The Rebirth of Venus

by Linda Proud

  In order to convey his ideas, he called for paper and a metal point stylus, which were duly brought to him, but when he reached out for the stylus and tried to hold it, his body shook from the effort and his face contorted in agony. His daughter, Contessina, took the pen from him. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘what it is you wish to draw.’

  Gasping for breath but relaxing, Lorenzo described groves and copses of trees, pathways, planting schemes for box hedges and laurels, creating in wood, leaf, grass and stone a garden for Philosofia.

  His body was weak from pain. But not the soul.

  58

  THE INVESTITURE OF A CARDINAL

  1492

  GIOVANNI DE’ MEDICI WAS AS UNSIGHTLY AS HIS ELDER brother, Piero, was handsome. Corpulent at sixteen, snub-nosed and with weak eyes which, even at that young age, were beginning to be protuberant, he was decidedly lazy. While his brother was at the jumps, he would still be in bed. He seemed to love his bed immoderately, except at night when nothing could draw him to it. While Piero stood up straight and impressed everyone with his skills as a courtier – easy and fluent speech, gracious, musical, athletic and martial – Giovanni shuffled about apparently lost in a daydream. But when he spoke, he was tactful; he never pretended not to know you but always greeted you by name and affably. Piero could make a great show of his learning; in Giovanni, it shone out, if fitfully, as intelligence. He did not seem troubled by an ecclesiastical career that had begun at the age of six; and as for all his benefices, he was neither proud of them nor ashamed. He needed them. They were his living; and no one was in greater need of wealth than a cardinal.

  He had been made a cardinal by Pope Innocent three years earlier, but it had been kept secret while Giovanni was still at university at Pisa. After the formal investiture, planned to be held at Fiesole since Lorenzo was too ill to travel to Rome, Giovanni would have to keep himself and his court, perhaps not in the ostentatious splendour of a cardinal such as Rodrigo Borgia, but at least in something worthy of the office. And then, if the integrity which his father advised did not work, he would have to pay for every single favour he required. Gifts from perfumed gloves to antique statues would need to be liberally bestowed on kings, princes and bankers.

  Always with him, as close as his shadow, was his cousin Giulio, a boy of about twelve at this time, and powerfully alike to his father, Giuliano. Always together, one rotund, the other slender – Poliziano said meeting them was like being accosted by the number ten.

  A man in constant pain is as fierce as a tormented bear. Life in the service of Lorenzo was near intolerable for those pages and attendants close to him. Unable to find relief in any position of his body, Lorenzo could go three or four nights without sleep and then a kind of madness came upon him, a snarling fury that would break out without warning. It was always followed by remorse and apology, but that did not stop everyone doing all they could to avoid upsetting him. And so we tip-toed about, spoke in whispers and drew straws for delivering anything amounting to bad news. Lorenzo’s eyesight, never good, was growing very weak: many took advantage and stood just outside his range of vision when having to ask him some question likely to annoy him, such as what he would like to eat at the next meal.

  He was attended by physicians from Rome, Naples, Venice and Milan, each state sending their best, desiring that il Magnifico should recover, for the peace of Italy depended on him. By his careful statecraft he held the fate of Italy in his hands. With his work on poetry and language, he was creating a vernacular to unite the country into a single entity. That was the deep work. The outer work, the daily affairs revolving on letters and meetings, kept ambitious states in check. Florence was the hub of Italy; our allies were the wheel.

  Despite the finest doctors Italy could send him, however, Lorenzo did not recover. Indeed, something else began to afflict him, something that came on so gradually we did not notice it for nearly two weeks. Slowly, slowly he weakened, his colour changing as it does with fever. Pier Leone analysed Lorenzo’s urine and said he did have a fever but not one of the blood. ‘It is a fever of the bones and muscles,’ he said. No remedy Pier Leone administered had any effect: Lorenzo was beginning to waste away, that fine figure becoming thin, his once strong hair now lying limp on his head.

