The next afternoon I returned to Sandro’s workshop again. It went much the same as the first time. I undressed and took my position, and we spoke little, save for when he had me turn to one side, then to the other, then put my back to him, so that he might sketch me from all different angles.
Even when I could not see him, I still felt his eyes on me, caressing and brushing against my flesh. My skin hummed. When I left that day, I felt somehow drained but exhilarated as well, as though we had made love without touching.
It was nearly a week before Sandro had me return; he had a commission coming due, so he needed to spend his time finishing it before he could return to our painting, as I had begun to think of it. It had not escaped my notice that this was not a work that had been commissioned; no patron was supplying him with the money (and therefore time) to create it. It would be a work of art in the truest sense, born only of Sandro’s own inspiration and passion and diligence and hard work.
The third time I went it was somewhat later in the day, and so the fire burning in the hearth and the candles scattered about the room were crucial to providing light in the fading afternoon. He welcomed me, and I undressed and took my place. It was easier each time, though the feeling of his eyes on me had yet to lose its force.
This time, though, instead of taking his usual seat, he hesitated. “I have a specific pose I would like you to take today, Simonetta,” he said. “If you would.”
I smiled. “Whatever you need.”
He took a step toward me, then stopped, looking unsure. “May I…” He cleared his throat. “May I touch you?”
A blush rose to my cheeks; I was sure he could see it, but there was no help for it. “Yes.”
He reached up to gingerly take my face in his hands. The rough cloth of his shirt brushed against my skin, and I shivered. I knew he felt it, but, thankfully, he made no comment. He gently tilted my head to one side, then stepped back slightly. “Yes. Just like that.” He reached out and placed a hand lightly on my bare left hip. The warmth burned through me. “Shift your weight into this hip—yes. Yes, exactly.” As swiftly as his hand was there, it was gone, and I felt a pang of loss at its absence.
He reached up and pulled a strand of hair across my right shoulder, letting it fall across my chest. I waited for his hand to move lower, to brush against my breasts, but it did not. I told myself that I was not disappointed.
Shifting to my other side, he carefully gathered the rest of my hair in his hand as though it were something precious; truly made of gold, perhaps. “Now,” he said, “if you would take your hair and bring it around your body, as though you are using it to cover…” For a moment his professional demeanor slipped, and he gestured silently, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to find the most delicate word.
My own blush deepening, I took pity on him and pulled my long hair from his grasp, using it to cover the area between my legs.
“Yes,” he said, clearly relieved. “Just so. And now, with your other hand, partially cover your breasts—yes,” he said excitedly. He reached up and moved my right hand, guiding it more precisely into the position he desired. I wondered if he could feel the heat radiating from my body as he touched me. Surely he could. What would he think it meant?
What did I think it meant?
He stepped back, his eyes once again critical as he studied me. “Yes,” he said. “Just relax that right hand slightly—relax your whole body. Yes!” he said. “Remember, you are Venus as she is first being born from the sea. You cover yourself because you are unsure of this world you have come into, not because you are ashamed. You are never ashamed.”
I tried to embody his words as best I could. I straightened my spine, let my hands rest casually against my body as they—and my hair—partially covered me. I felt a small hint of a smile touch my lips as I tried to become the goddess he had described. Venus was not ashamed of being nude—it was natural to her. It gave her power over those who beheld her, power over their dreams and desires. She was not exposed—she would expose those who laid eyes on her.
“Dio mio, yes. Yes. Perfect.” Sandro scrambled for his parchment and pencil and began furiously sketching.
My lips were dry, so I licked them once before speaking. “I remember hearing a tale when I was a girl,” I said, “that when Venus was born from the waves, she came ashore in Genoa.”
Sandro stopped drawing and looked up at me. “You come from Genoa, si?”
“I do.”
“Then the tale is true. Venus was indeed born in Genoa.” With that, he turned his attention back to his sketching.
* * *
That evening, when I returned home, Marco was already there, and waiting for me.
“There you are, Simonetta,” he said, an edge of annoyance in his tone as I entered the sitting room.
I made sure my cloak was drawn securely around me so that he could not see the simple garments I was wearing. Thank God I remembered to bind my hair up again before leaving the workshop, I thought. I had forgotten the last time. “Buona sera, marito,” I said.
“Buona sera,” he said, frowning. “Where have you been? I asked Chiara when I did not find you home, and she said she did not know.”
“Did she?” I asked. “I am certain that I told her. But it is of no consequence. I was at Maestro Botticelli’s workshop. I have been posing for him again.” I had said that I would not hide my doings from Marco, and so I would not. The one detail I would omit, however, was the exact nature of my posing.
Marco’s eyebrows lifted nearly into his hairline. “Oh, you have been, have you?”
“Si.”
“I do not remember discussing this,” he said, “much less you asking my permission.”
“I was not aware that I needed your permission. Maestro Botticelli asked for my help in posing for a new work, and I agreed.” I was struggling to maintain my light, indifferent tone. “I see no reason why we both should not do what pleases us. I thought that was what you wanted.”
