The Rebirth of Venus

by Linda Proud

  ‘Yes, I heard it, too,’ said Aldo. ‘He will probably take the city without a fight, as he did Perugia. The sight of a pope leading an army is enough to send everyone to their knees.’

  ‘I thought Julius was an old man.’

  ‘Older than I am. Not everyone dies young, Tommaso. Look at me. Look at you, come to that. Do not let your body dictate to your soul what you are capable of.’

  ‘I travelled to Italy with a man I want you to meet, a Dutch monk in love with the Greeks who is translating Euripides. He’s on his way to Bologna.’

  ‘Well, then, may fate preserve him. Euripides, you say?’ Aldo’s sad eyes glowed for a moment and then dulled, like the sun in an English winter. ‘We’re not printing any more. We’re just selling what books we have left.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then God take me. I shall be ready.’ Aldo’s spirit has been broken by Torresani’s insistence that they only print books people will buy. Their last book was a translation of the Fables of Aesop.

  ‘Don’t let the spirit dictate to the body what it can and cannot do,’ I said smartly.

  ‘Look at these,’ said Aldo, rising to fetch a portfolio of engravings. ‘Do you remember Albrecht Dürer?’

  ‘I never met him – he had left before I came – but, yes, I remember all the talk about him swaggering about, saying he had come to teach the Italians how to do woodcuts. “The stinking druid” you used to call him, even though the druids were Celts and not Germans.’

  ‘They’re all the same. Anyway, he’s back. Staying at the Fugger house and working on an altarpiece.’ Aldo brushed crumbs off the table and opened the portfolio. ‘See what the stinking druid can do on wood now.’

  The sheets were full size, each one bearing a print of a scene of the Apocalypse from Revelation.

  ‘Images for our time, eh? But he still hasn’t quite mastered perspective.’

  In the face of these designs, that seemed a petty quibble.

  ‘Who cares? Does it matter that much? I have been five years in England where native art is at such a low ebb that they have to import painters. Now I am home, where art is divine. In between, Germany and the Germans and their wood.’

  On my way north in 1499 I saw figures carved from limewood which made the heart melt. Now I held prints that, I was told, had been made from single woodblocks, which every Italian engraver would say is not possible. The flowing lines of a horse’s mane, the wings of an angel, the scales of demons, clouds, mountains, seas, little ships, a fantastic tapestry of detail carved by metal in wood.

  ‘We prefer clean lines in our Italian prints,’ I said.

  ‘We certainly do.’ We both chuckled.

  ‘Admit it,’ I said.

  ‘No. You first.’

  ‘The Germans are better than us in some things.’

  ‘Go – wash your mouth out, you traitor!’

  ‘What is he doing with these? Selling them as a set?’

  ‘Binding them in a book with the relevant text.’

  I laughed. ‘What is it called? The Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer illustrated by the words of St John the Divine? Oh, was there ever a man who knew his own worth so well? I want to meet him. Aldo, it’s time to reconvene your academy.’

  As if I were using a pair of bellows on a spent fire, I thought I detected a glowing ember in my old friend.

  In my arrogance, when I came to Venice in 1498 I considered it to be the ‘north’ where I could plant my Platonic seeds. But I found here a flourishing garden of philosophy, established mainly by the Bembos. Bernardo was a lifelong friend of Ficino, and his son, Pietro, is of that rare and perfect kind that grow up to continue the work of the father. But Bernardo Bembo has fallen on hard times and is now living in Padua while Pietro seeks patronage in the Court of Urbino.

  Aldo had an academy that met in the evenings at his printing house at Sant’ Agostino. There with scholars and artists we discussed philosophy and the spacing of letters, Greek literature and the width of margins, Italian language and new printing founts. From Aldo’s house poured works of beauty to which, alas, I contributed very little apart from my inventions on the Hypnerotomachia Polifoli. If I had left Florence with the Medici, I would have been in Venice in time to invent the portable handbook; it would have been me applying the secret laws of proportion to page design, me who carved letters based on the hand of Bartolommeo Sanvito, me who suggested to Aldo that he use the Greek comma and paragraphos to punctuate text and make it easier to read. I would have been hoisted on the shoulders of famous men and declared the Priest of Beauty, the one who, single-handedly, had elevated printing into an art. Hosannah!