  On the day of Giovanni’s investiture, Lorenzo was too ill to attend even at Fiesole and had to be left behind in the palazzo, weeping with frustration. I joined Angelo in the long and elaborate procession to the Badia at Fiesole to attend our young protégé as he stood before the high altar in that church of quiet beauty and had the insignia of cardinal bestowed upon him.

  This church of the Badia, with its elegant nave and aisles of smoky stone, was our church, for the Platonic Academy met frequently in an upper loggia of the cloisters. It was a building that bridged worlds, neither physical nor invisible but somewhere in between. Now with the investiture of Giovanni we seemed to stand at a threshold. Oh, how many plans had been laid by Lorenzo to reform the Church from within. Now his second son was at last being given the sapphire ring, the red mantle and the broad-brimmed, tasselled hat of a cardinal of the Church, and in Giovanni were vested all our hopes. He was one of us, and he would carry our philosophy into the heart of Rome. We were grafting him on to the papal stock in the hope of better fruits, and it was the intention of heaven, we prayed, that he be pope himself one day. Not a man in the church that morning was unaware of the weight of responsibility being placed upon this young man’s round shoulders. ‘Live with regularity, rise early in the mornings,’ his father had written to him. ‘Avoid ostentation but collect antiquities and beautiful books. Maintain a learned and well- regulated household rather than a grand one.’

  As Giovanni turned from the altar to face us, I could see tears in his eyes, whether from the solemnity of the moment or the absence of his father, I could not tell. Perhaps both. As his father had said, ‘this elevation comes not from your merits but from the grace of God’. He was neither proud nor humble. He was just Giovanni in a big red hat. His brother Piero took charge of him and led him from the church to meet the waiting crowd.

  There was something in Piero’s stance that day as he took on the function of his father, a delight in the role that was disquieting. He played it well but not well enough. He was charming and courteous but only to those men he knew; the rest he ignored. And he had something about him which said, ‘Look at me!’ – an air never worn by il Magnifico. His wife, Alfonsina, standing tall in gold brocade and large with his child, looked over the heads of the women around her, a group which included Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s wife, Semiramide, daughter of the Lord of Piombino.

  ‘You must be very proud,’ Semiramide said to her.

  Alfonsina, as if surprised to be addressed by the wife of a mere cousin, did not deign to reply. Humiliated, Semiramide detached from the group and went to join her husband and whisper to him. Lorenzino put his arm round her and looked darkly, now at Alfonsina, now at Piero.

  ‘We are leaving,’ he said, his thin lips down-turned. This caused consternation. The division in the Medici family affected us all and very, very few of us succeeded in belonging to both camps. Lorenzino leaving early had every man weighing up the repercussions in going or staying. For some it was an easy decision, and members of the Vespucci family readied themselves for departure. For others, there was much dithering.

  ‘Please, do not go,’ said Cardinal Giovanni to his cousins, his father’s advice still sounding loud in his soul. His attempt at diplomacy was supported by Bartolommeo Scala, who waved his arms about crying, ‘Now, now,’ as if a calming word from him would solve any dispute.

  ‘I will not stay where my wife is insulted,’ said Lorenzino.

  I looked across to Angelo who had his eyes closed as if in prayer. He was one of the rare men who belonged to both camps, as was Ficino. Both men, looking anxious and distressed, conferred. Ficino was particularly torn since he was a beneficiary of patrona
ge from both the Pierfranceschi and the Vespucci. He decided to go, Angelo to stay.

  Alfonsina, the cause of the trouble, looked at the men with cool amusement.

  ‘What a farce!’ Lorenzino said to his brother as they made for the horses. ‘That porker a cardinal, indeed.’ The angel-faced Giovanni di Pierfrancesco looked over his shoulder and smiled mockingly at the boy-cardinal.

  After his disastrous interview with Poliziano, Michele Marullus had found a sympathetic and supportive patron in Lorenzino, and had gathered about him other Greek scholars, refugees from Constantinople who, Angelo said, had the arrogance to believe that, just because they were born on the same soil as the ancient Greeks, had a better knowledge of the ancient tongue than an Italian could ever have. Angelo, the first Italian to hold the Chair of Greek, naturally disputed this. He kept his face averted as Marullus, Lascaris and the rest walked past him in the train of Lorenzino.

