The Poet Prince (62 page)

The time will return.

She completed her signature with the tiny drawing of an astrolabe, a symbol of time and its cycles, an emblem of time returning, before writing her name with full flourish:

Je * Anne Boleyn

Later that afternoon, as the king’s own chaplain droned the words of the Mass to the small group gathered in the royal chapel, Anne Boleyn quietly passed her prayer book to her secret beloved. Anne’s father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, acted as her messenger. Sir Thomas’s importance in the court and as a confidant of the king allowed him the privileged position of sitting beside his sovereign during Mass. He was more than willing to encourage the growing affection between his younger daughter and the king.

Henry VIII, King of England, received the message intended for him and held the book to his heart. The tears in his eyes blurred his vision as he gazed upon the woman he loved and whispered across the chapel to her, “The time
will
return, my Anne. We will see to it that it is so.”

How had it all gone so terribly wrong?

Anne had much time to contemplate this question as she sat in her cell, awaiting the moment of her execution. The French swordsman had arrived from Calais, prepared for his grotesque mission; he would separate her head from her delicate neck with a single slice of his sharpened weapon. It was Henry’s final gift to his beloved. As he had signed her death warrant, the king had also softened her sentence: Anne Boleyn, the queen of England, would not be burned at the stake
as a convicted heretic and traitor. In an unexpected act of mercy, Henry had sent to France for an executioner who could put an end to both her life and his misery quickly, efficiently, and as painlessly as possible.

It had been nine years since Anne and Henry had pledged to each other that the time would return. Anne held that same prayer book now, running her finger over the fading ink of that golden promise she had once believed—they had
both
believed—would change the world. Make no mistake, Henry had been as committed to this mission as she was. Their love had been real and it had been an unstoppable force for both good and ill.

Anne paused on the astrolabe to contemplate the passing of time. She had so little left. There was one more thing she must accomplish before leaving this life, one final act of devotion to the mission. She must find a way to protect her tiny, precious, red-haired daughter. Picking up her quill, Anne began to write the letter in French:

Beloved Marguerite,

By the time you receive this letter you will be aware of just how spectacularly I have failed you. There is so little time for me to express my sadness and regret. And yet all is not lost. We have accomplished much toward our goals, and we must not allow my death to stem the tide that is washing over this great land.

I write to remind you of my deep fondness and admiration for you, and to entreat as my final wish that you will find a way to impart your vision, our vision, to my daughter. Let me assure you that Elizabeth is the golden child of our dreams, conceived perfectly and immaculately in a place of trust and consciousness within all rules of The Order.

I beg of you, do not fail her. Even now, she shows a strength and a brilliance that is beyond compare. If Elizabeth is protected, she alone will ensure that the Time Will Return.

Anne

Arques, France
present day

M
AUREEN AWOKE TO
another dawn breaking over the hills of Arques. She sat up gently, so as not to wake Bérenger sleeping beside her, but to no avail. Bérenger, so attuned to her moods and energies, opened his eyes as soon as she stirred.

“You okay, my love?”

Maureen looked at him and shook her head. She ran her hands over her throat and whispered, “And I have a little neck.”

“What?” Bérenger sat up now, concerned.

“That is what she said, while awaiting her execution. It would be swift because she had a little neck.”

“Who said it? What execution?”

“Anne Boleyn.”

The realization dawned on him then. “You were dreaming again.”

She nodded. This had been the strangest and most vivid dream Maureen had ever experienced. She was not simply observing Anne Boleyn in the Tower of London, she
was
Anne Boleyn. She was experiencing the thoughts and feelings and memories of one of the most notorious queen in history as she prepared to die.

Maureen was not an expert on English history, but she had long been fascinated by the story of King Henry VIII and his six wives. Anne had been the catalyst for the Reformation in England, as Henry had defied the pope to be with her.

History did not remember Anne Boleyn kindly. She was most
often portrayed as a scheming adulteress of depraved and unlimited ambition.

But the Anne in Maureen’s dream was a very different woman. Mau
reen could feel the lump rising in her throat and tears stinging behind her eyes as she remembered the excruciating pain and desperation of the tragic queen in the tower.

She knew she would soon be uncovering a new version of history that was waiting for her beneath the layers of five centuries of lies.

While writing this book, I thought often of the old saw about painting the Golden Gate Bridge: it is a task that is never complete. I could spend the rest of my life writing a book about the birth of the Renaissance and never be finished. There were so many characters, story lines, and added pieces of information that could have—and perhaps should have—been included. The vast array of artists and their works, the humanists and patrons, and the histories and anecdotes surrounding them all is as daunting as it is inspiring.

A prime example is the rich and prevalent influence of Dante’s work (as well as that of Petrarch and Boccaccio) on the elder Cosimo de’ Medici and later on Lorenzo and his circle. They all deserve celebration, if not lengthy analysis, but I had to jettison those elements, as they took me too far afield from what was already complicated storytelling.

The finer points of Neoplatonism in the Renaissance are worthy of volumes, and indeed have inspired them, yet I toned down Plato in an effort to play up heresy. And while I believe that no intelligent person can argue that the Neoplatonist movement wasn’t critical to the unfolding of Renaissance art, I stand by my assertion that it was one element of many, and the most important of these was heresy. Neoplatonism was often a front for the true heretical teachings that were preserved in these great masterpieces. The Gnostic concept of becoming
anthropos
—a fully realized and enlightened human—is essentially identical to what we now think of as humanism. The difference is that to be
anthropos,
one must attain a personal connection to God, becoming fully human through that direct connection. Heresy!