  Hmmm.

  In the main I was the proof-reader on the Opera Omnia of Angelo Poliziano, of which Alessandro Sarzi was the editor. It has been put about, probably by Sarzi, that I left Venice in a hurry, accused of attempted murder. It is not true. All I did was squeeze him by the throat until his eyes popped, then I let him go. He forgave me, that oily carp, excusing me by saying that, while I was admirably in tune with the literary ethics of Poliziano, I had no understanding of the economics of book sales or of the needs of readers, for whom text must be simplified. And I grant him this, it was not Sarzi who betrayed me and told everyone I was an escaped friar. No, what made me leave in a hurry was the arrival of Gianfrancesco Pico.

  One more chapter for Erasmo then.

  100

  THE HEART IN A BOX

  1499

  VENICE, AT THE END OF THE CENTURY. THERE WAS A meeting of the Greek Academy in the house of Aldo, and one new guest arrived late. Recognising Gianfrancesco as he entered, I shrank back until I was concealed by the painter, Giorgione, a giant of a man who often entertained us on the lute. Gianfrancesco Pico was carrying a small wooden casket as if he were one of the Three Magi. Of course, it was not long before someone asked what was in it.

  ‘The heart of a saint,’ he replied, and took off the lid to show his relic to the assembly. ‘It is the heart of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, taken myself whilst his body burned on that irreligious fire. Miraculously my hands received no injury.’

  I kept mute behind the titanic painter.

  On this night, as it happened, our group had been discussing history and what constitutes a reliable witness. Putting the lid back on his box, Gianfrancesco arranged himself on a settle. I sat down behind Giorgione to keep out of his view. Pietro Bembo continued the discussion, standing in the tradition of Herodotus and claiming that the truest history comes from eyewitness accounts, but others disagreed. One thought that the best history is written by those able to see beyond the superficial details and understand the causes of events. I had to concur with this. Gianfrancesco Pico, who had become so gaunt since we’d last met that he looked like a heron, proposed that the best history is moral history, written by those who follow the faith most ardently. My throat burned with the urge to refute him; I was relieved when Bembo spoke out.

  ‘Of all the stories abounding in this city,’ he said, ‘one of the most fabulous is that of the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici. According to this tale, derived from friars, Lorenzo died unshriven.’ He was obviously unaware that this version of events had been published in Gianfrancesco’s Life of Savonarola. ‘I raise it this evening as an example of im-moral history, that is, facts freely bent and twisted so as to offer a cheap moral point. In this particular fable, dying unshriven is the fate of a tyrant.’

  Gianfrancesco objected. ‘Are you suggesting my account is not true? Who are you to say so?’

  Bembo, sensitive as ever, was aware that I was hiding. ‘I had it from a friend who had it from Poliziano, who was there when Lorenzo died.’

  ‘A courtier, a Medicean. Why should he repeat the truth? It was not in his interest.’

  I began to tremble with outrage. Giorgione’s large hands reached out behind him, took hold of my wrists and squeezed, as if t
o say, ‘Keep quiet. We know the truth. We are not stupid.’

  Gianfrancesco stood up to address the guests. ‘I will tell you the true version, as I heard it from Savonarola himself. It was in April, 1492, that Lorenzo de’ Medici lay dying. Fearful for his soul’s salvation, he called for Fra Girolamo Savonarola to come to his bedside. Fra Girolamo accordingly came to hear his confession and found the tyrant dying in agony and full of remorse. Before giving him absolution, however, Fra Girolamo asked him three questions. The first was: Do you repent having sacked Volterra? Because of his guilt, Lorenzo started violently at this, then he nodded and said that, verily, he did repent, and called on God to have mercy on his soul. Fra Girolamo then asked, do you repent stealing of monies from the fund for dowerless girls? Lorenzo cried out then, as if stabbed; writhing in torment he called on God to have mercy on his soul. Then, rising to his full stature, Fra Girolamo asked his third question. Would the tyrant restore liberty to Florence? At that, Lorenzo’s face hardened and he turned his back on the friar. Accepting this as his answer, Savonarola denied Lorenzo the absolution he sought and, moments later, Lorenzo died and went unshriven to suffer the eternal torment of hell.’

