The Madonna of the Almonds

by Marina Fiorato

  Bernardino was silent. He was being offered sanctuary. And his hand itched to be at the brush – he had never in his memory gone for so long without painting. A full day and a night had passed since he had drawn his message to Simonetta.

  Anselmo, encouraged, went on. ‘And Bernardino; I know of your reputation as a wolf to the fairer sex. But in San Maurizio you would be among Holy women. You must behave with propriety. This is your last refuge from justice; I cannot help you more.’

  Bernardino exhaled sharply. ‘Believe me, Anselmo, the sisters have never been safer from me. My heart belongs in that castle on the hill. No Holy moppet in a habit can tempt me when one such as she walks the earth.’

  Anselmo smiled gently. ‘I thought as much. Not for worlds would I have recommended you before this had come to pass. But now I feel that you will be as harmless as a monk – nay,’ he said with a wry smile, ‘more so, for not all monks are blameless. Let us say a eunuch then.’ He waited in vain for his friend to smile in the old way at the jest, then tried to sweeten the draught. ‘It need not be forever. But at present, it is better that you are far from here.’

  Again Bernardino was visited with the far-off memory of his exile from Florence.

  ‘And your patron is a fine man,’ Anselmo pushed forth, ‘a soldier and courtier, who loves the arts.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  The priest hesitated. ‘He is my uncle.’

  Bernardino’s eyes narrowed. He had lived in the world long enough to know what this meant. ‘You mean he is your father.’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Anselmo. ‘He is my father. My natural father. He is a good man, but like every good man he is not without sin.’ Anselmo looked down at his ringed hands as he spoke. ‘He has been good to me, for although I carry the stain of bastardy he has given me preferment.’ He waved his hand in a way that encompassed the fine house and all things in it. ‘I have come far. It may be that I will go further. But scandal or infamy touching my name will hold me back,’ he looked Bernardino full in the eye, that his friend might feel the full weight of his meaning.

  Now Bernardino looked down. ‘I understand you. I am endangering myself? Very well. I am threatening her happiness that holds my heart? Even in despite of this, I would not leave. But I will not endanger you, you who have been my dearest friend. Commend me to your uncle. I will go.’ The embrace that followed was one of true brotherhood.

  Just hours later, as the bells rang for Compline, Anselmo watched him go under the cover of night and reflected with sadness on their discourse. When he said that good men were not without sin, he had meant it. If he himself were to stand at the gates of Heaven, and were weighed by Saint Peter and writ in the ledger on the side of good, he would still have to account for the fact that, while Bernardino Luini had lost his own heart, he had in his keeping the heart of another – Father Anselmo Bentivoglio.

  CHAPTER 23

  Three Visitors Come to Castello

  Simonetta watched from the window once more. She saw the priest come and admitted him to her house and heard him in silence. But Anselmo saw that she had turned her back on God and was sorry for it. He expressed a hope that he would see her at mass, but knew she would not come while she was so derided. As the almond trees waved him goodbye he thought that, while her likeness lived forever in his church, he may never see her there again.

  Simonetta watched from the window once more. Then he came as she knew he would. She saw him from the window, and had his vellum in her white hand. She met his eyes over the distance and saw him caged behind the winter branches of the rose hedge, caught in a blackthorn web. She turned away deliberately before he could see her tears, crushing the missive in her palm. When she turned back he was gone, and she was pleased and destroyed at once.

  She may have shunned God but she still could not go to Bernardino. She could not come by happiness so cheaply. She loved him, but she could not give herself to him; there could be no good end to such a beginning as they had had. She could forget God, but not Lorenzo, and the public shame she had brought upon herself.

  Now she was totally alone. Raffaella had come to her in tears, and told her that Gregorio had told her to leave Castello with him or never see him more. Simonetta released her beloved maid, for although she was horrified at Gregorio’s denouncement of her, she could not say he was wrong. As one who had been divided twice from the men that she loved, and could not visit such pain on another soul; she told Raffaella to go.