There was initially an entire subplot in this book about the fifteenth-
century enigmatic literary masterpiece known as the
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
and how Lorenzo inspired and influenced it. Unfortunately, the
Hypnerotomachia
is such a complicated subject that I have had to save that information for another day, another time, another book! Those familiar with that book may have caught the reference to it when Colombina ends her life writing for Destino.

The bibliography for the books in the Magdalene Line series consists of hundreds of volumes (a partial list of which is posted on my website, www.kathleenmcgowan.com). But the Hope diamond in my library is the volume written by Professor Charles Dempsey,
The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli’s
Primavera
and Humanist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent
(Princeton Press). After years of wading through Botticelli commentary, in which each new authority contradicts the previous with astounding vitriol, the discovery of Dempsey was one of the great eureka moments in my research career.

Dempsey’s book is brilliant, and I am grateful for the enlightenment that I gleaned from it—and apologize to Professor Dempsey for the more extreme conclusions I have drawn, which are mine alone. While Dempsey never makes a definitive case for Lucrezia Donati as the centerpiece of
Primavera,
as the icon of love personified, he refers to it as a distinct possibility. I would also like to assert that I came to my own conclusions about Lucrezia’s esteemed position in Botticelli’s work several years before reading Dempsey.

Dempsey is also the only art historian I have found who admits a likeness between the woman in
Fortitude
and the woman at the center of
Primavera
. This was, in fact, my own observation in the Uffizi Gallery in the spring of 2001 as I moved from the room that housed Botticelli’s two small
Judith
pieces and the
Fortitude
into the main Botticelli room. Although the Uffizi has altered the collections in those rooms recently, moving
Judith
into the main Botticelli salon, there used to be a magical place in the gallery which I referred to as “the Lucrezia Donati spot.” One could stand in front of the case displaying
Judith
and see
the full version of
Fortitude
and the central figure from
Primavera
in the same sight line. It was in doing this that I became certain that the
same woman was the model for all. Even the tilt of her head is the same, but in a mirror image from
Primavera
to
Fortitude
. And thanks to Botticelli’s mastery of the infusion technique, I discovered that I felt something about this woman, experienced some element of her character, when I stood before the paintings. I began to look at those pieces with new eyes, and am convinced that all three are Lucrezia Donati. I believe that Colombina’s specific and charming tilt of the head is also found in some of Sandro’s early Madonnas.

That said, I am not an art historian and make no claims to be, although I am a most ardent and committed art enthusiast and have been blessed to spend much of the last two decades loitering in the great art museums of the world. And I have eyes. Sometimes it’s just that simple.

I find that much of the evidence art historians draw their conclusions from is necessarily circumstantial, and yet their assumptions often astound me in their simplicity and—dare I say it—irresponsibility. For example, many art experts believe that
Primavera
was not commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent but rather by his cousin Lorenzo (the Much Lesser) Pierofrancesco de’ Medici. The reason for this assumption is that an inventory was done upon il Magnifico’s death in 1492, and
Primavera
was in the Pierofrancesco household at that time. Now, there are countless reasons why paintings commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent during his life may not have been in his personal collection at the time of his death, so to assert definitively that he was not the patron of such a huge, expensive, and personal piece—simply because his cousin had it in 1492—seems irresponsible
to me.

I have made a sport of sitting in front of some of the greatest artworks in the world so that I may listen to the various guides, critics, and experts comment on the masterpiece at hand. I have spent hours in Botticelli’s salon, listening to the varied explanations of
Primavera
. Invariably, each expert asserts a definitive explanation of the painting’s meaning. And, equally invariably, these assertions differ—often dramatically. There were times when I delighted in the idea that art is so expansive that it provides us with almost infinite opportunity for in
terpretation; others when I despaired at the idea of ever really grasping what the artist’s true intentions may have been. Once I discovered the concept of “infusion” and learned to feel the art as well as see it, my appreciation of these masterpieces was enhanced beyond measure.

Much of what you read about the Medici in English refers to them in unpleasant terms: tyrants, hedonists, and worse. I mentioned this recently at an event in Italy, and my comments were met with stares of disbelief. Lorenzo de’ Medici was the father of the Renaissance, the champion of the Italian language, and a man known for his generosity and enlightened way of living. Most of the Italians I have discussed this with find it unfathomable that history views Lorenzo in any other light. It was in discovering Lorenzo’s greatness, and Cosimo’s before him, that I became an ardent champion of the Medici. I believe that much of the confusion comes from the generations of Medici who followed Lorenzo and were indeed corrupt. I think Lorenzo himself would have been horrified and sadly disappointed to watch as his descendants lost their way and abandoned the principles of love, beauty, and
anthropos
that he and his grandfather worked to preserve.

I came across references to how the Medici “locked their artists in basements and forced them to paint,” but then I would discover these fantastic stories about how Donatello and Lippi were utterly devoted to Cosimo. I use the word
devotion
specifically as it indicates love: these artists loved their patrons, they didn’t just serve them. Donatello really did beg to be buried at Cosimo’s feet and he really is buried alongside him in San Lorenzo. These are not the actions of an artist who was abused. I can see how Cosimo’s often comical relationship with Fra Lippi could be misinterpreted by history, and I was determined to show the beauty of it.

I was stunned to discover in my research that both Botticelli and Michelangelo lived as members of the Medici family in their youth. Lorenzo adopted Michelangelo at the age of thirteen in everything but name, and the boy was utterly committed to his foster father. There is also an argument that Sandro Botticelli was similarly “adopted” by Lucrezia and Piero and raised as Lorenzo’s brother, as I have depicted
here. Little is recorded about Botticelli’s personal life, but esteemed British historian Christopher Hibbert makes this assertion in his book
The House of Medici,
as well as providing the description of Botticelli’s commission to create the
Madonna of the Magnificat
for Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici.