Da Vinci's Tiger (2 page)

Piazza di Santa Croce, Florence

January 1475

“Q
UICK!
S
HIELD YOUR EYES!
”
S
IMONETTA
V
ES
PUCCI CRIED.

Gasping, I raised my hands against a blast of dagger-sharp splinters spewing from the jousting field.

Giuliano de' Medici and his opponent had just raced toward each other, to deafening cheers from the crowd, their lances aimed straight for each other, their horses thundering and snorting toward collision. With a horrifying crash, Giuliano's lance shattered on his opponent's shield, pelting the front row of the stands where I sat with wood fragments.

The rider was hurled off his horse. He lay sprawled on his back in the white sand that filled the Piazza di Santa Croce for the joust. Rushing in, his men-at-arms helped him stand and walked him off the lists. The rider's armor had saved him. His exquisite horse, however, writhed on the ground. A huge shard of the Medici-blue lance was embedded in his flank.

Whinnying in agony, the horse kicked out wildly. The crowd hushed as men circled the beautiful animal, trying to decide what to do. Giuliano retreated to a corner of the piazza to await his next round, his own horse prancing in fretful impatience and agitation.

“Poor thing,” Simonetta said of the injured horse. “Do you think it will die?” She reached to clasp my hand as we watched.

“Ouch!” My red gloves were spiked with a few azure-colored needles thrown from the shattered lances.

“Oh, my dear!” Simonetta began plucking out the tiny spears. “Thanks be to Mother Mary, your hands saved you. Many knights have died from lance splinters piercing their eyes.” She leaned toward me and whispered. “Even so, jousting is an exquisite sport, don't you think? So exhilarating to see these men ride at such a pace.” She giggled like the girl she was, before shrouding herself again in womanly reserve. “But at such a price.” She shook her head as she pulled the last shard from the soft velvet.

I tried not to wince as Simonetta gently peeled off the glove to inspect my hand. She pressed her handkerchief to
my palm to stop the tiny ooze of blood from the pinpricks.

“You will ruin that lovely lace with bloodstains,” I warned. Such intricate handiwork was imported from Venice and was expensive.

“Your beautiful hands are far more important,” she replied. “I have heard them praised by Lorenzo the Magnifico for their delicacy, and for the needlework and poetry they create. We must make sure they do not become infected.”

I was a bit vain about my hands, I have to admit. My fingers were long and slender, and I rubbed lemon juice into my skin to keep it fair. So I smiled to hear the compliment, especially since it came from the city's most important citizen-statesman.

Simonetta smiled back. The way her face lit up reminded me why all of Florence was totally besotted with her. With thick golden curls, a long neck, creamy skin, and huge amber eyes, Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci was gorgeous. Officially, the Medici had organized this joust to celebrate Florence's new diplomatic alliance with Venice and Milan. But Simonetta was its crowned “Queen of Beauty” and its focal point in many ways. The honor was no surprise as Simonetta was also the publicly celebrated Platonic love of the younger Medici brother, the handsome Giuliano, Florence's favorite rider in the joust.

Her image had been the first thing seen that morning as Giuliano and twenty-one other combatants paraded through Florence's streets to Santa Croce. Leading the procession, Giuliano was accompanied by nine trumpeters and two
men-at-arms, carrying pennants of fringed blue silk, decorated with the Medici coat of arms. All their tunic skirts were of matching blue silk brocade, their silver-threaded sleeves embroidered with olive branches and flames. As dazzling as his entourage's costuming was, though, spectators couldn't help but stare at the enormous banner Giuliano carried.

On it, Simonetta was depicted as Pallas, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, over a motto in gold lettering:
La sans par
, “the unparalleled one.” The great Botticelli had painted her holding a jousting lance and shield, in a golden tunic and breastplate, looking up to the sky. Beside her, ignored, Cupid was tied to an olive tree.

