The Medici Boy (20 page)

Meanwhile, in Agnolo’s blessed absence, Donatello finished carving the magnificent Annunciation to the Virgin for the Cavalcanti chapel. I recalled with envy how he had explained the work to Agnolo in the early days of that seduction. “You see, the Angel Gabriel kneels before the Virgin,” Donatello had said. “Mary is startled, as who would not be?” I could see him as he raised his long fingers and traced the book that Mary held, and the arm, and the figure rising from the chair. For that second I had hated him.

But now, with Agnolo gone from our lives, we stood together before the completed Annunciation and I softened toward him. The sculpture, in its simplicity and its beauty, was itself a source of grace.

“It needs a frame,” Donatello said. “A canopy or a frieze.” To me it seemed perfection as it was. “Putti,” he said, talking to himself. “Looking down. In awe. In fear.” He put his long hand on my shoulder. “Your boys. Your oldest two. Let me use them for the
putti
.”

That is how it came about that my sons Donato Michele and Franco Alessandro will stand forever in the Basilica of Santa Croce, clutching one another in fear of the height as they look down on the Virgin at that stupendous moment when she assents to be Mother of the Christ. My boys appear again, of course, in the Cantoria that Donatello executed for the Duomo, but here they are most themselves, alive and full of mischief, as I would choose to remember them.

The Annunciation was finished, save for a few bits of ornamentation left for Pagno to complete, to ease his disappointment at seeing his Prato carvings cast aside. Donatello turned at once to his several postponed commissions for Cosimo de’ Medici. First came two matching marble panels, one of the Crucifixion and one of the Ascension. Then a gilded coffer that would hold a manuscript copy of
Aesop’s Fables
in the original Greek. And then the long delayed bronze bust of Cosimo’s wife, Contessina de’ Bardi.

For the Crucifixion and the Ascension Donatello devised a new kind of sculpture,
rilievo schiacciato
he called it: on a flat marble panel he carved a relief of such thinness that it appeared to be a drawing, as if by using a stylus instead of a chisel he had forced the marble to release the forms trapped beneath its surface. The setting is Golgotha and those dim forms, as you gaze at them, become the figure of Christ in his last agony and, kneeling at the foot of the cross, the Virgin Mother and Mary Magdalene and the apostle John. As you continue to gaze at the figures, the background too moves to the surface and you become aware of angry clouds troubling the sky and a darkness settling over the scene. The face of Christ is taut with agony and the face of his Mother taut with grief. The matching panel, the Ascension, shows Christ surrounded by his apostles, the Virgin Mother kneeling at his feet, as he rises into heaven. He ascends into a summer sky and Donatello has so ordered the lines of sight that as you observe the figures you are forced—like the apostles themselves—to look up in expectation and in hope. These are masterful works, unlike anything I have seen before or since, and they adorned the facing walls of Cosimo’s private chapel in the palazzo on the Via de’ Bardi. The tiny chapel was without windows and lit only by wall sconces so I am sure they could not be well seen but it was enough for my lord Cosimo to know they were there. Later, when he built the great new Palazzo Medici on the Via Larga, he moved these marble panels to the family chapel which was well lit and where they could be seen to advantage. They are there even today.

The gilded coffer was to be companion of the one I had designed for Cosimo’s Greek prayer book nearly ten years earlier. As you would expect, I had kept the original drawings—I was ever a devoted collector of papers—and so with speed and some skill I brought the coffer to completion. This time I was allowed to do the work myself. I adorned the coffer with the Medici family seal, I cast the laurel wreaths and gilded them, I attached the jeweled clasp. My finished work was a perfect match for Donatello’s original. It was my masterpiece. The twin coffers stand at either end of the altar in Cosimo’s chapel, a Byzantine prayer book on one side and
Aesop’s Fables
on the other, with Jesus on the cross between them.

We went together to present the coffer to my lord Cosimo at his palazzo on the Via de’ Bardi. The name itself will tell you that the palazzo belonged to Cosimo’s wife although, since their marriage, Cosimo had gone far toward making it his own. The immense double doors that fronted the Via de’ Bardi now bore the Medici family crest—four balls within an ornate shield—and they were flanked on either side by decorative iron rings in the form of laurel wreaths that held torches against the night. Like all noble palaces of Florence, the Bardi had originally been a fortress and it seemed so still. The thick stone walls on the ground floor provided storage rooms where food and weapons had once been stacked against attack; these rooms were now workshops for the palace, stores for grain and wine, and shelters for the family horses and carriages. And, of course, the palace kitchens.

