Leonardo's Swans (19 page)

Beatrice did get anxious when Ludovico returned to Milan a few weeks ahead of her to “take care of some pressing business,” but when she arrived at the Castello, she was told in furtive, excited tones by the servants that Cecilia Gallerani and her son, Cesare, had been moved to a palazzo by the Duomo, and that Ludovico had arranged her engagement to Count Bergamini, one of Il Moro’s most loyal and chivalrous courtiers. The wedding was set for next month.

Now Beatrice is driving to the workshop of the Florentine, Magistro Leonardo. Ludovico wishes her to sit for the master. Beatrice has said that she does not want to be painted by Leonardo. Oh, not so much because of what Isabella said—that it would put her on a parallel with Cecilia, for that painting was done more than ten years ago, when Beatrice was but a little brat in the nursery—but because the man always leaves her with a feeling of disquiet. She has no idea why he has this effect on her, but it is almost to the point of superstition in her mind. If the Magistro paints her, the lovely world in which she has lived the summer long will somehow be altered. She knows it makes no sense, and she does not want to insult Ludovico, who is willing to take the Magistro from his colossal equestrian statue just to immortalize her “at this point of blissful youth and perfection,” as her husband liked to say. So she has agreed to visit the Magistro to see if she can make herself comfortable with the idea of sitting for him.

Upon entering the Corte Vecchia, she sees that the Magistro has made some progress on the statue of the horse, but the gigantic thing is being cast in pieces, and Beatrice is disturbed at the way the head lies on its side on the ground, apart from the legs, which are upright and waiting to be joined with the rest of the body. The body parts lying on the ground remind her that Leonardo is known for acquiring human bodies and dissecting them before audiences. What is one supposed to think of a man who exposes the insides of bodies? She leaves her chariot with the courtyard page and slips quietly through the open door and into his workshop. Boys are silently at work on various projects. Two are finishing the details on portraits commissioned by the nobles of Milan, whose features were undoubtedly sketched in by the Magistro and then turned over to his apprentices for completion. Beatrice knows that if she agrees to be painted by Leonardo, the master will probably complete much of the work himself, as a tribute to her position as the wife of his lord and master. But if one were merely a rich merchant or an insignificant courtier who wished for a flattering engagement portrait of one of his daughters, or a picture of his wife in her best jewelry, then the Magistro would do the main sketch, turn the details over to his apprentice, and perhaps perform a little of his own magic in the finishing touches.

Beatrice stands quietly, looking at the Magistro’s many drawings hanging on the walls, mostly of ugly, deformed people. Why would such a genius have a fascination with freaks when he is capable of making the beautiful even more so? Cripples, blind men, old men whose faces have been eaten by some horrible disease—could they be drawings of the dead? These are the things that line his walls. Intricate drawings of old, wrinkled, wizened men sit in pairs with heads of young men at the pinnacle of their beauty. The contrast almost disgusts her. The way he has placed these pictures seems to say: What is the use of such beauty? For soon it fades into the decrepit state of the elderly. It is as if he has shared some private joke with God over the arrangement of things. Beatrice does not like this; she thinks he is taking issue with the way that Our Lord has planned and executed man’s fate.

The Magistro sits on a stool, hunched over a drawing that Beatrice cannot see. His focus seems intense. A motto in fancy calligraphy is placed above his working space:
OBSTINATE RIGOR.

The others work in this manner too—focused, silent, intentional. It is so quiet that she thinks that she can hear their breathing above charcoal scratching on paper and brushes hitting wells of color. In front of Leonardo is a statue of Leda and the swan, which Ludovico has recently spent great effort to purchase from some dead cardinal’s estate in Rome. Ever since Isabella sent him those two creatures for his pond, he has been obsessed with swans. Beatrice recalls that Ludovico had sent the statue, which was supposed to have dated from antiquity, to be cleaned and refurbished by the Magistro’s workshop. Leonardo does not appear to have done anything to the statue, which is mottled with years of dirt and the droppings of birds, but is now staring at it, and then looking down to his paper.

