Leonardo's Swans (49 page)

At midnight, the king announces that he has a surprise for his guests. The genius, Leonardo the Florentine, has entered his service and has created a magical beast for the pleasure of the court. It will be unveiled on this night in honor of Louis’s supremacy over Italy. A black velvet curtain glittering with planetary symbols and celestial designs rises, while giant chandeliers, each with a hundred lit candles, fall gently on chains from the ceiling, lighting the small stage. As the drape rises, a lion—made of metal and larger than life—is revealed. The animal’s big green eyes, which seem to be of painted glass, stare at the crowd. The musicians begin to play a tune that Isabella does not recognize, but from the reaction of the French officers must surely be an anthem or military song of sorts. As the trumpeters blare the strident melody, the animal’s mouth magically opens, spewing dozens of lilies at the feet of the King of France. Isabella thinks that she sees a thin wire controlling the action, but she is not sure. What causes the flowers to thrust forward, she cannot imagine. The crowd gasps at the miracle of it all—of the flower-spewing lion; of the king who has taken Italy entirely out of the hands of Italians—and then rounds of polite applause accompany the last rush of lilies falling to the ground. Louis walks through the litter and takes a bow. He graciously holds out his arm, introducing the Magistro, who appears wearing a cape that matches the velvet curtain. The artist looks very old, much older than his years. The lines in his face have deepened and his lovely mass of curls is almost entirely gray. His beard is trimmed, but very long. He looks as if he is trying to turn himself into some sort of wizard. The expression on his face reminds her of that of his Jesus—all-knowing and resigned.

Yes, she wants to say to him, this is how we survive. Isabella smiles at Leonardo, feeling her plans to coerce him into making her portrait dissipate. Louis will follow the precise path with the Magistro as Ludovico—fritter away the artist’s time and genius in the service of his own glorification and vanities. Here is Leonardo, the visionary, serving the new master just like the rest of them, whores all. If Leonardo must serve Louis with his magical lion and dozens of other designs not of his own choosing, then perhaps with the portrait of the woman, who is no one in particular, he is serving himself alone. And she will let him. Maybe, at some time in the future, she will ask him to make her a nice picture of the Christ when he was young and working with His father as a carpenter, before His face bore the look of resignation after Judas sealed His destiny. She does not have the heart to pursue the artist anymore.

Isabella sees that the king is staring at her, so she dips her chin to the side in a manner that she knows is fetching and flirtatious and stares back. Then she turns away from him as she would from any man, for every woman knows that all men, even kings, are intrigued by a woman who captures their attention and then turns away. She takes hold of Galeazz’s sturdy arm.

“Time has not made you less daring, Your Excellency,” Galeazz says, eyes falling in admiration on Isabella’s deep décolletage. She had been inspired to have the seamstress lower the neckline so that the moons of her nipples were revealed. She had been viewing erotic Greek vases from Crete for purchase in the week prior, which gave her the idea. The women looked so enticing with their bosoms pushed high and their nipples exposed. Timeless! She instructed the seamstress to make the facsimile, revealing the tiny hint of pink, just enough to ignite the imagination.

“My husband has insulted the French king so many times that I must invent new tricks to keep him from seizing Mantua,” Isabella replies.

“Indeed, madame, he will wish to seize something else instead,” Galeazz replies, the old dance from love of verbal parry returning to his eyes.

Monsieur d’Amboise, the ambassador Isabella has feverishly courted because of his intimacy with the king, swoops into their dance circle, eyes grazing Isabella’s cleavage. “When I write my report to the ladies in Paris, all of them will instantly emulate your design,” he says.

Isabella feels the dancers pulling back from her and Galeazz, and she looks up to see what has caused them to ripple away, as if a stone has been tossed into water. The king approaches, his hand stretched out to take Isabella’s arm from Galeazz. The knight immediately offers the lady to his king, who takes Isabella’s hand and kisses it, eyes lingering on her exposed breasts. The king is tall enough so that when he stands, he has a lovely aerial view of Isabella’s cleavage, which, she notices, he takes in amply.

“In all of Europe, could there be another woman like you?” the king asks.

Isabella looks at Galeazz before she answers. “There was one, Your Majesty, but I am sad to say, she is no longer with us.”

No one speaks, for everyone within earshot knows to whom Isabella refers. Louis’s smile does not leave his face. If he has caught Isabella’s reference, he does not reveal it. He pulls her arm gently, bringing her closer to him and whispering in her ear, “Tomorrow, in your quarters?”

“
Je vous attendrais
,” she whispers in return. The king releases her hand, placing it on the arm of Galeazz. The music begins again, and Galeazz leads Isabella back into the dance. She wonders if he will mention Beatrice; if her cryptic comment to Louis has startled some part of his memory that he can no longer suppress. But he does not. She imagines that as with herself, the memories are stored, to be taken out at some indefinite point in the future—probably old age—when one can relive them without fear of reprisal.

“I must say, Your Excellency, that I have to agree with the king. In my travels, the ladies of Europe greet me with only one question,” Galeazz says. “‘What is the famous Isabella, Marchesa of Mantua, wearing these days?’ I do wish they would ask for something else, but they do not. D’Amboise is right. Even in the frigid northern kingdoms, the ladies will all be baring their bosoms within a fortnight.”

“Oh, it is a burden to be scrutinized so,” she replies.

