The Second Mrs. Gioconda

by E. L. Konigsburg

  Carlo came for supper, and Salai and his sister’s fiancé exchanged greetings. The young man remained standing and would not sit until Salai asked him to. Salai wanted to take an interest in his brother-in-law-to-be, so he asked him about his work.

  “Do you think,” Salai asked, “that the walk or the pace is the more natural for a horse?”

  “Oh,” Carlo answered, “I wouldn’t never have give that some thought.”

  “Leonardo,” Salai continued, “has been studying horses for some time now. He has concluded that the walk is the most natural.”

  “Well, I never, as I said, I never give that much thought at all. I just shods them as they bring them. I hardly notices anything above the hoof.”

  “Oh,” Salai said.

  They ate their supper in silence. The food was good. Good stew, simple spices, brewed a long time. Leonardo never ate meat. Home was, after all, where the food and the smells were familiar. And good. Of course the smells had changed since Salai had been bringing home money; Dorotea had cleaned the place up. Even so, the smells were familiar. Not quite as familiar as the smells of paint pots and glue, but they were good smells. All his senses, he decided, were comfortable: smell, taste, touch, hearing. Each was pleasing. Perhaps not the sound. He had grown to like the sound of the musicians that Leonardo hired to play in the studio. And, if he had to, he would admit that the sights of the studio were better. There was more color, more variety. But he could sacrifice some music and some art. Perhaps a little less of each was more comfortable. He could talk to these uncomplicated people about uncomplicated things.

  “The duke is calling together a conference of artists and mathematicians for next month,” he said.

  The young blacksmith looked at Dorotea. “When he says duke, does he mean II Moro?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Dorotea said proudly. “My brother lives close to the court.”

  Carlo said nothing for the rest of the evening, and Salai’s talk soon tapered to the same. Anything, any commonplace thing he said had the ring of bragging to it. He didn’t belong here. There were more pleasures than the simple pleasures of simple people, and he had grown to need them. He had outgrown home. He could no longer take on the simple, plain colors of his childhood.

  He returned to the studio.

  Leonardo decided to build a house on the grounds that II Moro had given him. He asked Salai to oversee the project. Salai was amazed at how well suited he was for such a job. He could outshout and outswear the most vulgar workmen, and he made them get the job done. The swearing and the shouting served him well. He calmed down, and he once again accepted Leonardo’s cool detachment about events that did not directly affect his person or his reputation.

  Salai heaved brick and pounded lime and built inner strength as he built the house.

  One evening he returned from the studio and found on the table by his bed a purse containing thirteen scudi. The note under the purse said “For Dorotea.” The note was written in the mirror writing that was unmistakably Leonardo’s.

  THE FRENCH invasion came, and II Moro and his children were forced to flee across the Alps into Germany. The duke left his city and its treasures to the rude French soldiers. They were a dirty lot. The French captains spit on the floors of the rooms, and the king himself had the habits of a sloth. A group of soldiers in the courtyard of the castle got drunk one night and used Leonardo’s clay model of the horse as a great white target for their arrows. The horse, punctured in a hundred places, became a sponge for rainwater. It disintegrated, dissolved it would seem by tears sent from Heaven.

  Leonardo and Salai left Milan. The whole world awaited them, and they chose Florence, the city from which Leonardo had come. Salai wanted to see Venice, the city that Beatrice had loved. Buildings faced with gold, streets of water, a bridge with shops on either side.

  Leonardo agreed to go to Florence by way of Venice, but he also announced that they would stop at Mantua on the way. Isabella lived in Mantua, and Salai, who had never had much regard for her, had even less now that Beatrice was dead. What fun could Isabella be if Beatrice was not there to see it? Salai protested. Had Leonardo not heard that Isabella had sent fish from Lake Garda to the French king? Had he no sense of loyalty to Beatrice? Did he not need to get to Florence quickly? Did he not? No, he did not. They went to Mantua.

