Signora Da Vinci

by Maxwell, Robin

  We reached the first floor and at once I was impressed by the quiet serenity that enveloped us. Just a story below was a seething financial marketplace. Yet here we were, as Lorenzo had promised, in a home.

  Not, of course, just any home.

  Every available space of wall, every niche, every inch of floor was itself a work of art in marble, gilded plaster, or finely carved wood. Monumental ceilings soared far above our heads. There were tapestries, paintings, sculptures, bas relief medallions, and exotic Ottoman carpets. I could not decide where to look first.

  Lorenzo decided for me. He steered us into the first door at the top of the stairs, a salon that, by my rough calculations, stood above the open-air public loggia on the corner of Via Larga and Via Gori.

  “This is where the family gathers,” he said, “and where, in bad weather, we entertain.”

  It was an enormous chamber with an azure and gold ceiling of staggering height, its many windows flooding it, even this late in the day, with enough light that all of the precious artifacts adorning it were clearly visible.

  “Have you heard of the Pollaiuolo brothers?” Lorenzo asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Come look at their work.” He guided me to the first of three large paintings that graced the salon’s walls. “They are friendly rivals of Verrocchio. Aside from your nephew, their bottega boasts some of the best young talent in Florence.”

  “But this is amazing,” I said, staring at its naked, beautifully muscled man, his warrior’s pelt headdress flying out behind him. One up-raised arm clutched the club with which he would momentarily bash in the brains of a many-headed beast, one of whose sinuous necks he clutched in his other hand.

  “It is Hercules and the Hydra,” Lorenzo told me.

  Two others by the Pollaiuolos were similarly alive with action and naked men. All the paintings and statues I had ever seen in my life had been of a purely Christian nature. These in front of me were mythical paintings, from Greek tales that my father had told me as bedtime stories. Ones that I was told never to share with other children.

  But when I turned to Lorenzo to make the observation, I found him staring quite peculiarly at the rippling-muscled Hercules and perceived, for the briefest moment, that my host was embarrassed. When he felt my eyes on him he said quickly, “Come. There’s much more to see.”

  He took me out into the hall above the courtyard again and we made our way to a set of massive carved doors. I could smell incense wafting up from the cracks beneath it.

  “Is this a chapel?” I asked, intrigued. “Inside your house?”

  “The first of its kind,” he answered. “The pope had to give us a special dispensation for it.” He swung open the doors and in we went. Here was a spectacular mural that surrounded us on three sides and climbed to the top of the high vaulted ceiling. My head spun with the fabulousness of the colors alone, no less the scene that the artist had rendered.

  “What am I seeing here?” I said.

  “Gozzoli’s Procession of the Magi.”

  He led me first to the west wall. I had to crane my neck to see the details all the way to the gorgeously gilt ceiling, but I was determined not to miss a thing. Here, before a bright white mountain range that I could not discern as snow or ice or marble, was an immense procession indeed, all of the men on horseback and on foot. But there were animals, too—huge spotted cats—one of them oddly riding pillion behind a boy on horseback, and a great falcon standing on the ground.

  “Who are these people?” I said, attempting to take in the complex and meticulously rendered faces and clothing, the weave and folds of the textiles, the facets of the gems, the luster of a silver spur. Every feather in the plumage of the birds, every petal of every flower, and each tree hanging with ripe fruit was in itself an ingenious work of art. The leaves of certain plants appeared to be painted in solid gold.

  “Who they are,” Lorenzo began, “is a story within a story. It is, after all, Gozzoli’s painting of the three Wise Men journeying to the birth of Jesus. Ten years ago, when my grandfather and father hired him to paint the fresco, it was the fashion that models for the biblical figures should be men and women the artist knew and admired.”

  “Their patrons?” I suggested.

  “Patrons and families and friends. Important figures of the day. Even the artist himself. You can find Gozzoli three different times in the fresco. This is the Holy Roman Emperor as the Wise Man Melchior,” Lorenzo said, pointing to an old man whose headdress resembled a crown. “And here is Balthasar, the Wise Man from the East. Gozzoli used for his model John Palaeologus, the Eastern emperor. Both rulers were in Florence in 1439—it was quite a spectacular occasion—trying to bridge the schism between the two branches of the Catholic church. It ultimately failed. . . .”

