by Linda Proud
‘It is rare, but not unheard of.’
‘In the end our good Filippino prevailed. “Let Michelangelo decide for himself,” he said. And so here it is. And there is the Donatello.’ He flipped his hand dismissively at the Loggia de’ Lanzi.
I gazed at the David, this naked giant who frowns, his eyes fixed on the south and Rome. Ah, my proud city, what a symbol you have set up. May it serve you well.
Michelangelo entered the Palazzo della Signoria without even acknowledging the guard at the gate, let alone explain his purpose. He is so famous throughout the city that he can go wherever he wants, this unkempt, unwashed artisan. He walked through the great palace of the government of Florence and led the way to the new hall which has been built to house the council of the republic.
‘There!’ he said. I looked up at the empty wall made ready for his painting. Had I been brought all this way to look at fresh plaster? Of course not. Michelangelo at once turned to the opposite wall and Leonardo’s painting of the Battle of the Standard, a composition to celebrate another great moment of the history of the old republic. I saw as if in double vision a masterpiece and a disaster.
‘Look what he has done! Taken the money and left.’
In the subdued, misty colours of republicanism, Leonardo has designed a marvellous scene of a battle, set in a rocky landscape, but the colours have run into each other. Michelangelo explained about the technique of applying colour to hot wax, which Leonardo had read about in Vitruvius and tried here, in the Hall of the Great Council.
‘It’s stuck fast – to the wall and to us. We can’t get rid of it. The studio is the place to experiment, not the site itself.’ Michelangelo wore an expression exactly like that of his David, a frown of anger mixed with concern. ‘Leonardo ought to be drummed out of Italy. Instead men queue up to commission him. He struts about in his fine clothes, daubs a little here and there, takes the money and scrams, while I, I put in more hours of labour than a workman would ever do, and all I get is commissions that ruin me and, when I complain about it, threats of death.’
He drew out of a wallet a sketch of one of his bathing soldiers. ‘I still write poetry,’ he said, handing it to me. On the back was a stinging verse about Pope Julius. ‘You can keep it. When I am found dead in the river, produce it as evidence.’
Florence, November 14th, 1506
I have been looking forward to introducing Michelangelo to Erasmus, but I received a note this morning saying that Erasmus has left for Bologna. Now that the Pope is in possession of the city, he deems it safe to go there. ‘When you have finished your work in Florence,’ he wrote, ‘join me.’
I went to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova and discovered that the man in charge is an old friend, Antonio Benivieni, once physician at San Marco. He was too busy to talk long but, having greeted me affectionately and heard my purpose, he gave me permission to measure the place.
The hospital is vast. Cloister leads on to cloister, to chapels, cells and various infirmaries. ‘Are there existing plans?’ I asked him.
‘Not that I know of. The Portinari may have them.’
‘No, they do not. The king has already asked.’
‘Then spend as long as it takes.’ He smiled the smile of Eurystheus when he imposed the labours upon Hercules. ‘It will not be done in a day.’
He gave me the use of a cell in a small cloister and here I have set up my equipment, nothing more elaborate than some rolls of paper, a measuring stick, compasses and dividers. Having done this much, I now sit staring at the blank sheet of paper. I am in the middle of a sprawling warren of buildings. The central part, the church-like hospital itself, is comparatively easy so I shall leave it until last. It is the rest which must surely defeat me, the various cloisters, the cells, the adjacent buildings which house the oblate nuns who serve the place, all added to the site over time. I remember seeing a map of Venice drawn by a friend of Aldo and regret not having asked the man how he did it. Surely the only way is to be hoisted into the sky by angels.
I sit here, and if I were not tormented by the immensity of my task, I would be at peace. Sparrows cheep in the quiet cloister. The great bell of the campanile calls the hour and I feel its reverberations in my heart. I close my eyes and lift my head, listening to Florence. I am home.