“Oh, you did?” Marco said, tossing aside the book he’d been reading and rising from his chair. “I had thought that we understood each other, Simonetta. Need I remind you that you are my wife? No one else’s. Certainly not that painter’s. That means you ask my permission before you go off and do as you please.”
“I am your wife, yes, but you do not own me,” I said, letting the steel behind my words show through.
Marco laughed, a harsh sound. “That is what marriage is, you beautiful fool.”
His words bit into me. In the eyes of the law, and of society, yes, he was right. But were there not other types of ownership over a person?
I thought about my parents’ marriage: my loquacious, vain mother and my sober, taciturn father. It had certainly never seemed to me that he owned her. And yet, their marriage was no great love affair, either.
Was that what love was? To own, or desire to own, another person? Did his love give him ownership over me whether I consented or not? Whether I loved him or not?
And he does not love me, not in the real sense of the word, I realized. He loves me in his way; he loves me as he understands love. But if he really loved me, he would never go off to spend his nights in the arms of some whore, the “way the world works” be damned.
“I am my own person, wife or no,” I said at last. “Our marriage vows may give you dominion over my body, yes, but not my mind.”
“You read too much, Simonetta,” he said, frustrated, dropping back into his chair.
“I thought that was one of the things you loved about me.”
He had no answer for that; no doubt he was remembering the early days of our courtship, and of our marriage as well, when we would read love poetry in bed, whisper verses in each other’s ear as we made love. Perhaps he had believed that my devotion to poetry and reading would be transferred to him when he became my husband. Yet my intelligence had made me an asset to him among the Medici circle, and he could not deny that.
Suddenly it began t
o come clear. He had brought me to Florence intending for me to be the jewel in his crown; hoping that I would charm and delight his friends and acquaintances and help him to rise in the world—and that I would give him a son. I instead had become the one they all flocked to. I was the one Lorenzo spent his time in discussion with, the one sought out by poets and painters, even as Marco faded into the background. Even as I remained barren, or so it seemed.
And, even as I felt disgusted with him, I pitied him, and myself, too—that a marriage that had started out with such hope could come to such disappointment. Yet was I to apologize that I had become happy in this city to which he had brought me?
In his eyes, I supposed, I should do just that. And even as I remembered fondly that handsome, somewhat naïve young man who had come, quoting poetry, to woo me, I was now able to admit to myself that what had most enthralled me about him was the glittering new life he had promised me in Florence.
I had gotten what I wanted, for the most part. He, it seemed, had not.
I felt as though I was about to cry, yet that was the last thing I could allow myself to do. I drew a deep breath and pulled myself up to my full height. “And so?” I asked, breaking the silence. “Are you to forbid me from posing further for Maestro Botticelli, then? Even though I have already given my word?”
Now that I was aware of it, I could read the calculation in his eyes as plain as if it were written on parchment. If he were to forbid me from continuing to pose, Lorenzo de’ Medici would hear of it, and would no doubt take offense at this slight to one of his favorite painters. This, in turn, would not bode well for Marco’s political aspirations.
“I suppose you may as well keep on, since you have already begun,” he said finally. “In the future, though, mind you consult with me about such things.”
“Of course, marito,” I said. With that, I turned and left the room.
* * *
That night, Marco turned to me in bed, and though I thought to push him away, I did not. I was still upset over our quarrel earlier, true, but that had as much to do with my realization of the bleak reality of our marriage as with anything he had said. Perhaps we could repair what had gone wrong between us. Perhaps it was not too late; perhaps this strife would soon pass.
I opened my legs for him, and as he slid inside me I sighed aloud in pleasure, realizing that I had missed this, had missed him. I moved my hips against him, meeting his thrusts, and I heard his breathing quicken at my response. We moved together, slightly faster now, and we both reached our release at the same time, our voices mingling as we cried out. He let his head fall to my shoulder, and kissed my neck, my cheek, and then my lips before lifting himself off of me.
Yet afterward, and only when I was certain that Marco was asleep, I let tears slide silently down my face. My hopefulness as we had started to make love had gone, and everything now only felt wrong.
26
And so, with Marco’s cooperation—however grudging, however incomplete his knowledge—I continued to go to Botticelli’s workshop and pose. He did another day’s worth of sketches of me in the same pose as the last time, then tried a few variations of it.
“I think I shall keep to my original vision,” he said to me as I dressed at the end of one session. “I am sorry to have wasted your time by being so indecisive. But the good news is that the next time you are here, I can begin to paint.”
I smiled. “Not at all. I am happy to help in whatever way you need. It is not so difficult, after all, standing up there for a time.”
His expression turned serious as he regarded me. “Perhaps not,” he said, “but I still thank you all the same. I know it is no small thing that I have asked.”
The words I wanted to speak sprang to my tongue with such force that I was only just able to hold them back. You could ask of me anything in the world, and I would say yes.
As he had before—and almost as if he had read the words in my eyes—he made a small motion as though to take me in his arms, but did not.
I lowered my eyes quickly, shame flooding through me at all that I was feeling. “I should go,” I said. “When would you like me to return?”