  “Constantinople was conquered by the Turks four years later,” I offered.

  “Quite right. But the true outcome of the visit was wholly unexpected and even more stupendous. In John’s entourage were some of the greatest Greek scholars and thinkers and theologians of the time. During that conclave a great passion for classical learning was born. Florence was buzzing with debates between the best minds of Eastern and Western thought. It was how and when my grandfather’s obsession for gathering the art and philosophy of ancient times began. After everyone left he sent out scouts like Niccolo Niccoli and Poggio Bracciolini to find the lost manuscripts of antiquity.”

  I was tempted in that moment to reveal my father’s connection to Poggio, but I held my tongue.

  “Things in Florence were never the same again,” Lorenzo finished.

  “Tell me about this one,” I said, moving to the east wall. This was by far the most crowded and detailed of the three frescoes, with dozens of men attending six men on horseback as they rode down from a castle at the top of the high white mountains. A dog chased a man on horseback, who himself chased a deer.

  “Well, here you can see my family.” Lorenzo smiled at me. “No surprise. We were Gozzoli’s patrons.”

  “This looks to be your father.” I pointed to a broad-cheeked man in rich red robes on a white horse. I felt myself suddenly embarrassed by my familiarity. “I saw him at your wedding festival.”

  “Ah, the day you threw yourself under my horse.” Lorenzo had a way about him that made me feel at ease. “You are right, though. That is my father, Piero. And following right behind him on a brown horse in robes as humble as a monk’s is my grandfather, Cosimo.”

  “And where are you?” I asked.

  This time Lorenzo’s smile was wry. “I am in two places, actually. Here . . .” He pointed to a very young man on a magnificently caparisoned white steed. Unlike his father and his grandfather, he was clothed in royalty and wore a large bejeweled crown. The boy’s features were fine, almost pretty.

  “This is the idealized version of Lorenzo de’ Medici as, I suppose, the artist expected the ruler of a great republic should be.” Then he pointed to another face nearly lost amidst a gaggle of scholars, all easily identified by their tall scarlet caps. “This is me as well. The real ten-year-old—jutting lip, squashed nose and all.” Lorenzo was matter-of-fact when he said this, with not a hint of injured vanity. “Listen, there’s something I want to show you before dinner.”

  Lorenzo seemed on fire now. I followed him back down the stairway to the ground floor and its square colonnaded courtyard.

  It was as Lorenzo had said it would be—emptied of the bankers, merchants, negotiators, and hagglers. Several servants were quietly sweeping the marble floor and another was polishing the heavy wooden doors that looked as though they could hold back a small army. It was, here in the Palazzo Medici, as serene and domestic now as it had an hour before been chaotic and mercenary.

  We crossed the courtyard diagonally to a single unobtrusive door. But what was to be found inside it was anything but ordinary.

  It was a magnificent library.

  The tall fitted cabinets and shelves of inlaid cypress and walnut fille
d every inch of the four walls from floor to ceiling. They looked and smelled freshly constructed and finished. Many ornate pedestals had been built to accommodate large manuscripts. I turned to Lorenzo to find on his face an ecstasy in which tranquility and excitement were balanced in equal parts.

  “Until this year the collection was lodged at the Monastery of San Marco. These are the books and manuscripts my grandfather and my father collected. Recently I’ve acquired some myself.” He looked around, beaming. “Where do I begin?”

  I found his ardor infectious. “The earliest,” I suggested.

  “Good. The earliest.” He didn’t have to think but a moment. He crossed the chamber and opened a stained-glass cabinet door. Then he withdrew from the shelf, with something akin to religious reverence, a scroll, the antiquity of which was clearly apparent. He placed it on a massive table and gestured for me to sit down before it. He unrolled it with a delicacy in those strong, muscular hands that seemed impossible.

  I silently read the title, in Greek. I was hardly breathing.

  “Is this . . . an original?” I finally said.

  “Yes.”

