The Master of the Prado

by Javier Sierra

  “Here it is,” said Fovel, pointing at the first panel. “This is the only ghost you will see in the Prado.”

  I must have looked quite confused, because as much as I examined the panels—which I could almost describe from memory anyway—I could see nothing in them that was remotely like a soul in torment.

  Fovel realized this. Lowering his voice, he leaned toward me.

  “None of the museum guides describes this as a representation of a supernatural appearance, I know,” he said. “But that’s exactly what it is. Three scenes of terror inspired by one of the tales of The Decameron by Boccaccio, written around 1351.

  “A ghost story? Like Dickens?”

  “Exactly, Javier. And a moral tale much like the ones Dickens would pen five hundred years later. Except that the story that inspired this panel was called “The Inferno of the Cruel Lovers,” combining several visions in one story—a curse and a revenge.”

  I stole a glance at the nearest panel, which was officially titled The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti. No hint of either lovers or an inferno. For a moment it occurred to me that Fovel might be trying to divert my attention from the question I’d put to him by engaging me in a new lesson about these intriguing paintings, but that wasn’t it. He was quite serious. There were ghosts here.

  “That one there is the protagonist—the lad in the gray doublet, with red stockings and yellow boots. He’s in all three panels, but in the first one he appears twice, you see?”

  I did. “Is he . . . the ghost?” I asked.

  “No,” he laughed. “It is unusual to see a figure painted twice in the same painting, but it’s not usually an indication of something supernatural, but rather, a kind of signal.”

  “How is that?”

  “Whenever you see a figure duplicated in a painting, you can be sure that the painter is trying to tell us something,” explained Fovel. “The painting is relating a story. Here, it’s almost like a comic book. The figures appear in several frames.”

  I remembered then what I had learned about the repeated figures in the School of Athens frescoes but kept it to myself.

  Sandro Botticelli, The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti (1483), Panel I. The Prado Museum, Madrid.

  Fovel continued. “The fellow in the gray doublet is called Nastagio. According to Boccaccio, this wealthy youth had been wooing a young Florentine girl. All we know of her is that she is the daughter of a certain Paolo Traversaro. In a departure from the customs of the time, she has decided to reject the young man. Over on the left side of the first panel here, we can see how the youth, dejected at her refusal, takes to this pine forest near Ravenna intending to kill himself. Look at him closely—he looks desperate, miserable. On the verge of doing something crazy.”

  I peered at the panel. “What’s Botticelli trying to say here, showing the boy holding a branch?”

  “Ah, well—here’s where our story really begins,” answered Fovel. “It’s May, which, in the European mind then was the traditional time for visions and apparitions.2 What happens is that while Nastagio is considering just how he will do away with himself, a horrific scene unfolds in front of him. Suddenly, out of the depths of the forest charges a horseman astride a black steed, brandishing his sword and chasing a redheaded girl who flees before him, terrified for her life.

  “Nastagio intervenes, seizing a branch and confronting the horseman and his hounds. His face full of rage, the rider orders him to move aside, shouting, ‘Let me fulfill justice divine! I must dispatch without cease the punishment merited by this bad woman . . . Every Friday at this same hour I overtake her . . .’ ”I

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s very simple. What Nastagio has witnessed is an apparition—ghosts. A scene from the hereafter that repeats itself eternally in that small clearing in the forest. Here—you get a better idea in the second panel. This scene shows the rider, whose name is Guido—dismounting and setting upon the woman, whom, according to Boccaccio, he proceeds to disembowel, feeding her heart and entrails to his dogs.

  Sandro Botticelli, The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, Panel II. The Prado Museum, Madrid.