He sighed, and I noticed he took a step back from me. “I shall send word, if that suits. It shall take me a bit of time to find and prepare the proper canvas.” He smiled. “It shall be a very large one.”
I smiled back distractedly, barely hearing him. “Very well,” I managed. “Until next time, then.”
“Indeed,” he said, seeing me to the door. “Buona notte, Simonetta.”
I did not reply, afraid of the words that would tumble from my lips if I did.
It seemed so foolish, that things should change so suddenly. In truth, I had long desired him, ever since I sat for him the first time. It was the reason I had always sought him out at gatherings, the reason why I always knew where he was in a room without having to look. It was why I had wanted to pose nude for him, to let him see all of me, even as the thought frightened me. It was the fear of wanting something I could not have.
It was the reason his eyes burned me as he studied me: because I imagined they were his hands on my body, instead.
It should not have mattered that I had finally formed the words in my own mind. The feelings had been there for years. But somehow, now, just having admitted it to myself, the world around me suddenly looked both brighter and darker at once.
I thought of a section of one of Dante’s poems: “I felt a spirit of love begin to stir/Within my heart, long time unfelt till then;/And saw Love coming towards me fair and fain/(That I scarce knew him for his joyful cheer),/Saying, ‘Be now indeed my worshipper!’”
I shivered as I walked home, even though the night was not cold.
Desire was what I felt, certainly. But what I also felt—even though I should not, even though I had no right to be feeling it—was love.
27
Several days passed, and I had no word from Sandro requesting that I return. He had warned me of this, of course, but in light of my new discovery—about myself, about him—it felt painfully dire. Did he no longer need me? Had he thought better of the whole project?
It was silliness, I knew. I remained listlessly in the house, though one day I did go to the Medici palazzo to take the noon meal with Clarice. We had a pleasant enough time, though it was punctuated by several mild coughing fits I could not contain.
“Are you quite well, Simonetta?” she asked me. “You are not taking ill again, are you?”
I smiled. “I hope not. I have spent quite enough time being ill of late, I think.”
Our talk turned to other things, and I impulsively invited her and Lorenzo to dine with us the following evening, an invitation which she gladly accepted.
“It will keep him out of that Donati woman’s bed, anyway,” she said irritably. “He has scarcely been home of late. How does he think to get another son if he strays from his wife’s bed?”
“Men are fools,” I said. “Even the ones who ought to know better.”
Just then, we were interrupted by the excited arrival of little Lucrezia, who had insisted her nurse bring her in to greet me. It was just as well, for I did not wish Clarice to question me as to my words. I had not told her what I had learned of Marco, and of the strain in our marriage since. I could not bear for her to know the truth; she who had been witness to all of my early, girlish hope and happiness in those days leading up to, and immediately after, my marriage.
Friend though she was, I could not bear to admit to her that she had been right all along.
* * *
The next morning my cough seemed to have worsened, so I stayed abed that I might recover in time to host Clarice and Lorenzo later that evening. I sent Chiara to the market for everything we would need, then slept most of the afternoon. Indeed, when it became time to dress for the evening I felt much improved, and Marco and I had a lovely time with our friends. It became much easier, I found, to put aside our differences in the presence of company.
Maybe we should move in with Lorenzo and Clarice, I thought to myself with a bit of humor as we lingered over our dessert wine.
However, despite feeling well at dinner, it soon became clear that I was not truly well.
I awoke in the night to another coughing fit, yet this one showed no sign of subsiding. My hacking woke Marco, as well, who, once again in the role of attentive husband, dashed down to the kitchen to fetch me a glass of watered-down wine to soothe my throat. I was only able to take small sips in between the coughing, and soon blood was being expelled from my lungs.
“Send for the doctor,” Marco barked at Chiara, who had come in to assist. “Now! Get him here at once!”
Marco sat beside me in the bed, rubbing my back, trying to get me some wine in between coughs. Yet the blood was still coming when the doctor arrived.
He examined the blood staining a bit of cloth Chiara had given me and, with Marco’s permission, laid an ear against my chest, that he might listen to what was happening within. Then he laid a hand against my brow. “She is burning with fever,” he informed Marco, as though I were not right there.
“She was fine at dinner this evening,” Marco protested. “How can she have become so ill so quickly?”
The doctor hesitated. “She has been ill in the past, yes? Recently?”
“Here and there,” Marco said. “The climate of Florence does not agree with her; I have offered to take her home to Genoa, but she does not wish to leave.”
“I’m afraid the climate has not much to do with it,” the doctor said. “Signor Vespucci, perhaps you and I had best step outside to discuss—”
By then my coughing had slowed enough that I could speak. “I am right here, dottore, and I am not deaf nor addled in the head. Whatever you wish to say to my husband should also be said to me.”
The doctor hesitated again, but when Marco showed no sign of following him out of the room, he relented. “I am not certain yet,” he said. “I will need to monitor your condition throughout the coming days to be sure, Signora Vespucci, but I believe that you have consumption.”
The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence Page 19