by Linda Proud
‘Wonderful!’ said Ficino. ‘Quite wonderful!’
I despaired. ‘So how long before we receive the book?’
‘November.’
‘November? Why not next week?’
‘Each page has to be set up, don’t forget. Has to be set up, printed and taken apart again, since we need to use the same letters for the next page. That’s what takes the time. Five hundred copies of a book with this many pages will take us several months. How long would it take you?’
I smiled wryly despite myself. Even Hercules would have been defeated by such a labour.
‘Wonderful,’ Ficino repeated as we left.
‘Diabolical,’ said I.
We had timed our visit to the city to coincide with a visit to the workshop of Sandro Botticelli, where a new picture was to be unveiled to a small and very select group of men. Ficino, who came less and less often to the city these days, looked about him keenly as we rode through the city, and I saw through his eyes the division of men into rich and poor. It was easy to distinguish them: the rich wore colour and the poor wore undyed wool. Nor did they mingle overmuch. The crimsons and purples, yellows and blues, the silks, the velvets, the high cap-feathers, all kept each other’s protective company in a city mostly comprising the undyed. The republican ideals that had inspired the government during Ficino’s boyhood were now quite vanished; no one even made a pretence of them any more, except that Florence was ruled by a prince who pretended to be a citizen. Lorenzo, popularly referred to as Il Magnifico, was everywhere, visible and invisible. He was visible in the wealth paraded by those families affiliated to his. He was invisible in the favours granted that bound men to him; the arguments resolved with a gift; the marriages brokered; the benefices gained and bestowed.
The Medici bank was failing through mismanagement and Lorenzo wanted little to do with it. Because the war with Rome had been his war, he had more or less paid for it. When his own resources had run dry, he helped himself to the enormous fortune he was supposed to be protecting for his wards, his Pierfranceschi cousins, until they came of age. Similarly he helped himself to the fund for dowerless girls. He brought in new taxes which crippled the priesthood and the poor but left the rich untouched. When I say ‘he’, I mean of course the government, but the government was Lorenzo, invisibly. By secret ways the Medici had long been in control of those who chose the names for the ballot of each signoria, two months in duration.
Looking through Ficino’s eyes, hard hit as he was himself by the new taxation on priests, I saw a city built on corruption and greed. Looking through my own eyes and myopically, I saw Florence as a city of beauty. But then I was a beneficiary of Lorenzo’s generosity. He had given me a house in return for saving his life on that dread day when the rival Pazzi family had sought to assassinate him in the Duomo. He had also permitted me to wed Elena de’ Pazzi at the very time when he was arranging for the government to pass a new law that no daughter of the Pazzi family may marry or bear children. Why had he done this? Yes, he was grateful to me; but it was more than that. Lorenzo liked to give to others what he could not have himself. What he gave to me was a marriage based on love.
‘She will have no dowry,’ he had told me grimly.
‘She is my wealth,’ I replied.
And tears had come into his eyes, in that time when he cried easily and for good reason. In the death of Giuliano, he had lost not only the brother he had loved, but also a young and prudent counsellor he had never listened to. Lorenzo was alone. He needed friends. He gave us gifts of that which we held most precious and we were bound to him, as flies in the honeyed dew of certain plants.
I wanted Ficino to speak his thoughts out loud, but he kept quiet, looking to the left and right of him as we passed through the streets. The deprivations and ills we had suffered during the dark days of the war, the hopelessness and despair, had been swept away like the stinking silt after the flood of ’79. The city was alive and at work restoring itself. It was growing in beauty, with new palazzi being built on ancient principles. There was a new order. The city militia was more evident than it ever had been, and there were police. The bankers at their green baize tables in the Old Market exchanged money as the Medici had done four generations ago – out in the open and according to custom, if not in strict adherence to the spirit of the law forbidding usury. Lorenzo no longer dealt in money. These days he dealt in benefices. He kept the best for his second son, seven-year-old Giovanni, and gave the rest as gifts. And who did not want a benefice? I would have liked one myself, to free me from the burden of earning a living by the skill of my hands, allowing me to copy books of my own choice and at a calm pace. Few recipients bothered with the requirement to be in holy orders, let alone follow the rules of those orders. What we all wanted, Ficino included, was a life of leisure to pursue what we desired. The only difference between men was what they desired: Ficino wanted a simple life devoted to what he called ‘the hunt for truth’, whereas some, such as Bartolommeo Scala, once again the Chancellor of Florence, wanted fabulous wealth and to live like a prince. But it was all on the back of benefices, one way or another.