We were greeted by two servants in full livery—I recognized Giacomo as one of them—and we followed them through the entryway to a huge courtyard paved in stone. In the center stood an ornate well crowned by a small statue of the bearded Marsyas playing a flute, the same Roman statue Donatello had repaired for Cosimo years earlier. Giacomo showed us to a vaulted staircase that led to the first floor balcony where Cosimo himself met us. He greeted Donatello with an embrace and a kiss on either cheek and he shook my hand with some warmth. My hands were sweating and I feared to drop the coffer, bundled in a crimson velvet cloth and clutched beneath my arm. Cosimo led us through two vast reception rooms to his private quarters. I scarcely had time to look around me. The public rooms were a blur of great wealth. Ornate marble floors, gilt ceilings, and walls painted with scenes of triumph from the Bible and mythology: the walls of Jericho tumbled down, Hercules wrestled with the Hydra. Cosimo’s private apartment was a series of rooms that unfolded, one from another. There was a sitting room with carved chairs and a long table, a study where he kept his huge collection of books in Latin and Greek and our native Italian, a bedroom, and his tiny chapel—scarcely more than a closet—where he daily made his prayers. I believe there was a bathroom, all unto itself.

At a gesture from Cosimo I settled the coffer on the long table in his sitting room and he removed the velvet cloth. The coffer glowed in the dim light, and I watched with pleasure as Cosimo traced the laurel leaves with a stubby finger, caressed the gilded edges, and tried the jeweled clasp.

“It is a perfect match,” he said to Donatello. “A beautiful, rare thing for my Aesop.”

Donatello bowed and said that the design was mine.

Cosimo seemed surprised, but he smiled and came to me and took my hand. I did not say what I was thinking: that the execution had been mine as well. All work that came from Donatello’s
bottega
—no matter who had produced it—came from the hand of Donatello and with his approval. High lords did not pay Donatello for work by his assistants. He had been generous to acknowledge that the design was mine.

Wine was brought and Cosimo toasted Donatello’s good health and great talent and then they talked at length of other commissions Cosimo had in mind. The bronze bust of his wife, Contessina de’ Bardi, already agreed upon. A bust of Niccolò da Uzzano, quickly, before he dies. And after that he desired another bronze, a decorative piece, whimsical, something like the
putti
on the Annunciation Donatello had only now completed. A cupid perhaps, or a baby Pan, holding a butterfly or a little bird. He left it all to Donatello.

This Pan, this dancing baby, would of course become the Atys Amorino, a pagan
putto
with tiny wings on his back and on his heels. In his outstretched hand he holds a butterfly and he is laughing with delight. He wears only leather pants, open in the front, to reveal his waggling privy parts. He is filled with pleasure in the butterfly and in the world and in himself. He is the perfect pagan. “He is the spirit that was Greece,” Cosimo would say when it was completed, but to me he was the spirit that was Donatello . . . if only Agnolo had not come among us.

Cosimo himself escorted us to the door of the palazzo and stood bidding us farewell as if we were old friends who had stopped by to exchange a greeting.

He turned suddenly to Donatello and asked, “How does it go with my bronze David?” He knew that Donatello had taken a hammer to the
bozzetto
—such news is never secret—but he asked nonetheless.

“Slowly,” Donatello said.

“Ah, yes,” Cosimo said, and nodded agreement. “Yes. Of course.” Then he turned to me and said, “You must encourage your brother to be of help.” He looked me full in the face and said, “I shall remember you.” He clasped my hands in his.

I could not have been more surprised by the words or by the gesture. Cosimo was a man of extraordinary warmth beneath all that silence and it was a warmth I would have need of later as I lay in prison in cursed Padua. We said farewell.

I write this down for what reason? Because it happened and because I would have you know that no less a critic than Cosimo himself approved my work and because he loved my lord Donatello enough to include me in that love.

