The Medici Boy (15 page)

“Clap him in bronze and you have your David,” Cosimo said.

“If he would stay still long enough,” Donatello said, smoothly, as if a naked boy in his studio was no rare thing. My lord Donatello was changing each day, becoming more subtle and more devious as he suited himself to Agnolo.

“We must persuade him,” Cosimo said, and they drifted off to Donatello’s worktable where they discussed the more immediate business at hand. As keeper of notes, I joined them.

First to hand was the war against Lucca. Brunelleschi had been hired as a consultant on battle plans and it was his grand idea to mount a new kind of attack: instead of relying on a mercenary army and its feeble forays into the outlying areas of the city, he would quite literally swamp his adversaries: he would divert the river Serchio in such a way that it would flood the city out. The
Consigli
were enthusiastic and Cosimo had gone along with them. Michelozzo had been at Lucca for the past two months and had sent back word that he despaired of “the crazy scheme.” The scheme had been impractical from the start and was now proceeding so slowly that Cosimo, speaking for the
Consigli
, was inviting Donatello to lend his expertise as war engineer. Donatello never refused a commission and he readily accepted this one. I made a written note of the commission and a mental note that this could not turn out well, not for my lord Cosimo and not for Donatello either.

Cosimo then moved on to the next order of business, the delays with the Prato Pulpit. Two years earlier Michelozzo had signed a contract with Prato in the name of the partnership—
La Bottega di Donatello e Michelozzo
—to produce an outdoor pulpit for the Cathedral of San Giovanni for the celebration of the feasts of the Virgin and for the display of the holy sash that was the cathedral’s most prized relic. The contract was precise: the pulpit was to be supported on a fluted pier constructed at the corner of the new façade and to be of the finest white Carrara marble. All the details were very specific, all of it agreed to by Michelozzo and Donatello. I myself had inspected the contract and had made revisions in our native language that were later put into lawyer’s Latin, and so I was well aware that it specified completion of the pulpit in no more than one year, and now here we were in August of 1430 and the work was scarcely begun. It was Cosimo’s business this day to remind Donatello that the contract had been negotiated through the Medici banks and Cosimo himself was being made to look negligent. I made a note of this while Donatello assured him he would attend to the matter at once.

Finally, Cosimo wanted to talk of the soul and its perdurance after death. I excused myself because this was an intimate matter between two men of genius who shared a love and trust of each other and, for Cosimo at least, a great fear that beyond the edge of life there loomed the possibility of an eternity of fire that would burn but not consume. I wondered at the time if I had ever entertained such a fear myself and I wondered if Donatello—prey as he was to unnatural lust—shared Cosimo’s fear of eternal fire. I had little time to worry about the next life, however, since this one—with a wife and three sons to feed—kept me sufficiently occupied. Besides, I was not important enough to catch the eye of God and hold it. It was one of the advantages of being a little person.

When it seemed right to do so, I returned to my lords Cosimo and Donatello and found their talk had moved from eternity to the more pressing problems of mortality. The Pest had returned to Florence this summer and Cosimo was about to leave for Verona where the infection had not yet caught on. The disease seemed to have lost some of its original force since the decimations of 1400 and 1417. It continued to reappear, in summers usually, and it remained as cruel and as fatal, but the victims now were fewer in number and often weakened by other ills to begin with. Children were most vulnerable, but thanks be to God my boys were sturdy and, until now, lucky as well. Cosimo had only two sons, Piero who was fourteen and Giovanni who was nine, but like any father he was most eager to protect his family. Later, I would discover that he was eager to leave Florence to protect his family, not from the Black Pestilence but from that other pestilence, the family Albizzi. They were conspiring against him and in little more than three years they would succeed in placing blame on Cosimo for the failure of the war against Lucca and for “crimes against the state of Florence.”

“The David,” he said, turning to me. “In bronze. Life-size. For display in my garden.”

He cast a glance across the room to where Agnolo was standing, clothed now, fiddling with his hair. Cosimo looked frankly at Donatello and smiled, a strange kind of amusement.

