“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.
ALSO BY KAREN ESSEX
Kleopatra
Pharaoh
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
a division of Random House, Inc.
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Frontispiece: Leda and the Swan, School of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519); courtesy of Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Essex, Karen.
Leonardo’s swans: a novel / by Karen Essex.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452–1519—Fiction. 2. Italy—History—1492–1559—Fiction. 3. Artists’ models—Fiction. 4. Sibling rivalry—Fiction. 5. Milan (Italy)—Fiction. 6. Sisters—Fiction. 7. Artists—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3555.S682L46 2006
813'.54—dc22 2005048468
Copyright © 2006 by Karen Essex
All Rights Reserved
eISBN: 978-0-385-51766-9
v3.0
Karen Essex, Leonardo's Swans
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