I, Mona Lisa (27 page)

The corners of his eyes crinkled with amusement. “You are perfection, just as you are.”

I felt mildly panicked. “I can’t stay long. I am only supposed to attend Mass, then return home. If I’m late, the servants will wonder
where I’ve been and might say something to my father when he comes home.”

“We were paying our respects to your mother,” Zalumma said loudly. I shot her a glance.

Leonardo, by that time, had pulled something from his pouch: a piece of burned charcoal tied to a small, sanded stick. “I know I sent you a copy, based on the sketch I made that night in the Medici courtyard. But I am displeased with it.”

“Displeased!”

“It resembles you, certainly, but I want . . . something more. I am not good at expressing myself in words, but if you would simply trust me . . . and sit only for a few minutes, no longer. I have no desire to cause any problems with your father. Your servant here will keep watch over the time.”

I relented. He led me a short ways from the churchyard, where a great boulder rested beneath an oak. There I sat; and he encouraged me to turn gently, again looking over my shoulder at him, so that my face was in three-quarter view.

He took the charcoal—made, he explained, from a stick of willow that had been scorched in an oven until it turned black—and began to draw with impressive speed. The broad outlines came first and quickest.

After a minute or two of silence, I asked, “So, how is it that you remembered all my features so easily—after seeing me only once? The cartoon you made of me was very crude. Yet the drawing you sent me . . . you remembered every detail.”

He kept his focus on his work and answered distractedly, “The memory can be trained. If I want to remember a face, I study it very closely. Then, at night, when I lie awake, I recall every feature, one by one.”

“I could never remember them so clearly!”

“It’s quite simple, really. Consider noses: There are only ten types of profiles.”

“Ten types!” I gave a short laugh. He lifted an eyebrow at that,
and I immediately stifled my smile and did my best to relax my face into its original pose.

“Ten types of profiles: straight, sharp, aquiline, flat, round, bunched, some with a hump or curve above the middle, some with the same below. If you commit those types to memory, then you have a storehouse to draw on, which will aid your recall.”

“Amazing.”

“Then there are, of course,
eleven
different sorts of noses when one looks at them from the front. Even, or thick in the middle, or thick at the beginning, or thick at the tip . . . but I am boring you.”

“Not at all. And the nostrils?”

“They are a separate category, Madonna.”

I fought to suppress a grin. After a while, I changed the subject to one I was more keenly interested in. “You are staying at the Palazzo Medici. You are very close to the family, then.”

“As close as an outsider can be.”

“How are . . . how are the sons faring?”

A faint crease appeared above his nose. “Giovanni is fine, as always. The world could end and it would not affect him. Piero . . . I think Piero finally realizes the gravity of his situation. Everyone had been speaking to him for years about the responsibility he would take on when his father died. It’s just now become real to him.”

“And Giuliano?” I pressed, a little too quickly. He saw, lowered his gaze a bit, and gave a faint, sad smile.

“Giuliano is grieving. No one was dearer to Lorenzo than he.”

“He is a very good person.”

The artist’s expression softened; he paused, the charcoal in his hand hovering just above the paper. “He is.” His tone lightened. “He was quite pleased to hear I intended to honor the commission.”

“He was?”

He smiled in the face of my poorly hid excitement. “Yes. I think he appreciates your friendship greatly.”

I flushed, unable to speak.

“Perfect!” he said; the charcoal flew over the page. “Continue thinking of that. Just that . . .”

I sat in flustered silence. He stared at me and drew, then stared at me again, for a long moment. . . . And some troubling thought made him flush and look down. He stared at the drawing, but he did not see it.

But he had seen something. Something in me, something he had recognized. It tugged at him, and he averted his eyes from me, lest they reveal a secret. At last, he regained control of himself, and continued to draw until Zalumma finally said, “It’s time.”