  Isabella was gracious. She played the lute and sang for Leonardo, and she listened attentively as he sang for her. She showed them around her castle. She had a whole suite of rooms with low ceilings and small doors, and these were for her dwarfs, some of whom she had bred herself. Her best of breed she trained and sent to her relatives when they were in need of cheering up. Salai remembered his first conversation with Beatrice when she had been expecting Matello. “You are very well proportioned for a dwarf,” she had said.

  Isabella’s favorite part of the castle was her Studio of the Grotto. There she kept her richest harvest of works of art. As they moved from room to room they saw ivories and silver and crucifixes. There were many musical instruments, all designed to her musical scale as the rooms of the dwarfs had been scaled for them.

  In one room off the main court there sat a clavichord, an instrument so beautiful that only Lorenzo da Pavia could have designed it. Salai walked over to it and saw that it was ebony inlaid with ivory and all around it were mottoes in Latin and Greek. “Why, Duchess Beatrice has one just like this!” Salai exclaimed.

  “Had,” Isabella corrected.

  “Well, yes,” Salai said. He didn’t always remember that Beatrice was dead.

  “I asked the French for it, and they had it sent here,” she continued.

  “You asked the conquerors of your sister’s castle for a favor?”

  “I was doing the clavichord a favor. Such a work of art deserves a long life. I didn’t want the clavichord to meet the same fate as Master Leonardo’s horse.” Leonardo bowed politely in recognition of the compliment.

  Salai said nothing more.

  A few days later, Aura, Isabella’s pet dog, was killed. Isabella and all her courtiers at Mantua were plunged into the deepest mourning. “He never left my side,” she cried. “He was the handsomest and most amusing little dog that was ever known.”

  He was also the stupidest, Salai thought. Aura had been killed falling off a cliff pursuing a larger dog.

  Isabella cried all during supper the night of the fatal accident. She also sighed loud and a lot.

  Aura was buried in a specially designed lead casket in Isabellas animal cemetery. Along with everyone else at court, Leonardo and Salai were implored to attend the funeral. At the service, famous poets from Ferrara and from as far away as Rome sang songs in Latin and Italian in praise of the chaste and noble Aura. Isabella commissioned Romano, the sculptor who had done a bust of Beatrice when she was a girl, to design Aura’s tombstone.

  Salai did not know whether to laugh or to be outraged. He chose laughter.

  Besides the clavichord, Isabella had also claimed the poets, the musicians and the agents who had hunted Italy for antiques for Beatrice. All were now in the service of Isabella. And Salai knew that Isabella would not rest until she had acquired Leonardo da Vinci, too.

  Salai became determined that Isabella should not add Leonardo to her collection. He knew that Leonardo would sell his services to whomever he chose. Leonardo would not regard himself as being disloyal to Beatrice by being loyal to Isabella. Leonardo knew no loyalty save that of his own genius. And he could not be approached on the basis of sentiment any more than he could on the basis of loyalty. Leonardo regarded himself above such common feelings. Isabella herself would have to drive Leonardo out of Mantua. And Salai would have to drive Isabella to that.

  “Dear Duchess Isabella,” he said, “Master Leonardo has often expressed regret that you have ceased asking him to do your portrait. I know him well, and he is too shy to remind you himself. You are aware, of course, that he never painted Beatrice, your sister of blessed memory. I think her looks were too da
rk and not nobly formed. Frankly, one would have to say that she did not inspire the master. I am sure that is the reason he never committed her face to canvas. How otherwise can you explain that he painted both of the other women loved by II Moro?” Salai then lowered his voice and said confidentially, “I’m referring, of course, to Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli.”

  Isabella took the bait. She would make up for Leonardo’s shyness. She flirted and cajoled. Leonardo, knowing that he was a guest in the house of the aristocracy, obliged. He did a sketch of Isabella in charcoal.