  I saw in front of my eyes words that had been inscribed fifteen centuries before. It was not a work that my father had ever translated or possessed, though he had told me of its existence. I read silently the opening lines of Sophocles’s Antigone. Lorenzo stood behind me, quietly inhaling my delight. I could have sat there for hours, reading this legendary play, but a few moments later I rolled it closed, slowly and with great care.

  “I’ve a Greek treatise on surgery,” Lorenzo offered. “Or perhaps you’d like to see a manuscript of Cicero’s letters. Or Tacitus. I have two of his. All the classical and early Christian literature. . . .”

  I turned and looked up at him. “May I come back again, when I have more time?”

  He smiled broadly. “Of course! Here is the beauty of it, Cato. This library, like no other in Europe, is open to the public. All scholars are welcome.”

  This was a staggering thought.

  “Knowledge, Herself, has her home here,” he intoned reverentially.

  “That’s beautiful, Lorenzo.”

  “I wish I’d said it. It was one of my tutors, Angelo Poliziano, who did.” Lorenzo moved to a shelf upon which stood a row of bound books—these which had been printed in the new style, on a press with moveable type—and lovingly ran his fingers across their spines. “This house is the nurse of all learning, which here revived again.”

  “And who said that,” I asked gently.

  “I did,” he replied, unable to conceal his pride. “I fancy myself as something of a poet, though I have everything to learn.”

  “What better place for you to be, then? In the belly of the nurse of all learning.”

  “In at least one way,” Lorenzo said slowly, seeming to think as he spoke aloud, “I’ve turned into my grandfather. I would, had I no responsibilities to family or state, spend my entire fortune on books.”

  “Even more than art,” came an unexpected voice from the library door.

  We turned together to see Sandro Botticelli leaning against the doorframe, a jaunty grin on his long sensual face. He looked altogether at home in this place of magnificence, and utterly pleased with himself.

  I found myself smiling at his presence. I liked this audacious man. I said to him, “So to Lorenzo, politics and art are lesser occupations than the collecting of books?”

  “That is a gross understatement,” Botticelli replied. “He is obsessed with books, as Cosimo was. I would go looking for my friend to play ball with, search all over, only to find the two of them in a corner of the San Marco library, poring over Plato’s Republic, the old man pointing with a gnarled finger at a difficult passage, and Lorenzo translating with a look of such transported joy you would have thought he was making love to a woman . . . except he was ten years old.”

  Lorenzo laughed at that.

  “I’m glad to see you here, Cato,” Botticelli went on. “Another good mind is always welcome at the table. The more voices, the fiercer the arguments.”

  “I’m delighted to be here,” I said, “though I admit to an utter state of awe.”

  “How can one not be awed?” Botticelli continued. “Can you imagine how it was for me, a working-class boy of fifteen being taken under the wing of Cosimo de’ Medici, the greatest man in Italy, and being raised like a son in his wonderful family? Then, the most divine woman, Lorenzo’s mother, became my most generous patron. If there is Heaven on earth, I swear it has been my life so far.”

  The sudden sound of a gong being struck three times reverberated authoritatively through the palazzo.

  “That is our dinner being served,” Lorenzo said. “Shall we?”

  With that, we three companionable fellows walked shoulder to shoulder back out into the central courtyard and toward a rear doorway.

  “Say hello to Hadrian,” Botticelli quipped, acknowledging a marble bust of the infamous Roman emperor in a niche above the door.

  “He is Sandro’s favorite sodomite,” Lorenzo added with an indulgent smile that left me wondering about what other indulgences were acceptable in this household.

  We exited the palazzo and stepped as if into another world. Sheltered from the bustle and stark stone of the city, here between ivy-covered walls, was a living paradise—Verrocchio’s garden a hundred times over. Footpaths wound through a riot of flowering bushes, patches of blossoms and grasses, short and tall. Artfully pruned trees and others as wild as nature had made them shared the garden with a pair of strutting peacocks and what sounded like an entire flock of songbirds trilling ardently. Through the greenery and splashing fountains I caught a glimpse of a large, masterful bronze statue—a woman about to behead a cowering man. This was no simpering Madonna, I thought. “This way,” Lorenzo said. “We’re dining under the loggia.”