I rose and dusted off my skirts. “When will I see you again?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I must return to Milan tomorrow. Perhaps, by the next time we meet, I will have produced a sketch that satisfies me. If so, I will transfer it to a panel so the painting can begin.” His tone grew dark. “With Lorenzo gone . . . difficult times are coming for his sons. If things deteriorate, it might no longer be an advantage to be friends with the Medici. If you are thinking of making a match . . .” He had embarrassed himself by saying too much; he fell silent.

I drew back and frowned; my cheeks began to burn. Why was he saying such a thing? Did he think I was interested in Giuliano for personal gain, for the prestige? “I must leave now,” I said, and began to turn away.

A thought stopped me. I turned back and demanded, “Why do you wish to paint me?”

He was the one now flustered. “I thought I had answered that question.”

“It’s not because of the money. What is it?”

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. When he finally did answer, he said, “Perhaps I do it for Giuliano. Perhaps I do it for me.”

My beloved Lisa,

 

I write to you for two reasons: first, to let you know that I intend to beseech my brother Piero for leave to ask your father for your hand. An appropriate period of mourning must first pass, of course.

And now I can formally ask you to forgive me for failing to appear at the scheduled place and time. I know how it must have hurt you, and perhaps made you think that I no longer cared for you. Quite the opposite is true.

Second, I must thank you. Your words to Father—about all the good he has done for Florence and the people—were compassionate and wise, and they touched him greatly. No daughter could have been sweeter or offered greater comfort.

So few have taken Father’s true feelings into consideration, even though he, in his final moments, thought only of others. When he knew he was dying, he summoned his dearest friends and did his best to comfort them, instead of permitting them to comfort him.

He was even gracious enough to allow Giovanni Pico to bring the monk Savonarola into his bedchamber. God forgive me, but I cannot help but hate the friar, who maligned my father for his good works. Serving as patron to so many artists, supporting the Platonic Academy, entertaining the poor with circuses and parades—these were pagan things, Savonarola said, and for that, my father would burn in Hell unless he repented. Had I known he intended to say such things, I would never have allowed him audience.

The ugly little monk repeated his horrible accusations, beseeching him to “Repent, for all the blood you have shed!”

In reply, my father turned his face to the wall. Only at my urging and that of several guards were we able to succeed in removing the friar from his presence. How could he have been so cruel as to call my father a murderer—my father, who never lifted a weapon unless it was in self-defense?

Fra Girolamo then turned to me and said, “You would be wise to repent and fall to your knees, for your
arrogance—and that of your brothers—will soon bring you there anyway.”

My father called for me then, so I hurried to his side. He had begun to grow incoherent. He asked the same question, over and over: “Please!” he said. “Please, please tell me—where is he?” I told him I did not understand who he was talking about, but if he said the name, I would bring the man at once to his bedside, but he only groaned and said, “Ah, Giuliano, after all these years, I fail you!”

He worsened soon after, and the doctors tried to give him another potion, which he was unable to swallow. He dozed restlessly, and woke, disoriented and much weaker. He called for me many times, but would not be comforted by my presence as I held his hand and tried to soothe him. And then he grew very still, until all one could hear in the room was his struggle to draw breath; he seemed to be listening for something.

After a time, he seemed to hear it, for he smiled, and with great joy whispered: “Giuliano . . . it is you. Thank God, you have made it to shore.”

Soon after, he expired.

I am now troubled by a suspicion that allows me no rest. I have come to believe that the draughts prescribed by the physician during the last several months of my father’s life made his condition much worse.

Trust that my thoughts are not simply fueled by my grief; I suspect a conspiracy to hasten my father’s death—perhaps even to induce it. My beliefs have been reinforced by the fact that my father’s personal physician, Pier Leone, was found drowned in a well two days after my father died. A suicide, they say, owing to his dismay over his patient’s death.

The Signoria has taken a special vote allowing my brother Piero to take over our father’s role even though he is only twenty. He is terribly distraught and uncertain at this
time, hence I cannot trouble him with matters of marriage yet. I must be a support to him now, not a distraction.

