Seeds of Decline

by Edward Charles

  Then, with his cardinals lined up before him, Sixtus had turned his attention to founding a dynasty. With celibacy still the official position in the church, although you didn’t need reminding there were many leakages to that ruling, it was time to look to a layman, if only to father the children to carry the name forward to the next generation.

  Another nephew, Girolamo Riario, a small-time customs clerk from Liguria, had been chosen for the task. Sixtus’ first step had been to buy him a title. Conveniently, the village of Bosco d’Alessandria carried the title Count on its tiny shoulders and had been available for only fourteen thousand florins.

  The pope then set about finding Count Girolamo a bride. After some abortive negotiations, the count was married to the ten-year-old Caterina Sforza, illegitimate daughter of Galeazzo Maria, Duke of Milan. Then, with the Sforza connection and protection in place, Sixtus had set his eyes on Imola, which sat only fifty miles due north of Florence and was right on the main trade route to northern Europe. Somehow, he had managed to convince Taddeo Manfredi, Lord of Imola, to exchange the town for Castelnuevo di Tortona, thus ceding control of Imola to Milan.

  Now Florence found itself threatened, and in order to keep control of his northern border, Lorenzo made a deal with Galeazzo Maria to buy Imola for one hundred thousand ducats. At this Sixtus flew into a rage. He threatened excommunication, which would have rendered all contracts and treaties between Milan and its trading partners null and void; with the rapid prospect of economic collapse. So faced with this threat, Galeazzo Maria had changed his mind and sold Imola to Pietro Riario for just forty thousand ducats.

  Relations between Florence and the pope were strained and, to make matters worse, Sixtus had mischievously asked the Medici Bank to lend his family the money for the purchase. Ever-cunning, his intention had been to drive a wedge between Lorenzo and the city and in this he had almost succeeded. But in the end, after much soul-searching, Lorenzo had taken the side of the city and refused the loan to Sixtus.

  But now, to cap it all, this morning, further bad news has arrived. Somehow, it seems, Riario has managed to borrow the money from someone else and they say he has completed the purchase of Imola.

  And if that is true, then Lorenzo is left high and dry, on unhappy terms with his city, with the pope and with powerful Milan. And with the Treaty of Lodi having collapsed after twenty-five years of peace, Lucrezia is uncomfortably aware just how vulnerable Florence – and Lorenzo – really are.

  And that’s why they are meeting, to try to sort something out. As soon as Lorenzo arrives. Nothing can be done without Lorenzo. As if his name had just been called, he enters the room. ‘What a miserable bunch you all are. Come on. It’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘I wish I shared your optimism.’ Francesco Sassetti has the longest face of all.

  Lorenzo looks round the room and Lucrezia follows his gaze. Even his younger brother, Giuliano, looks miserable. His face is long and very pale. ‘What’s wrong with you, pastry-face?’

  Giuliano shrugs. ‘I’ve got nothing to do. You are run ragged, trying to negotiate new peace agreements, sorting out the bank, keeping the city in order, and I? I have no useful role in life at all. I’m just The Magnificent Lorenzo’s baby brother.’

  Grins all round. The trouble is, he’s right.

  Everyone looks at Lorenzo. Perhaps it’s because he’s the only one in the room smiling and looking confident? Perhaps (more probably) because in the end, it’s Lorenzo who makes all the important decisions.

  Suddenly, he claps his hands together. ‘Right!’ Everyone looks up, expectantly. ‘This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to negotiate a new peace agreement with Venice and Milan and come to a settlement with the pope.’

  He looks at Giuliano, who stands, face like a hangdog, shaking his head. ‘Good luck in that venture.’ In the absence of a rebuke, Giuliano gets bolder. ‘And how, when everybody knows Florence is in retreat and the Medici in trouble, are you going to convince our enemies to sit down at the negotiating table and come to an honourable settlement with us?’