The banner's message was clear. As Pallas, Simonetta was not distracted or beguiled by Cupid's earthly romances. Follow her gaze and her example to make it to heaven. When Simonetta climbed the grand dais stairs to take her throne, she had received as many cheers as the city's beloved Giuliano would when he rode into the lists to the fanfare of herald-trumpets.

How marvelous to be considered so beautiful, so good and true, that an artist such as Sandro Botticelli would want to paint you, I thought. Jealous, I pulled my hand away and spoke sharply. “It's fine.”

The slightest of frowns creased Simonetta's brow. “We must be friends, Ginevra de' Benci Niccolini. I have so few since moving here from Piombino to marry Marco. We are, after all, cousins by marriage. And”—she paused—“I think
we will have much to talk about.” She giggled again, this time pulling my gaze with hers toward a handsome, debonair stranger sitting next to the great Lorenzo. The man bowed his head in salutation to us as we did. “He has been appreciating you for the last hour.”

I felt my face flush. “Who is he?”

“Bernardo Bembo, the new Venetian ambassador.”

I was about to turn to look at the diplomat more carefully—something Le Murate's sisters would have chided me harshly for—when a man's voice from behind stopped me.

“Observe! Here comes the Six Hundred.”

Men around him laughed.

Again I flushed, mortified. The man was talking about my oldest brother, Giovanni. And not in a flattering way.

Walking onto the field, Giovanni approached the thrashing horse. He circled it slowly, while the other men who'd tried fruitlessly to calm it stepped back. As usual, my brother was dressed to the hilt, wearing a lavish emerald-green-and-gold taffeta tunic, his soled hose scarlet, his fur-lined beret threaded with silver and gold.

“Do you think he has enough florins on his back?” The man behind me kept up his sarcasm.

My brother's love of expensive clothes and fine horses had become the city's gauge for all things ostentatious. Giovanni had purchased a magnificent horse from the Barbary Coast of North Africa for a staggering six hundred florins (an amount that equaled the annual income of ten skilled artisans combined). He raced it in the annual
palio
for St. John's Feast. He
also loved to parade about town on the horse. I could hardly blame him. The horse was an incredibly fluid mover and a joy to ride.

But “Here comes the Six Hundred” had become a Florentine slang term for a braggart. A republic city-state of merchants, guildsmen, artisans, and bankers, Florence did not approve of showy everyday displays of wealth, despite its citizens' love of pageantry and spectacles like this joust.

I fumed.

Simonetta put her hand atop mine and patted it to keep me from turning round to glare at my brother's attackers. I wondered if he would cease if he knew who I was. But Florentine men were used to speaking their mind no matter what.

“Well, he is a Benci,” another voice said. “His grandfather was Cosimo's best friend and the Medici bank manager. The Benci family earned its wealth. You have to give them that.”

It was a typical Florentine assessment of politics and connections, the stuff of many street-corner conversations in a city run by the merchant class. I still wanted to kiss whoever said it. A commoner who made himself a fortune, Cosimo had been much admired in Florence for his generous patronage of artists and for funding the completion of the cathedral's dome. The Duomo had become one of the wonders of Christendom. The respect afforded Cosimo spilled onto my grandfather.

But my brother's critic didn't skip a beat. “Certainly old Benci earned his keep by stuffing the election purse with
Medici supporters to ensure that Cosimo stayed in power—the same as any common whore making her way by bending the ethics of good men.”

Simonetta's hand closed tightly on mine. She squeezed hard, warning me to remain rooted in ladylike silence.

Instead, I laughed out loud at the insult. I couldn't help it. I was plagued with an impetuous temper that had always landed me in terrible trouble with the nuns. But this time, I swear the influence of Pallas's mythical intellect saved me. For once, I knew the right thing to say at the right moment.

Leaning toward Simonetta, I said in a loud, staged voice, “Look, Simonetta. My dear, dear brother approaches that poor, suffering, valiant horse.” I drew out the adjectives with feminine empathy. “If anyone can save that beauteous steed, it will be my brother. He is a great scholar of ancient texts. He owns the manuscript written by a legendary Calabrian physic to animals,
Liber de Medicina Veterinaria
.” The Latin rolled easily off my tongue.