All this came about because Agnolo had left us and Donatello was himself once again and so was I, free for a time of what Alessandra called my poisoned feelings.

Agnolo came back into our lives once more in August, 1431.

CHAPTER
21

A
GNOLO WAS STANDING
at the door in easy conversation with Pagno di Lapo. They were laughing together, like old friends. It was a warm day in August and Agnolo had left off his stockings and was wearing only a dirty white shirt and that ridiculous farmer’s hat. His hair was long and scraggly and his feet were bare. I approached them and said, “It’s well for you that Donatello is not here,” and I found that in my anger I could scarce get the words from between my teeth.

Pagno looked at me in surprise, but Agnolo gave me a wide smile and said, “He’s not here. He’s at the Palazzo Bardi, sketching Big Contessina.” I should have struck him for his impertinence, but I was so astonished that he knew of Donatello’s whereabouts that in truth I did not know what to do.

“Agnolo is newly back from Lucca,” Pagno said.

“You’re not allowed to be here. Donatello has forbidden it.”

“I’m only standing outside. I came to offer a greeting.”

“Go away!”

“He is always hurtful,” Agnolo said. “Why is he like this?”

Pagno turned to me and then to Agnolo and then back again to me. There was no more to say. I waited for Agnolo to go but he did not move.

“I looked for you everywhere,” I said. “My lord Donatello looked.”

“I told Pagno where I was going,” Agnolo said. He turned to Pagno and said, “I told you.”

“And I told you,” Pagno said to me. “I said he’s gone off with his soldier. You asked me and I told you.”

“But you didn’t say you
knew
. You let us chase around the city looking for him! You let us go to the Buco!”

“You went to the Buco?” Agnolo laughed, incredulous, pleased. “Did you enjoy it?”

“I told you he was in Lucca,” Pagno said.

“They’re very friendly at the Buco.” Agnolo was amused.

I found myself speechless with anger and frustration. Here I was a man of thirty-one years, an accomplished artisan with a wife and four sons, being made fool of by a rent boy, a
bardassa
, who had exploited my lord Donatello and was even now mocking me with what he had done. I turned away in fury.

Agnolo and Pagno continued to talk, defying me, until Pagno slipped him some coins and Agnolo took his leave.

“Donatello must not know of this,” I said, and my voice shook with anger.

“Donatello will want to know he’s back,” Pagno said.

* * *

D
ONATELLO WAS, AS
Agnolo had rightly said, at the Palazzo Bardi making sketches for the bust of Cosimo’s wife. He was there almost every morning for a week and when he returned he began at once on the
bozzetto
from which he would model the bust itself. He worked quickly and well, as was his way.

I did not mention to my lord Donatello that Agnolo had returned to Florence nor that Pagno had known him to be in Lucca all those months, but I continued angry at Pagno that he had spoken truth about Agnolo’s disappearance but in such a way that we were meant to think it was not so. All my anger at Agnolo was now concentrated on Pagno and I wished him ill.

“What’s wrong with you?” Donatello asked me. “You do not concentrate.”

“Nothing.”

“Well, try to concentrate.”

“As you say, my lord.”

“Never mind ‘my lord’. Only pay attention to what you’re doing.”

What I was doing was helping prepare the framework for the bust of Contessina and in truth I had just badly formed the wires that would support her left shoulder.

“It’s Pagno,” I said.

Donatello sighed and shook his head. He was well aware there was discomfort between Pagno and me.

“He knew all along where Agnolo was.”

Donatello said nothing but he paused with his trowel poised above the bucket of clay.

“And now he’s back. He was in Lucca the whole time we searched for him at the Buco.”

Donatello said nothing.

“And I had to go to the Ufficiali di Onestà,” I said

“They inscribed everything in a record book,” I said.

“I told them lies. They have my name,” I said.

“And now he’s back?”

“I saw him. He came to the
bottega
.”

“Turn him away if he comes here. I don’t want to hear his name again.”

“I did. I told him to go.”

“Enough.”

“Pagno gave him money.”

He was silent then for a long time and I knew not to say anything more.

Now at least Donatello would not be surprised if he came upon Agnolo in the street, and I further hoped that I had done Pagno some little harm. I was thinking this when Donatello of a sudden said, “Pagno is kind and generous. We should all be more like Pagno.”