  Simonetta had thought that there was no greater pain than the death of a husband. She was to learn she was wrong. To lose Bernardino before their love could even begin was infinitely worse, and such recollections only added to her guilt and pain. She knew that if she saw him close just once and let him speak to her she would run to him, and live their lives in secret passionate ruin. But the loss of her religion could not free her from her moral code. She still knew right from wrong and wished that she did not. In the cold empty fortress she had the useless comfort of a warm full heart, and the guilty remembrance of his kiss to heat her when the fire burned low. She shivered equally with the cold and the remembrance of his touch. She wandered the frozen almond groves and watched the leaves fall from the trees she had reprieved from the axe. She knew now it was a matter of time until she must leave this place. Her income from the paintings had come to an abrupt end, and Manodorata had not been near her since the incident in the church. She could not hope for the help of a respectable man, even one from another church and faith than the one she had sullied. She feared the jeers of the citizens of Saronno and so kept to herself. She dared not venture to town and approach the Jew in his house with the star on the door.

  But she had underestimated him. She had not known that one who had lived with jeers and ridicule could turn the other cheek. She had not seen that those who are derided make up their own minds before they themselves deride. She had not realised that the censure of Christians only recommended her to him.

  Simonetta watched from the window once more. And when Manodorata came up the path to Castello and she saw his bearlike furs she was so grateful, and so warmed by the approach of a friend, that she ran down to the loggia, and held out her arms in welcome. She did not know that her gesture mimicked the stark almond branches that held their dark fingers towards him too.

  CHAPTER 24

  Saint Maurice and the Sixty-Six Hundred

  When Bernardino Luini first set foot in the chapel of San Maurizio in Milan, he felt like he was entering a prison.

  The impression had begun to form when he had entered the city that morning at dawn, dressed as a friar and riding a humble mule. He had been waved through the great Roman gate of Porta Ticinese with no inquiry from the sentry, and had even felt cocky enough to sketch a cursory cross of beneficence over the guards’ heads. But when the pikes had crossed behind him again he began to feel trapped. Milan was a closed place, ringed with a rosary of walls and gates. The streets were designed to show the glory and importance of the ideal city to the world – long, wide roads with massy silver-stone buildings; it was not easy to be anonymous here as one might have been in a warren of cramped medieval streets in the old cities. A civic utopia, Lombardy’s capital was a dwelling place for courtiers, not plague-ridden peasants. Bernardino passed the elegant Roman pillars of the colonnade of San Lorenzo, under the cold shadow of the massive bulk of that same Saint’s huge, squat Basilica. Bernardino pondered that for all its shining new buildings and broad thoroughfares Milan was still an antique city at heart; the Roman origins lay all around, the new marched side by side with the old, and past and present shared the same modus: grandeur and civilization beyond their time. He shivered and pulled his robe closer – the weak dawn sun had not yet penetrated the streets and the city’s vast architectural marvels looked stark and bleak. Even the miraculous high-gothic Duomo, with its forest of silver spires, seemed a bed of nails set to impale him. Bernardino knew the city well; had spent many happy years here in Leonardo’s studiolo befo
re his master had taken him to Florence and their acquaintance ended with his Venetian exile. But now he felt no affection for his former home. Perhaps it was the fact that Leonardo had died some years ago and was no longer here to welcome his favourite pupil. Or was it that no place save Saronno could feel like a home to him now? Simonetta was his harbour, his mooring was wherever she was; and he was now cut loose, drifting, and had been caught in a net that closed behind him. He was a lobster in a pot. The grandeur of the pot was of no consequence to him – he was still trapped.

