Leonardo's Swans (47 page)

Isabella waited and waited for Leonardo to suggest a sitting, and finally, on the eve of his departure, he sent a note asking if he might sketch her in her parlor before he left for his military occupations.

When she arrives, he has taken over the room entirely. Her finely carved table is now his workbench, his materials scattered upon cloths next to the bust of her sister. She has not moved it since its arrival, but it causes no reaction in the Magistro that she can discern. Music fills the room. He has employed a duet of flute and lyre players who pluck and blow an airy melody. She feels like a dancer as she takes her seat in the chair that he has repositioned away from the hearth and into a ray of light seeping in from one of the low windows. Without consciously orchestrating her motions, she feels as if her every movement is in time to the music, arranged by some unseen choreographer. She sinks into the chair gracefully, letting her arms fall gently at her sides.

She has worn her best jewelry, which turns out to be a mistake. He asks her—with the utmost deference, of course, but at the same time, makes it known that there is to be no discussion on the matter—to remove the gold necklace of one hundred links, and the large rings adorning her fingers. Her ladies take the jewelry from her, moving like dancers to the rhythms of the stringed instrument.

“Utter simplicity, Your Excellency,” he says. “When I paint a woman, I wish to reveal the essence of the woman, not the extravagance of her jewels. The adornments detract.”

She wants to issue a hundred commands to him to make sure that she gets the portrait of which she has dreamed for so long. Yet he invites no comments, and she is enjoying the dreamlike quality that the music is creating. Has this not been for so long a dream? Why should the reality not feel as such? Isabella recognizes the boy apprentice whose indifference toward his master she had seen displayed in Leonardo’s studio years ago. He is still beautiful, this young man whom Leonardo calls Salai, and still serves the Magistro with an attitude alternating between flamboyance and disdain; disdain to be serving anyone at all, or disdain to be serving the artist, Isabella cannot tell. But Salai, now tall and probably past his twentieth birthday, produces the supplies Leonardo requests—chalk of red and black, pastels of many colors for shading, sheets of paper of different grades and thickness and size—with a flourish that should be reserved for the presentation of great creations of one’s own. Salai offers the Magistro’s tools with the pomp with which a great chef enters a dining room with his specially prepared delicacies and presents them to a king. The apprentice, too, seems as if he is dancing. The young man’s curls are still abundant, unlike the Magistro’s, which have begun to thin. Though the artist is still fit, he has affected a slightly hunched posture that Isabella has not seen in the past. His dress has not diminished in style or extravagance. Both men did seem to bother to pack all their finery before fleeing the French, she cannot help but notice. The apprentice is dressed in grades of silvery fabric, with fancy oversized sleeves that keep getting in the way of performing his duties. His every movement threatens to disturb something that he has just carefully placed. The Magistro pays him no mind as he distractedly receives the materials, staring at Isabella as if she were not at all real but some object in nature he is contemplating.

“I have in mind to do a sketch in which the head is in profile with the body in a counter pose turned forward,” he says. “As if the body and the face might say two entirely different things. The language of the face expresses itself though the eyes and the smile, but the language of the body has so many more tools.”

Isabella wants to talk to him, to discuss the theories behind his art, to hear the contents of the mind that has created such extravagant beauty. But she does not speak to him. It would be like interrupting an expert marksman as he aims his shot, or a poet as he searches for the exact metaphor.

He gently moves her arms, placing them as he would like them to be. “One must always make the figure so that the breast is not turned in the same direction as the head. Let the movements of the head and arms be natural and pleasing, with various twists and turns. The hands folded just so. Yes, I like that. You will see. You will be very pleased with the drawing.”

The threat of this endeavor being arrested in this, its nascent stage, startles Isabella out of her dreamy state. “This is just a preliminary sketch, is it not? You will produce the oil before not too long?”

Oh, how horrible it would be to remain a mere chalk drawing, never bursting into the full bloom of an oil. Never to receive the colors, the qualities of dark and light, the shadows, the gradations, the subtleties and translucent beauty that only an oil could offer. She mustn’t allow it to happen. But the tales of Leonardo’s procrastination, and the creative ways that he frustrated Ludovico for years, falls upon Isabella’s memory with a giant thump, which reverberates throughout her entire system. How will she see to it that he completes the oil and not leave her as a mere sketch; she, Isabella d’Este, muse to many, must not be just another study, a mass of scribbles and lines on a thin sheet of paper!