I speak with hindsight. At the time we could barely see the foundation on which we built our lives. It was the invisible part, the secret ways. It was normal. That men were divided between those who earned a living and were poor, and those who derived a living and were rich – that was normal. The poor went to church and prayed there. The rich went and gave generously, funding chapels that were to bear their names, having their own images painted on sacred walls. I did not have a benefice, but I lived by the hospitality and generosity of those who did.
On this day as we went to Ognissanti, I saw the hearts of men. There were those who greeted us affably in passing. They were the men who were part of the Medici system. Then there were those who turned their backs or just stared with cold eyes. They were the ones who hated Lorenzo, as I myself had hated him once. With some it was resentment and envy; with others it was with just cause. I knew their bitterness intimately, could understand but not condone. And then there were those who took no notice of us one way or another, being too busy laying out their stalls, skinning their meat, stirring their vats, planing their wood. The ones who live amongst dust and stench, converting the earth into a living. To them we were as we were, two men on horseback, of no relevance to their lives.
‘What is this painting, Father?’
‘Be patient. You will see it soon enough.’
‘But it is shrouded in secrecy. Why?’
‘Privacy, not secrecy. My young Lorenzino is a very private man. Only I have been invited to this unveiling, and Poliziano, of course, since we both designed the picture with Sandro. Lorenzino wants us to see it at the same time he does. Always considerate.’
The Lorenzo he spoke of was not il Magnifico but his cousin, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. The painting we were going to see had been commissioned to celebrate his recent marriage to Semiramide d’Appiano. He was only nineteen, but il Magnifico, having found the perfect match for him, had seen no reason to wait.
There was much talk in the city of a rift in the Medici family, caused by the guardian spending the patrimony of his wards on the war. ‘Will il Magnifico be there, do you think?’ I asked.
‘No, it is just the select few who will be there, at the most propitious moment for this celestial image to be uncovered.’
‘Celestial?’
‘Be patient, Tommaso.’
2
VENUS IN A SEASHELL
1482
ENTERING THE WORKSHOP IN OGNISSANTI I REVIVED, AS a vegetable gone limp plumps up in water. It was a temporary revival but enough to remind me what being alive felt like. Filippino Lippi said I walked in like a ghost and took on all the colours of what was around me. Colours. Pinks and duck-egg blues, dark greens and coral reds: Sandro’s palette was a natural one and not overwhelmed by ultramarine and gold.
The workshop was busy and many panels were in the process of completion but the large canvas in the centre of the room was shrouded in linen. All around were charcoal studies tacked up roughly: nymphs and goddesses dancing in flowing, diaphanous gowns, flowers of the meadow done in realistic detail, studies of trees, of feet and hands. Such movement, such vivacity! While other painters of Florence continued in the long tradition of holy scenes, Sandro Botticelli had returned to Arcadia.
Far from a select few, many men were crowding into the small space. Having heard about the event, Lorenzo de’ Medici had arrived, along with his usual entourage of companions numbering at least ten, including two of his sons. And they were not the only young ones. Other men had brought their sons and, to add to Botticelli’s distress, a four-year-old neighbour who had taken possession of him and called in daily to pose – unwittingly – for devils and demons was pushing roughly through the crowd towards the painter with a very determined look on his face. I remember the boy’s name: Ridolfo Spini. Unable to pronounce it, he called himself Doffo.
‘Tommaso! Are you here too?’ Sandro seemed bemused as to what my connection to the patron could be.
‘I’m with Ficino.’
‘Well, make yourself useful and help Filippino clear the place of juveniles.’
‘Even Lorenzo’s sons?’