  The company was quiet, then Pietro Bembo spoke gently. ‘This is a very different version from that of the man who was there. You can read it for yourself in Poliziano’s Opera Omnia.’

  ‘He was lying. He was not there. How could anyone be at a man’s deathbed confession other than the man and the confessor? I heard it from the confessor.’

  ‘POLIZIANO WAS THERE!’ I shouted, bursting free of Giorgione’s restraining hands. ‘And so was I! Lorenzo did not confess to Savonarola. He had already confessed. You, you stoat, you weasel, you rape truth to propagate the faith,’ I cried, jabbing my finger at him – his face had slackened, I noticed with satisfaction. ‘I have seen Giovanni Pico’s Opera Omnia. You have butchered it. You left out anything relating to Cabala or magic. You left out his Concord of Plato and Aristotle and his nine hundred theses. As for the poems, you told me your uncle had burnt them. I tell you now, to your face, I do not believe you.’ I was whipping round the room, gesticulating, booming, fulminating like Savonarola himself. ‘With your book you have given the world a false Pico, or rather, another Pico. It is the book of a bigot, for whom scripture is the ultimate authority, not one iota of which may be questioned, for whom magic and Cabala are pagan heresies. It is a perversion. Misrepresentation, deletion, mendacity – how low will you stoop in your love of Christ? Your life of your uncle begins with three letters addressed to you. To you? When did he ever write to you? You were a nobody until your uncle died. You have stolen his glory for your own. You are nothing but a tomb-robber. Shame, shame, shame on you!’

  Gianfrancesco’s face had regained its firmness. ‘Tommaso de’ Maffei,’ he said menacingly and with a sneer. ‘A runaway friar. And you have the audacity to tell me to be ashamed? The authorities will be interested to learn of your whereabouts.’

  He took up his rather smelly pig’s heart in its casket and left us.

  ‘And I know for a fact,’ I shouted after him, ‘that Savonarola was burned to ash that no relic may be had of him!’

  ‘Ha!’ said Giorgione appreciatively, once Gianfrancesco had gone. ‘Now I know what the voice of Truth sounds like.’

  ‘It is the voice of a man,’ I said somewhat hoarsely, ‘who, for a moment, values truth above his life. I wish it happened more often.’

  ‘At least Tommaso didn’t catch him by the throat and try and strangle him,’ Aldo told the rest of the company, waving his hands about apologetically. ‘It seems our proof-reader has a vendetta against all editors. Now, while Maffei makes his escape, shall we continue with our discussions? Is it true, by the way,’ he asked, opening the door for me to leave. ‘Are you a friar? When you arrived you did have short hair, but I presumed you’d had nits.’

  ‘I was a brother of the Dominican Order.’

  ‘And you have the nerve to accuse others of omissions and deletions? Ha! Hypocrite.’

  Pietro Bembo left with me and took me back to his house. I asked him if he had a copy of Poliziano’s book and he led me to his library. The book was large and neat, with all its edges carefully, mechanically cut. Backed by wooden boards covered in red morocco leather and bearing panels stamped ‘ihs Maria’, it was heavy and potent. This was the big book of a big man, a giant among poets, a titan among scholars. The Omnia Opera Angeli Politiani, 1498. I thumbed through the pages and, as I did, relived my years of service, remembering the man in the titles of his works. At last, amongst the Latin epistles, I found what I was looking for, his letter to Jacopo Antiquario describing the death of Lorenzo. As with so much else, it had been tampered with. All manner of little things had been inserted so as to queer history. For example, it states that the death of Pier Leone, the physician, by drowning in a well was suicide. That was certainly what Angelo said himself, but I am convinced that in the original letter he had more carefully said ‘unnatural means’, but I have no way of proving it, since the original is lost. Then, in this version, Angelo refers to Lazaro di Pavia, the physician from Milan, as ‘most learned’ when in fact he considered him a fool whom Lorenzo only suffered so as not to offend Ludovico Sforza.

  ‘Meanwhile Lazaro, the doctor from Pavia, arrived, most learned as it seemed to me, but summoned too late to be of any use.’

  He was not summoned – he arrived unexpectedly.

