The Botticelli Secret

by Marina Fiorato

  My face must have looked as blank as my unpainted countenance on the image I had stolen, for he swiftly simplified his terms. “You found something out. Something they do not want you to know.”

  “What?”

  “I do not know.”

  “And who is ‘they’?”

  “The dark agencies that pursue us, and are determined to wipe your knowledge clean.”

  “But we don’t know anything!”

  Brother Guido sighed and chose a tone in which he would address a simpleton. “I know that, but they do not know that we do not know.”

  My head hurt. I felt like a simpleton. “Wouldn’t it be better to come clean and beg the protection of the abbot?”

  “Sanctuary is not what it once was,” said Brother Guido sadly. “You know yourself that the flower of the Medicis, Guiliano, was cut down in the cathedral by the diabolical Pazzi family.”

  Ah, yes, that reminds me. I said I’d tell you about the Pazzis, didn’t I? The Pazzis, in whose chapel I had so recently sheltered at Santa Croce, had hacked Giuliano de’ Medici to bits, while he was at mass in Santa Maria del Fiore. Local reports said that they stabbed him twenty-nine times and hacked at his head until it split like a melon.

  “Well . . .” I amended weakly, “perhaps we could explain to . . . you know . . . them . . . explain all this.”

  He was agitated now and rose to pace the tiny room. “Explain to whom? We do not even know who seeks you. How could we ever be safe again? How could we return to Florence, be we never so protected, without fear of our lives? That every footfall is an assassin, that every dish is poisoned, that every winter chill is the kiss of a knife?”

  I considered this. Brother Guido painted quite a picture, and no, I did not particularly want to live as he described. “Then what are we to do?”

  “We must use the only advantage we have.”

  I did not much feel that we held any advantage. “And what is that?”

  “They are afraid of us.”

  My laugh was a donkey’s bray. “They are afraid of us?” I was incredulous. “They have chased me round Florence butchering my acquaintance—and yours—and yet they are afraid of us?”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “Our supposed knowledge threatens them. And so, we must truly possess that knowledge to keep them at bay. The secret is our hostage, and we may be able to use it against them, to barter for our safety.”

  “But . . . but . . .” My boggling brain could barely form a sentence. “We don’t know the secret.”

  “Yet.”

  “What?”

  “We figure out what they think it is that we know.”

  “And how do we do that?” My voice was laden with scorn.

  Brother Guido smiled. “You have the key to the puzzle right there.” He pointed directly to my chest and I wondered briefly how my tits were going to help us out of this. He flapped his hands impatiently. “The picture.”

  Frowning, not understanding, I drew the painting from my bosom again. It had been crushed by my sleeping form, and I flattened it out on the reading desk, securing the rolling edges with a candlestick and a Bible.

  Brother Guido came to my shoulder and his shadow loomed large. The painting lay, golden and perfect, in the pool of candlelight, every detail singing out in the dark cell. Brother Guido lowered his voice, almost with reverence, but his tones were no less urgent. “You have been pursued all this while because you took this painting.”

  I swallowed the panic that rose in my throat, spun to face the monk. “Then I could give it back! I’ll go back to Botticelli’s—the abbot will give us an escort—I’ll return it . . . say sorry. I was going to give it back, to Bembo, and then Bembo was . . . is . . .” My torrent of words faltered as Brother Guido began to slowly shake his head. “Don’t you see?” he said. “You cannot go back. For even if you returned the painting, you would still know the secret. You cannot unlearn what you have learned.”

  “But I don’t know the secret!” I almost screamed it. “I could explain that I don’t know . . . and . . .” This time I stopped myself before Brother Guido could hush me, for I knew it would be no good. I was only a whore—a good one, but still a whore—and they would sooner kill me than take the chance that I was lying. Plus, I had seemingly passed on my knowledge to another, a man of God, who was not as alone in the world as I. I sat down, heavily, before the picture. “All right” I said. “Then how are we to solve this puzzle?”

  The monk began to pace behind me again, his robes whispering on the stone floor, his feet beating time. “I think our pursuers believe that you know something about Botticelli’s painting. About the Primavera. That you saw something when you were there that day.”

  “But I didn’t!”

  “So you say. But from what you told me, Botticelli became—somewhat agitated—when you were sitting for him.”

  My mouth curled at the understatement. “That’s true.”

  “I think you saw something in the room, or in the painting, and referred to it unknowingly.”

  “There was nothing in the room.”

  “Then it must have been the painting.”

  “But the painting is still there, we don’t have the real thing. It’s bigger than a warship’s sail.”

  Brother Guido impatiently tapped at the parchment I’d flattened on the table. “Yes, but this, signorina, is a cartone, a perfect miniature copy of the panel that Signor Botticelli is painting. The faint grid that is drawn across the figures is to assist the transfer from this small parchment to the vast space on the panel. The artist will carefully measure and study what each square contains, and then transfer the information to a larger square which he will have mapped out on the wall. You see?”

  I did see. I remembered from Botticelli’s studio a net of strings stretched across the vast panel. And told Brother Guido of them. He nodded. “Yes. Sometimes the grids of ropes are stretched across a frame, and then candles lit behind, so that the shadow of a grid is thrown onto a wall. Artists have different ways of working, but the principles are the same.”