I glanced back at the snide man and his companions, knowing that Florence's obsession with rediscovered ancient Greek and Latin writings granted respect and status to those who possessed them. I recognized the man as a Pazzi—a member of the aristocratic banking family that was the chief rival and a bitter critic of the Medici. I nodded at him, politely, of course. “Through studying that rare, important text, my brother knows everything about tending horses. If the beast is curable, my brother will know how to do it,” I said.

With that, all persons within earshot fell silent. If nothing else, they anticipated an interesting display of equestrian husbandry and the value of ancient education. Florentines did so love publicly enacted drama.

Settling back in my seat, I pulled my cloak closer about me against the January chill and buried my nose in the collar's ermine—mostly to hide a self-satisfied smile. I dared to peep over the soft fur at Simonetta to see her reaction.

Her amber eyes sparkled in amusement. “You will go far indeed in this city, Ginevra.”

Luckily, my brother proved me right. He moved closer and closer to the convulsing horse, dodging its kicks to stand next to its head. Giovanni knelt. The horse stilled and let my brother touch its muzzle. The crowd was transfixed.

Cautiously, Giovanni lowered his face to breathe into the horse's nostrils, just as horses greet each other. Then he stroked the horse's neck, whispering into its ear. He took hold of the shard of wood with one hand, while the other stayed on the horse's neck. He looked up and nodded, signaling the grooms standing by that he was ready for their help. Quickly, they laid hands on the horse to keep him still. Giovanni yanked the spear out of its side before it realized what was happening.

The crowd cheered. The horse struggled to its feet and let a groom stanch the wound with clean linen. Then, limping, it peacefully followed Giovanni off the course.

“I'll be damned,” muttered the Pazzi man behind me.
But it didn't take him long to continue his jabs at my brother. “Now I am sure the Six Hundred will exploit the situation and try to buy that horse away from the defeated rider.”

“In truth, that will be a good negotiation for the rider,” his companion said. He lowered his voice a bit, since his gossip could be interpreted to be anti-Medici. “He was strong-armed by Lorenzo to compete in today's joust. He told me he was forced into spending enormous sums to properly outfit himself to the Medici satisfaction. He purchased fifty-two pounds of pure gold and a hundred seventy pounds of silver for his armor, his horse's decorations, and livery for his followers.”

The men around him whistled.

“So he will be glad for some reimbursement.”

I imagined the nods of approval from the gaggle of merchants and money changers behind me.

“But it's not as if that horse will ever be able to joust or race again, not with that wound to its back leg,” the Pazzi attacker said, changing tack. “Only a fool would want to buy it. A fool like the Six Hundred.”

He would still mock my brother? Even after such a triumphant display of horsemanship and bravery? I turned round and blessed the Pazzi man with the most innocent, demure smile I could muster in my fury. “But good, my lord,” I said in a purposely dulcet tone, “would not this horse father wondrous colts?” I paused to allow my listeners time to consider. “After all, his most important . . . mmm . . . . leg . . . was not pierced.”

The man's mouth dropped open.

His friends guffawed in appreciation. But this time the laughter was with me. Even ladylike Simonetta shook with mirth, but she pressed her lips together to keep from laughing out loud.

I turned back to face the jousting field, having won that round for my family's honor, just as Giuliano charged back into the lists for his next go at glory.

T
RUMPETS BLARING,
G
IULIANO DE
'
M
EDICI
SPURRED HIS
mount to the grandstand where Simonetta and other special guests sat. He pulled up in a shower of white sand. Bracing his ten-foot-long lance against his hip, Giuliano bowed to Simonetta while his horse pranced and snorted in place, anxious to get back on course.