My grief is heightened by the fact that I could not speak to you at my father’s funeral, and that I was never able to meet you that evening at San Lorenzo.

It would be wise to destroy this letter; if we have enemies, I would not want you ever to become their target.

Know that I love you always. Know that I will approach Piero at the first opportune moment.

 

Yours forever,
Giuliano

O
ver the next few months, as spring turned to summer, my life became an agony of waiting. I heard nothing from Leonardo, received no letters or striking sketches from Milan. Even worse, I heard no more from Giuliano.

His elder brother, however, fueled much gossip all over the city. Piero directed his attention more to sports and women than to diplomacy and politics. It had long been said that his father had often despaired because of Piero’s lack of acumen and his arrogance.

Especially his arrogance, and Lorenzo proved right. Only months after
il Magnifico’s
death, Piero managed to alienate two of his father’s closest advisors, and most of the Lord Priors. It did not help matters that his mother, Clarice, had been from the noble and powerful Orsini clan, who considered themselves princes; nor did it help that Piero had married Alfonsina Orsini from Naples. For this reason he was considered an outsider—only one-third Florentine and two-thirds self-proclaimed royalty.

Savonarola astutely used this in his sermons, rallying the poor against their oppressors, though he took care not to mention Piero by name. Anti-Medici sentiment began to grow; for the first time, people
spoke openly against the family, in the streets and even in grand palazzi.

I, in my misery, no longer had excuses to avoid Fra Girolamo’s sermons. I tolerated them, hoping that my obedience as a daughter would soften my father’s heart and keep him from rejecting Giuliano as a suitor. So I found myself twice daily in San Lorenzo, listening to the fiery little Dominican preach. In late July, when Pope Innocent died, Savonarola proclaimed it another sign of God’s wrath; in mid-August, when a new pope ascended St. Peter’s throne, Savonarola grew red-faced with rage. Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, now Pope Alexander VI, dared to take up residence in the Vatican with his three illegitimate children: Cesare, Lucrezia, and Jofre. And he did not, as most cardinals and popes had in the past, refer to them as niece and nephews; he blatantly insisted that his children be recognized as his own. There were rumors, as well, of whores in the papal palace, of orgies and drunkenness. Here was proof that God’s wrath was imminent.

Zalumma sat beside me in church with lowered lids and a distant expression. Clearly she was not contemplating the prophet’s words, as one might believe; I knew she was somewhere else in her imagination, perhaps in the beloved mountains she had left as a girl. I was elsewhere, too. In my imagination, I conjured the villa at Castello, and the glories housed there, or resorted to the memory of my tour in
il Magnifico’s
study, recalling the brilliance of a great ruby or the smoothness of Cleopatra’s chalcedony cup.

Those memories sustained me as I listened to Savonarola’s words; they sustained me as I dined each evening with my father and Giovanni Pico, who drank far too much wine and often wound up weeping. My father would take him to his study, and they would talk quietly late into the night.

Fall came, then winter, and the new year. At last, Zalumma smuggled me a letter bearing the Medici seal, and I tore it open with a mixture of desperation and wild joy.

“Madonna Lisa,” it began, and with those two distant words, my hope was crushed.

I am at wit’s end. Piero has steadfastly denied me permission to wed you; he seeks for me a bride who increases the family’s standing and better secures his position as Father’s successor. He thinks only of politics, not of love. My brother Cardinal Giovanni is determined that I should wed an Orsini, and will hear of nothing else.

I will not have it. I tell you such things not to discourage you, but rather to explain my long silence and assure you of my frustration and my determination. I will be matched to no one else. My inability to see you has not cooled my desire; indeed, it has fanned it. I think day and night of nothing but you, and of a way for us to be together. I am committed to designing that way.

I will be with you soon, my love. Have faith in that.

Giuliano