Florence, November 17th, 1506
I pace the hospital, trying to keep count of my steps but getting distracted at every turn. I have now at least an idea of its plan and how everything fits together, but the details tire me. The oblates are sweet. They do not go about wearing the heavy and solemn air of the professed nun. They are voluntaries and have not left the ability to laugh outside the hospital gates. When off duty, the younger ones play and no one reprimands them. I am in a sea of women. When I am about, pacing north or south, east or west, trying to keep count, they become shy. But sometimes I observe them unseen and then I can be distracted for an hour or more, not quite sure what it is I am looking at. A mystery closed to man. Such is its charm that only by an effort of will can I go back to my work of reducing three dimensions to two. Sometimes I think there is a fourth dimension and that it holds the secret that will unlock my work and make it easy. It eludes me. It lies in the mystery of women.
Florence, November 20th, 1506
Early this morning I was disturbed by a dreadful clamour on the streets, the Florentines baying and howling. I ran out of the hospital and, near the Duomo, saw a small company of soldiers riding through the city bearing the heraldic arms of the papacy. Their way was impeded by Florentines banging on pans to alarm the horses and unseat the riders. What was this? Some embassy from the Pope being met with hostility? But at the rear of the party I saw Michelangelo riding backwards on a horse, his arms bound behind him.
‘They are taking me to my death!’ he was shouting at the crowd. ‘The Pope means to kill me!’
I ran as close to him as I could.
‘Tommaso!’ he shouted. ‘I told you this would happen! It will be you next!’
Officers of the Signoria were moving into the crowd and forcing them back to let the soldiers through. The government will do nothing to save its famous son. The one is being sacrificed for the sake of the many. I do not think the Pope will kill him, nevertheless I am made nervous by the incident.
Florence, November 25th, 1506
I found ‘the mad old man’ in the family house a few steps beyond the San Frediano gate. His nephew took me to the room where he was working at a sloped desk, looking through a magnifying lens as he drew, an old man with long grey hair, hunched over his work, a pair of crutches propped against his chair.
‘There is someone to see you, zio mio.’
‘Va via, you mosquito!’
‘It’s true!’
Botticelli turned and looked up at me, wincing to refocus his eyes. ‘Fra Tommaso?’
‘I am no longer in the Order.’
‘If that moves you beyond hypocrisy, I’m very glad of it.’ He swatted his nephew. ‘Out, you horsefly! Leave me with my visitor.’
I stooped to look at a picture in dry point of Dante and Beatrice in the river of light. ‘So, you have attained Paradise, at last.’
‘It feels more like hell.’
He gave me the lens so that I could see better the miniature figures.
‘This is where Dante is finally lost for words. And it is where my art fails me. How can I draw light? Paradise has little in it but stars and angelic sparks. Drawing devils was so much easier…’
In tiny lines, he has caught Beatrice gazing on Dante with love, their arms touching. I squeezed his shoulder, rather lost for words myself. He did not seem mad to me, just in that blissful, if rather irritable, condition of the elderly when they are no longer concerned with what anybody thinks. ‘You never married,’ I observed. ‘Never had so much as a mistress so far as I know, and yet you know love better than any of us. You were
never a priest nor a friar, and yet you are the more religious.’
‘More religious? I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘The Frate was innocent, you know, and we burned him. All of us culpable, the whole city. “Crucify him!” we cried.’ Botticelli’s head sank even lower between his shoulders.
‘I think most people presume his innocence, given what was done to him to get a confession.’
‘I know his innocence for a fact. Doffo Spini told me.’
‘That pointy-eared imp! Why should he know the truth?’
‘He was on the board of examiners.’ Botticelli was amused by my expression of horror. ‘Oh, yes, Doffo went far in government. A year after the burning, when he was in my workshop and filling up with my wine, I asked him if the Frate had been guilty or innocent. And he told me, laughing, that without doubt he had been innocent. Everything was cooked up: the accusations, the trials, the confession. “It was him or us,” Doffo said. Besides, it was the wish of the Pope.’ Botticelli spat on the floor.
Although I had not been offered a seat, I sat down. ‘What does Doffo Spini know about the truth of men’s hearts? I hesitate to accuse Savonarola himself, who seemed to be without stain, but he unleashed evil. The fruit of his actions was rotten. Things are never as they seem. While the time of the Medici appeared to many to be a time of decadence, yet it was a time when wisdom was prized and beauty venerated. Beauty, Sandro. Your goddess. Savonarola burnt her. Labelled “vanity”, she was sacrificed on a pyre.’