It had been a typical Tuscan January day, cloudy and cold with a damp chill coming off the Arno River. But at that moment—as if the Fates wished to add to the moment's symbolic drama—the sun burst forth, spilling golden light onto the Piazza di Santa Croce and making Giuliano's fantastical armor gleam. His silver-steel breastplate was draped
in white silk embroidered with pearls, the gold border of his red cape encrusted with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. His shield was the snarling face of Medusa, her hair of snakes so lifelike one could almost hear them hiss. Orso, his black-and-white-spotted horse, was just as resplendent. A silvery helmet covered its forehead, and its back was draped with a blue-cloth caparison embroidered with the Medici coat of arms.

We all gaped at the image created by the warhorse and its twenty-one-year-old rider, whom Florence affectionately called “the Prince of Youth.”

“My lady,” Giuliano called out. “May I ask the honor of your favor again?” The scarf she'd given him earlier must have been lost on the field or bloodied during the last round. He carefully lowered his lance as Simonetta stood. From inside her angel-wing sleeve she pulled a long ribbon of blue and silver, dyed and embroidered to match Giuliano's attire, and tied it onto the blunted pole.

Giuliano raised the ribboned lance once again in salute to the stands. The crowd erupted as he and Orso cantered back to the 125-foot-long jousting lane.

Trumpets sounded to announce his opponent. “Signor Morelli has now entered the lists,” called the tournament official. I couldn't help but feel sorry for anyone tilting against Florence's favorite son that day. The poor man received tepid applause.

Trying to garner some support, his herald shouted, “Signor Morelli challenges the honorable, the champion
Giuliano de' Medici
a plaisance
!” A friendly challenge for the pleasure of the assembled to watch—no real danger to Giuliano.

At this, the piazza echoed with cheers.

Giuliano and Morelli lowered the hinged visors of their helmets. As if cued by the snap of the eye shields, both horses reared and pawed the air. The two riders struggled to balance themselves, their lances, their shields, and their armors' weight against the horses' excited cavorting. The crowd hushed.

A page approached the rail that ran the course, separating the horses from colliding. He lowered a crimson-colored pennant to the ground. He looked left, then right, to make sure each rider was ready.

The horses snorted, nickered, kicked up sand.

And . . . and . . .

Even the passing clouds above seemed to stop and hover in anticipation.

The page snapped the flag up into the air.

“
Heeaaah!
” Giuliano shouted, and jabbed Orso with his long golden spurs. Whinnying his own battle cry, Orso lunged into a canter. So, too, did Morelli's chestnut charger.

Daaa-da-dummm, daaa-da-dummm, daaa-da-dummm.
The rhythmic surge of the horses' hoofbeats mingled with the music of jingling armor. The two men lowered and braced their heavy wooden spears across their chests at an angle, straight at each other.

Da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum
. The horses' rhythm quickened.

I felt Simonetta stiffen and hold her breath.

The riders hugged their shields closer, leaning forward and in toward the barrier fence to maximize the force of impact. And to survive it.

Crrrr-aaack!
Giuliano's lance struck Morelli's arm guard and split.

Morelli lurched dangerously to the side but stayed in his saddle.

“A hit! One point to Giuliano de' Medici!” the joust's scorekeeper sang out. “That is his thirty-first broken lance of the day!”

Striking an opposing rider on his armor between the waist and neck yielded a point. Unhorsing an opponent was an automatic win. Each match lasted “three lances,” unless one of the riders was knocked to the ground. Breaking a lance did not add points, simply a heightened drama to the hit.

Giuliano was handed another brightly painted lance and the riders charged each other again.

This time Morelli managed to hit Giuliano's breastplate. Giuliano was knocked askew so that his lance missed Morelli entirely.

“A point to Morelli!” the scorekeeper shouted with a little less enthusiasm.

The third and last round no longer seemed friendly at all to me. Simonetta shifted uncomfortably, tense. The two riders charged faster this time, their horses heaving, their necks lathered in sweat.

With a bone-chilling crash, the men smashed together
with such force they both fell backward in their saddles, their heads sagging toward the horses' rumps, their arms splayed out wide like Christ on the crucifix. Their lances dropped to the sand. Pages rushed forward to stop the horses. It took several of them to push their masters—weighed down by fifty pounds of armor—upright.