  The south wall of the garden was dominated by three sweeping stone arches separated by ancient marble columns in the Greek style. A moment later we’d passed through the arches to be confronted by a high-vaulted chamber and an immense dining table, perhaps the largest single piece of furniture I had ever in my life seen.

  It would have easily seated forty, but places were set only at one end—I counted eight. Though the silver filigreed candelabra and salt-cellar would have paid for a whole new section of Vinci to be built, the place settings surprised me with their simplicity—terra-cotta plates and goblets, no finer than would be found on my father’s table.

  The other diners were flowing in through all three archways now. There was a young woman who, I surmised, must be Lorenzo’s wife, Clarice Orsini. My friend Benito had been right; the newest member of the Medici clan had a palpable air of snobbery about her. She was tall, though not as tall as me, with a pale moon face on a long thin neck and a headful of tightly curled hair, more red than blond. She was not unpretty, but the aloof tilt of her chin, and her lips, which seemed perpetually pursed, made me sorry for Lorenzo the instant I set eyes on her.

  Giuliano and Lucrezia de’ Medici clutched either arm of Piero. First Giuliano seated his mother, then together with Lorenzo the boys helped their father to his chair at the head of the table. The ruler of Florence grimaced as his knees bent to sit.

  Giuliano and Lucrezia took places on Piero’s right and left, Lorenzo and his wife next to Giuliano, and I across from Lorenzo at their mother’s side. Sandro Botticelli sat next to me. Next to Clarice was an empty place setting. No one spoke of it.

  “This is my new friend, Cato Cattalivoni,” Lorenzo announced, sounding very pleased. He introduced me in turn to his mother, father, brother, and wife.

  “Will you make a blessing on our table, Lucrezia?” Piero asked his wife in a voice rough with suffering.

  We all closed our eyes as she prayed.

  She spoke in a lovely, melodious tone, and suddenly I felt a pang of longing, almost to the point of physical pain, for my own gentle mother, whom I had never known.

  The ble
ssing was over and the servers were bringing in wooden platters of steaming loin of veal with sour orange relish, and ravioli in a fragrant saffron broth. The chicken with fennel was equally delightful, and an herb and mushroom omelet was redolent with mint and parsley and marjoram. This would certainly be a feast, but it was, I realized, one of the simplest food, none that Magdalena had not served my father and me a hundred times.

  Suddenly I heard my name spoken. Lorenzo was addressing his parents. “Do you remember that fabulous mechanical sun and constellation that Verrocchio and his apprentices erected for our third wedding feast?” His mother nodded. “Cato’s nephew, Leonardo da Vinci, designed it. Cato has just opened a wonderful apothecary on Via Riccardi.”

  “Really it is my master’s shop,” I demurred. “He’ll be joining me presently.”

  “You are modest, Cato. You yourself refurbished the place and made it a thing of beauty.”

  “Whosever shop it is, we are delighted to have you at our table, Cato,” Lucrezia said, leveling me with a warm and welcoming smile. I could see that her two front teeth crossed a touch at the bottom, but it only increased her charm.

  “Oh, I so loved the sun and stars!” Clarice cried, sounding more like a little girl than a woman. “We had three feasts,” she told me across the table, “one more splendid than the last. My in-laws built a great ballroom out into the Via Larga, just for the occasion. We had fifty dishes at each feast.” And she added pointedly, “Served on the best gold plate!”

  “Clarice thinks us very strange for eating simple fare on stoneware when we dine as a family,” Lorenzo told me, trying to suppress his amusement. “In fact, the first time her mother came for a visit, she was insulted by it.”

  “Well, it is strange, husband. And it was positively embarrassing when instead of sitting with our guests at the wedding feast, you stood up and waited on them.”

  “That is nothing for you to be embarrassed about, Clarice,” Lucrezia said. “Lorenzo has a fine sense about what is right and proper in any given situation. He has since he was very young. Do you suppose his father would have sent him at the age of sixteen to visit the new pope if he had—”