“Sir!” She finally announces herself. Leonardo turns around, startled. Immediately, he stands, bowing to her.

“Your Excellency. A privilege.”

“What is your drawing?” she asks. She knows that her husband will not be happy to hear that the Magistro is spending the day working on something other than the horse.

The drawing startles her. It is much more suggestive than the statue. Leda of Leonardo’s invention is curvaceous and naked. The swan is huge, almost as tall as Leda, and he cups her body in lavish white feathery protection in a manner as proprietary as any man has ever claimed a woman. Her round hip fits neatly and perfectly into the curve of his wing, which drapes languidly down her thigh and leg. Beatrice cannot imagine how anyone has found eroticism in coupling with this animal, but the Magistro has done it. Leda shyly turns away from the swan as if she is embarrassed to be enthralled with such a creature. Yet enthralled she is. Beatrice feels her cheeks flush as she looks at the picture; she herself has recently been awakened to the look of pleasure and satisfaction that the Magistro has drawn into Leda’s face.

“Ah, the swan,” she says, groping for some innocuous comment. “My husband has a new fascination with the creatures. I am sure that your study will please him, should you ever choose to make a painting.”

“Your Excellency, he has already commissioned it,” answers the master.

He puts down his charcoal and raises his hand into the air ceremoniously. A young apprentice knows this signal and rushes to him with a bowl of water and a slice of lemon so that he may clean the carbon from his long fingers.

“Has he?” Beatrice feels the first pangs of jealousy she has felt in months. Could the obsession with swans signal his ongoing fascination with her sister?

“Do you think it will please him?” the master asks.

“It is beautiful. The swan, I mean.”

“Oh yes. Zeus used the disguise to seduce, of course. The swan is the clever one, the one that cannot be resisted because of its beauty. No one imagines its purpose because it looks so pure.” He adds in a low whisper, “I do not trust it.”

“And the woman?”

“Look at her,” he says. “What does she know? She is lost in her own pleasure.”

Beatrice does not like to hear this judgment upon Leda. Nor is she willing to accept Leonardo’s condemnation of the swan, because that would mean that those two creatures swimming in the pond inside the Castello walls have power over Ludovico, which is perhaps what Isabella had intended when she sent them.

“Can a swan not be pure?” she asks. “What of the tale of the swan maiden whose robe of feathers was stolen by a hunter so that she would remain in female form and be his wife? The swan is blameless for her beauty.”

“And she left the one who loved her at the first opportunity. Besides, that is a tale suitable for children, nothing more. There are many others. I watch the creatures myself, you know. I see how they transfix those who observe their grace. And yet, if they are threatened in any way, they can be brutal attackers. What is one to make of beasts of this dual nature?”

“What of the story of the swan who sees its reflection in the pond and knows that it is dying and so begins to sing to its fellow creatures to console them for mourning his passing?”

“Do you suppose that creatures of nature may be as foolish as we human beings?” he asks gently, a tiny, woeful smile appearing on his face. “The swan knows when it is his time, knows that all things of this world are but an ephemeral gift. This inescapable fact evades only the human. No sooner is the poor mortal secure in his power and success than he is destroyed by forces larger than he.”

“Do you mean that Our Lord destroys us just as he creates us?” Beatrice asks. She hopes that she does not sound huffy. She wishes Isabella were here to help her engage in this sort of dialogue. Isabella would know just the correct profound retort to such a pronouncement.

“I do not, Your Excellency. I mean merely that nothing is permanent. All is as fleeting as our emotions. Only man’s delusional state of mind prevents him from seeing this inevitability.”

Beatrice would like to get off of the subject of swans and mortality because it is adding to the anxiousness of being in this workshop. She, who is so sure-footed and grounded, is feeling a whirling vertigo. She does not want to look either up or down for fear that she will faint.

“That is a very sorrowful observation, sir,” Beatrice replies, gathering her wits. “How might one retain one’s good humor if one contemplates such thoughts? Man may soon turn to dust, but does he not leave greatness in his stead? The tales of Homer or the treasures of ancient Greece and Rome attest to this fact.”