  Wearing the ceremonial half-armour of a man-at-arms, Marullus grasped the hilt of his sword in its scabbard in such a way that it stuck out behind him. As he passed close to Angelo, he turned suddenly as if he had been called from behind and succeeded in grazing Poliziano on the thigh.

  He turned back, his eye glinting, obviously expecting to find Angelo drawing his sword; but Angelo carried no sword and Marullus noticed it for the first time.

  ‘Professor!’ he said, making much of his authentic Greek accent. ‘Have I hurt you? A thousand apologies!’

  ‘I think you will find I am immortal, Marullus.’

  ‘Ah, even Achilles had his heel and Hercules his poisoned tunic.’

  ‘I trust the tip of your sword is not as lethal as your tongue.’

  Marullus stared at him through heavy-lidded, insolent eyes and then abruptly moved on.

  Pico cut his way hurriedly through the crowd. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked Angelo.

  ‘Just a graze.’ Angelo was lifting up his robes and inspecting the wound. ‘But it might be poisoned.’

  Pico laughed merrily. ‘Why do you always expect the worst?’ He shielded his eyes against the sun. ‘What’s Lorenzino doing?’

  Having reached the horses, Lorenzino had now doubled back to confront Piero and his wife. ‘How is it that the city fountains are flowing with wine?’ he shouted, ‘if not that your father stole our patrimony? And as for you, madam, your supercilious Roman airs do not suit our climate!’

  ‘Now, now!’ said Scala, thoroughly agitated.

  Older members of the Vespucci family, assisted by Ficino, calmed Lorenzino down and encouraged him to leave with what dignity he had left. Those remaining glanced at each other, and each man’s eyes said the same thing: that this would not have happened had Lorenzo been here. Angelo moved swiftly to Piero’s side and counselled him in a low voice, after which Piero announced that all would be leaving, to go into the city for a reception at the Palazzo de’ Medici. Trounced by this manoeuvre, the Pierfranceschi took another road back to the city and did not attend the banquet at the palazzo.

  The cardinal’s train was so long that he had almost entered Florence before the end of it had left Fiesole. This mighty and splendid procession, including elephants from Lorenzo’s menagerie, made its way to the Palazzo della Signoria through streets thronged with cheering crowds.

  The Florentines stayed up all night to celebrate the accession of their first cardinal, dancing to musicians who played in squares by the light of bonfires, lubricated by the wine flowing out of the public fountains. Friars walking amongst the crowds made plain their disapproval. A church run by princely cardinals rich enough to turn water into wine was a church requiring purification and renewal!

  In the palazzo, dining alone with just a few companions in his chamber, Lorenzo heard about the events at the Badia and sent an order that the Pierfranceschi brothers and their creatures were not allowed to enter Lorenzo’s part of the palazzo – ever. Growling, he pushed his trencher away and said he had no appetite.

  59

  JANUS TIMES

  1492

  DURING THIS TIME OF BANQUETS, SAVONA ROLA FASTED. It was Lent and he preached daily to a crowd, now said to number fifteen thousand, who looked on his increasingly gaunt frame as that of a new Jeremiah.

  Lorenzo, no stranger to self-flagellation of the body, wanted no scourges for the soul; ignoring fiery preachers, he had the musicians and monks of San Lorenzo perform the chants of our forefathers. While most of Florence heard prophecies of tumult in the city and blood in the streets, we, the Mediceans, listened to music most divine, the hymns of our ancestors ringing in the roof of San Lorenzo’s nave, resonating in eternity, one pure note after another, the cleansing, purifying teaching of Our Lord sung in human voice at its most sublime.

  ‘And there will be tumult in the city, tumult outside the city, tumult in the piazza, tumult in the palace, tumult for forty hours, tumult for eleven hours, tumult for twenty-four hours. Evils worse than evil most evil.’ Thus roared the Dominican, Fra Silvestro, at the Duomo.