“When you can find the time,” he said.

CHAPTER
17

F
OR THE NEXT
months—in truth, until the very end of the year—creating Cosimo’s David seemed the sole concern of the
bottega
.

Michelozzo had returned from the increasingly hopeless war on Lucca and assumed oversight of the Prato Pulpit and, having long since completed the overall architectural design, he now took on responsibility for the sculptural work that Donatello had put aside. This included a new balcony composed of seven marble sections bristling with child angels who hold between them the arms of the Commune of Prato. But even before Michelozzo could settle in and lay chisel to stone he was summoned by Ghiberti—with the intervention of the Operai—to assist in casting sections of the Baptistry doors. These were the second set of bronze doors for San Giovanni and they took precedence over all other public art works, so Donatello had no choice but to let him go. He put Pagno in charge of the frieze for the pulpit—scrollwork and laurel leaves—and promised that very soon, just as the Prato contract specified, he would sculpt the
putti
with his own hand. But not now. Not the pulpit and not anything else.

And so Donatello was at liberty and set to work sketching Agnolo from every angle as he worked out on paper the possibilities he would explore in clay. He seated Agnolo so that his head and the sketch and his own eye were all at the same level. He sketched the head and neck for the latter half of a day. The next morning he had him stand and turn beneath the angle of the light so that the unexplored planes of that soft, smooth body came newly into focus. He had him face front and back and side. He had him lean forward from the waist, then back. He had him stand with his left knee bent, his full weight upon his right leg, and then reverse the pose. He was searching for the angles with the greatest show of power and resilience. He was searching out the bronze David.

“You’re about to hurl a heavy stone. Bend back a little. Feel the weight of it.” He was taking great patience with the untutored Agnolo.

“I don’t know how.”

“This is not difficult. Relax. Now make as if you have a stone in your hand and you’re about to throw it.”

Agnolo made a feeble effort at throwing an imaginary stone. He stood up straight and still. He looked ridiculous.

“Like this,” Donatello said. “Your right leg forward, your upper body bent back so that your right arm can gather to a force, and your left arm across your chest supporting the other end of the slingshot. In a slight crouch.”

Agnolo folded his arms across his chest and stood there. Donatello held his patience as if this stupidity were a normal thing in a model.

“Right leg forward,” he said. Agnolo stretched out his leg as if he were about to dance. “Put your weight on that leg. Lean into it. It’s bent at the knee. Good. Now lean backward from your waist. More to the side. The right side. Good. Now crouch a little. No, just a little, and now pull your right arm back and down. Your right hand is holding the sling with the stone in it. Hold it back, and down. Now with your left hand reach across your body to grasp the other end of the sling. Good. Now look up at your enemy.” Agnolo looked at Donatello. “No, look up. Look up over your left shoulder. Pull the shoulder down a little. See? You feel the tension through your entire body. Your right foot curls down with the effort. Good. You are about to launch a stone that will fell Goliath in a single blow. Good. Very good. Now hold that pose while I sketch you.”

Agnolo held the pose for a moment, pleased with himself. He discovered at once that posing was not easy—all his limbs ached—and from this time on Donatello was hard put to encourage him.

“You are a poor shepherd in the hands of God. He is using you to perform His holy will.”

“You are one of the great heroes of the Bible.”

“The King has clothed you in his own armor but you have put it off because you find your strength in God alone.”

Agnolo was a boy without education of any kind, but he was quick to respond to approval.

“The king has summoned you to fight for Israel. You alone.” These brief hymns of praise were pleasing to Agnolo but almost at once he began to make difficulties. First it was a question of posing nude while someone drew pictures of him. This was degrading. This was beneath him.

Donatello, who had not considered this nicety, shot him a hard look and left me to deal with the matter. I was, in truth, made speechless by Agnolo’s complaint.

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

“I am not a whore. Only whores pose nude.”

“On both points you are in error,” I said.

“What do you mean?” He was not indignant. He did not understand.

“David fought Goliath with no weapon but a stone. He has to be nude.”

“But no one else is nude.”

“No one else is David.”

