Da Vinci's Tiger (15 page)

“Yes,” I spoke once more, smiling with a strange new confidence.

Leonardo clapped his hands together as if to break our trance. He could barely contain his excitement. “Please sit, then, Ginevra de' Benci. I must sketch you anew!”

Il dado è tratto
—A SAYING FROM
C
AESAR
WHEN HE REBELLED
against the Roman Senate—kept repeating in my mind.
Our die was set.
We had, like Caesar, crossed the Rubicon. There was no turning back in my insurrection with Leonardo. The fall and winter passed in a whirl of work, with a heady sense of doing something daring, forbidden even, something entirely new.

Oh, we were so full of ourselves. We laughed. We debated. I tried to convince him of Plato's metaphysical philosophies. He countered with his careful observations of the tangible world—the power of swirling water, for instance. “You know, I have found the remains of seashells up in the
hills. I cannot help but think the seas were once much higher and then slowly receded, leaving them there,” Leonardo said.

“Yes, in Noah's flood,” I said.

“You don't believe the seas could carve mountains and leave behind its skeletons in a mere forty days and forty nights, do you?”

I opened my mouth to respond but closed it again without saying anything. I hadn't thought to question the biblical story before. He rattled my church teachings again when I patted the curls framing my face to make sure they covered my ears.

When he reminded me to sit still and asked what I was fussing over, I explained that Sister Margaret had admonished me to always keep curls covering my ears, since the Virgin Mary was impregnated with baby Jesus when the Holy Spirit spoke in her ear. Leonardo looked at me with such bemusement I had to laugh. Maybe our Holy Mother could conceive through her ear, but a normal woman would not!

Leonardo was full of such challenges and surprises. Constantly trying to expand his knowledge, he kept lists of words he wanted to add to his vocabulary. He had even recorded two dozen synonyms for a man's private parts. “Want to hear a really funny one?” he asked me one afternoon as he mixed his paints.

Taken aback, I frowned, unsure what to say. A virtuous woman would never admit being curious about such things. But of course, I did want to hear, particularly since he seemed so amused by it.

He smiled mischievously and told me.

As for me, I recognized that I could feed that intellectual hunger of his, at least in sharing knowledge I had gained from my reading. A few weeks into his painting, I asked, “Maestro, I know you struggle to read Latin. But do you know the content of Ovid's
Metamorphoses
?”

He put the brush he was using between his teeth and picked up another to put a dab of contrasting color to the panel. “No,” he mumbled.

“Ovid opens with the line: ‘
In nova fert animus . . .
'” I quickly realized my rudeness in quoting a language Leonardo did not understand. “Ovid begins,” I corrected myself, “with ‘I will speak of forms changed into new entities.'”

Leonardo peered around the propped-up board so I could see his face. Slurring around the brush in his mouth, he said, “Like we are doing right now! Tell me more. It suits our work.”

Precisely the reason I had brought it up. So I shared the legends Ovid recounted in his long poem tracing the evolution of man. I repeated Ovid's tales of human foibles like Narcissus's destructive self-infatuation and Julius Caesar's tragic fall from power because of his hubris.

All the while, Leonardo grunted and nodded. He was particularly taken with the story of Pygmalion, a Greek sculptor who carved a beauteous female figure out of ivory. “Ovid says Pygmalion was so put off by the prostitutes of his city that he foreswore mortal women and fell in love with the statue he was creating, its purity of spirit. He sighed
and longed for his statue to become real. Upon hearing this, Venus took pity on him. One night he kissed the statue's lips, and they felt warm. He touched her breast and it softened from ivory to flesh under his hand. He embraced her waist and the figure melded to him.” I stopped abruptly, realizing Leonardo had ceased painting and was staring at me.

“Go on.” His voice was raspy.

“With his caresses, she became mortal. They loved. And had a child.” I stumbled over my words, suddenly embarrassed, feeling a tugging at my heart and, well, elsewhere.

Leonardo seemed to shake himself and disappeared back behind the panel and into his painting.

Some days we were mostly silent, as Leonardo struggled to work with the oil paint. He and Verrocchio's other apprentices were well schooled in tempera. But Leonardo was one of the first in Florence to attempt using the oils preferred by northern painters in Flanders. Oil paints did provide subtler, more varied, and translucent tones but were difficult to mix evenly and to spread with the brush.