  Every face in the room reflects Giuliano’s doubts. Each one looks miserable. They all look at Lorenzo, who claps hands again, then holds them out, like a magician, producing a magic rabbit from a hat. ‘By Magnificentia. How else?’ Everyone looks stunned. ‘We are going to hold a joust – the greatest joust ever seen in the Piazza Santa Croce.’ He turns to Giuliano. ‘I am going to call it Giuliano’s Joust, in recognition of your twenty-first year, and it will be dedicated to Simonetta Cattaneo, the most beautiful woman in Florence.’

  Giuliano’s face lights up, as it always does when his lover’s name is mentioned. The poor boy is besotted with her. ‘Oh, thank you.’

  Lorenzo grins. ‘Don’t thank me. You’re going to do all the work. You said you wanted a job. Well, you can organize the whole thing: castles, banners, pennants, brocades, cloth of gold – no expense spared. You will engage the greatest artists, sculptors, architects, artisans, armourers, poets, musicians and cooks, for our delectation. And I, Lorenzo, will foot the bill.’

  The room is in uproar. Everyone is happy. Everyone is confident it will be a great success.

  Except Francesco Sassetti. ‘When is this great event going to take place?’

  The room goes quiet. A dampener on their euphoria. The winter is ahead of them. It will be months before the sun returns.

  ‘The end of January!’ Lorenzo makes the announcement with a flourish.

  ‘January?’ Lucrezia is the only one who dares contradict her son. ‘You can’t hold a joust in the Piazza Santa Croce in January!’

  And Lorenzo, without faltering, turns to her and says ‘Can’t I? Just watch me!’

  Lucrezia looked across at Savonarola and smiled to herself. The monk was sitting on a flat rock, a long blade of grass between his teeth, chin cupped in his hands, obviously lost in her story.

  Encouraged by his interested expression, she took a deep breath. ‘It’s a matter of style, really. Condottieri fight with mercenary armies, paid for by the participating parties in a war. They like plenty of show: men, horses, guns, armour, cannons, flags, banners, and noise – always plenty of noise. And the questions they are addressing with all this show? Will this army prevail? Will they break our army? Will they pursue us all the way back to our city walls? Once here, will they besiege us until we are starving and plague-ridden? And if they do, what ransom shall we have to pay to save ourselves from rape and pillage? It all comes down to money. War always does.

  ‘But princes? The questions they face are different. Does he have a clear strategy? Does he have the confidence to carry it out and the persistence to drive it through to fruition? Does he have the confidence of his people? Of his allies? Does he, in other words, have sufficient support?’ She raised her eyes, making sure he was still listening. ‘And finally, and overpowering in its significance, does he have the money to make it all come true?’

  ‘That is what magnificentia is all about: imagery, perception and confidence. Yes, it involves shows, and bands, and flags flying, and armour glinting in the sharp morning air, and banquets loading down tables until they bend, and artists painting heroic pictures, and sculptors hewing rock, and poets reading orations. But above all it’s about confidence, theirs in you and, just as important, their perception of yours in yourself.

  ‘It’s about advertising yourself, advertere – you know your Latin, Girolamo – to make people turn toward you, to make them notice you, and if you can’t make them like what they see, at least make them respect it.’

  ‘Lorenzo understood that?’

  She could see Savonarola was smiling. And concentrating hard. She could almost hear him remembering, and she knew that he had not only heard her but that despite his resentful upbringing, he understood too.

  She nodded. ‘He has always understood. Lorenzo was born understanding.

  ‘He also left nothing to chance. It was a heaven-sent opportunity. An opportunity to kill tw
o birds with one stone. Giuliano wanted recognition, so Lorenzo announced the joust in his name. Giuliano wanted uplifting, so Lorenzo allowed him to dedicate the joust to Simonetta Cattaneo, the most beautiful woman in Florence, thus associating Giuliano with beauty and success. Giuliano wanted responsibility, so Lorenzo put him in charge of organizing the joust himself. And he did. With the care and precision his elder brother would have taken pride in.

  ‘And in case anybody of influence was unable to attend and see for himself, Lorenzo asked his close friend Angelo Poliziano to write and publish an epic poem Stanzas Begun for the Joust of the Magnificent Giuliano de Medici.’

  By his blank stare, it seemed the monk had not enjoyed the benefit of Poliziano’s epic work.

