Although not as large as Giotto’s funeral, the city mourned the passing of the great artist with a large ceremony and feast. Daddi’s remains were buried in the church of Santa Croce, where a number of his triptychs and wood panels were already part of the church’s elaborate decorations. Christiano and Estancia attended the ceremonies and did an admirable job of expressing their loss. After all, even though they knew that Daddi was in fact still alive, it was a moving and emotional experience to see over a thousand well wishers, many from the greatest families in Florence, greater Tuscany, and as far away as Rome and Venice, at his funeral.
When they returned to the villa that evening, they shared the experience with Daddi. He had seriously contemplated showing up to the ceremonies in disguise, but decided in the end that it would be better for him to stay out of Florence for a while, no matter how well camouflaged. He was pleased to hear that the ceremony was well attended and of all the warm comments from former patrons, apprentices, clergy and admirers of his work.
After Christiano and Estancia had gone to bed for the evening, Daddi sat alone by the fire and reflected on his life and where it would take him. He was tired of painting. He had lived the life of a famous painter two times over. He loved the beauty of art and the dedication to the craftsmanship that it entailed. He had enjoyed building his wealth and his fame, but now wondered what it was all for. He also enjoyed sharing his knowledge and skills with younger artists, much like he had with his sons one hundred and fifty years earlier. But the loss of Angelina and his daughter, Constanzia, had hit him hard. He had had everything a man could ask for, but he hadn’t appreciated it at the time. He was tired of losing the people he cared for the most. It was one thing to lose a loved one to old age. It was something quite different to lose them to a sudden and terrible illness. He didn’t know exactly what the next few years held in store for him, but he knew that they at least did not involve painting. When he retired for the evening, Bernardo Daddi was officially dead. The next morning Giuseppe di Bernardi began his journey in the world.
Chapter 41
New York, March 2010
Mackenzie and Anthony had met a number of times since he had disclosed his secret to her. She was full of questions and he was more than willing to answer them. He hadn’t thought so at first, but it felt good, after all these years, to share himself with another person. He hadn’t done that for hundreds of years, and even then less than a handful of times.
They liked to meet at the small diner in midtown where Mackenzie had initially told him of her suspicions. It made it easy to grab the train to the Cloisters afterwards. They tried to sit in a corner in the back and always got there early before the morning crowds started rolling in. The place was mostly filled with cops who had either just got off duty or were just about to start, as well as a mix of service workers, construction workers, and business people. Anthony loved places like this.
Anthony looked around the diner, cradling his coffee mug with both hands. “You know the great thing about New York diners is that they remain a point of convergence for an entire city.”
“What do you mean a point of convergence?” asked Mackenzie.
“It is a place where rich and poor alike can enjoy a bagel with cream cheese or eggs with corn beef hash and freshly brewed coffee and orange juice. If you want to start your day with a Bloody Mary, so be it.”
“My father has always loved diners. I guess I’ve always been drawn to them as well. There’s a certain unpolished charm to them,” agreed Mackenzie. “No one orders a double skinny macchiato with an extra shot. You order a coffee and they bring it to you in a white, ceramic mug. You’re responsible for adding anything else to it.”
“Exactly,” responded Anthony. “There is a casual grace, a beautiful simplicity to a diner. It is one of the few timeless fragments of society that has not changed much since the 1920s.”
Mackenzie sat back and reflected on the time she had spent with Anthony and how close they had grown over the past several months. She had observed and unconsciously catalogued his eating habits, which at least for breakfast were on a pretty regimented rotation at the diner. He cycled through four breakfasts: oatmeal with fruit and cream, coffee, no juice; bagel with cream cheese, lox, tomato, onion and capers with coffee and orange juice; two eggs sunny side up with corn beef hash, whole wheat toast, coffee and orange juice; and buckwheat pancakes with butter and maple syrup, bacon, home fries and coffee. He drank his coffee black. She made it a personal game to try and guess his order before he made it. So far she was batting about .700. Her father would be proud.
She hadn’t disclosed Anthony’s secret to her father, which weighed on her conscience terribly. They never kept secrets from each other and he knew she was keeping something important from him. She had promised Anthony not to say anything and she was true to her word. She thought about broaching the subject with him on several occasions but it never seemed like the right time. Or maybe she didn’t want him to specifically say no to her request.
“I’m sorry to change the subject,” she said after a few moments of mutual silence. “But this has been bugging me. Fra. Lippi was a monk. He started his life in a monastery. Wasn’t it hard to follow the monastic life after being married and having families?” asked Mackenzie between bites of her muffin.
“No, actually it was perfect for me at the time. My daughter, Estancia, and her husband, Christiano, had both passed away. Their two daughters, Maria Constanzia and Christiana Angelina, were married and starting families of their own. It was odd that I was around at that point. I enjoyed working on the farm and in the vineyard, but I was ready for a change. I wanted to get closer to God, to learn the secrets that I thought the Dominicans could either teach me, or at least direct me towards. Most of the time I enjoyed being a monk. Having a regimented routine and a lot of time to just sit and think and pray were good things for me at that point in my life, at least for a while.”