This seemed to please him, but a moment later he said he would not pose nude unless someone else was nude. “Ask Caterina,” he said, smirking, and Donatello, who was listening, made as if to strike him.

Well, he would not pose nude, he said, unless some third person was present.

Donatello’s face darkened and he frowned. It was a mark of anger we had all learned to fear.

“To protect you?” he asked.

Agnolo stared at him, a provocation.

“From me?”

Agnolo said nothing.

“Are you afraid for your reputation?”

“I am unused to posing. Nude.”

“I can find any number of boys who will be glad to pose. Nude.”

“Some boys will do anything,” Agnolo said.

Donatello fell silent, but I sensed that this was an insult he would not soon forget.

Thus, it was agreed that I should move my worktable nearer to the posing alcove so that, by merely looking up from my notes, I could see Agnolo and, if there were need, intervene to protect his virtue. I thought that Donatello would not concede this, but the boy had a power over him I could not understand. Agnolo glowed with satisfaction.

* * *

A
DRAFT UPON
Cosimo’s bank arrived that morning and I immediately inscribed in my
quaderno
the date, the amount, and the quantity of bronze it was expected to buy. The draft was an advance of fifty florins against materials—tin and copper and fine white wax—and another thirty to urge the project on. Donatello cared little if it were thirty or forty or one hundred. So long as his bills were eventually paid and the materials for his next project were readily available, he was indifferent to money. It was only with Agnolo that he seemed to count his coins and, even with Agnolo, he made up for a moment of stinginess with countless acts of generosity. “He’s just a boy,” he would say to me and reach for the rope to the money basket.

Agnolo preened and fawned and pouted.

D
ONATELLO GAVE HIM
a new, easier pose, and—to ease the dreariness of posing—had him alternate it with the first. “Stand straight,” he said, “your weight is on your right leg, your left leg is extended. No, less extended. You are about to throw the stone. It is curled in your left fist and you hold it at your left shoulder. Do you see how easy? You are looking off to your left. Calmly. You see Goliath and you are not afraid. You are in the hands of God.”

“What about my right hand? What is it doing?

Pagno, who had stopped his own work to observe the new pose, leaned into me and made an obscene comment.

“Nothing,” Donatello said. “It’s hanging by your side. Is that easy for you? Is that comfortable? We can alternate the poses when you tire.”

But Agnolo made new difficulties. Now it was a question of money. He chewed on his lip and rubbed one booted foot against the other and finally came out with it: he could not possibly live on the few
piccioli
Donatello paid him.

“You must tell him I need more,” he said.

“Tell him yourself.”

“He won’t speak to me.”

“Don’t play the fool.”

He hesitated and then he said, “He is offended that I know he wants me.”

“He does not want you. You make too much of yourself.”

“I need money.”

“You need, you need,” I said. “Ask your soldier for money.”

“He’s in Lucca, fighting. He doesn’t know my needs.”

Once again my contempt rendered me speechless.

“I’m standing here naked,” he said.

“Then cover yourself. Put on a cloak.”

“But I should take it off for him? I’m your brother.”

“You’re not my brother. You’re the son of the wool dyer and his wife.”

And so it was agreed that Donatello would pay him a weekly sum, due always in advance. This did not include the odd trips to the hanging basket, sometimes by Donatello, sometimes by Agnolo himself, and once—and this astonished me—by Pagno di Lapo who slipped the boy a handful of change. What, I wondered, could explain this?

* * *

T
HE MONEY ISSUE
settled, Agnolo found himself hard-pressed for another source of complaint. It was not long, however, before he lit upon the Black Pestilence. He was not feeling well. He was hot. He had a fever. He wanted to lie down in Donatello’s privy chamber. He needed a cold drink. He was bored. He might die of boredom. Or of the Pest. In response, Donatello gave him the key to his privy chamber. He sent an apprentice for a cold drink, or a hot one, whichever the moment required. He assured him that boredom did not cause death. He promised him the Black Pestilence would pass when the weather grew colder. It always had. It would again. “And then I shall freeze,” Agnolo said.