  ‘Poliziano described it and just in case the imagery was lost on the less-than-literate, Botticelli repeated the allegory with his paintings of Primavera and Venus and Mars, with Simonetta seeming to don, or in her case, perhaps I should more accurately say remove, the mantle of the goddess with graceful charm while Giuliano played the male god’s role, just to make the point.’

  ‘Was it well attended?’ Savonarola’s expression looked more well-mannered than really interested, but it was a start.

  ‘They were all there, all Lorenzo’s friends – all the beautiful people, as I used to call them.’

  PIAZZA SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE

  29th January 1475

  ‘Ladies over here, men over there. Ginevra, please will you stand with Simonetta and Lucrezia? It’s only a bit of fun. Won’t take a moment.’

  Giuliano has become so accustomed to his organizing role that he can’t stop.

  ‘We’re lucky with the weather. Lovely light for drawing. Not like January at all.’ Leonardo da Vinci, dressed in rose pink as usual, smiles at the girls, obeys Giuliano’s instruction and moves along, making room for them. He has been swapping rude rhymes with Lorenzo and his friend Amerigo di Giovanni de Benci, director of the Geneva branch of the bank, who is paying the Florence Tavola and the Palazzo Medici a visit. Amerigo has brought his daughter Ginevra with him and already she is causing quite a stir. She is a gorgeous little thing, just seventeen, and married a year previously to Luigi di Bernardo Niccolini, a tall, thin-faced cloth trader, well-known to be ferociously rich but absolutely charmless.

  Bernardo Bembo pushes into the far row between Leonardo and Sandro Botticelli and introduces himself. He has just arrived in Florence as Venetian ambassador and come to the joust with his wife and son, who are somewhere near the back. But Bernardo has heard about the auction and despite his family’s presence, he’s made his decision already. He’s not only going to bid, but when Ginevra comes up for auction, he, and nobody else, is going to be her Cavaliere Servante.

  It’s a piece of fun that Giuliano has dreamed up. He has filled the front row of the crowd with the most beautiful girls and then allowed the men to declare their undying love for them and to be their knight in shining armour. Of course they have to pay for the privilege and in each case the highest bidder wins, with the money going to the poor, less an administration charge, of course, to cover costs, but nobody knows what they are and nobody dares ask the Medici.

  Lorenzo is, as always, expected to be the highest payer, but he’s seen how the land lies. So when La Bencina comes up for auction first, he bids hard enough to push Bembo to his limit and then gracefully and very publicly retires. This leaves Bembo to claim his prize, which publicly involves a gentlemanly peck on the cheek but privately seems to involve a surprising amount of groping beneath her heavy winter cloak and passing of notes. The girl retires red-faced and breathless to rejoin her father and Bembo, flushed with a combination of success and lust, rejoins his family higher up, in front of one of the wine tents.

  Lorenzo opens the bidding again, this time for Lucrezia Donati. This is no great surprise as Lorenzo is known throughout the city for his long-standing relationship (his joke and a very well-worn one) with the fair Lucrezia. Indeed, everyone remembers the rather public snub he delivered to his future wife-to-be, Clarice Orsini six years earlier, when he declared his undying love for Lucrezia at his own joust, and was presented by her with a large bunch of violets. But today, to everyone’s surprise, Lorenzo is outbid and for the second time withdraws gracefully.

  With Ginevra and Lucrezia ‘sold’ Lorenzo reappears, this time declaring for Simonetta Cattaneo. He bids steadily, outbidding her husband Marco Vespucci. But then, to everyone’s delight, Giuliano outbids his brother and wins the hand of the fair lady, who is promptly declared belle of the tournament. It’s hardly news as Simonetta has, by general consent, been dubbed the most beautiful woman in Florence ever since she first arrived from Genoa. No surprise either that Giuliano had to win, as it is no secret that she is his mistress and has been for some months.

  The contest ends with loud applause and considerable conversation in the crowd. Down at the front, Leonardo da Vinci is busily sketching Ginevra de Benci. It seems Bernardo Bembo has wasted no time in commissioning a picture of her.