“Yeah, you didn’t exactly follow all the tenants of the Dominican order, did you? Especially the one related to celibacy?” Mackenzie said with a sly smile as she blew on her tea.
“I said that a lot of the monastic life was good for me. Not all of it.” Anthony winked, with what she detected as a hint of a blush. “Outside of having an affair with a nun and having a child, I think I was an exemplary monk.” They both laughed at how absurd that statement sounded.
“Given the time period, they were pretty cool about the whole thing, don’t you think? I mean they could have burned you both at the stake or tortured you into renouncing your affair and returning to the ‘true’ path.”
“You could probably say that I was mature for my age,” he said with a knowing grin. “Even though I was a relatively junior monk, I was very good friends with the Prior and some of the other monks higher in the order. I knew that they had had their own, shall we say, inappropriate liaisons, and not always with women.” He paused as the waiter refilled his coffee mug. Another waitress in a matching gray dress and white apron passed by with an omelet that looked like it could feed a small family, along with a side of crisp fragrant bacon.
“The Catholic Church was an immensely powerful and wealthy institution at that point in time. There was no shortage of eager young men from wealthy families who were willing to join the priesthood and donate a sizable portion of their families’ wealth to the church. Having a son in the clergy was not a bad move financially or politically for a wealthy merchant or even a nobleman. A bishop in those days was more powerful than all but the wealthiest merchants, and a cardinal was as powerful as most kings. Remember that two members of the powerful Medici family, Giovanni and Giulio, eventually became Popes Leo X and Clement VII. That would be like two Rockefellers or Rothschilds becoming popes, although the Medici were more powerful than either of those two families. So they really did not need the distraction caused by a disgraced monk and nun hanging around the cloister or in the community. Better to release them from their vows and let them remain frie
nds of the church, especially since my artwork was already well known both within and outside of the church. I attribute it more to sound business decision-making than forgiveness.”
Two policemen in crisp blue uniforms walked into the diner and sat down at the counter. The waiter working behind the counter brought them two cups of coffee without asking for their order and welcomed them casually. Mackenzie always felt a kinship towards police officers, having grown up with them her entire life. She imagined that her father spent a good deal of his early career just like these two, walking the beat, stopping in the local diner for breakfast. She often wondered, if her father could, would he go back and do it all over again? If it meant having her mother back, she thought he definitely would.
Mackenzie paused, then asked, “Up until this point we’ve covered your progression from Berlinghiero Berlinghieri to Bernardo Daddi to Fra Lippi. Who came next? Did you take a hiatus and emerge as Rembrandt, Sisler, or someone else?”
Anthony sipped his coffee and thought for a moment.
“No, I quit painting professionally for almost five hundred years. I paint privately and work as a restorer, but I have not painted as a professional artist since about 1470.”
“Why not? Why did you stop?”
“Let me answer that by asking you why you became a restorer,” responded Anthony.
“Because I love paintings, and restoring old ones that have been damaged is very fulfilling.”
“Yes, it is indeed,” replied Anthony, “but I doubt that anyone really sets out to be a restorer. What did you want to be when you were a girl, a restorer?”
“I’m still a girl,” said Mackenzie, laughing.
“Funny, yes, you are. You know what I mean.”
Mackenzie thought for a moment and then said in a more serious tone, “I wanted to be a painter. From the very beginning I wanted to be a painter more than anything. I used to dream that one day I would have my own show in the great galleries in New York and Paris and everyone would know my work.” She thought back to how she used to imagine smartly dressed people viewing her exhibit, glasses of champagne in hand, remarking on how exquisitely she had captured something magical with her work.
“So what happened?” asked Anthony quietly. “What stopped you from becoming a painter?”
“Because by the time I got to college, I started to realize that I wasn’t good enough to be an artist, or at least good enough to be the artist I dreamed of being. And by the time I got to grad school I knew for sure. My friend, Kat, is ten times the artist I am and she can’t make a living at it. I knew I had a good eye for detail and a lot of patience, and thought that being a restorer might be a good fit. I loved all the additional science and history and research involved as well.”
“So are you content with the choice you made?”
“Yes, I love what I do.”
“Do you ever look back and wish that you were an artist?”
“No, not really,” she lied. Mackenzie had always wanted to be a painter. That desire never left her. She told herself she didn’t care, but she knew it wasn’t true. “I mean, I would love to be good enough to be considered a great artist, but I’m not. But I try to be very good at what I do now and hope that I’ll eventually be considered a world class restorer.”
“In that case, in many ways you know why I stopped painting, at least professionally, almost half a millennium ago.” Anthony smiled. “You know, when I say half a millennium out loud, it sounds ridiculous.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” said Mackenzie, almost jumping out of her seat. “You were a great artist. You were three great artists, people that art historians study, that art critics write about and respect. You were considered one of the greatest artists of your time—in fact, three of the greatest artists of three different times!” she said.
Anthony took a last bite of his bagel and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He took another sip of his coffee, which the roaming waitress had just topped off for the fourth time.