  I tired abruptly of my art lesson. “All very interesting, and I’m sure you have a point.”

  “It’s this. What we have here is an exact replica of the Prima-vera, exactly as it will look on the final panel, down to the smallest detail. The only item missing from the inventory is your face, and we have the original here.” The ghost of a smile. “I’m saying that whatever Botticelli is hiding in his painting, whatever allegory or code he has placed within it, is within this one too.”

  I began to see.

  “So, we need to figure out what the message is, and that is how we may get ahead of the game.”

  I took issue with the brother’s choice of words. I didn’t think the events of the last day seemed much like a game, nor did I see how we could figure out what the painting “meant.” But as my options were narrowing, I decided to humor the fellow. He certainly seemed enthusiastic, and not at all afraid—he was excited by the challenge and looked almost as triumphant as if he had solved it already, his handsome face aglow in the candlelight. Fucking intellectuals.

  “We have a few hours before mass, and then we must go from here. So let us begin.”

  We transferred the painting to the floor, and I brought the candle from my cell. Darkness thickened outside as we studied the painting in its twin circles of light. It was incredibly detailed, and crowded with figures, and I knew not where to begin.

  Brother Guido echoed my thoughts. “Let’s begin with the simplest aspects, and we will move to the imagery and allegory in due course.”

  I cleared my throat in an attempt to conceal the fact that I did not know what at least two of his words meant. “Yes, yes, let’s do that.”

  A wave of his hand invited me to begin.

  I swallowed, hoping I would not appear too ignorant. “Well, there are eight figures. Nine, if you include the little flying dwarf.”

  “Cupid. Eight adult figures and a cupid. Good.”<
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  His praise encouraged me. “There are two men and the rest are women.”

  “Six females and two males. Good.”

  This was easy. “One of the men is a . . . blue tree goblin.”

  He snorted with laughter and turned it, too late, into a cough. “Forgive me. A what?”

  I was crushed after my good beginning. “He looks like a tree goblin,” I protested huffily, pointing to the figure on the far right of the painting. “He’s blue. And he has wings, and he’s in the trees.”

  “Very well.” Brother Guido composed himself. “Forgive me. I didn’t at once recognize your somewhat—pagan—identification. And?”

  I responded to his pompous tone by becoming as crude as I knew how. “And he’s trying to fuck the girl who’s puking flowers.” I pointed to the maiden in white who had a stream of blossoms flowing from her mouth. He winced at my language.

  “He seems to be attempting an abduction or . . .” He cleared his throat. “A . . . rape.” He looked sideways at me, but I’d heard much worse in my time. And been paid to hear it. “Good. And what of the other male?”

  I looked carefully, for the first time, at the martial figure with the sword. I started, then looked again.

  The monk saw my astonishment. “What is it?”

  “It’s him! It’s Botticelli.”

  “Are you sure? It’s a self-portrait?” Brother Guido craned in,so his curls brushed my cheek.

  “Yes!” I said, breathless suddenly with the closeness of him (you should remember, I usually get tumbled half a dozen times a day, and I’d gone from sundown to sundown without a man). I had to concentrate hard to return to the matter at hand. “It’s the very spit of him. That day in the studio I noticed it before. He’s even wearing the ocher-colored cloak that he wore when he painted me.”

  “All right.” The brother moved away again, to rub his chin thoughtfully. I missed his nearness. “Well, that must be significant. Let’s return to him later. What of the other figures?”

  “Well, the one in the middle, the grand lady, looks like a queen or a Madonna”—I kept the comparisons to Vero Madre to myself—“and next to her—the pregnant one—is, well, me.”

  “Flora. At least we have one identification. And I think the other, the queen as you dubbed her, may be Venus, goddess of love.”

  I nodded, as if I, too, had been thinking the very same thing. “And then here are three maids in white.” I studied the graceful trio. “It looks like they are dancing.”

  “Good. I think so too. They would appear to be the three Graces of Roman mythology.”

  I began to feel better. “And there are lots of flowers on the ground, and”—I peered closer—“oranges in the trees.”

  “Excellent.”

  I sat back, flushed with triumph. I turned to the brother. “What did you get?”

  “Well, the thing immediately put me in mind of the Stanze, an allegorical cycle of poems by Angelo Poliziano, who is the favored poet at the court of the Medici. The allegory expounds on the metamorphosis of spring into summer, which would seem to be commensurate with the title of the piece, Primavera meaning Spring. Now, one would assume that the figures on the right—clearly depicting the rape of the shepherd girl Chloris by Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, and her subsequent transformation into the goddess Flora, the figure which you depict—begin the scene, and that the scene is to be read from right to left as most allegorical paintings are. But the presence of your friend Botticelli on the left of the picture, next to the three Graces, gives me pause. Although his appearance as Mercury, the winged messenger associated with the month of May, would seem to give credence to my first theorem, I think that the manner in which he holds his caduceus high, and stirs the clouds clockwise, indicates that the picture is meant to be read another way, namely, clockwise from left to right. Moreover, if you look very carefully at the slices of landscape behind the figures, the land on the right is the golden color of summer and autumn, and on the left, the colder, fresher hues of spring and early summer. But although this may indicate the direction the painting must be read, and that all the figures are immediately (almost too obviously) identifiable from well-known classical tropes, I must confess that its deeper secrets are hidden to me.” He paused to draw breath, and shook his head in puzzlement.

