“Benedetti? He loaned you money?”
“Gave, Master. Freely.” And why he gave it is a subject I will have to address with you very soon.
“If he can give you money, he certainly does not need mine, then. No more payments to Benedetti! Now, boy, I have much to tell you, but even more to ask you.”
Here it comes.
“Who told the Duke that I was working at the Lazaretto?”
“Don’t look at me like that, Master! Do you—can you—believe that I would knowingly betray you?”
“But the very day after you found me, the Duke’s horsemen appeared at the Lazaretto! How do you explain that?”
“I told you I saw someone on the roof that night. And you didn’t believe me.”
“I believe you now,” he says. “And you must have been followed. That was careless of you, Giacomo, very careless. But what is done cannot be undone. Let us say no more about it.”
No more about whether you might have been the one followed, rather than me.
He leaves the kitchen and goes to the study. I arrive soon after.
“Master, may I enter?”
He is seated before the fire.
“Hmm? What is it now?”
“Your father was here, Master.”
His head snaps up, his eyes wide.
“What? My father—Piero da Vinci—came to Milan?”
“Yes, Master. He saw the letter you sent to your brothers. He had money for you.”
“I will never take money from my father. Unfortunately, neither will my brothers lend me any.”
“Why is that, Master?”
“Because they do not consider me a proper member of the family.”
“But—why, Master?”
He pokes the fire with the iron and stares into the flames. Then, after long moments have passed, he turns to me.
“Did he say anything else to you, Giacomo?”
“What do you mean, Master?”
“Did you talk?”
Should I tell him what the old man told me? No. Better I keep that to myself.
“Only hello and good-bye,” I say.
“That is more than he has said to me since the day I left Florence. And more than I would want to say to him.”
“Anyway, Master, it is too late for your father’s money. He has left Milan.”
“And good riddance to him.”
He turns to the fire and warms his hands.
“Water, please, Caterina. I know you are outside the door listening.”
And I can hear her shuffle off to fetch the jug.
“Master, there is food ready for you, but please serve yourself,” she says, entering with the cups. “I do not feel so well. I’ll go to my bed.”
He continues to sit in front of the fire, staring at the flames.
“Come, Master,” I say, “let us see what Caterina has left for us.”
We go to the kitchen and sit down to eat the bean soup that she has prepared, along with half a loaf of millet bread. Now I must tell him my plan for the Last Supper.
“Master, we must act soon,” I say. “We owe so much money to the merchants, and Father Vicenzo, well, nothing would please him more than to throw us out of the house. He has already stopped payment for your expenses—”
“He has?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did. Even now the Duke may be welcoming Michelangelo, and who knows what will happen to us after that. Our task is to finish the Last Supper as soon as possible, if we do not want someone else finishing it for us. And we need to eat, too.”
“You have a great talent for re-stating the obvious, Giacomo. We have a tree full of worries, and all you can do is shake the branches. Instead of endlessly repeating the problems, give me a solution.”
Very well, then, I will.
So I tell him what I agreed with Benedetti: that in return for canceling our debts, his face would appear on the shoulders of one of the Disciples. (I do not mention the ten ducats, which I gave to Caterina for food—he would surely demand them.)
“And once I have proposed a similar arrangement to the other merchants—our debts are paid, the painting is finished, the Duke is satisfied, Michelangelo is sent away, and your position will be secure. There, Master, you asked for solutions. How does this one sit?”
“Whose idea was this, Giacomo?” he says sweetly. “Yours or Benedetti’s?”
“Why, mine, Master, of course.”
He’s going to shower me with thanks and praise!
No, his expression is changing, the smile has gone, the eyebrows are lowering, and now he is shouting loud enough to make Donatello’s skull cover its ears, if it still had ears. Or hands to cover them.
“I will never, ever compromise my art to pay off a few merchants. You have done many foolish things in the past, Giacomo, and I have managed to forgive you for them. But you go too far! Nobody tells Leonardo da Vinci how to paint, what to paint, or why to paint. I, and only I, Giacomo—hear me for the first and last time!—make those choices.”
“Master—”
“Learn the business of art, boy, before you meddle in another artist’s business. That time is many, many years hence.”
Never has Pride, newly attired in the soft robes of Self-respect, been obliged to undress so quickly. I press my lips together to restrain the profanities seeking to escape. He is like a man who prefers to stand in the rain on his own rather than ask for shelter from another.
And the way he is looking at me now, he is about to rain a tempest down on my head. I’d do best to leave the room without delay. His father was right about one thing: Leonardo da Vinci is a very stubborn man!
But I cannot leave without saying something, anything—to show my respect, of which he now thinks I have none.
“Master?”
“Yes?”
“Happy New Year.”
He looks straight through me and gives a slight shake of his head.
“Is it?” he replies. And turns away.
There go my painting lessons, perhaps forever.
XXVII
For the first time ever since I came to live with the Master, Caterina is not already awake and bustling about in the kitchen when I rise the next morning. She complained of feeling unwell the night before, true, but illness has never prevented her from being first in the kitchen to light the fire. It was a matter of pride for her to rise before us.