“Oh yes, the painting. Do not worry. It will capture Your Excellency in all her stunning complexity. But these works do take some time, and I ask that Your Excellency be patient.”

“Are you certain about the pose, Magistro? A profile?” A profile. So conventional. So very yesteryear in style. The great beauty of his portraits is that he does not paint in profile. It is hard to capture a soul when it is not looking in one’s direction.

“But in your case, Your Excellency, I do not think of this as a profile. I think of it as looking ahead, into the future.”

He smiles at her in a way that she thinks is not a smile that an artist reserves for his patron, or for one of illustrious birth, but one that—just for an instant—allows her to know that he has, indeed, seen into her soul. He’s read it, she thinks, and accurately so. She is one who will always keep her sights set forward.

“Perhaps that is an attribute we share, Maestro. Perhaps that is why the two of us are here, while others, less fortunate, less forward-thinking, have been left to the past.”

“An honor, Your Excellency, to share any attributes with you at all.”

She can tell that he is pondering whether or not she has given him, or either of them, a compliment.

Lowering his eyes, he picks up the black chalk and hesitates not one second before letting it hit the paper in slow swirls of motion. His face, however, is still and blank, revealing not one clue as to how he feels about either his subject or the likeness of her which he is in the process of creating.

She wants to talk more about a schedule for the painting, but she dare not. The sitting has begun. She is frustrated, trying to remain still and dreamy for Leonardo, for she wishes to be portrayed with an expression of utmost intelligence and serenity. The two are not always complementary qualities present at the same time in the same face, but if anyone can capture the complexity, as he said, it would be the Magistro. But she mustn’t spoil it by allowing the more commandeering aspects of herself to be exposed. She must be remembered as a woman of the future, a woman of vision, not the bossy creature he must sometimes think she is.

If only she could sit for him and watch his progress at the same time. With other artists, she has not had this desire. She has always known that if she was not pleased with the results, she could either cajole or threaten them into making changes until she is satisfied. But the Magistro is different. She is all too aware that he will make his sketch and be on his way before she can have a proper word with him. The man is inflexible, even for an artist.

So she sits quietly, feeling the softness of her hands as they lie one upon the other, hoping that she is the embodiment of Serenity itself, when his pronouncement that he is finished startles her out of her reverie. Before she can speak, he is packing it away.

“But, may I not see it?”

“Oh no. Not before I shade it properly. I will spend the next several days doing so. And then I shall be off.”

“But what will you work from for the oil?” she asks, hoping that her alarm—her distrust of him to finish the project—cannot be read on her face.

“I intend to make a copy of it to take with me. You shall have my original.”

And with that pronouncement, he and his assistant and his musicians are gone.

Three days later, he has the sketch sent to her. She asks of his whereabouts only to learn that he left Mantua at sunrise. Of course. His letter thanks her profusely for her hospitality, promising her delivery of the portrait of herself in oil at an undisclosed date in the future, depending upon the extent to which the Venetians require his services in matters of weaponry and military engineering. But he is gone, escaping her comments on the sketch, absolving himself of any chance of hearing requests for changes, or, worse yet, another sketch entirely. Isabella had stayed awake most of the night preparing herself for the latter, wondering how she would phrase such a request, should she look upon Leonardo’s sketch and not be pleased. One would have to be most discreet. Direct, but not demanding. Solicitous and complimentary, yet firm in expressing one’s desires. And if all else failed, there was always the promise of money, which generally accomplished miraculous results with artists. A little up front, with much more upon delivery, if one ever hopes to receive the promised piece.

