Signora Da Vinci
Page 43
Many people believe that Salai was Leonardo’s young lover. I thought a better explanation of why he might have taken in the lying, cheating ten-year-old thief, spoiled him excessively, and kept him at his side till two weeks before the maestro died was that Salai was a son he would never have considered abandoning like his own father did to him.
Q. How plausible is it that a woman could successfully live as a man, as Caterina does in Signora da Vinci?
A. Cross-dressing in history has always interested me, especially women who have taken on the guise of men. The nearly unbelievable examples are females who have put on soldiers’ garb and gone to war for extensive periods, serving on the battlefield with male comrades, only being found out after their deaths.
Caterina, living alone as she does in my story, had it easier. It was my creative choice to have her menstrual cycle disrupted when, through misery, she lost a great deal of weight after Leonardo departed for his apprenticeship in Florence. This simplified certain parts of her existence. My favorite tidbit of historical research on the subject was the “horn” that cross-dressing women used to have a normal-looking male piss in public.
Certainly one needs readers who enjoy a “suspension of disbelief ” in this regard, but not only was Caterina’s disguise possible—such behavior was commonplace enough to have several books written about it (see my bibliography).
Q. Is it remotely believable that Lorenzo de Medici could have taken Leonardo da Vinci’s mother as a lover?
A. It is. Lorenzo was a famous poet in his time. His love sonnets were most highly regarded. While the objects of his adoration in his earlier poetry were the Florentine beauties Lucrezia Donati and, platonically, his brother Giuliano’s mistress, Simonetta Cattaneo, in his last thirty-seven sonnets Lorenzo fixates on anther woman—never named—but definitely not his wife, Clarice.
His lover, “my lady,” as he refers to her, provided “a beneficial touch that ennobled his life.” Under her influence he transcended suffering and achieved intense pleasure and happiness in his otherwise difficult, pain-ridden existence. We may never learn who Lorenzo’s lover was, but I like to think it was Caterina.
Questions For Discussion
1. Caterina’s life seems, from the beginning of the story to the last page, to be based on deceit. Did this bother you at all? Do you think she should have regretted it more, or do you think the ends justified the means?
2. Did you find it believable that Caterina fooled as many people as she did with her disguise?
3. What did you feel were Caterina’s strengths? Her weaknesses? How did you feel about her relationship with Lorenzo? Her father? Leonardo?
4. Did you ever feel that Caterina was an overbearing mother, or became too involved in her son’s life?
5. What surprised you the most about Caterina’s character as you went through this journey with her?
6. As portrayed in this novel, was Leonardo da Vinci a sympathetic character? If you had lived at the end of the fifteenth century in Italy, would you like to have known him?
7. Did knowing that the heroes and heroine of Signora da Vinci believed in pagan and Hermetic principles rather than Christianity make you like them any less? Any more? Have you explored any religions outside the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition?
8. Did the practice of alchemy by the members of the Platonic Academy strike you as a plausible pastime? Do you feel, after reading this book, you have a better understanding of medieval alchemy?
9. What aspects of Leonardo’s life and career were most interesting to you: his art, inventions, dissections and anatomical drawings, or philosophies and notebooks? If you had had a chance, what questions would you have asked the maestro?
10. All the Medici men suffered from severe gout and many of them died of its complications. Does this surprise you? When you think about the Middle Ages, what other diseases do you associate with the times?
11. Does reading this book make you want to further explore any aspects of the Italian Renaissance, the characters or plotlines Robin Maxwell has written about?
12. Some historians see the Dominican friar Savonarola as a church reformer and martyr. Do you feel that the citizens of Florence deserved his extreme “reining in” of their luxurious lifestyle, his “bonfires of the vanities”? Do you think he deserved burning at the stake?
13. Before reading Signora da Vinci, did you believe the Shroud of Turin was authentic or a hoax? After reading this book, have your feelings shifted? Is a camera obscura photograph of a corpse’s body and Leonardo’s face a reasonable explanation in your mind?
14. The author portrays Roderigo Borgia quite sympathetically. From what you know, or have read about the Borgia family in general, was his positive characterization plausible? Did you find it hard to believe that even a pope might have Hermetic and pagan leanings?
15. Did Lorenzo Il Magnifico Medici seem too good to be true as a medieval ruler? As a human being? Do you think he should have been written with more foibles, or did you enjoy falling in love with him as Caterina and the author, Robin Maxwell, did?
16. Superstition, with its omens, heavenly signs, talismans and worshipping of holy relics, played a huge role in medieval life. What are the modern equivalents of these beliefs?
Grape And Olive Compote
Friend and extraordinary epicurean Susan Jeter created this simple but spectacular recipe. It has always made for compulsive consumption and, with its ingredients as common to Italy now as they were five hundred years ago, cried out to be included in Signora da Vinci.