“What will you do then, Isabella, after you have scandalized the world with your latest fashion?”

She stops dancing for a moment. What will she do? She doesn’t have to think of it now. She is, after all, a woman perennially looking toward the future, as if with her steady gaze, she is creating it. It is as if her eyes create a clear path in whatever direction she turns them, so that the past is always retreating and the future takes care of itself. “I don’t know what I shall do, Galeazz. I suppose I’ll just have to invent something new.”

La Fortuna and Our Characters

Isabella d’Este
survived the political upheaval and wars of her time, the rise and fall of empires, the turbulent days of the early Reformation, and a notorious rivalry with her sister-in-law Lucrezia Borgia to become one of history’s most influential patrons and collectors of art. She gave birth to eight children and outlived her husband by many years, befriending popes, emperors, kings, and titans of art like Perugino, Rafael, Bellini, and Titian. She saw the sack of Rome by the army of Emperor Charles V in 1527, during which time she sheltered two thousand of her closest friends in the Palazzo Colonna, negotiating for their safety with both sides. She died in 1539 at the age of sixty-five. Her last words were, “I am a woman who learned to live in a man’s world.” Leonardo’s drawing of Isabella is in the Louvre. He never painted the promised oil. Her beauty and intelligence are most evident, however, in Mantegna’s
Venus and Apollo on Mount
Parnassus
, also in the Louvre, in which she is depicted as a pregnant muse in the center of the painting.

Ludovico Sforza
raised another army from exile and reentered Milan, where the fickle populace, tired of the French, welcomed him. But his brother-in-law, Francesco Gonzaga, again refused to come to his aid with an army, and so Ludovico was captured by the French, betrayed by a Swiss captain for thirty thousand ducats, a number strikingly reminiscent of thirty pieces of silver. Ludovico spent the rest of his life languishing in a French prison, dying there in 1508.

Galeazz di Sanseverino
, though loyal to Ludovico until the end, became a favorite of the French kings Louis XII and François I. Louis restored his estates and his fortune, and eventually he rose to become
Grand Ecuyer de France
, the Master of the Horse. He died at sixty-five, a formidable age for a warrior, in the Battle of Pavia, where, ironically, he had spent many happy days with Beatrice and Ludovico. He never remarried.

Beatrice’s sons,
Ercole
(aka Maximilian) and
Francesco
, were reared at Innsbruck by their cousin Empress Bianca Maria Sforza. Maximilian was restored as Duke of Milan in 1512, but was ousted in 1515 by King François and made to live out the rest of his life in France, though not imprisoned like his father. Francesco reigned as Duke of Milan from 1530 to 1535. He died as a result of complications from an earlier assassination attempt. His widow, Christina of Denmark, is famous for her response to a later offer of marriage from King Henry VIII: “Unfortunately, I have but one head. If I had two, I would be at His Majesty’s service.”

After the death of Francesco Sforza, the duchy of Milan became part of the Hapsburg Empire under Charles V, grandson of Emperor Maximilian.

Cecilia Gallerani
eventually returned to Milan after Isabella gave her a good recommendation to King Louis as “a lady of rare gifts and charms.” Her son by Ludovico, Cesare, became a soldier. He died in 1515. Cecilia had three children with Count Bergamini, who died in 1514, after which Cecilia continued to host a literary salon. Though Italy’s poets considered her one of the great muses, her own poetry was never published. Leonardo’s portrait of Cecilia,
Lady with an Ermine
, is in the Czartoryski Museum at Kraków, Poland.

Lucrezia Crivelli
lived for many years under Isabella’s protection at Mantua in the Rocca di Canneto. Her son by Ludovico, Gianpaolo, became the Marquis of Caravaggio and a soldier, serving, for a time, under his half brother, Francesco. Gianpaolo died in 1535, only a few days after his half brother. He had been on his way to request that the emperor invest him with the title of Duke of Milan, being Ludovico’s only living son.

Leonardo’s portrait of Lucrezia, known as
La Belle Ferronnière
, named for the decorative ribbon on her forehead, as well as
The Virgin of the Rocks
, in which she may have served as Leonardo’s model for Mary, are in the Louvre.

Isabel of Aragon
continued in her pattern of gloom and bad luck, signing her letters “a woman unique in her disgrace.” She, too, spent years living under Isabella’s protection in Mantua. Eventually, she returned to Naples, where she died in 1524. A lovely drawing of her by Giovanni Boltraffio serves as the poster for the Ambrosiana Gallery in Milan. The original is too fragile for display.

Though revered throughout Europe,
Leonardo da Vinci
had money troubles that continued to plague him. After his second stay in Florence, he traveled to Rome, where he worked for Giuliano de’ Medici, but his health began to fail. In 1516, the French king François I invited the great master to live near his castle at Amboise, giving him a manor house in Cloux. There Leonardo spent his last days reorganizing his notebooks. He died on May 2, 1519, not long after his sixty-seventh birthday. He was never again as productive as during his years at the court of Milan.

Leonardo’s portrait of
Beatrice d’Este
on the south wall of the refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie has disintegrated almost to shadow, but her faint profile is still discernable in Montorfano’s mural, nestled in the drapes of the habits of the Dominican nuns, on the wall opposite
The Last Supper
. Cristoforo Romano’s lovely bust of Beatrice is in the Louvre, and the stunning marble tomb of Ludovico and Beatrice is now in the Certosa at Pavia.

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