He wept then. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I have no one to discuss these things with. I get confused… Dante is my only solace. So… ’ he said, blowing his nose hard on his apron, ‘where have you been? I thought you were dead. Everyone else is. I wish I were dead myself. They are cruel to me here. They neglect me and keep me prisoner.’
‘That is not true,’ said his niece, walking through the room. ‘Why do you tell these lies, old man? It is enough we have to look after you without suffering your accusations and insults.’
‘Tommaso, take me out for the afternoon,’ said Botticelli. ‘I’d like to go and visit the past. They’ve moved my paintings from the Casa Vecchia to the Villa Castello. Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco is dead, you know, like everyone else. No one here will take me out – they’re all too busy.’ He threw a chalk hard at his niece.
‘Too busy looking after you, you crazy old beggar!’ she cried, throwing it back.
It is a fair journey, out beyond Careggi, and I hired a donkey and cart to carry my friend. We made our way out to the hills with Botticelli shouting directions to Il Vivaio, for I could not quite remember the way. But then, neither could he. Although he shouted with much conviction, he sent us up paths that led nowhere. In the end I had to ask directions from people we met on the road.
‘Who lives at the Villa Castello now?’ I asked Botticelli as we approached and I could see the villa in the distance.
‘It’s alright. She’s not at home.’
I presumed he was speaking of the widow of Lorenzino.
‘She lives alone? That is most unusual.’
‘She is a most unusual lady. Who would want her in their house?’
‘We are speaking of the widow of Lorenzo Popolano?’
‘No. No. The widow of his brother, Giovanni. Caterina, the black spider. How long have you been away and how far?’
I brought the donkey to an abrupt halt. ‘Caterina Sforza? Is that who we are going to see?’
‘I told you, she’s away. She’s fighting Cesare Borgia. Hand to hand in single combat.’
I stared at him. Perhaps he was losing his wits after all, swinging between lucidity and confusion. ‘That was years ago, at the turn of the century. She lost and was brutally raped by Cesare. Last I heard, she was in prison.’
‘No, she got out and came here to claim her inheritance, Giovanni’s widow. An alchemist, they say. And a poisoner.’
I set the donkey off again. ‘Now what nonsense are you talking?’
‘She knows her simples and her compounds.’
‘That doesn’t make her a poisoner.’
‘No, but poisoning people does.’
‘Who has she poisoned?’
‘Pope Alexander for one.’
‘Caterina Sforza killed Alexander? I have never heard that. I was told it was a servant.’
‘She tried to poison Alexander but did not succeed.’
‘How? How did she try to poison him?’
‘From a distance. That is her way, poisoning from a distance. She had a document impregnated with some evil tincture, rolled it up in red velvet and sent it to the Vatican. It was designed to kill on contact.’
‘Like the tunic of Hercules.’
‘That’s right, soaked in snake poison, but Alexander was a bit more astute than Hercules and had someone else open the package, saying nothing good comes wrapped in red velvet, not from Caterina Sforza. She poisoned from a distance. Who knows who she poisoned?’
Seeing the gates of the villa ahead, I trembled and, despite my rapacious curiosity, hoped that Caterina was indeed not at home. The villa lay long and low amidst its gardens, the plants of summer reduced to dank, rotting stalks. The gatekeeper was dozing by the fire in his lodge. We tried to gain entry by citing Botticelli’s name but it did no good. Money succeeded, however, where fame failed and on receipt of a few soldi the gatekeeper sent to the house to see if we might enter. At last a servant returned to say that we could. ‘Everyone is resting so you are to be quiet and not stay long.’
‘Is the Duchess at home, then?’ I asked fearfully.
‘She is, but resting. Take care not to disturb her.’
I led the donkey cart up the long gravel drive to the house with blank windows. In the courtyard I paid out more money for my friend to be lifted up the stairs to the sala above the grand entrance of the house. Once there, Botticelli regained his crutches and creaked his way across the tiled floor.
