Da Vinci's Tiger

For my muses:

Megan and Peter

I beg your pardon, I am a mountain tiger.

T
HAT
'
S THE ONLY LINE OF MY POETRY LEFT.
A
SINGLE SCRAP
to reveal what I thought of myself. Oh, there are a dozen sonnets written
about
me—praising my neck, my skin, my hands, my virtue. Two were penned by Lorenzo de' Medici himself—Lorenzo the Magnificent, the de facto prince of Florence, the city where a riotous blossoming of new thought and art pollinated a springlike rebirth across Europe. I was the chosen Platonic love of one of his greatest political allies.

I beg your pardon, I am a mountain tiger.

One line. And, of course, Leonardo's portrait. The portrait that now hangs in Washington, DC's National Gallery of Art—the only Leonardo da Vinci in all of the Americas.

Ever since that portrait was rescued from a palace cellar and recognized as a work by the young Leonardo, art historians have asked: Why is Ginevra de' Benci not smiling? As if I denigrate Leonardo's genius by not grinning with gratitude. She is ill, some say. She's shy, suggest others. She was heartbroken by the departure of that charming ambassador from Venice. She could not have been very nice, a few have even pronounced—poor Leonardo to deal with such a formidable-looking young woman for his very first portrait. Can the spiky juniper bush behind her be a symbol of her prickly personality that the ever-so-clever Leonardo put there as a sarcastic joke?

They should see how I smile at them now, at such speculations. Indeed, Leonardo did enjoy word games. The backdrop of juniper,
ginepro
, is a pun on my name. But perhaps my expression was suggested by Leonardo to be a protest of my circumstances. Perhaps I influenced him to create the image of a mysterious but strong female, which became his hallmark. Or perhaps my reserve was something as simple as knowing that had I
smiled
out at my viewer, people of my day would have denounced me as provocative, dangerous even.

The fact that Leonardo painted me facing forward, in a three-quarter pose, my gaze outward and steady, engaging the viewer, was daring enough. He and I shattered the Italian quattrocento tradition of portraying women in profile,
looking away modestly at nothing, bejeweled and elaborately coiffed, advertisements of a family's wealth to be assessed as one might a piece of silver. Instead, Leonardo risked painting me as a real person, with individual thoughts and personality that peek out at you in my gaze—the eyes being the windows to our souls, after all. He believed a portrait should reveal the subject's “motions of the mind,” even if that subject was a mere woman.

Such a revolutionary concept it was! We Florentine ladies were not supposed to stand for long at windows, for fear our thoughts might wander beyond our domestic duties and, God forbid, invite improper imaginings of men passing by. A rulebook at my convent school claimed that if we exchanged a long glance with a man, we could inflame his carnal appetites. The poor man might fall helplessly into sin and be cut adrift from God, like Adam cast out of the Garden of Eden because of Eve's foolishness.

This attitude was held dear at the very same time well-read men like Lorenzo de' Medici were convinced that a woman's graceful, physical beauty was actually evidence of her having deep inner virtues. As such a woman could be a muse of spirituality that
saved
a man's soul. Lorenzo and his followers proclaimed a man grew closer
to God by gazing upon such a woman—even a married one—and devoting himself to her in a nonphysical love affair.

Yes, a time of marvelous contradictions!

Such paradoxes allowed a woman glory—if she could find and walk the silken-thread line that divided women into
either saint or temptress in the minds of men. If she could recognize and survive the politics involved. And if she was strong enough to also create an inner, poetic world that no one could sully or destroy.

I beg your pardon, I am a mountain tiger.

You see? As if a tiger would beg anyone's pardon.

I had to learn to walk in such contradictions. At sixteen years of age, I emerged from Le Murate's convent school, where I had been sent “to learn the virtues,” chaste, practiced in modest deportment, groomed to achieve an advantageous marriage for my family. But thanks to a rare intellectual abbess, my eyes had also been opened to the power of thought and art, philosophy and poetry. That was the element of me that would most attract the attention, the imaginings (Platonic and not) of powerful men and the beautiful Leonardo. And would bring me love.

I beg your pardon, I am a mountain tiger.

Come, look in my eyes. Under Leonardo's brush, a thinking, feeling soul glimmers there behind a carefully composed expression of quietude—like a tiger partially veiled by the forest. Can you see it, waiting silently, watching for a chance to spring forth with a roar?

Leonardo did.

But I get ahead of myself. Leonardo would have hated
that. He believed in a systematic study of a thing, layer by layer, to discover what lay below and created the surface we could see. And so, let us begin my story—the story of the great Leonardo da Vinci and his mountain tiger.

It all started with a joust.