  Yet not all that was here was so grand. That evening, as Bernardino kicked his tired mule up the Corso Magenta where the monastery was to be found, he entered the humble doorways in the blunt stone façade sure he had mistook Anselmo’s directions. The chamber he entered was square and he was struck by the cold, and the darkness. He soon realised, as his eyes penetrated the gloom, that he was standing in the lay hall of the convent church, and the illusion of a cube was given by a dividing wall that reached up into the dark and just stopped short of the curved ribs of the ceiling. A yawning gap above told of another space beyond. High in the walls a series of small round windows in the Lombard style so loved by Ludovico Il Moro provided the only illumination. Bernardino walked forward with his footsteps echoing and examined the wall. Disguised among the panels sat two small grilles and shuttered doors, the only connection, it seemed, to anything on the other side. As he looked, the oaken doors through which he had entered slammed shut with a trick of the wind. The illusion of prison was complete. As one imprisoned might do, Bernardino fumbled about for an exit, and at last found an open door, through the side of one of the dark chapels that ringed the room. Here was another hall, but more rectangular in aspect – larger certainly. He walked to the middle of the great vaulted space and revolved under the crossbeams. The pilasters rose away into the dark void overhead. A painter that had gone before him – one with more enthusiasm than skill, had painted gold stars in a dark blue heaven and these stars now wheeled over his head. He was no longer in prison, but he was not yet free. This piece of decoration, and the cold, merely made him feel like he was outside.

  In truth he had not felt warm since he had left the circle of Simonetta’s arms. He sat down hard on the nearest pew and put his head in his hands, appalled by the task ahead. Why had he agreed to this? How could he, who felt so dead, make the place live – the two main halls and the numerous chapels? Would the brush answer in his hand or had he lost his passion along with his love? And where the hell was everybody? He was cold and a terrible tiredness settled on him. He wanted to lie down on the cold floor and sleep.

  But he could not. His first task, if he was to warrant the money he had been paid, was to portray his patrons. It was ever thus. In each place he had painted, be it ever so Holy, his patrons had insisted that their images take precedence, over the Virgin and the Saints and Christ Jesus himself. Today he had come with his sticks and chalks, his charcoals and scaffolds and ropes, and was to embark upon the image of Alessandro Bentivoglio, the greatest lord in Milan, and the father to his dearest friend.

  He had met Signor Bentivoglio this very morning, when he had first entered the city; fully aware that he must pay his respects to his lay patron before making his obeisance to God at the monastery. He had walked the marbled halls of Signor Bentivoglio’s great palace in the Borgo della Porta Comense, and been received by a man who surprised him with his quiet nobility. He was a good subject to be sure – a man of later years but of strong features, with a beard and hair as black as a moor’s. Bernardino had expected more of a dandy, a profligate – one who wasted words and wealth, and scattered Lombardy with bastard children such as Anselmo. But as he made sketches of Bentivoglio, the reason for this seriousness became clear, as Alessandro began to speak of the second patron Luini must paint: his wife. Alessandro’s great love, Ippolita Sforza Bentivoglio, was the patroness of the Benedictine order of San Maurizio, and was to be portrayed in a fresco as great as his own.

  The noble voice warmed so much when it spoke of the lady that Bernardino looked up from his broad sweeps of charcoal. He was attracted suddenly by fellow feeling – for here was a man whose love recalled his own. He vowed to do the lady justice, and said so. ‘If I may have the honour of sketching the lady, I will answer for it that my portrait will do her no dishonour.’

  The sad, stone grey eyes met his. ‘That you may not do. I wish it were possible.’

  Bernardino hesitated. ‘Signore, I cleave to your wishes of course, but I must tell you that a portrait is always better if it is taken from the life.’

  Now the pebble eyes seemed suddenly awash, as if the tide covered them. ‘My lady has been dead these five years past. You may only paint from what others captured of her, when she lived.’

  This, then, was to be the start of his commission in San Maurizio. A patron and a ghost. Bernardino could not face the painting of the lady yet. He had been appalled at Bentivoglio’s story and had almost wept with his model as the sitting finished in silence. He felt the nobleman regarding him closely, and the warmth with which he took his leave of Bernardino gave the artist the impression that he was being given credit for an empathy that he did not feel. He was sorry for his new lord, to be sure. But the tears he shed were selfish ones. Only his own loss could move him so. The loss of Simonetta.