That she is still in her bed frightens me.
I run upstairs to her room. She is sleeping peacefully. Poor thing, she has exhausted herself. Maybe rest is all she needs. When I think how she hit Tommaso over the head with her pan, I have to laugh. But then I remind myself that one day he and his cronies will creep up behind me and—
“Giacomo, where are you? There is no breakfast!”
I run back downstairs and into the kitchen. The Master is waiting.
“Where is Caterina? Never mind. Forget breakfast. You are coming to Santa Maria with me, boy. Now. I grow vexed with your constant complaints about the Last Supper. You have been hinting that I am unable to finish it. No, do not deny it. Put on your cloak and off we go.”
The Master and I walk out together into the air. The water trough is sealed with a layer of ice. A rough gray sky covers the earth like a beggar’s blanket.
He takes long strides and urges me to walk more quickly. We pass through the Vercellina Gate and head towards Santa Maria, our breath clouding the air before us. A cart lies in the ditch, one of its wheels off. The driver is nowhere to be seen.
Soon we come to the refectory. The Master searches through his leather bag.
“The key! I do not have the key.”
“It’s in your hand, Master.”
He looks at it as if for the first time.
“So it is.”
I take the key from him, put it in the lock, and turn. A part of me, if not all of me, wishes I had the wrong key and that we would never aga
in enter this room to stand before the Last Supper.
The doors open slowly, grinding their hinges. There is a scampering in the darkness. I feel a strange comfort, knowing that the mice have not deserted the refectory. Perhaps they have faith that the painting will be finished, even if the rest of the world does not.
The Master takes two candles from his bag and lights them. He walks straight to the Last Supper, mounts the ladder to the upper platform, and holds the candles aloft while he inspects the surface.
From left to right he paces, then from right to left. He descends to the lower platform and makes a further inspection.
Still he says nothing, but shakes his head.
Then he steps down to the floor, stands back a few paces, and takes in the whole surface. Now he turns to look at me.
“Why do you think I have been hesitating to finish the painting, boy?”
“Because you could not decide which faces to use as models for Jesus and Judas?”
“Come, Giacomo, you know better than that. There is another reason, far more important.”
I know. That’s why I’ve been worrying.
“What is the meaning of that look? Do you think I deliberately waste my time? That I do not paint the Last Supper because I cannot master it?”
“No, but—”
“No painting has ever defeated me, or ever will.”
“Yes, Master. I mean, no.”
“Come here, boy. Look! Look closely at the surface of the wall. Well?”
“Master, I see nothing.”
There’s nothing to see, nothing having been painted on it!
“Touch it, boy, touch it.”
“It’s—it’s—?”
“It is. Damp. Not much, just a little, but enough. For the past two years I have waited for the plaster to dry itself out. I have tried applying all manner of coatings to the surface: beeswax, boiled oil, varnish, resins. Nothing has worked. I have even tried prayer. And now I am trying a chalk-and-limestone mixture. The problem is not so much this side of the wall—the other is where the dampness comes from.”
“But—what do we do, Master?”
“Do? We should abandon this place and paint the Last Supper in another refectory in another church! I suggested as much to the Duke—and he bellowed all Hell at me. His late wife, the Lady Beatrice, is buried in Santa Maria. No other church will do. When I told him that the dampness renders the surface unsuitable for paint, he told me not to bother him with petty grievances and to remedy the matter.”
“So now you must finish it on a damp wall?”
“Given more time, I can find a solution—I know I can. But he won’t give it to me! Easter, it has to be done by Easter, in time for the arrival of Pope Alexander. He will compel me to finish a painting that should not be finished—and doom what was to be my eternal monument to an early death!”
“Oh, Master …”
He lightly touches the surface with his finger and inspects the residue.
“And that is why you decided to paint the wall secco—in oil? Because you thought it might hold better on the wall?”
He nods.
“I could not use fresco, because that relies absolutely on the plaster drying. The problem would be visible right from the beginning. With oil, at least, we have some time before—”
At that moment there is a pounding on the refectory doors, followed by voices: “Is he in there?” and “Come out, Master Leonardo!”
“If that is Father Vicenzo,” my master says, “tell him that the Duke has promised to hang him up by the ears if he interferes with me again.”
“Yes, Master.”
I go to open the doors. Some ten persons are standing there—shopkeepers, the ones we owe money to. I close the doors behind me.
“Right,” says Fazio, “where is he?”
“Not here,” I say, without thinking. I know the routine. “Gone to Rome.”
“Not without you, he hasn’t,” says Rossi, the greengrocer. “He’d lose his way.”
“We know he’s here,” Bagliotti, the baker, says. “We’ve been watching him.”
From behind the doors I hear my master shout: “Let them in, Giacomo, let them in. If I can yet finish the Last Supper with all these interruptions, they will account me a greater artist than ever before.”
The group of claimants enters. The Master is still staring at the wall.