“Greatness is relative, or I should say that the perception of greatness is relative. True greatness is not relative, it is absolute. I realized that years ago.” Anthony paused a moment and then continued, somewhat nostalgically, “You are quite right, I was fortunate to have been considered a successful artist. I loved being an artist. I loved everything about it. I loved mixing pigments, setting glare, trimming my brushes and choosing the right piece of wood. I loved working with young apprentices, seeing their enthusiasm and watching them grow. I would never trade those experiences. I loved watching the look on people’s faces when they first saw one of my paintings. I would sit quietly in church and watch as people would come and stare in wonder at some of the triptychs or other paintings that I had made. It is a wonderful feeling when people appreciate something that you have poured your heart and soul into.”
“Do you know how rare that is?” asked Mackenzie. “Do you know how few people there are who have experienced what you are talking about? I mean, I can only imagine that feeling.”
“Yes, you are absolutely right. I was blessed and feel very fortunate to have had those experiences.” Anthony paused and sat back in his seat and looked towards the ceiling, almost in a dreamlike state and continued. “I was confident in my skills and comfortable in the world that I created. I had been honored by Lorenzo and Cosimo de’ Medici and by popes and royalty alike. They all sang my praises and it was easy to get taken away by that world.”
He looked down at his coffee. A sad look crossed his face momentarily before he continued. “I think that the first time I started to feel that perhaps I was being passed and falling behind was when I saw how rapidly Sandro Botticelli was growing as a painter. I knew that he was going to be great from an early age. By the time I decided that Lippi’s time had come, in 1469, the same year that my friend Piero de’ Medici passed, Botticelli had emerged as the premier artist of Florence, and perhaps even the entire world. I went into seclusion for a little more than twenty years. When I did return as the young Antonio de Bernardi and presented myself to Lorenzo de’ Medici with the papers signed by his grandfather, Cosimo, Botticelli had just finished The Birth of Venus. At this time Lorenzo was already embroiled in a terrible dispute with Girolamo Savonarola regarding the future of Florence. He proudly showed me a number of Botticelli’s works, including his favorite, The Adoration of the Magi, which, as you know, placed Lorenzo and his family, as well as Botticelli himself, in the nativity scene and furthered the myth of the Medici that Lorenzo was so keen on creating. He knew that Botticelli’s paintings, just like Donatello’s sculptures, marked the start of an era, a new age. Of course we now call that the Renaissance, but that term had not yet been coined. Lorenzo introduced me to a young man, a boy, really, whom the family had taken into their household. That young man was named Michelangelo Buonorroti.”
Mackenzie had listened quietly, working hard not to let her excitement show. But she couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“You mean that you met Michelangelo when he was a young aspiring artist?” she asked excitedly, trying not to speak too loudly in the diner.
“Yes, it was in late 1490. You cannot imagine the thrill and at the same time the gut wrenching feeling of failure that seeing his work had on me. Having just seen Botticelli’s greatness, I looked upon the work of a young artist who I knew immediately would become one of the greatest artists the world had ever known. And this was before ever seeing his greatest works. It would be almost ten years before he began carving the statue of David or painting the Sistine Chapel, but I knew. I had seen great art many times over. But I had never actually felt what I did when I saw Michelangelo’s work. It moved me in a way that I have never felt before or since. My head was swimming. I thought that I would either faint or throw up. I forced myself to gather my composure and speak intelligently with Lorenzo. But by then I knew. I knew that I could no longer consider myself a great artist and began to doubt if I really ever was one.”
To some extent, Mack
enzie knew how he had felt. Her own epiphany happened during her senior year at Bryn Mawr. She was putting the finishing touches on the final piece for her show. Every senior art major at Bryn Mawr put on a personal exhibition of their work. She had already received rave reviews from her teachers and fellow students alike. While trying to remain humble, she knew that it was going to be one of the best exhibits anyone had seen in years. Then she ran into Laura Walters, a freshman, who was working in the studio late one evening, which was rare for first year students. Mackenzie walked over to take a look at what she was painting with the intent of giving the underclassman some encouragement. It only took an instant, but she knew that nothing that she had painted, ever, was as good as the painting that this freshman was working on. Of course, Laura Walters was a very nice girl and was very deferential and complimentary to Mackenzie and her work. After all, Mackenzie was a senior and the acknowledged star student of the department. Somehow the fact that Laura was so nice made it worse. In the blink of an eye her entire world had been shattered and this unassuming eighteen-year-old girl was to blame. Mackenzie hated herself for the feelings of anger and jealousy she felt, but she couldn’t help it. She would never be as good a painter as Laura Walters. From that moment onward she never looked at herself, at least as a painter, in the same way again.
She wasn’t sure what to say. Everything she thought of saying sounded trite, or worse, like pity. For a while they just sat quietly. It was the first time she had ever seen him look sad. After a long pause, she broke the silence.
“You know, if every artist held themselves up to Michelangelo’s standard, not a lot of artwork would have been made since the sixteenth century.”
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