  “Guido goes on to tell Nastagio, ‘Then right away, by the power and justice of God, she arises as if she had not died, and resumes her miserable flight. The chase resumes again for me and my dogs.’ ”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “It’s basically very simple, Javier. Both the horseman—Guido—and the woman have been dead for a long time. He also suffered a disappointment at the hands of that naked maiden, and, like Nastagio, came to the forest where he killed himself. Then, a curse befell the pair, and they were damned to this pursuit for all eternity. He was accursed because of his cowardice, and she because ‘her cold hard heart would accept neither love nor pity.’ Botticelli wanted to bring to life the idea of the eternal circle, in this case with our two phantoms, locked in an endless cycle of pursuit. You see?”

  I nodded, moved. “That’s a very sad story . . .”

  “But not for Nastagio!” smiled Fovel.

  I looked at him blankly.

  “Having stumbled on this extraordinary drama and feeling very close to the rider’s predicament, Nastagio hatched a plan of his own, which we see here, in the third panel of the series. Take a good look; come closer! The plan was as ingenious as it was simple. Nastagio sent an invitation to Paolo Traversaro’s entire family for an outdoor banquet to be held there in the forest on the following Friday. As you can see in the painting, everything is beautifully arranged. Then, in the middle of the feast, while everyone was there, at exactly the same hour as before, the phantoms of the maiden, the horseman, and the dogs all burst out, interrupting the party and causing great distress among the guests.”

  Sandro Botticelli, The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, Panel III. The Prado Museum, Madrid.

  I broke in. “I can see it! Nastagio’s beloved and her attendant ladies overturn their table in their fright, while the men stare at the rider, stunned.”

  “And see Nastagio? He’s standing there, unafraid, explaining to the company what is happening. The women take pity on the cursed maiden, and as for Traversaro’s proud daughter—the moral of the story is not lost on her. Boccaccio writes, ‘This horrific scene had another happy result. So seized by terror were the young women of Ravenna that, from that day forward, they looked more favorably upon the desires of young men.’ ”

  “Tell me.” I was now dying to know. “Did Nastagio and Traversaro’s daughter end up marrying?”

  “See for yourself. On the right of the third panel, you see how this lady takes Nastagio’s arm? She is the one who was screaming in the scene before, the one in the red dress—his beloved! Moreover,” he added, “there’s a fourth panel, which isn’t here. It remains in the hands of the family who commissioned this work, in a palace in Venice. That fourth panel depicts a wedding scene, with everyone happily celebrating the daughter’s good decision finally to accept Nastagio’s proposal.”

  “Since you mention it,” I said to Fovel, “who was the family? Who commissioned the painting, and why?”

  “Well, Javier, you may not realize it, but you’re looking at a very lavish wedding present from the quattrocento. The panels were part of a cassone—a high-class wedding chest. If you look closely at the third panel, you’ll notice several shields hanging from the trees, emblazoned with their crests. Identify those crests and you answer your question. The one on the right belonged to the Pucci—a rich and influential family of merchants from Florence. The middle shield is decorated with the crest of the Medici—they ran the city—and the last one, on the right, belongs to the Bini family.

  “We know from the old records of the period that in 1483, the wedding of Giannozzo Pucci and Lucrezia Bini took place before Lorenzo de’ Medici—‘Lorenzo il Magnifico,’ as he was known. So you see—this was a warning to the new bride from the great and powerful Pucci family, a reminder intended to keep her loyal and submissive. She would have been
confronted with these images for years, adorning the clothes chest in her bedchamber.”

  I stood there for a moment, absorbing what Fovel had told me about the painting. At the same time, I was admiring his deft maneuvering of the conversation away from my question about the Prado’s ghosts, and onto territory where he felt safe—the painting is relating a story, he’d said.

  His voice broke in on my thoughts, wrapping up the lesson.

  “As you can see, Javier, interest in the supernatural goes back a long way.”

  “That’s clear,” I agreed.

  “But one thing that was very new at the time was the way Botticelli depicted these apparitions. He was thirty-six and had just completed La Primavera a year before, influenced once again by the ideas of Marsilio Ficino. He was about to begin his famous Birth of Venus. At the peak of his career, knowing by then just how to depict the supernatural, he did so with a sensitivity that would not be seen again until Raphael arrived in the city some years later.”

