Da Vinci's Tiger (10 page)

“Aaaaahhhh.” He nodded. “Just like your poem!”

“Oh, well, I, but . . .” I frowned. Lord, what a nitwit I was being. “I would not presume to compare anything I might think of to the great Plato. I tore up the verse.”

“What? Oh, that was a crime, La Bencina! It was an exquisite poem. I was about to ask if I might have it as a”—he smiled warmly—“a token of our new friendship. But I am grateful to you for my better understanding of Plato now. I so like the ancients' concept that earthly pleasure is not completely forbidden or viewed as evil that must be killed off—as our priests teach.” He leaned even closer toward me. “But rather a force to be harnessed for its energies and guided by the more noble in us.”

I laughed nervously. “Yes, most men do like that concept when they hear of it.”

That telltale rumble of mirth in his chest grew to a chortle just as Giuliano, Simonetta, Verrocchio, and Leonardo finished their discussion and approached us. Embarrassed, I pulled back quickly from Bernardo, but he let go of my hand reluctantly, keeping his extended like a statue's gesture of disappointment. Verrocchio and Giuliano were too busy discussing how Leonardo should paint the Madonna offering a
red carnation to the Christ child to notice. But Simonetta's playful smile and Leonardo's disapproving glower told me the two of them had.

Her expression I understood and felt bolstered by. But Leonardo's seemingly negative judgment bothered me. I stiffened as I nodded formally at him, seeking some expression or gesture to explain his thoughts. Leonardo did nothing in response.

The business between patron and artisan was done. It was high time for me to get back to my house. I had been gone far more hours than I had planned, and I was queasy with hunger and a swirl of confusing emotions. I said my good-byes hastily and awkwardly, not daring to meet Bernardo's gaze again. I swept up Sancha, who was chatting amiably with one of the older apprentices.

As I hastened out the door, I heard Bernardo proclaim with gusto, “What news I have, Giuliano. What a glorious day! Ginevra de' Benci's inner virtue and beauty are just as her outer loveliness promises. I have found my Platonic love. I have found my Simonetta.”

St. John's Feast

June 1475

I
DID NOT SEE
L
EONARDO AGAIN UNTIL THE
FESTIVAL OF
S
T.
John the Baptist, when I spotted him sitting on a rock beneath a tree, sketching. He was smiling. I realized Leonardo was in heaven in terms of subjects. Before him paraded some of the most majestic horses in all of Italy. Snorting, pawing the earth, prancing, tails and heads held high, they strained against their lead lines to nip at one another as their grooms walked them. They were gathering in a meadow just outside the city's western walls for the
palio
—a tumultuous race from one end of the
city to the other, right through its main streets.

One of those magnificent steeds belonged to my brother—the infamous Six Hundred. Giovanni wanted to speak with his jockey one last time before he and dozens of other horses and riders would squeeze through the narrow gates of Ponte alla Carraia to start the breakneck dash to glory or disaster. The jockeys rode bareback, and many a horse crossed the finish line without a rider, the man having fallen or been pushed off somewhere along the five-minute course. Many horses were injured, too, squeezed up against the stone walls of palazzos or kicked brutally in the rampage of panicked animals straining to pull ahead of the pack.

“There he is.” Giovanni pointed to his horse, Zephyrus, at the far end of the field, on the other side of the bucking herd. “Good. I told Apollonio to keep him away from the others.” He kissed the top of my head, something he'd started doing right after my wedding when he finally grew taller than I, shooting up four inches within a year. “Will you be all right waiting here, sister? I don't think you should try to navigate that horde with me.”

“Of course I will be, brother.”

He hesitated. No other woman was in sight. And there were a great many men milling about, stumbling from the wine they'd just consumed at the midday feast meal.

“Go on.” I laughed. “You can see me from over there. If I am threatened, you can jump on Zephyrus and rush in to save me!”

“It's just . . . I need to tell him . . .”

“I know, my dear, I know. If the jockey needs to pull up or turn a corner sharply, he must not saw on Zephyrus's reins, as the bit would damage that tender Barbary mouth.”