A few afternoons, he threw away his paints with a curse, as they ran or hardened on his palette. He apologized repeatedly about the smell. Eventually, he determined that the best recipe was combining one part oil with two parts turpentine, then stirring in the powdered color pigment. He continued to experiment with which oils to use—nut, linseed, balsam, or mustard seed.

Thus, he built my portrait, brushstroke upon brushstroke,
color upon color, layer upon layer. He re-created the blush on my cheeks by blending rose hues with violet, the highlights of my hair with browns, golds, and whites. Several times, he had not waited long enough for the undercoat to dry before applying the next. The paint bubbled, wrinkling the surface, because the top layer dried faster being exposed to the air. Sometimes Leonardo used his fingertips to flatten the surface and better blend the two layers of color.

He also found early evening light better illuminated the natural colors of my face and hair. “See,” he said to Giovanni one late afternoon, as my brother watched Leonardo paint, “how much more graceful and sweet her face appears in this gentler sun?”

Always one to bring us back down to earth, Giovanni squinted in my direction. “Sweet?” He frowned. “If you say so, Leonardo!”

We all laughed.

Of course, Bernardo visited often. He and Leonardo discussed the portrait's composition and the choices Leonardo made as he painted. Bernardo approved Leonardo's decision to place me in front of a juniper bush
ginepro
, and to include the hint of a limpid pond, a distant town and hills beyond. Bernardo had described his own country villa near Padua, and Leonardo created a landscape that echoed Bernardo's memories. They seemed to connect well over their enjoyment of nature and horses.

Of the juniper, Bernardo had exclaimed, “Ah,
perfetto
!
The
ginepro
is a well-known symbol of chastity. It will heighten the statement of your virtue,
carissima
.”

“Its emerald foliage will also create a lush halo of green behind her head, Your Excellency, and provide a color contrast that will accentuate the gold of her hair and the paleness of her face,” Leonardo said.

“Of course, of course. Your eye is as keen as a falcon's, maestro,” Bernardo said. “The combination of colors will be extraordinary. And the placement of her in such a magnificent natural landscape . . .” Bernardo turned his attention to me. “It will make you, and all of us, immortal, my dear.”

I smiled. “That is thanks to you, my lord.”

“Is she not a sweet, pretty, gracious little thing, maestro?” Bernardo asked. He kissed my hand.

I had learned that when Leonardo did not like a statement or a question he simply did not address it. And that is what he did now. “You'll note, Your Excellency, that the
ginepro
is also a pun on her name, a way of identifying Ginevra de' Benci for all eternity, as long as my painting survives.”

“Indeed! Meaning upon meaning!” Bernardo beamed in appreciation. He circled the painting. “I have intended to ask you, maestro, how you will identify my patronage of your work? Master Verrocchio's sculpture will feature my beloved holding the rose bouquet I brought her, which conveniently is the blossom contained in my coat of arms. But what shall we do with your painting?”

Leonardo hesitated. His silence told me the thought of marking Bernardo's ownership of my image had not occurred
to him before. After all, the portrait he and I had conceived was intended to show me as my own being. Leonardo also had a rather large ego about his work being unique and better than that of his Florentine brother artisans and, therefore, immune to outside suggestion. Sharing credit for his ideas was not something he would do readily. This was a man who told me he wrote his thoughts and observations in backward script so that they could only be read in a mirror reflection—his way of preventing others from stealing his insights or designs. And despite Verrocchio's teasing, Leonardo foolishly remained unconcerned with the niceties necessary to placate patrons and generate income from his art.

Bernardo's face clouded.

I didn't want Bernardo disappointed. But I also felt protective of Leonardo, not wanting one of his first patrons to find him lacking in deference or ideas. Such a reputation would discourage wealthy Florentines from giving him commissions in a city well stocked with thirty talented and more compliant master painters as well as fifty marble workshops with hungry workers to feed.

I spoke up hastily. “We have been discussing that, my lord.”

“Ah, and what have you discussed, my Bencina? Something poetic, I am sure.” Bernardo knelt and took my hand. “Perhaps you should hold one of my books, adding to our celebration of your exquisite mind. No, no”—he shifted his thoughts—“that would not do it clearly enough. You have books of your own.” He paused. “Perhaps the backdrop
should be changed to the sea with a Venetian ship on it. Yes, that would do. The sea and a ship.”