  ‘Yet so as to do something, he ordered various precious stones to be pounded together in a mortar for I know not what kind of medicine. Lorenzo thereupon asked the servants what the doctor was doing in his room and what he was preparing, and when I answered that he was composing a remedy to comfort his intestines…

  ‘Angelo knew full well what kind of medicine it was,’ I told Pietro Bembo. ‘It was an epithema.’

  ‘A poultice?’

  ‘Yes, made of powdered gems and pearls, so noisy in preparation that Angelo went to the physician to ask him what he was doing. He was told it was an epithema. But I am certain that it was administered internally, powdered gems given to Lorenzo as a drink.’

  ‘My God…’

  ‘I have no way of telling if Angelo wrote these words himself or if they have been altered by the editor, but he did know what kind of medicine it was. Perhaps he wrote this himself, as a signal of his disquiet. Of course he could not write the truth, not in a letter being circulated. Who did he fear?’

  ‘Who do you suspect?’

  ‘Oh, everyone in turn. I have churned this milk for years but it never becomes butter. Be certain of one thing, Pietro. What you heard from Gianfrancesco Pico tonight is not the truth. Nothing he says or writes is true. His uncle, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, was not the saint he would have us believe. He was a philosopher who, for as long as he lived, suffered no conversion to a religion that his perverted nephew would recognise. Gianfrancesco is motivated, driven by jealousy of his uncle. Those who are so uncertain of the truth of their faith that they will commit any atrocity, literary or physical, in its cause are a poison in the veins of humanity. There, it is said.’

  ‘My friend, it is not safe for you to remain in Venice. Gianfrancesco will surely report you.’

  I woke up then and apologised. ‘I have told you things you should not know, things which Poliziano himself refused to tell me, for my own good. I am a poor friend.’

  In the middle of the night, Pietro hired a boat to take me to the mainland. ‘Take the road to Treviso,’ he said, ‘and go on to Bolsena and the Brenner Pass and thence to Germany. I will tell the authorities that you are heading for France via Padua and Milan.’ He took my face in his hands. ‘Go to England, as Ficino told you to do. Brother in Plato, go well and go safely.’

  Venice, September 9th, 1506

  I am fascinated by Dürer’s beard, which is ginger and silky and makes him look the very image of Christ. He has a long face, hi
s auburn hair falls across his shoulders in tight ringlets and he stares at you with beautiful eyes, watchful and unsmiling. Everybody hates him.

  Since his last visit to Venice in the 1490s he has become a member of a lay confraternity which seeks to imitate Christ. ‘A little beard and I even look like Him, so it reminds me at all times to make my thoughts and actions the same. And here in Venice I have plenty of opportunity to practise humility and forgiveness.’

  The Venetian painters give the stinking druid a wide berth and put about rumours of his night walks in the calle of brothels.

  ‘Jealous,’ says Dürer, apparently unaffected.

  Men say that he is the jealous one, furious that the walls of the newly rebuilt Fondaco dei Tedeschi are to be decorated by Giorgione. ‘It is a German building with a German architect and Dürer says it should have German frescoes. German frescoes! What are they?’ The Venetian painters are laughing until their ribs ache.

  Dürer is a man whose pride protects him and he seems to need no friends. He keeps to himself, working in a corner of Bellini’s workshop on an altarpiece for the German church. For old Bellini is an exception to Venetian painters, as he is an exception to much of humanity: kind, generous, sweet-natured, he has befriended the stinking druid.

  He arrived this evening, with Bellini, at the first convening of the reborn academy, while I was reciting Poliziano’s vernacular verse from memory. To my surprise, Dürer named some of Angelo’s poems he wished to hear. It seems he knows them better than the Venetians, and I discovered afterwards that in fact he is using them to learn Tuscan.

  ‘The Venetian dialect is barbaric,’ he told me later. ‘I will never learn it. A man who speaks Tuscan is understood throughout Italy. A man who speaks Venetian is understood nowhere but Venice. So I learn Tuscan, the Tuscan of Poliziano and Lorenzo de’ Medici.’

  Warming to the man, I told him that it had been Lorenzo’s work to make Tuscan the basis of a unified language for all Italy. It seems in Albrecht Dürer that I have discovered a man to whom I can speak openly, even of the most secret things, a man I can trust.