He smiled. “Stay right here then.” Giovanni wagged his finger at me. “Keep a sharp lookout for a horse breaking away from his groom. I don't want to have to explain some mishap to Luigi—after all, he did entrust your safety to me for the feast day.”

“And hasn't it been grand fun?” I said. “Like old times. I am so grateful that Luigi was chosen to be one of the
festaioli
to oversee this year's festivities so that we were able to enjoy the events together, brother.”

Giovanni pulled a tendril of my hair playfully before jogging away to see his horse.

I smiled, watching him go. At eighteen, Giovanni still moved with that childhood gladness, a boyhood joy in motion that we women were denied in our heavy dresses and society's requirement for calm deportment. I used to ache to run alongside him and his horses, to feel my legs skip. But that day I was so flush with the festival's colors and music and vibrancy, I felt nothing but happiness.

How could I not? Florence had nearly a hundred public holidays during the year, but St. John's Feast was its grandest—a two-day extravaganza celebrating both our material successes and our earnest piety. Another paradox, but Florentines explained away this contradiction by beginning the celebration with a government-ordered
mostra
—a lavish display of the city's riches as homage to the blessings our patron
saint bestowed upon us that resulted in such robust economic well-being. Festooning their shops with colorful banners, merchants put out their best merchandise—gold cloth, silver plates, painted panels, tapestry, jewelry, carved wood, embroidered leather.

After a morning of everyone ogling such elegant wares, Florence's clergy donned elaborately embroidered vestments and processed through the streets with Florence's holy relics—a thorn of the Holy Crown, a nail of the cross, a finger bone of John the Baptist. Following them came the city's secular dignitaries dressed as angels and biblical figures, with musicians of all sorts playing and singing.

But the most important parade occurred the morning of the feast's second day. The city's guildsmen circled the Duomo cathedral to approach the ancient, octagonal Baptistery and its gates of paradise—huge bronze doors decorated with scenes of St. John's life. Carrying painted candles, they slowly marched under blue canopies painted with stars and lilies that were stretched across the streets to replicate the night sky.

All this pageantry was about to be capped off by the thrill of the
palio
.

I breathed in the warm summer air, cooling now in the late afternoon with a breeze blowing off the Arno. I did not often venture to this side of Florence near the Ognissanti monastery. I caught the fragrances of clover, summer-supple grasses, and olive trees in bloom—foreign scents within the clogged city streets where I spent most of my time. With
pleasure, I took in the fragrance as my eyes wandered along the cavorting horses, the distant hills of Antella where we Benci had a country villa and I had frolicked as a child, and finally back to Leonardo.

He continued to sketch furiously, looking up at the horses and down at his drawing, up and down in rapid succession. With surprise, I noticed that he openly drew with his left hand.
Con la sinistra
. The Latin word for left, which had evolved to mean
sinister, of the devil
. Le Murate's nuns would never have allowed us to write so. Such a proclivity was often used as evidence that a woman was a witch.

As I watched, he stopped, mumbled to himself, flipped the page, and began anew on the paper's reverse side. He looked up and surveyed his choices before fixing his eyes on one horse to draw. Another few minutes and he was done with that particular sketch and scanned the field again—this time coming to rest on me. I instinctively smiled and waved at him.

Leonardo sat and stared in answer.

The man was infuriating. I stamped my foot under my billowing dress and turned my gaze back to the horses. I ignored him. But then I realized he was still looking at me. And he was sketching.

I am not sure which it was—vanity, curiosity, or fury—that propelled my legs. I marched myself toward him. Realizing what I was doing, Leonardo snapped out of his drawing daze and, appearing rather horrified, scrambled to fold up his sketches and pocket his chalk. In that fluster, he
fell off his rock—just as I arrived at his side.

There he lay, sprawled at my feet, like a beetle flipped on its back. For a moment Leonardo was aghast at the indignity of his position. I felt a strange sense of power, for once towering over a man, and then a flood of concern for an artist being reduced to such embarrassment. But I knew my helping him up would only worsen his consternation.

I was frozen. So was he.