  We heard a new mass by Ockegenheim.

  ‘Blood will be everywhere. There will be blood in the streets, blood in the river; people will sail boats through blood, lakes of blood, rivers of blood…’ Thus fulminated Fra Domenico at Santa Maria Novella. ‘Two million devils are loosed from hell because more evil has been committed in the past eighteen years than in the preceding five thousand.’

  In San Lorenzo we listened to the music of Heinrich Isaacs and felt our hearts melting in that surrender of the soul which is love of God. My eyes would fasten on the paintings, not the new ones venerating Man, but old ones of the Holy Virgin against a sky of burnished gold. I wanted to reach out to the certainties of the past, the piety of the artists, the virtue of the governors, the devotion of the poets. The future – as predicted by the soothsayers – was becoming a source of deep fear. I wanted to remove the clever hands from mechanical clocks; I wanted to take the gnomons from all dials, to snuff out the calendar candles and arrest the sand in hour glasses; I wanted the heavenly spheres to stop in their orbits and for the sun itself to become fixed, because something terrible was coming.

  These were queer times, Janus times. Pico had bought and moved into a villa on the slope of Fiesole just above Angelo. This proximity allowed one to run to the other, even in his night clothes, when some interesting fact had been discovered in his reading. Indeed, Pico had a path cut down through the woods so as to enter our villa through the garden and save five minutes on the road. Often they read together, Pico standing at a lectern, Poliziano chin in his hands at a desk. You would think it the ideal of conviviality, but sometimes during the meals they shared they could come close to blows over Savonarola, each shouting at the other to wake up and see the truth. Then they would return to the study and their work on Aristotle.

  Angelo was also engaged in translating Greek medical texts with Pier Leone, intent on finding a cure for Lorenzo. Pier Leone’s treatment for Lorenzo’s gout was simple and wholesome: Lorenzo went regularly to the sulphur baths, but for the rest of the time he kept warm and dry, ate no pears and swallowed no grape pips. The gout was not cured thereby, but the inflammation was reduced; the main cause for concern now was that strange, creeping fever. So he and Poliziano scoured the works of ancient physicians looking for knowledge deeper than the ‘necromantic cures and potions’ favoured by some of his contemporaries.

  ‘We have restored the ancients in our arts and letters,’ Poliziano told Lorenzo. ‘Why not medicine? I am bringing the works of Galen and Hippocrates out of Greek. But, as with all these things, knowledge is of no use if it is not practical. Pier Leone has gathered many ideas from these pages. Lorenzo, permit us to try some cures advised by the ancients.’

  Lorenzo agreed with the theory but was cautious about being the subject of any experiment. But his son, Piero, lent his weight to Poliziano’s arguments: everything must be tried which might effect relief if not a cure. At las
t Lorenzo relented and agreed.

  ‘Shall I tell Pier Leone, then, to obtain the ingredients?’

  ‘If that is your wish,’ Lorenzo sighed, falling back on his pillows. Although he was in great pain, he was not expected to die. According to Pier Leone, gout does not kill and fevers may be cured. Indeed, the thought would not have been in our heads but for those awful words of the Friar, ‘Within a year…’ Eight months had elapsed. As Ficino said, it sometimes seems with prophecies that, having been uttered, they must happen. But if that is so, what is the difference between a prophecy and a curse? One would reply, why, it is the intention of the speaker. In which case, Savonarola’s prediction was a curse.

  Lorenzo, however, ignored it. He said that his illness was a blessing for it had given him the opportunity to spend time with what he loved best: the Tuscan poets and poetry itself. Each evening we took it in turns to read to him and, just as the men around the deathbed of Cosimo had formed the Platonic Academy, here the School of Poetry was being reborn. Angelo Poliziano, Cristoforo Landino, Naldo Naldi, Girolamo Benivieni – these men were the setting for the gem that was the real poet among them: Lorenzo himself.