1 bunch seedless red grapes
1 jar (or equivalent) Kalamata olives, pits removed
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh chopped thyme (optional)
Mix all ingredients in an ovenproof dish and bake uncovered for one hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, turning the fruit every twenty minutes with a spoon to recoat them with the oil and vinegar. Serve warm or cold with soft goat cheese on crusty bread or with crackers, or use as a side dish with fish or poultry.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hermeticism, Alchemy, Philosophy, the Occult, Apothecary
Frank L. Bochard, “The Magus as Renaissance Man,” Sixteenth Century Journal
Robin DiPasquale, “The Aboca Museum: Displaying the History of Herbal Medicine in Italy and Europe,” on the Web
David Melling, Understanding Plato
E. J. Holmyard, Alchemy
Jonathan Hughes, “Base Matter into Gold,” History Today, August 2005
Art Kunkin, “Practical Alchemy and Physical Mortality,” Gnosis, A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions #8, Summer 1988, and conversations with Art Kunkin
Francis Yates, Renaissance and Reform; The Italian Contribution: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition; The Rosicrucian Enlightenment; The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age
Leonardo da Vinci
Serge Bramly, Leonardo, The Artist and the Man
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, arranged, translated, and with an introduction by Edward MacCurdy
Leonardo da Vinci—The Complete Paintings and Drawings, Frank Zöllner
Charles Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci—Flights of the Mind
Giorgio Vasari, Vasari’s Lives of the Artists
Michael White, Leonardo, The First Scientist
Lorenzo de’ Medici
James Wyatt Cook, The Autobiography of Lorenzo de’ Medici the Magnificent
Christopher Hibbert, The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall
Nicholas Saladino, Lorenzo the Magnificent and the Florentine Renaissance
Hugh Ross Williamson, Lorenzo the Magnificent
Florence
Michal Levey, Florence
Palazzo Medici, “In the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent,” www.palazzo-medici.it/eng/ museo.htm
A. Richard Turner, Renaissance Florence
Gender, Cross-dressing, Female Studies, Society
&n
bsp; Philippe Aries and George Duby, A History of Private Life—Revelations of the Medieval World
Rudolph M. Dekker and Lotte C. Van de Pol, The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe
John M. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance
Valerie R. Hotchiss, Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross-Dressing in Medieval Europe
Renaissance Art
The Age of the Renaissance, edited by Denys Hay
Barron’s Renaissance Painting, text by Stefano Zuffi
Rome and the Papacy
Will Durant, The Story of Civilization V, The Renaissance
William Manchester, A World Lit Only by Fire
R. A. Scotti, Basilica, The Splendor and the Scandal
Jesus in India
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Lost Years of Jesus
Look for the next original novel from talented author Robin Maxell, who has the storytelling ability to bring famous characters to life. Read on for a short excerpt where she imagines Juliet and Romeo’s balcony scene through Juliet’s love-struck eyes . . . .
Romeo moved closer to me. Without invitation he threaded his fingers through my hair. “Is that what you wish for yourself ?”
Something melted inside me. “I have no wish to be a man,” I said. “Honorary or otherwise. I only wish to write.”
“Do you wish to love?” he whispered.
He was so audacious. Yet I nodded.
“Close your eyes, Juliet.”
Without thought or fear I did as he asked. I believed I would soon feel his lips on mine. But instead he lifted my hand and, with infinite delicacy, pushed back the sleeve of my gown. Then I felt warm breath on the tenderest inside of my forearm.
“I believe in the senses,” he murmured, sending tiny waves of air across my skin.
I shivered with delight. “Give me another,” I demanded.
“This is mine,” he said, releasing my hand and moving away, but in the next moment his face was buried in my hair. He inhaled deeply. “Aaahh,” he sighed. “The natural perfume of Juliet.”
I tilted back my head to lean upon his and there we remained, still and breathing. Did he know that I wished his hands to circle my waist, slide across the naked skin of my breasts?
“Listen,” he said softly in the shell of my ear.
This I did, allowing Romeo to teach me. “It is the nightingale,” I said. Its trilling notes in the darkness had never sounded so sweet to me. How was it that suddenly I heard magic in that song?
I felt his arms on my shoulders, turning me a half turn. Then, with both hands enclosing my head, tilted it skyward. “Open your eyes.”
They fluttered open. There before me at what seemed as close as arm’s length was the full moon, a dark brace of clouds skittering across its bright and shadowed surface.
“Touch. Smell. Sound. Sight,” he uttered. “All so easily gratified.”
“What of taste?” I said, pressing him.
“Ah, now you become greedy.”
I turned to face him. “It is one of the senses.”
“True.”
Again, I thought that he would kiss me, to this way prove the fifth sensation. Instead he turned, and searching the fruit-heavy branch snapped from it a fat ripe fig. When he faced me again he held in his hands its two halves.
“Were there more light,” he said, “we would see the luscious . . . pink . . . flesh.” His voice caressed the words. Then holding my eyes with his, he took a half in his palm and brought it to his mouth. I grew suddenly alarmed as he buried his lips in the soft fig’s center and closed his eyes, ecstatic.
“My lord!” I cried, breaking the spell.
His eyes sprang open and he gazed without apology into mine. “I think I should go. I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
“No, no . . .”
But he had leapt to the balcony wall and swung his body up into the tree. Hanging loose from the branch by one arm he leaned down and held out his hand to me. The fig’s other half was cupped in his palm.
“For you, my lady—the final sense.”
I took it, words failing me once again.
“When you taste it,” he said, “think of me.”
Then he was gone, all rustling leaves and shadows.
I stood stupidly, staring at the half fruit and, smiling, brought it to my lips.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robin Maxwell lives in the high desert of California with her husband, Max, and her avian muses, Mr. Grey and Cookie.