Then suddenly that beautiful, sculpture-perfect face of Leonardo's lit up with a smile. And he laughed. Laughed at himself—a rich, rolling belly laugh. I pressed my lips together, still uncertain what to do, trying to hold back a laugh myself. But then I giggled. And giggled. Our mirth harmonized and filled our little corner of the meadow, echoing the trumpetlike whinnying of the horses. We laughed so hard, we struggled to catch our breath.

“Zounds, man!” Giovanni came across the grasses. Helping Leonardo to his feet, my brother began laughing himself. “What happened, signor, did you take my sister on in a game of checkers? I seem to recall her once punching me so hard after I beat her that I fell off my chair!”

“Giovanni!” I couldn't help punching him lightly to shut him up.

“You see!” He threw his hands up in playful exasperation.

Leonardo chortled, but clearly did not know what he should say next.

“Giovanni,” I said, realizing that now I needed to direct the conversation, “this is Leonardo da Vinci, an artist once
apprenticed to the great Verrocchio. Maestro, this is my brother, Giovanni de' Benci.”

The men bowed to each other.

“Is that your horse?” Leonardo gestured to Zephyrus.

“Indeed,” Giovanni said. “Is he not magnificent? I have great hopes for him today.”

Without a word, Leonardo pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to my brother. The others he hurriedly tucked into his satchel, including one that showed the beginning outlines of a woman. On the page Giovanni held were multiple images of the same horse—rearing, standing, lunging, and shaking its head. Those images were juxtaposed with close-up studies of legs and their flexing, bulging muscles.

“Why, this is astounding!” Giovanni exclaimed. “This is my beautiful Zephyrus, is it not? The way you have captured his head, here”—he pointed—“is just the way he carries himself when he readies for a battle. I swear the horse loves to win. And look at the power of his hind legs—you have replicated it exactly.” He shook his head in amazement. “I have never seen anything like it before.”

Leonardo beamed. He stepped forward so the two men were shoulder to shoulder. “I am trying to portray how the horse propels itself forward with such speed,” he explained. “I rode as a child, my uncle's horses, but none moved as fast as these. I remember the power felt like it came from his hindquarters. Is that right?”

Giovanni smiled. “Well, not exactly. A fine horse such as Zephyrus is a miracle of proportions. Every part of his body
works together to produce his speed. He is a piece of art in his own right, maestro. See the angle of the shoulder here? The supple strength of his back? And the slope and stance of his hocks, knees, and hooves?”

Leonardo persisted. “So then it is not one particular part of the animal but how all the parts are put together?”

“Precisely! See, look at your drawing here . . .”

As they talked, I noticed more rich and powerful men coming to speak with their jockeys—including Lorenzo the Magnificent. I knew he had a stable full of racehorses and a phalanx of grooms. But it was said that Lorenzo exercised his own four horses himself whenever he could in the cold morning air and that his most famous racehorse, il Morello, would refuse food from any hand but his. The horse nickered happily upon spotting Lorenzo.

Then another figure caught my eye—Bernardo. He was talking to a jockey trying to calm a jittery chestnut just beyond il Morello. My heart began dancing like the horse's feet. I had encountered Bernardo twice since seeing him at Verrocchio's
studio, each meeting bringing a brief, titillating exchange of banter and compliments from him, but no lingering conversation. Perhaps today, I thought as I watched him, surprised when I felt hope well up in me.

“Sister? Daydreaming again?” Giovanni interrupted my thoughts. He smiled at Leonardo. “So often this one would almost bump into walls as she read some book while walking to dinner. Always her heart and head somewhere else.” He took my hand and threaded it through his arm. “We should
probably make our way to the grandstand now, sister, to take our seats before the race begins.”

Leonardo followed my gaze to Bernardo and the jockey. “Placing a bet,” he said to me, reading my curiosity yet again, just as he had at the studio. “Many lords have been here in the meadow to lay a wager.” Leonardo raised his eyebrow and shifted his gaze to another corner of the meadow, where a richly dressed merchant was glad-handing a jockey. “Or trying to bribe a jockey to hold back to fix the race.” He shook his head. “Florence is full of intrigue, even on a saint's birthday.”

He turned on his heel and walked away.