Fazio speaks. “We’re here for our money. Or rather, we’re here for your money. We’ve waited long enough.”
Now the Master turns and says: “Did you want to be paid yesterday?”
“Of course we did,” Rossi says.
“But you weren’t,” my master replies. “So please do not tell me that today is any different.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Fazio asks.
“It is all I am going to say.” My master crosses his arms. “Now, gentlemen, if you please. I have work to do, by order of the Duke.”
“We all have work to do, Master!” Peroni says.
“You call what you do work, Peroni?”
“Master Leonardo, you have eaten my cheese—”
“Once was enough.”
(A while ago my master had a bad attack of stomach cramps after eating some of Peroni’s gorgonzola, our famous local cheese, which is left to age naturally in caves, where the mold gives it its blue veins. It happened that some bats took up residence in the same caves. The cheese was tainted. Since eating it, my master’s mood has been the same.)
“Blame the bats for that cheese, not me!” Peroni says in a high voice. “I would have been pleased to give you your money back—if you had paid me in the first place.”
“What about my health?” the Master says. “How do you plan to give that back to me?”
“Master,” Bagliotti says, approaching him, “we did not come here to insult or be insulted. We came here for our money. And if we don’t get it within the next seven days, we will have to take the matter to the Court of Justice.”
“Do as you must. You will never receive my business again.”
There is general laughter at this response.
“We don’t want your business again, Master,” shouts a voice from the back. “We just want your money!”
“I don’t have any. Good day, gentlemen.”
“Don’t expect any of the other shopkeepers to deal with you in the future, either,” Peroni says. “The whole market is behind us. If you don’t pay, you don’t eat, Master Leonardo. Insult your way out of that!”
The Master is, in fact, silent. I look at him. We could solve this problem now if he would agree to use their faces in the Last Supper.
“Master, please …”
He shakes his head at me.
“There is a way we can avoid all the unpleasantness of the courts,” Rossi says. He has several long stray hairs on his lumpy chin. Could he not see them in the mirror? Surely his wife could, even if he chose to ignore them. She must love him very much, to leave them hanging there like that.
“Yes,” my master replies. “Desist from making the complaint.”
“No, Master,” Bagliotti says, “the complaint will be made. Unless … well, we understand from the paper merchant, Benedetti, that he has come to a private agreement with you concerning the payment of your debt to him.”
My master turns to me. Is he going to shout again? I’ll avoid his gaze and look out of the window, as if I have just seen someone I know fly past.
“What agreement?” he says.
“Why, Master Leonardo, you agreed to paint Benedetti’s face in the Last Supper,” Fazio says.
“You are wrong,” comes the reply, and in a rising voice. “I never made any such agreement, my servant did, and without my approval. Talk to him, if you like, but as I do not plan to honor this arrangement, you may find your discussion a bigger waste of time than your visit here today.”
The Master turns back to the Last Supper.
“So whose faces will you use, if not ours, Mast
er Leonardo?” Fazio says, the persistent fellow, I have to admire him. “Are we not grand enough for you? Is it only the rich and important who appear in your paintings? Yet the Disciples were simple men, Master, whose hands bore the marks of a lifetime’s labor, as do ours.”
He makes no reply, even though Fazio’s speech deserves one.
“Gentlemen,” I say, “let us leave the Master to his work.” Nobody moves. “Please.”
I take Fazio by the arm and guide him away before the Master becomes incensed, and I can tell from the way he is standing, hands on hips, that he soon will be.
When I have herded them like reluctant sheep out into the cold air, I say: “You all know the Master will pay, in time. Even now the Duke owes him thousands of ducats.”
“Always the Duke, isn’t it!” Peroni chirps. “The Duke is not responsible for eating Leonardo da Vinci’s cheese, is he?”
“No, but—”
“Then why should he be responsible for his bill?”
Can’t argue with that.
“Nor is your master courteous,” Rossi says, “not that we expect much of that from an artist. But he should be asking for our forbearance.”
“Then offer it to him anyway, gentlemen, and he will be all the more in your debt.”
“The last thing we want is more of Leonardo’s debt!”
There is some laughter at this. And if there is still laughter, there is still hope.
“Will he paint Benedetti, or no?” Bagliotti says.
“I made the arrangement without the Master’s consent. I did not anticipate an objection.” But I should have.
“The last thing we want, Giacomo,” Fazio says, “is to take the matter to court. Even Peroni, whom your master insults so freely, is against it.”
What Peroni wants more than anything, I think, is an apology for my master’s mockery. And, like most things that one badly wants, he is unlikely to get it.
“But it is Father Vicenzo who brings us here,” Bagliotti continues. “He has been whispering in our ears that the Dominicans have stopped paying your master and are about to throw him out of that house you live in. We have been very patient, but this news has doubled our worries. Now we are thinking that Leonardo da Vinci might be tempted to leave Milan in the middle of the night—and us with our unpaid bills. He would not be the first artist to do so.”
Leonardo’s Shadow Page 17