Sandro sighed heavily. ‘Do what you can.’
I took Doffo Spini by the ear and led him spitting and snarling from the workshop. Outside Filippino Lippi was bribing other boys not to re-enter, but they were mobbing him, taking his money and not moving off.
‘They’ve heard our Venus is naked,’ Filippino told me, exasperated. He had his own workshop by this time, but was still found frequently at Botticelli’s, convinced as he was that his erstwhile master could not function without him. Particularly at viewings. ‘Where did Doffo go?’ he asked, barring the way to a young Vespucci.
‘O Dio …’ I went back inside and found my charge sitting in front of the covered panel, facing the audience as if he were the one all had come to see. With his pointed ears and spaced teeth, he did indeed look like an imp from the inferno. Before I could reach the child, however, the babble of voices suddenly quietened. I turned to see the Pierfranceschi at the door, Lorenzino with his hooded eyes and mop of unruly hair and Giovanni with his broad brow and startling innocence. Several years younger than his brother, Giovanni was taller and as eye-catching as an angel. One always had to make an effort to draw the gaze away from him to his brother. If Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco was surprised or upset by the heaving mass of visitors, he did not show it. The prize pupil of Marsilio Ficino, he was a very polished courtier and in his sweetly modulated voice he expressed delight that so many had come. As he glanced at his guardian, however, he blinked once or twice before walking towards him, his arms open for an embrace from the one he had always called ‘father.’
‘You forgot to invite me!’ said il Magnifico, playfully pulling his young cousin’s cap down over his eyes.
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco straightened his cap with a smile. ‘This was intended to be a preview. I was going to invite you when it is formally hung in my house.’
‘Well, I could not wait for that.’
Lorenzino had a fine and noble bearing that left no one in any doubt that here was a scion of the Medici family, descended from the same forefather as il Magnifico himself. Their grandfathers had been partners, but Lorenzino’s father, Pierfrancesco, had been bought out from the banking enterprise and had retired with a considerable fortune. Twenty years younger than il Magnifico, Lorenzino was closer in age to Lorenzo’s eldest son, but he and Piero had never played together as children, and Lorenzino always took his place close to il Magnifico, to stand with the same posture of superiority no matter how old he was. Years notwithstanding, he was il Magnifico’s equal, at least in his own eyes.
Sandro nudged me. ‘Get rid of the children,’ he hissed.
I crossed to where Piero de’ Medici, abandoned and neglected, sat alone on a table staring at his cousins with smouldering hatred. Too young to understand the subtleties and undercurrents of relations between grown men, Piero took things at face value and considered himself usurped. ‘Your father wants you to wait for him outside,’ I said.
‘No he doesn’t!’ he said, brushing me off like a fly. Vanquished as ever by the imperiousness of this boy, I went looking for his brother, but little Giovanni had squeezed in between his father and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and was standing on his father’s feet, hanging on his belt and staring up at him with piggy eyes full of adoration.
‘Come, Sandro, off with those covers,’ said il Magnifico, swinging his pudgy son to and fro. ‘The day is hot and our curiosity is scalding us.’
‘Not everyone is here yet,’ said Sandro nervously, waiting for the instruction of his patron rather than his patron’s guardian.
‘Who is missing?’
‘Angelo Poliziano.’
‘He’s here,’ said several voices.
Just inside the door, Poliziano stood sweating and breathless. ‘Forgive me,’ he panted. ‘I know we need to catch the moment, so I ran.’
‘The moment?’ Il Magnifico glanced around and, noticing the hour glass for the first time, looked abashed, realising that Ficino had timed the unveiling to coincide with the movement of the planets.
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco invited Poliziano to come forward and greeted him affectionately. ‘You’re not too late,’ he assured him. There was still some sand trickling through the hour glass.
Little Giovanni, who had been pushed gently away when his weight had begun to trouble his father’s feet, was now lifting the linen to peak at what was behind. Doffo Spini, considering himself in charge of this event, poked him spitefully and told him to stop. Giovanni ignored him. The new tonsure on his pate, strange as it was on such a young head, was not enough to remind Filippino Lippi that the child, whose hand he now smacked, was not only a priest but an abbot.