  “You know, Doctor, I think it’s very interesting how you manage to connect everything together . . .”

  “But that’s because everything is connected!” he exclaimed.

  “The prophecies, too? Can you connect Botticelli to the whole New Apocalypse phenomenon?”

  Fovel flashed me an ironic grin, and continued. “As any historian will tell you, just a few years after Botticelli painted these panels, Florence was to become the center of prophecy par excellence.”

  “Are you certain about that?”

  “Absolutely, my boy. In the years after Botticelli painted the panneaux, a huge controversy was to develop in Florence the likes of which had never been seen. It hit Botticelli very hard. The source of this apocalyptic outbreak was Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican who was to become the city’s most notorious religious figure. His ardent sermons became famous throughout Italy, railing as they did against corruption in the church and in the political institutions, and more generally against vice, luxury, and Florence’s infamous bacchanals. His reputation and following grew to such an extent that both Lorenzo de’ Medici and Pope Alexander VI tried numerous times to do away with him without success. Even Michelangelo, having heard him speak, found his voice to be so penetrating, intense, and engrossing that he never got it out of his head for the rest of his life.”

  “Were his predictions alarming?” I asked Fovel.

  “Oh, much worse than that, my boy,” he replied gravely. “This ‘hound of God,’II repeatedly referred to the church as a ‘proud whore,’ responsible for betraying Christ’s evangelical message. And he made no secret of his wish that Charles VIII of France take all of Italy in order to reclaim his rights over Milan and Naples, ejecting the pope from Rome in the bargain. Savonarola dreamed of a new theocracy based in Florence, and threatened the authorities with all manner of divine punishment if they failed to take steps to consolidate religious and political power. In his Convent of San Marco, he would prostrate himself before illuminated panels by Fra Angelico, drinking in the spirit of the biblical prophets, and then emerge, ecstatic, with his own prophecies.”

  “So he started having visions? And channeling prophecies?”

  “He did, and certainly looked the type, with his scrawny frame, wild eyes, and threadbare habit. Along with another of the monks at San Marco—Fra Silvestre d’Andrea Maruffi—he produced countless prophecies about the grim future in store for the city. Maruffi was a sleepwalker, and could be seen on many a night roaming across the tiles of his cloister roof. Upon waking, he would spout horrific visions that Savonarola would faithfully transcribe. Before long, he, too, developed his own prophetic gift.

  “Savonarola also published two treatises, Dialogus de veritate prophetica and Compendium revelationum, both of which confidently predicted a great change for the church and the imminent beginning of the thousand-year rule of Christ on earth.”

  I was incredulous. “You mean this Dominican friar, who is from the same order as some of the main inquisitors, comes out with all these predictions bordering on heresy and no one can stop him?”

  Fovel nodded.

  “In those days, you see, Florence was full of heretics, and tolerated some quite unorthodox ideas, so at first no one paid much attention to him. But that soon changed. Florence’s intelligentsia had distanced itself from strict Catholic orthodoxy but was not as dogmatic as the Dominican, and it eventually began attacking him. Marsilio Ficino, Botticelli’s teacher, even called Savonarola an emanation of the Antichrist. Imagine!”

  “How did Botticelli go from following his teacher to getting mixed up with a hothead like Savonarola?”

  “Well, now, that’s something of a mystery. No one can say exactly when or why he began to drift away from the Neoplatonists at the Academy, but for whatever reason, the mad monk’s sermons began to appeal to him. Botticelli, who had been a close friend of Leonardo and even opened a little tavern with him,3 turned away from the light into the bleakest darkness. In his famous biographies of the great artists of the time, Vasari described Botticelli as becoming ‘an ardent follower of the sect,’ and that ‘this caused him to abandon his painting, and without any income, his life was plunged into chaos.’ ”4

  “How terrible!”