She snatches the sketch, sheathed between two thick pieces of parchment, from the messenger and spirits it away to her private rooms, feeling her heart pump louder and faster as she puts the paper down on her desk, revealing it. She is looking into the future. Her face is in profile, but the rest of her body is forward. She was not entirely successful in suppressing her more commanding aspects, because she looks, to herself at least, as if she might be gazing upon some project she commissioned, judging whether or not it meets with her approval. Perhaps this is what the Magistro meant to convey, that it is this very project upon which she is looking. She does appear to be composed within herself. And intelligent, yes. She appears serene and commanding all at once. The lines of her face, her hair, and her body are soft, though, not serious and pinched. Even the hard stripes of her garment have been softened to flatter the curve of her bosom. She is sure that the cut of her dress was actually lower than it is drawn. She appears more serene than sexual, that is certain. But there is nothing unflattering about the piece, though she hopes that the tiny pocket of fat under her chin does not make it into the oil. What strikes her most are her hands, folded so simply, with the index and middle fingers slightly separated; relaxed and natural, yet looking as if she might be holding something inside herself with those hands, which she does not wish to be revealed.

How she would like to speak to him about it, not to demand the revisions he undoubtedly fled at daybreak to escape, but to compliment him on the piece, to say that this sketch alone has fulfilled her dreams. No, she would not say that because if she did, he would never deliver the promised oil. And that, she must have.

She did not dream that the Magistro would not deliver the sketch himself, instead entrusting it to a messenger of the court. In retrospect, however, she should have anticipated the sly move on his part, considering his reputation for weaseling out of finishing commissions. And in this case, he did not even give her the opportunity to offer him money, instead sending the sketch in exchange for her hospitality. She has no hold over him. Avenues open to her to procure her precious oil spill forth in her mind. If he will not enter her service, she will hound whoever becomes his patron until that person uses the power of the purse string. If he thinks he can escape her by going to Venice he is mistaken because she has, more than once, had the old doge eating out of her palm. But what if he does not remain in Venice and ends up in foreign service? What if he, in his profound desire to find money for his ambitious and slightly fantastic projects, goes into the service of the sultan of the Turks? It would be just like Leonardo to sell the sultan on his magic, and, from what Isabella has heard, just like the sultan to buy it. What would she do then? Play the vixen to a barbarian? What hold might she find over the sultan of a foreign empire? How could she have allowed this to happen? The Magistro has slipped out of her grip like water. She is not happy, yet she feels a slow smile creep across her face. She, Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, and daughter of the wiliest man in Italy, has been outwitted, for the moment, by a painter.

Imagine.

Epilogue

XXI * IL MONDO (THE WORLD)

IN THE YEAR 1506;
IN FRENCH-OCCUPIED MILAN

 I
SABELLA
wishes to say so much more to her sister, who, lying in the church under cold marble, feels like a long-yearned-for confessor. Finally, here is one to whom Isabella can confide; one who will not take her words, spoken in confidence, and sell them to the highest bidder or the most pressing enemy. She has grown so accustomed to dissembling, especially in the last years. What relief to kneel by Beatrice’s still form and pour out her thoughts. Isabella and Beatrice had wasted so many hours in inglorious competition over meaningless things. Now she wishes that Beatrice were at her side, an ally in the hundred private and public wars, both spoken and unspoken, in which she must engage to stay alive. At the rear of the church, she hears the rustle of fabric. Throats begin to clear in muffled coughs. The entourage grows impatient. Is it because is it late? Or because they cannot wait to inform some French official that the marchesa, despite her posture of being a good French loyalist, has lingered too long at the crypt of the dead Sforza duchess? Who in her party would play the Judas? she wonders. At this moment, only the dead can be trusted. She whispers:

Times are dark, my sister. Either Fortuna has ceased to smile upon us, or is demonstrating for us her great irony. The Pope’s bastard and many a man’s whore, Lucrezia Borgia, has married our brother and rules in Ferrara in the stead of our pious and saintly mother. Her father purchased the title of Duchess of Ferrara with a large dowry and the threat of invasion. Can you imagine the grief of our dear late father, who despised the Spanish pope? At least that corrupt creature is dead, probably from poison. Oh, no one dies anymore of natural causes. But the Borgia witch has enchanted our beloved brother. I will not allow it to stand. You would not believe who else she is taking between her legs besides our brother, and it makes me too sick in the stomach to say the name. The presence of Borgia blood in the court of our parents has inspired acts of bloodshed and horror, even from members of our own family. Oh, Beatrice, regret not the sorrows you did not live to endure!