical, don’t you think, Silio?” Lucrezia said with great affection.

  “Drawing the influence of the stars down into statues by astral magic, as our master Ficino does, is even more so,” Lorenzo added. Now I was certain he meant to annoy his young wife. Lorenzo continued his argument. “These are legitimate practices of philosophers, Mama.”

  Lucrezia considered the statement as Clarice steamed.

  “You must remember, my dear,” said Marsilio Ficino, “that the most Christian Augustine was himself reading Hermes. Taking him seriously. Even if he disagreed on certain points, he could not have thought the man too much of a heretic.”

  “He’s right,” Lorenzo added. “The wisdom tradition Hermes speaks of can be traced in an unbroken line to Plato himself. And who can deny Plato’s wisdom?”

  “In fact”—Ficino turned to me again—“we now believe that Hermes was a contemporary of Moses himself.”

  “Really?” I was truly startled at this revelation and could not wait to write my father of it.

  “Really,” Lorenzo agreed. “We have even begun to discuss the question of whether Hermes was Moses.”

  “I’m going to bed.” It was Piero. He had heard enough of high philosophy for one evening, it seemed. Or perhaps the pain had simply overtaken him. His hands were flat on the table and he attempted to push himself to standing.

  “Wait, Papa!” Botticelli cried, standing in his place. “Please, I have something to show you.”

  Piero’s face softened, and a pleasant expectation crinkled his mouth. He relaxed back in his chair.

  Sandro stood. “Don’t anyone move,” he said and dashed from the table, “except you, Giuliano. Come help me!” The younger brother followed Botticelli, and they moved toward a closed door that appeared to lead into the palazzo from the loggia.

  A moment later, to the sound of crunching on the marble floor, they returned, rolling on a wheeled contraption a huge, paint-smeared sheet covering a rectangle that looked to be six feet high and twelve feet across.

  Facing us all, the artist beamed. He carefully removed the cloth and stood aside. Every jaw in the room loosened and fell. Then there was silence as a dozen eyes drank in the splendor.

  “I call it Birth of Venus,” Botticelli said.

  The first sight of it was simply startling. It was blatantly pagan and openly erotic, and an unquestionable statement of its maker’s genius.

  A woman, magnificent in her nakedness, was stepping lightly from a half shell at the edge of a placid sea onto a fecund shore. Her features were delicate and proportioned as if by the hand of the Creator. The color of her skin was pale, tinged with roses, but so fine in texture that one could almost see through her body. Venus’s hair was glorious—red gold and so thick and long and flowing it draped the whole length of her torso, where, holding it with one hand, she modestly covered her pudenda.

  So deeply drawn was I to her image that it was only by virtue of a hank of that lovely hair blown sideways from her head that I became aware of other figures in the painting. On the left in the air, amidst a storm of flowers, hovered two winged wind gods—one male, one female—entwined in each other’s arms and with puffed cheeks, creating the breeze around the goddess of Love.

  To the right of Venus was another figure, a woman—perhaps Spring—who in her pretty floral dress held aloft a posy-embroidered cloak with which she seemed to be urging the newborn goddess to cover her nakedness.

  But my eyes could not long stray from Venus herself. She was slender, and the one breast not covered by her right hand was small, but her belly and thighs were prettily plump and rounded. Only her left arm seemed oddly shaped—too long, and almost disconnected from her shoulder. But nothing diminished the overall beauty of face and form, and her expression of unutterable sweetness.

  I think Botticelli had not expected from the viewers this profundity of emotion, this stunned hush.

  “Do you see what I have done, Marsilio?” he said to Ficino, breaking the silence. “How the image holds a reflection of Idea? How I have used the greens for Jupiter, the blues for Venus, gold for the sun. Is she not a perfect talisman to draw down the power of the planet Venus, the very life force of Heaven, and store that echo . . . that taste . . . that substance of the divine Idea of Love, for our use?” His hand was clutching his own heart, and his eyes were limpid with tender emotion.

  But the boys’ tutor was quite speechless. His lips moved as though he was still trying to put his thoughts into words.