Giovanni dropped the fabric and, laughing at his own naughtiness, went off to torment his brother. He tried to climb the table to join Piero but so lacked agility and grace that finally Piero had to haul him up to save the family any further embarrassment.
‘Magnifico,’ said Botticelli in desperation. ‘It is too hot and stuffy for your little ones.’
‘And it’ll be even hotter in a moment,’ said Filippino to me.
But all eyes were now on the hour glass and the final stream of grains. Ficino raised up his hands and began to sing a hymn, an Orphic hymn to Venus. As the last note of the hymn resonated in our expectant silence, Sandro Botticelli nodded to Filippino who, with a simple flick of his wrist, disrobed the painting. From the men came one sound: a deep, intestinal grunt; from the boys, yelps and titters. Doffo Spini gave a penetrating whistle that seemed incredible for a boy his age. For what we were looking at was a naked woman, life-size, gazing at us with such benign innocence that our lust was simultaneously both aroused and doused. Fat little Giovanni clapped his hands to his mouth. Too young to have much awareness of being an abbot, he looked from the painting to his brother, his face a shining mixture of fascination and horror, while Piero himself stood on the bench, his eyes popping. This was clearly what Botticelli had feared, not that his painting would corrupt the young but that the young would corrupt his painting, its proper reception and understanding. But the initial grunts that had come from the adults were now converting into sighs of aesthetic pleasure, and he had to be content with that.
She was as pale as marble, with long, golden hair flowing about her. One hand partly obscured her breasts from our hungry eyes, the other, grasping the end of her long tresses, covered her pudenda. That she was standing in a scallop shell the size of a coracle and attended on her right by zephyrs and on her left by a nymph waiting to cover her with a robe, were details that only impressed themselves later. The Cyprian sea, the coastline in the backgr
ound and the roses raining in the air barely reached the eye that fastened on female nudity.
Botticelli himself gazed at us. Always nervous in anticipation, once the covers were off a work he enjoyed himself. He was growing somewhat stout with age, and his fair, wavy hair did not seem to have had too much attention of late. His delphic eyes, where light danced as on water, rested on the face of Lorenzino. The young man seemed to be two-in-one, half of him falling in love with this goddess in the basest manner and the other, more noble part, appreciating the literary references he could read in the painting. His approval was obvious, and that was the important thing.
Lorenzo de’ Medici had recently given his cousin a painting by Botticelli originally intended as a gift for Giuliano, a gesture of reparation he needed to make for spending the Pierfranceschi wealth. The painting, the wonderful, enigmatic Realm of Venus, a Platonic picture of the transformation of the soul through love, had been presented this very year, on the occasion of Lorenzino’s marriage. Immediately Lorenzino had commissioned a new work. Here it was: Venus Anadyomene – the new-born Venus rising from the sea and wafting to shore on a shell.
Lorenzino called on Ficino and Poliziano to explain the painting to everyone present, Ficino to discourse on Love and Poliziano to recite the passages from Lucian, Ovid and Apuleius that had provided Sandro with the imagery for the painting. But in a booming voice, Bartolommeo Scala interrupted to give us his own philosophical interpretation of the myth, so tediously allegorical that I turned away. I noticed that, among Lorenzo’s companions, Girolamo Benivieni was crying. His brother, Antonio, tried to comfort him but Girolamo shrugged him off and hurried from the workshop. Il Magnifico looked askance at Antonio Benivieni, who gave one word as an explanation for his brother’s behaviour: Giuliano. Lorenzo nodded gravely and sympathetically and turned back to Scala.
Since the death of Giuliano de’ Medici, Girolamo Benivieni had worn a mask of melancholy and carried a fear of death that was palpable. The shock of the assassination had created such a depression in the young poet that he woke each morning believing the day to be his last. For reasons that were not lost on me, the painting had reminded him of Giuliano. It was an image Giuliano would have understood at once and have loved. He might even have commissioned it himself, had he lived. My own eyes curiously dry, I stood gazing around the workshop.