“Your Excellency, forgive me for saying this, but only the rare and extraordinary man leaves something behind on this earth other than his excrement.”

He must have been startled by the shocked look on her face, because he adds quickly, “Your Excellency and the duke, of course, being the most notable exceptions, what with your generous patronage of great works.”

“But you will leave behind many beautiful things,” she counters quietly.

“Paint flakes from the canvas, much as skin falls from the flesh. Man destroys his own creations. Nature takes care of the rest. What survives does so by accident.”

Beatrice turns her face away from the Magistro, but finds no comfort in the face of Leda, or in Leonardo’s drawings, or in the motion of the apprentices as they go about their chores.

“I understand we are to have a sitting, Your Excellency,” Leonardo says, interrupting Beatrice’s search for a soothing place for her focus to fall.

“Yes,” she answers in a low voice. She wants to get out of this room in the worst way. She will agree to anything and then change her mind later. If his reputation is correct, he will never make the time to paint her anyway.

“First yourself, and then your sister, the illustrious marchesa. Please explain to her that I know that I am not worthy to receive the commission to paint her likeness, and I am greatly flattered by her letters. But I have awaited the instruction of His Excellency, your husband. And he has finally granted her wish, with the caveat that I make your portrait first, as is only proper.”

The room begins to spin as the information makes its way into her head. So that is the game. Isabella and Ludovico have not seen fit to play their cards for Beatrice, but the Magistro has revealed all. Ludovico has no desire to have Leonardo make a painting of Beatrice, but he cannot, in good conscience, have the master paint the sister without first doing homage to the wife. Oh, they are good players, but even the best eventually become transparent.

Anger and determination set in. Beatrice feels the vertigo leave her head. She looks down, surprised to see such elegant, buckled velvet slippers on the feet of an artist. She almost wants to giggle. Suddenly, she feels the power that comes with knowledge.

“Thank you for showing me your drawing,” she says, looking back at the Magistro’s intense face. “We shall be in touch, you and I.”

Leonardo seems surprised that she is taking leave so quickly, before any arrangements or artistic considerations for her portrait have been discussed. She does not know why she is afraid of him; he has such kind eyes. But she does know that she has no intention of ever entering this studio again.

L
UDOVICO
is waiting for her to have a light supper in their apartments. He gives her a great innocent smile as she enters the room and sits opposite him.

“What, no kisses for your lord and master?” he asks, his dark eyes lit bright by the candles.

She gets up and gives him a perfunctory kiss upon the cheek.

“Did you have a nice visit with the Magistro? Did you make a time to sit for him?”

Beatrice affects her most earnest face. “No, my lord, I did not. The man gives me a feeling of disquiet. I am not comfortable sitting for him. I feel that he will steal my soul. That is what they say he did when he painted Cecilia.”

“My dear, I observed Cecilia for ten years after she was painted by the Magistro, and I assure you that she was still in possession of her soul.”

“Still, my lord, I do not think it wise for me to put myself on parallel with one who was your mistress. It would be unseemly.”

Beatrice wishes with all her heart that Isabella could hear the words she used to manipulate Beatrice turned back against her.

Ludovico looks slightly anguished by her decision. “If that is how you feel. But you should consider that he is in our service and is the greatest master of our day. Do you not wish to be painted by such a man? Even your most illustrious sister has said that she would like to be immortalized by such genius.”

“Oh no, my lord,” Beatrice says, hoping that her face projects a sincere look of horror. “We cannot allow my sister to be put on the same level as one of your former mistresses. We can’t let her risk her reputation that way. You know how people talk. Already your innocent kindness toward Isabella has been interpreted wickedly in certain quarters.”

“You make too much of it, my dear,” he replies. “Isabella has a mania for good painting. That is all there is to the wish to sit for Magistro Leonardo.”

“I would love to see my sister happy,” she says, cocking her head to the side wistfully, pretending that she is forming these thoughts as they come out of her mouth. “But we cannot allow it to happen. Having the Magistro paint another woman so close to you—about whom rumors have already spread—would fuel those wagging tongues. It would reek of adultery.”