  Leonardo’s drawing was not kind; it was honest. He chose to draw Isabella’s profile, her hair loose about her shoulders. He showed the beginnings of her double chin and the lumpy line of her shoulders and—unkindest stroke —he showed her eyes. Eyes that betrayed no amusement, eyes that showed self-interest. Salai thought that Leonardo’s drawing, a silent editorial, might make an end of the lady’s begging for a portrait.

  But it did not.

  Isabella was too greedy. She felt now that she was closer than ever to two of her life goals, and the two would be rolled into one. Not only would she have some work from the hand of Leonardo da Vinci, she would also have the portrait she had longed for. A bargain. Isabella would not give up. Leonardo, who had so accurately drawn those eyes, should have known that, and part of him did. But the silent, lonely part of him, the part of him that wanted acceptance, did not.

  Morning, noon and night Isabella nagged. Leonardo who had little patience with the actual act of painting, Leonardo who would assign such work to his apprentices whenever he could, this Leonardo put her off. Day after day she proposed, and day after day he postponed.

  She never raised her voice. She never demanded. She never commanded. She never suggested that Leonardo owed her something in return for her hospitality. She merely talked and talked and talked. Salai smiled as he remembered Is abellasays. No one who came to the castle for a stay longer than five minutes could escape being shown the drawing. “Leonardo,” she would announce, “will soon add color to this pale, pale cheek.” She would smile at her audience and at Leonardo. Leonardo would smile back.

  Salai saw that as Isabella’s smile became wider, Leonardo’s became weaker. He knew that they would soon leave for Venice.

  They did.

  THEY SPENT a month in Venice, finally arriving in Florence in the spring of the year of the new century. It was Leonardo’s first visit home in seventeen years and Salai’s first visit ever.

  Florence was a republic; there was no Duke of Florence as there had been in Milan and Mantua and Venice. There was no court around which the life of arts centered. There were many rich men who sponsored the arts; there were many powerful businessmen in love with scholarship and music and art. And they welcomed Leonardo with commissions and civic duties. He was appointed to a committee to decide where to place the statue of David that the young sculptor Michelangelo had completed for the city of Florence; the town fathers, not a duke, had commissioned him to do it. And the town fathers commissioned Leonardo to paint a battle scene on one wall of the City Hall, and they commissioned Michelangelo to do one on the wall opposite.

  Secretive, tall, handsome, elegantly dressed Leonardo found nothing to like in the short, homely, unkempt, quick-tongued Michelangelo. And Michelangelo’s wit found an easy target in the touchy, sensitive son returned home. The two giants of art and engineering did not get along.

  Beatrice had been right: Leonardo had a thin skin indeed. He was easily deflated. That great mound of talent and intellect, as she had called him, stayed aloft on pride. Actually, Salai hated to see anyone best his master. He himself had little more respect for learning now that he was living among the sages of Florence than he had had when he was visiting among the scholars of Pavia. But he had learned to hold his tongue; he had also learned to use it well. At twenty he still did for the master what he had done when he was half that age. But now he did it consciously and conscientiously. After an evening among the famous of Florence, Salai often found himself pumping the master back up, making remarks that were both witty and wild and causing the master to laugh. Leonardo could never laugh at himself, but he could laugh at this irreverent young friend, this Salai who was almost part of himself.

  Each new day was an enemy to Leonardo; he could not be satisfied with yesterday’s well-done work. When he received the commission to paint the battle scene on the wall of the City Hall, he was not content that his work be his best; it had to be better than Michelangelo’s. It had to be astounding. He worked on some new formulas for paints and a different method for drying them, and the whole of his work melted, melted and oozed down the wall. It was as Beatrice had said. The work had no proper sense of unimportance. The audience, the subject and the patron were all too important. Too important. Serious. Too serious. Leonardo had tried too hard.

  Florence was a city in love with art. The Florentines would go anywhere, suffer any discomfort to partake of something new in art. They were fevered with culture. When Leonardo did the cartoon of an altarpiece for the Servite brothers, Salai invited some merchants in to see the work. Those merchants passed along word that in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci was a sight not to be missed. Soon everyone wanted to look. On the days that followed, men and women, young and old, crowded into the room where Salai displayed the cartoon. Salai charged admission. Those few merchants who had first been invited had no idea that they had been bait; they had felt privileged.