  “My darling boy,” Lucrezia finally said, “you have done far more than paint a magical talisman. This is a masterpiece for all time.”

  “I would venture that she is the most beautiful woman ever painted,” Lorenzo offered, “ever in the history of the world.”

  “What incantations are needed to bring her to life?” Giuliano asked in a hushed whisper. “I want to make love to her. Instantly.”

  Everyone laughed at that, and the spell seemed all but broken . . . except that I caught, out of the corner of my eye, Lorenzo staring at me. He was, I think, unaware I had seen him.

  “Come here, Sandro,” Piero said to the young man whom he and his own father had raised from a boy. His voice was stern and serious. Botticelli went to the patriarch’s side and knelt at his feet, laying his head on one swollen knee. The older man’s gaze fell on Ficino.

  “This is your influence, Marsilio. I see it. I hear it. All your lessons of spirits and occult forces, magi controlling the influences of the stars . . .” Everyone was still. Afraid to breathe. Piero looked up at Botticelli’s panel.

  “This painting . . .” His voice was choked with emotion. “. . . it makes me want to live another day.”

  A sob escaped Lucrezia’s throat, and she clutched her husband’s arm. There was a general outcry of relief and celebration. Sandro began kissing Piero’s hands in gratitude. The rest of us stood from our chairs and edged closer to the painting to study its perfection.

  Clarice was clucking with quiet indignation to her mother-in-law over the total nakedness of Venus on her clamshell. I overheard Ficino and the Medici sons’ conversation.

  “I’ve always told you,” the boys’ tutor said, “that images can be used as medicine.”

  “Perhaps as strong as an apothecary’s,” Lorenzo suggested.

  “Indeed,” their teacher murmured appreciatively. “Indeed.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Uncle Cato!”

  I looked up to see my son standing just inside the apothecary door, in exactly the same spot where Lorenzo had surprised me several weeks before.

  Of course the bell we had put up together jingled, but I had been so engrossed in consulting with my new customers—Benito and his grandmother, Signora Anna Russo—that I failed to hear it. My surprise and delight must have been instantly apparent in my expression, for Anna turned expectantly to meet my “nephew.” I just prayed that my confusion at being addressed as uncle, and not “Mama,” was less obvious.

  “Leonardo,” I called cheerfully to him, my husky masculine voice already becoming second nature to me. My shop had been an instant success, w
hat with the very real need for a neighborhood herbalist, as well as profuse gossip about my talents spread all around by my young friend, Benito. The moment I had opened my doors—even without a sign—I had been overrun with customers with every sort of ailment from warts to agues to infections to female maladjustments. A preponderance of my patients were women who confided to me that they had never felt so comfortable talking of “personal matters” with any man before. In no time, ladies and girls were coming from different Florentine neighborhoods, even some from across the Arno.

  With all that business and counseling, my new speaking voice and persona had developed. But more than anything, the friendship of Lorenzo and the acceptance by his family—though I did not confide this to my neighbors or customers—did more for my confidence in this new life than anything else.

  The potion I had mixed for Piero de’ Medici’s gout had, of course, not cured him, but thankfully it had relieved the worst of his discomforts. For this Lucrezia had been eternally grateful. After that she had sent for a veritable stream of everyday remedies and cosmetics, with the occasional request for Sandro Botticelli’s pigments. I hardly dared to think it, but the Medici matriarch was becoming my patroness.

  Leonardo was gazing around at the shop, his eyes fixed on the lofty ceilings. “I like your shop, Uncle.”

  Benito had gone directly to Leonardo’s side, a wide grin plastered on his face. He’d been nagging me about meeting my nephew, who was just a little older than him.

  “It’s not really Cato’s shop,” he told Leonardo. “Or so says our new apothecary. But I can tell you that when the old man arrives he’ll have a hard time wresting customers away from your uncle.”

  “My great-uncle Umberto would have a hard time wresting a worm from the mouth of a dove,” Leonardo said in a half-jocular, half-serious tone. “He’s already sixty-eight and quite feeble.”