  So when he hauled himself up on his ladders and platforms, he began to draw Alessandro first. There was no-one here to greet him, the huge lay hall stood empty. Beyond the partition on which he began his drawings, the great division where the public could not trespass, he at last heard the Holy sisters moving around, making their devotions. Through the gap above the wall he could hear the prayers and praisings from the sequestered nuns, without looking upon them. He was glad of his solitude. He wished to be alone when he began, to see if the gift was still with him.

  As he drew, the charcoal answered him and he transferred his sketches efficiently to the tempera he had laid. Alessandro began to come to light and as Bernardino drew he heard masses being sung through the wall as the hours passed. The plainsong that the sisters sang was so beautiful and sweet that the sound threatened his composure. He felt that he was drowning, that the tide would flood his eyes too, and he would be lost. He drew his brows together and shook his head, the song stopped, and only then did he realise he was observed.

  A lady stood there, tall and still. She had the carriage of a noblewoman, but her face was as scrubbed and homely as any village maid. Her skin was tanned and rosy, her thin lips dry, her eyes small and dark and friendly. She could have been any age between twenty and thirty, for she had eschewed all the unguents and artifices with which ladies of her birth improved their faces. She was unplucked, unpainted, and clearly used to the outdoors. Despite this she seemed to be an aristocrat, in all but the fact that she wore the habit of a nun. She was no beauty, but had a calm about her, and when she smiled in greeting, her face lit from within with a goodness that Bernardino wished he could paint. He felt soothed by her before she had even uttered. She was a balm to his wounded feelings. He felt he had met her before, that he knew her already. After the smile words soon came. ‘You must be Signor Luini. It grieves me that there was no one here to greet you, but you happened to come at a time when my sisters and I walk the cloister in silent contemplation. No,’ she held up her hand as Luini made to scramble down from his platform, ‘do not descend, for it seems a perilous business.’ She smiled her sweet smile again. ‘I am Sister Bianca, Abbess of this house.’

  Bernardino stared. She held up the ring of her office and he reached down to kiss it. He looked closely at the ring she wore as his lips drew nearer. It was a red cross of Bohemian garnets. It was the colour of warm blood but as cold as stone against his mouth. He thought only older matrons sought to wear such a ring.

  With uncanny perception she said, ‘You are thinking that I am full young to hold such an office.’

  Luini dropped his eyes. ‘Forgive me. I just…that is I thought…that
a lady such as yourself…there is much to see and do in the world…’ he blustered, ‘I thought that ladies entered Holy offices as widows or…’ he tailed off.

  The Abbess smiled again. ‘But when God calls you, Signore, he can do so at any age. I entered this place a full four years ago, at the same time that our Lord Duke Francesco II Sforza did reconquer the city. The rhythms of life that apply for other ladies – the age of marriage, the age to bear children – do not call to me. I dance my measure to the canonical hours, and my year passes according to God’s calendar.’

  Luini smiled too. ‘Sister Bianca. Do you mind if I continue my work? I must take the moment when it presents itself and I have a following wind today, it seems.’

  The Abbess stepped closer. ‘Yes, it goes well. It is very like him.’

  Luini drew on, and felt, rather than saw, that the Abbess stayed to watch. He was reminded of Anselmo in the Sanctuary of Saronno and smiled.

  The Abbess asked, ‘You do not mind being observed?’

  ‘Usually, yes. But in this case you put me in mind of another that watched me in this way. He too was a person of Holy orders.’

  ‘Perhaps he was captivated by the gift that God has given you. It is no small thing to make a man appear on a wall as if he were here in this room. Nor is it every day that we in Holy orders get to see a miracle take place before our eyes; for all that we read and study the miracles of the Saints every day. Perhaps we thought the age of miracles has past. It is heartening to know that it has not.’