I looked over Bernardo's shoulder at Leonardo, whose face contorted with aggravation—I knew he was already halfway through painting the landscape he had envisioned.

I turned back to Bernardo, whose lips were dangerously close to mine suddenly. “The ship can be sailing toward you, my dear,” he whispered, drawing even closer so I felt his breath on my mouth, “its beloved harbor.”

I caught his meaning of a ship putting into port. It was an uncharacteristically obvious wordplay to make in front of someone else. Shaken, I stood. “I think a sailing ship a bit too . . . too . . . nautical a theme, my lord.”

Bernardo sat back on his heels, chuckling.

My mind raced, trying to come up with a viable alternative. “Oh! What about the verso? Something on the back of my portrait.” Leonardo's relieved smile steadied me. “Yes, that's it. An emblem on the back. Maybe a winged horse like your Pegasus, my lord.”

“Mmmm.” Bernardo nodded. “I have seen paintings with a front and back during my ambassadorship to the Burgundian court.”

“Perhaps a maiden with a unicorn,” Leonardo suggested.

I thought of the sketch Leonardo had done in the meadow the day of the race. That certainly would be a flattering emblem. “Oh, that would be lovely, maestro. How kind of you to suggest such a symbol.”

But something about that exchange annoyed Bernardo.
He didn't like the switch of emphasis away from his horse, Pegasus, which would unequivocally mark his commission. But I also sensed he did not like Leonardo picturing me as capable of taming a unicorn—one of our strongest symbols of the power of chastity to overwhelm even wild, magical animals—or that I was so flattered by Leonardo's appraisal of me.

Bernardo stood, crossed his arms, and said rather sternly, “Apt, very apt, for our lovely Bencina. But that says nothing of me, maestro, or the affection between my lady and
me
.” For the first time I heard a mean-spirited and condescending tone in Bernardo's voice. “I hope you are able to think of something more specific than that? If not, perhaps I can consult with your master, Maestro Verrocchio.”

Leonardo fumed.

Was Bernardo jealous? The situation was souring fast. What to suggest? I paced, definitely not maintaining the self-contained deportment Le Murate had schooled me in. Ah, schooling. I stopped. “Good my lord, let us devise an emblem that signifies both your learning and your generous encouragement of art and literature. Perhaps an emblem you've used or might use in the future, perhaps a stamp in the manuscripts you collect.”

Oh, Bernardo was devastatingly handsome when he was pleased.

And so the three of us designed a wreath wrapped with a favorite motto of Bernardo's—
Virtus et Honor
—for the verso. Bernardo suggested the wreath be made of laurel and palm,
both symbols of intellectual honor and virtue. I pointed out that the palm was also associated with victory and innocence, triumph over earthly temptation. Bernardo laughed and murmured, “Indeed, my love, indeed. But let us not forget that Apollo, the god of poetry who often wore a crown of laurel, succumbed to passion once or twice.” He grinned meaningfully at me.

Leonardo looked back and forth between Bernardo and me. He had the strangest look on his face, a mix of anger and something else. Then he suggested that the background appear to be porphyry, a stone noted for its endurance and resistance to outside elements. “It will symbolize her resolve to remain pure and unsullied.”

Sweet Jesu
, this was idiocy on Leonardo's part. Was this really concern about my chastity, or simply a rebel's dislike of authority?

Bernardo frowned and eyed Leonardo. His lighthearted humor was gone. He spoke to Leonardo with cold imperiousness. “Finish the emblem with a sprig of the
ginepro
juniper—our symbol for Ginevra—in the wreath's center. Stretch the scroll carrying the motto across the wreath from side to side. But wrap it once around the stem of the juniper in its center, as I would encircle the waist of my beloved to kiss her. Thus.”

Bernardo grabbed my waist and reeled me in for a sudden, brusque kiss. Then he let go so abruptly I almost fell backward. It was Leonardo who reached out to steady me.

For a tense moment, the three of us stared at one another,
I in the center of the two men. Bernardo's eyes narrowed as he looked at Leonardo. Then he bowed to me with great ceremony.
“Ciao, bella.”
He headed for the door, saying nothing to Leonardo.