  I suddenly felt a little less clever. And more confused than ever.

  So it went on for hours.

  Mercury and Venus were the only figures wearing shoes. The leaves framing the head of Venus were laurels, indicating the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Two of the three Graces wore jewels, one was unadorned. And so on and so on. Our eyes were hollow and shot with blood, our brains stuffed with detail, our throats hoarse with chatter.

  The sky had already begun to lighten, and I was hungry for breakfast and a jug of beer.

  Brother Guido stood, suddenly. “We’re approaching this in the wrong way,” he stated firmly. “We are no nearer to divining the true meaning of the piece. Let’s leave the painting for a moment and go over your time with Botticelli again.”

  I sighed and swore, for we’d been through my interview with the artist a hundred times.

  The brother ignored my language. “What did you say just before he became enraged? Tell me word for word, and don’t leave anything out.”

  “It was just idle chatter.”

  “About what?” he persisted. “Perhaps you mentioned something that was in the painting? One of the figures or flowers?”

  Madonna. “I tell, you, I didn’t,” I protested. “I told him what I told you, that I’m from Venice, and that it is a city of great beauty, and great trade too.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I said something about Pisa and Naples or Genoa, her sea-faring rivals.”

  The monk suddenly knelt by me and took my shoulders, with the same urgency but more gentility than Botticelli had done earlier. “You mentioned those three cities, and no more?”

  “Yes—well, Venice first of course.”

  “But you mentioned Venice in isolation? Then grouped the other three together?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Signor Botticelli did not react to your mention of Venice? He showed no anger or vexation?”

  “No, he was all charm. In fact, it was he who first sang the city’s praises.”

  “But he became enraged when you mentioned Pisa, Naples, and Genoa in the same breath.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  I was. “Yes, I tell you.”

  His eyes began to dance. “Three,” he crowed. “Three cities that are doing the same thing. Three maidens that are doing the same dance. You said yourself, they could be the same girl. Three Graces, three cities. Maritime powers. Luciana, you did it!” He spun me round in a mad dervish-like whirl. In the delight of the moment I barely knew that it was the first time he had used my name. Childlike as he, I bent over the painting again. “Cities,” he said. “They’re all cities. Each figure represents a place.”

  My blood pounded in my chest, I was no longer tired. “And which other cities?”

  “I know not. But I do know that something is afoot.” Brother Guido’s curls stood out from his head like those of a dark angel; his eyes were blue fire.

  “But what?”

  “War? Trade? Hidden treasure?”

  Now he was really getting carried away.

  “But we’ll soon find out. And one thing is sure—they think we know already. That is why we are tangled in this coil.”

  I looked again at the three beauteous maidens, innocently dancing their strange measure, revolving for eternity in their graceful trinity. “Which is which?” I mused, almost to myself. “Which of the three Graces is which city—Pisa, Naples, Genoa?”

  He examined the painting again, calmed a little. “Let us look carefully. What do you notice about them?” He glanced sideways at me. “I would venture you have danced a measure or two in good company, signorina. I imagine you are a
dancer of great grace and beauty. Might you see something in their attitudes or postures?”

  He was right of course. I am an excellent dancer, and have danced many a measure in the greatest of Florence’s houses, before being taken upstairs to dance quite a different measure in the bedchamber. But even in such houses, I rarely receive such gallantry, and was suckered into giving the Graces my full attention. “Well,” I began. “Their hands look a little—strange.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, I know three things about courtly dancing.

  “Qualcosa Uno: when you dance in a ring, you tend to keep the hands low, as is seemly for a woman in company. But here, the hands of two of them are lifted high, their gaze is lifted to their hands, and the hands themselves twisted into an odd attitude above their heads, in a manner that would not be—well, usual in polite circles.” I felt a little odd speaking of what was seemly, when I, clearly, am not, but I do know a little of manners, even if I do not actually have any.

  “Qualcosa Due: in a roundel such as this, the trio should all face the same way.”

  Brother Guido nodded slowly. “Perhaps the message is in the hands. The gaze of the left-hand Grace is directed at the clasped hands. Perhaps they are trying to tell us something—make a shape of some kind?”

  I looked and looked until I was near cross-eyed, and the monk did likewise.

  “Not unless they are trying to tell us about a duck, or some other fowl, for the life of me I cannot see any other shape depicted by those fingers.” I rubbed my eyes.

  “Perhaps they are spelling something?” Brother Guido mused, too tired to notice my feeble jest. “Do their hands make a letter? If not in the Arabic, then the Cyrillic script, since classical figures are thematic here?”

  I had no thoughts on letters, Arabic or otherwise, for I cannot write. I left him to that particular line of inquiry. My tired mind wandered, to be brought back by a swift question.