‘Here they are, here they are,’ he cried out, too excited to remember to keep his voice low. I was arrested by what was ahead. On the long wall opposite the fireplace and set in a row in the wooden panelling were three paintings, two large ones flanking a smaller one, all more or less of equal height but the central one much narrower than the other two.
‘Didn’t intend them to be a matching set,’ said Botticelli. ‘But they look well together, they look well.’
On the left was The Realm of Venus with its serpentine row of figures, a zephyr, Chloris fleeing, Flora stepping, Venus standing still, and then the Graces dancing and Mercury pointing to heaven. It had been so long since I last saw it that it had become somewhat blurred in my memory. I stood in front of it for some time, becoming familiar with the figures again. How wrong Filippino had been to say that Botticelli could not paint the smile. It’s in the eyes, not the mouth.
In the middle of the three, Pallas and the Centaur, which I had only glimpsed in Lorenzino’s chamber. Now I gazed at leisure on the figure of Minerva, or Pallas, drenched in Medici symbols, pulling up a centaur by the hair. I read its meaning as easily as if it were a book, but Botticelli raised a crutch and jabbed at the scene beyond the figures to draw my attention to the bay. ‘I told Lorenzo Popolano that it was metaphor, the sea of the soul, but for me that is the bay of Naples and the little galley is the one carrying Lorenzo il Magnifico to his triumph at the court of King Ferrante. That is what it means to me, but Lorenzo Popolano was never too keen on his elder cousin.’
On the right was that painting of Venus which I had seen unveiled in Botticelli’s workshop twenty-five years previously. I recalled the workshop crowded with so many familiar faces as if it were a scene painted by Ghirlandaio: Lorenzo de’ Medici, Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, the Benivieni brothers, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, Lorenzo and Giovanni Pierfranceschi. So long ago.
I gazed upon Venus, wafting to shore in her shell. S
ymbol upon symbol, working on my soul like heat on an alembic. Meaning arising. Transformation underway. My soul began to tremble with the significance.
Botticelli was similarly transported by his own work. As he stood staring up at the paintings, his eyes grew watery, and when he went to speak, he could not.
‘What is it, my friend?’ I asked.
‘I gave up painting myths – my brother made me – it was dangerous – there weren’t any patrons, anyway. I started painting God. Painting my idea of God. The God that once possessed me when I painted these. Don’t ask me what these paintings are about: I barely understand them myself. Did I paint them? I can see my hand in them, but where did these images come from? I listened to the ideas of others as to Orphic hymns and my imagination brought forth figures. Savonarola was wrong. He never understood. He never understood the soul…’
‘Hush!’
There was the sound of swishing silk, the sound of footsteps made in velvet slippers, a sibilant sound, the approach of a snake. The hair on my skin stood on end.
‘Who are you and what do you want?’ She stood in the doorway, the virago, the woman-warrior. She is in her mid-forties but if Caterina Sforza has lost her youthful beauty, it has been replaced by that of maturity, of majesty. She was admirably if starkly dressed, her hair loose and hanging over her bare shoulders and down her back as straight as a veil. In a large, silk gown with puffed sleeves, she emanated greatness, offended greatness, and I felt as if I had just been caught in the act of theft. Botticelli was too old to worry about such things.
‘Just looking at my paintings, Madonna.’
‘Your paintings?’
‘They came from my hand.’
‘You are Alessandro Botticelli? Oh, forgive me! Why did you not announce yourself?’
‘I did. They had never heard of me at the gate.’
The Duchess sent at once for refreshments and while we waited she asked for an explanation of the enigma of The Realm of Venus. ‘No one has been able to tell me what it means.’
Botticelli said nothing but seemed to be waiting for me to speak. Believing that Caterina Sforza had been brilliantly educated, I launched into a profound and complicated explanation involving the myths of Ovid and neoplatonic mysteries, showing how the composition depicted the birth of the soul and its return to God. Within a minute she looked dumbfounded; a few seconds later, bored. ‘Please, stop! I never learnt my lessons in literature and philosophy,’ she confessed. ‘I have always been happier in a pharmacy. When it comes to the properties of plants, I have no equal. All these flowers painted so exquisitely in the meadow here – these I understand and can read. But when it comes to metaphysics, well, Messer Alessandro, please explain as if to a simpleton.’