Sitting again, Giuliano and Morelli pulled off their helmets, shaking their heads as if clearing their vision. They smiled weakly at each other, trying to catch their breath.

But who had won their match?

The crowd waited. Silence from the scorekeeper. It became obvious the longer he hesitated that the scorekeeper was trying to find a way to award the round to Giuliano. Rumor had it the Medici family spent sixty thousand florins of their own for the joust's decorations, prizes, and grandstands, not to mention purchasing Giuliano's armor, his entourage's livery, and banners. Since a single florin could buy thirty chickens, the monies spent to delight Florence with such a spectacle were staggering. It seemed a proper thank-you to let Giuliano win.

Even so, Florentines were devoted to fair odds. A favorite maxim held that someone not appropriately rewarded for his efforts was like a donkey who carried wine on his back but was given only water to drink—in other words, anyone allowing himself to be exploited in such a way was an ass. So our expectation was that hard work guaranteed a fair shot at success, a share in the goods. It was the underlying, pervasive philosophy that kept our little republic rotating citizens in
and out of important offices every two months, to theoretically give all citizens the chance to influence policy.

And yet somehow these beliefs were thrown out the window like the contents of a chamber pot when it came to the Medici. The family essentially ran Florence. The Medici had achieved this power subtly. They did not use violence, poisonings, or assassinations, as did some power-hungry families like the Sforza in Naples. Nor did they flaunt their privilege, culture, and education to intimidate others, as did the noble-born Pazzi.

Instead the Medici granted favors and loans when a person most needed them. They brokered advantageous marriages and business partnerships. Such favors demanded loyalty in return. With the general public, the Medici continued their soft-as-silk coercion with entertainments like this joust and by building an almost mythical image for themselves. Giuliano was so gallant and handsome, Lorenzo so witty and poetic, that there was a widespread affection for the young Medici brothers.

Perhaps recognizing the political blunder of undoing Giuliano de' Medici at the joust his family was footing, Morelli made a brilliant move.

He raised his leather-gloved hand and shouted, “Good Giuliano, in thanks for your gracious arrangement of this glorious day, I concede our round to you. And in commemoration of our valiant bout, I present you”—at this he signaled his pages—“my banner. Accept this in salute to your jousting prowess, to our great city's alliance with Milan and Venice,
and to the honor of this joust's Queen of Beauty!”

The crowd's answering applause was rapturous. Morelli may have lost his match by the gesture, but he'd certainly won the hearts of Florence. He instructed his pages to drape the triangular pennant over the railing in front of Simonetta before he trotted off the jousting field.

Much as I liked her, I felt myself pout as I inspected the artwork. Could one woman possibly deserve all this attention?

The image—of a reclining nymph, asleep after gathering a bouquet of wildflowers, and the Cupid who crept up to wake her—was absolutely exquisite. Better, frankly, than the joust's centerpiece by Botticelli, I thought. There was something so real, so alive about their expressions. The Cupid youth looked upon the nymph with such tenderness, and she seemed so peaceful, as if entranced by the scent of the blossoms she held. Delicate shading around her cheekbones and eyes added such depth and naturalness to her face.

“Who painted this?” I asked Simonetta. “Do you know?”

“Maestro Verrocchio,” she said.

“Really?” I was surprised. Trained as a goldsmith, Andrea del Verrocchio had become the Medici's favorite sculptor now that Donatello was dead. “I am amazed. I know Verrocchio's studio is one of the busiest in the city, and his sculpture much admired. But I did not realize he could paint so . . . such . . .”

“Haunting faces?” Simonetta finished my thought.

“Yes.”

We both gazed at the pennant. “In the Medici palazzo
hangs a portrait painted by Verrocchio, which is quite lovely,” Simonetta said. “But there is something different about this image, something new. I've heard it said that one of his older apprentices helped Verrocchio paint this pennant. A man named Leonardo, from the little village of Vinci. He's the illegitimate son of the Medici notary, I believe. Isn't it astounding that such promise emanates from so low a beginning?”