  “The worst was to come. Savonarola convinced the painter to destroy all of the work he’d done during his pagan period. He suggested that Botticelli bring everything from his studio and burn it in one of the ‘bonfires of the vanities’ that Savonarola would organize each week. Perhaps you’ve heard of these—great pyres with sculptures, furniture, clothes, tools, books, and paintings that the repentant Florentines would give up to avoid the wrath of a God who, according to the Dominican, would level their city otherwise.”

  “My God . . .”

  “It was a disastrous time, so unbefitting of the Renaissance. And don’t for a moment think that Savonarola’s influence over Botticelli was limited to winning him over to his particular fanatical brand of belief, what he called his renovatio ecclesiae—no! When the ever-accommodating Sandro finally began to paint again, it was in line with Savonarola’s ideas, following his ideology with astonishing faithfulness.”

  “How horrible,” I breathed.

  “Indeed,” Fovel replied. “In 1501, with the truculent cleric now dead, Botticelli threw himself into the creation of a canvas which, for the only time in his career, he signed and dated to ensure that there was no question as to its provenance. This would become what we know today as The Mystical Nativity, which is at the National Gallery in London. This painting depicts the birth of Jesus not as an event in the past, but rather as a prophecy that will be accompanied by other signs: Angels will embrace man, and demons will be set upon and vanquished. This was what his Dominican teacher had preached in his Nativity sermon of 14945—that the corrupt Florence of the Medici would fall, as would the pope, that Moors and Turks would be converted to Christianity, and that these events would usher in a new era of prosperity and direct connection to God.”

  Fovel then reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded, double-page reproduction of the painting we were discussing. It looked as if it had been taken from an old magazine. I shook my head, wondering how the hell he happened to have exactly that painting in his pocket.

  Fovel had carefully unfolded the glossy paper, oblivious to the five or six people around us who were observing his every move. Although the print was in color, I knew instinctively that it couldn’t come close to doing justice to the beauty and glory of the original.

  Having unfolded and flattened out the print, Fovel went on.

  “Botticelli painted this three years after Savonarola, Fra Silvestere Maruffi, and Fra Domenico da Pescia—another of his fervent followers—were hanged and burned in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, having been convicted of heresy. The monk’s old followers were now all being sought out and persecuted, and so Botticelli had to be particularly careful to cover up his affiliation.”

  “If that’s true, how can yo
u be certain that there’s a link between the Nativity and Savonarola’s heresies?” I asked him.

  Fovel smiled broadly. “Simply by reading the monk’s works and knowing exactly where in the painting to look!”

  I leaned over to have a closer look at the reproduction.

  “For example,” began the Master, “in his Compendium revelationum, Savonarola dedicates several pages to explaining what he called ‘the twelve privileges of the Virgin.’ These were a series of short litanies that his followers would chant in their processions through the city. If you observe the scrollwork here carefully, these banners being held aloft by the twelve angels who float over the scene, you’ll see that they contain certain inscriptions. We can only make out seven of the original twelve, but all of them are these ‘privileges’ taken word for word from Savonarola, and in Italian, too, just as he had them: Sposa di Dio Padre Vera, Sposa di Dio Padre Admiranda, Sacrario Ineffabile . . .”

  “That’s it? That’s all your proof?”

  “Of course not, that’s just the beginning. Right next to Botticelli’s signature there’s another hidden mystery. An inscription, written in a very rudimentary Greek, which says, more or less: ‘I, Alessandro, painted this painting at the close of the year 1500, during the time of Italy’s great turmoil, in the half time after the time, according to the eleventh chapter of St. John in the second woe of the Apocalypse, during the loosing of the Devil for three years and a half, then shall he be chained in the twelfth chapter and we shall see him [fallen] as in this picture.’ ”6

  “What does it mean, Doctor?”

  “Clearly, it refers to two actual chapters from the Apocalypse of St. John, the Book of Revelation, wouldn’t you say?”