  Salai closed the door of the studio to visitors when he received word that the master was returning from his retreat in the hills. Leonardo had once again seriously taken up his studies of flight.

  Salai also enjoyed arranging audiences for the merchants who came to Florence. Everyone got something. The merchant got anecdotes to return home with. Leonardo got bellows for his pride, and Salai got money for his efforts. Dukes and princes would tell their courts how the master had looked, how softly he had spoken, and how he had promised them (in all confidence) that as soon as he had a gap in his schedule he would do their portrait. Leonardo promised them all. He always promised. He simply never delivered.

  It was Isabella who would not be easily put off. She was more determined than ever to have her portrait done. She had more reason for hope than the others. Leonardo’s promise to her was already half fulfilled. She wrote to Cecilia Gallerani and asked that lady, her sister’s rival, to please send her the portrait that the master had done. What she saw made her even more anxious to have herself immortalized. She began a campaign that was to last for three years. It began with letters:

  M. Leonardo,—Hearing that you are settled at Florence, we have begun to hope that our cherished desire to obtain a work by your hand may at length be realized. When you were in this city and drew our portrait in carbon, you promised us that you would some day paint it in colors. If you will consent to gratify this our great desire, remember that apart from the payment which you shall fix yourself, we shall remain so deeply obliged to you that our sole desire will be to do what you wish, and from this time forth we are ready to do your service and pleasure.

  M. Leonardo,—You sent word by Messer Angelo some time ago that you would gladly satisfy my great desire. But the large number of orders which you receive make me fear lest you have forgotten mine. I have, therefore, thought it well to write diese few words, begging you to paint this little figure by way of recreation when you aRe tired.

  As soon as Isabella discovered that Leonardo found letters easy things to ignore, she hired Brother Pietro to deliver her messages and to keep Leonardo’s promise even before his eyes. This left Brother Pietro in the position of composing good letters out of poor excuses.

  Most illustrious and excellent Lady,—

  From what I hear, Leonardo’s manner of life is very changeable and uncertain so that he seems to live for the day only. Since he has been in Florence, he has made only one sketch—a cartoon—and this sketch is not yet finished. He has done nothing else, excepting that two of
his apprentices are painting portraits to which he sometimes adds a few touches. He is working hard at geometry, and is quite tired of painting.

  Most illustrious and excellent Lady,—

  I have succeeded in learning the painter Leonardo’s intentions by means of his pupil Salai. In truth his mathematical experiments have absorbed his thoughts so entirely that he cannot bear the sight of a paintbrush. If he can, as he hopes, end his engagement with the King of France without displeasing him by the end of a month at the latest, he would rather serve Your Excellency than any other person in the world.

  Most illustrious Madonna,—

  I am glad to tell you that a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, Salai by name, young in years but very talented, has a great wish to do some gallant thing for Your Excellency. So if you desire a little picture, or anything else from him, you have only to tell me the price you are ready to give, and I will see that you are pleased.

  Her Excellency, the Most illustrious Madonna, did not accept Salai’s offer.

  SALAI was delighted with Isabella’s pleas and letters. He would glady have paid both postage and entertainment tax on them. Many people who came to the studio had news of Isabella. Nothing in the reports he received convinced Salai to like her any better. He was pleased that Leonardo was busy with church commissions and geometry and the study of flight. There was small chance that he would find time to finish Isabella’s portrait. Sooner or later she would come to realize that here was one prize that was just out of range of her jeweled pink fingers. Three years had passed since they had left Mantua, and still Leonardo had not produced the finished work. And still Isabella persisted. Perhaps in another three years she would know. Salai would like some way, some way other than letters and other than waiting, for her to realize that a work from Leonardo’s hand would ever ever be beyond her grasp. Some way that would be final, polite and a little bit mean.