  Sandro Botticelli leans over his shoulder. ‘You were right, Leonardo. Lorenzo and his brother came to an agreement. This is Giuliano’s day and Lorenzo agreed not to spoil it for him.’

  Leonardo blows chalk off his sketch and half-turns. ‘It’s just as well. Giuliano is getting pretty serious about Simonetta. He would have been furious if Lorenzo had outbid him on this day of all days.’

  He brushes back his long hair with his fingers, leaving pink chalk marks above his left ear. ‘If they’d had a row about it in front of everyone, it would have ruined the day for all of us.’

  ‘But they didn’t and within an hour we had Botticelli sketching Simonetta on Giuliano’s behalf and Leonardo doing the same with young Ginevra for Ambassador Benci.’

  Lucrezia had relaxed as her tale unfolded and was now looking more rested than she had for days. She smiled at the memory. ‘Every time I looked up there seemed to be an artist handing over a little sketch and some rich man handing his florins in the opposite direction. If Giuliano had thought about it, he could have made it another way of raising money for charity, but the artists were poor enough, so nobody minded that they kept the money.’

  ‘Are they sluts, these women?’ To her complete surprise Savonarola’s eyes were cold and distasteful.

  ‘Sluts? Of course not. They were respectable married women. And all from good families too.’ How can you even think such a thing?

  ‘But they flirt with other men. Pretend to have sexual interest in them. And do so publicly, in front of crowds. What sort of example do they set for others, these so-called women of good families?’

  She shook her head, despairing. ‘No, you don’t understand, Girolamo. It’s all a game. Courtly love. As if the men were once again knights in armour, pursuing the art of chivalry and the women are the fair maids they pretend to woo. Everybody does it. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘So the men do not, in the end, sleep with the women?’

  ‘Good Lord no.’ She paused, thinking of Lorenzo and Lucrezia Donati, of Giuliano and Simonetta, of Benci and Ginevra. ‘Well, some of them, perhaps. Very privately and with the utmost discretion. Rich men do … have a tendency to pursue that which they cannot have.’

  He looked at her hard and in that look she felt distance, criticism, even perhaps disgust. ‘Yes. They do don’t they? Until they get it. And then, having ruined it, they don’t want it any more.’ His face was cold now. ‘Do they?’

  It is never easy to look into an expression that rejects you and everything you live by so completely, and so she averted her eyes. Looking across the valley, uncertain how to continue, she changed the subject.

  ‘La Bencina, as Poliziano always called her, kept Leonardo busy that year. The ambassador wanted paintings and a marble bust of her. Most of us thought it was because she had refused his approaches and the images were a substitute, but I admit there were scurrilous rumours the other way. Whichever way round it was, his pre-occupation with
her continued for a long time.

  ‘Leonardo sold him a painting of her, with juniper trees behind and her eyes looking strangely out of focus, as if she was far away in another world. Leonardo also did the drawings that Verrocchio used to make the marble bust of her, holding a bunch of violets to her breast, a reference to a poem by Braccese, teasing Benci for his broken heart.

  ‘All in all, it was a wonderful day and although it took place at the end of January, the weather was kind to us and we all got home without a soaking. It was the making of my Giuliano – he was taken much more seriously after that, and remained grateful to Lorenzo for what he had done.’

  With a dry throat, perhaps after all her talking, and perhaps in response to his look of harsh rejection, she crossed to the stream and drank, then inclined her head. Standards were standards and she was determined to not allow their conversation to become uncivilized.

  She smiled, a somewhat forced smile. ‘Shall we walk back?’

  He nodded his agreement and reached for the walking sticks, left leaning against a rock. As he turned, she felt a sudden pain in her stomach and doubled up. Luckily, by the time he stood and turned back to her she had recovered herself and was smiling again. But the pain this time had been particularly sharp, worse than ever before, and it had frightened her.

  Together they set off down the hill, he asking questions about the joust and she answering as best she could. But the pain kept returning and she hoped she could reach the Bagno before he noticed. She had not told anyone – not even her doctor – about these pains and the lumps she had been feeling for weeks. She didn’t want to. She knew all too well that once she did, they would confirm it and then, officially, she would be dying. And she was not ready for that, not by a long way.