Leonardo's Swans
“True enough,” Trotti says, building on Ercole’s comment. “Leonardo must have known that he had to escape Lorenzo’s service so that he could play Pheidias to Ludovico’s Pericles. So he made a magnificent silver lute in the shape of a horse’s head. And he convinced Lorenzo that he should present the thing to Ludovico at Milan as a gift from the city of Florence! Leonardo appeared at Il Moro’s court with his exquisite lute and sang in his exquisite voice. All of that is true. Then he secretly slipped Il Moro a letter listing all of his qualifications. And so it was accomplished. Leonardo enchanted the duke with his beauty and his voice and the playing of his own compositions, and Leonardo never returned to Florence.”
“He is beautiful as well, the Florentine?” Isabella’s interest heightens.
“So beautiful that he cannot find a model as intriguing as himself. They say he has built an octagon of mirrors so that he might view himself from all angles and paint himself in profile.”
“And have you seen the painting?”
“I have seen others,” Trotti says, tantalizing both of the elder Estes and the young one, all of whom he knows have a mania for collecting.
“What have you seen? Anything we might procure? Or should we approach him with a commission?” asks the duchess.
Isabella realizes that in a few months, she will be Marchesa of Mantua, who, like her mother, will have her own allowance to purchase art. If she wants to commission a painting by a genius, she will have agents and ambassadors of her own to conduct the negotiations.
“Unfortunately, he is notorious for not completing commissions. The monks of San Donato in Florence are suing him over an incomplete Adoration of the Magi, though they display it with pride in their chapel. But most things, he leaves undone.”
“So it goes,” says Ercole. “Men of genius rarely behave conventionally.”
But Isabella and Leonora have no intention of giving up.
“What have you seen that is completed?” Isabella asks. “Is it up for purchase?”
“I shudder to think, my daughter, that when you are Marchesa of Mantua, I will have to compete with you over these items,” Leonora says with a mixture of pride and acceptance.
Trotti sits quietly, unusual for him. He looks at the duke, who merely looks back.
“It’s rather indelicate,” he says.
“Our daughter is about to become a bride and a marchesa. I believe you can speak openly in her presence,” replies the duke.
“I have seen a magnificent portrait done by the Magistro of Cecilia Gallerani, Ludovico’s mistress. It is completed. And it is not for sale.” He lowers his eyes.
THE conversation is not pursued. Isabella is promptly dismissed to her chamber. She leaves the room humbly and without protestation, because long ago she discovered a wonderful secret. If she turns the corner discreetly, she can linger against the wall out of sight and hear everything her parents say inside their favorite room, in which they seem to hold their most intimate conversations.
“So Ludovico’s attentions are still solidly affixed to this woman?” Ercole asks.
“She is regarded as a wife at court, Your Excellency.”
“Do you think he will honor the betrothal with Beatrice?”
“He must. He has proposed the idea of marriage to the Gallerani woman many times to his advisers, and each time the proposal is rejected. She is a woman of beauty and brilliance, but her family brings nothing in terms of strengthening Milan either politically or militarily. There is danger from Rome and from Venice. There is great danger from Naples. There is danger from France. Losing your allegiance to any of the others would be deadly. He will honor the commitment, but at a time convenient for himself. That is how he does all things.”
“Messer Trotti, speak candidly,” says the duchess. “Are we sentencing our daughter to a lifetime of misery?”
“Your Excellency, Milan is a marvel. Ludovico has summoned the most brilliant artists and architects and engineers and craftsmen in Italy. The finest minds in Europe are now at the universities of Milan and Pavia, thanks to Ludovico’s invitation of intellectual freedom and high salaries that are tax free. In many ways, he is an enlightened man. In others, he’s a snake. But he is not unkind. Though he will probably not love Madonna Beatrice, he will treat her generously. At any rate, my eyes will constantly be upon his affairs.”
The duchess looks at her husband. “I fear for Beatrice’s happiness. She is not as stable as Isabella, and not entirely in control of her emotions.”
“She will have to learn to be so,” answers the Diamond in the icy tone that earned him his nickname. “Beatrice is not daft. She is smart and capable.”
Trotti shakes his head. “Your Excellencies, I say this with all respect for every member of your family, and the high honor due you, but it is a pity that the marriage contracts cannot be switched.”
“Do you believe that we should renege on the contract?” asks the duke. “That will leave us with only remote marital ties to Milan.”
Isabella hears the impatience in her father’s voice.
Trotti continues: “Il Moro will make himself the Duke of Milan. He will never be satisfied being the regent to the young duke, Gian Galeazzo, who is weak and incompetent. Il Moro feeds the boy’s vices steadily, as one feeds one’s favorite pets. Gian Galeazzo has weaknesses for wine and for boys with pretty faces. Il Moro sends him an endless stream of both. His wife, Isabel of Aragon, complains loudly of still being a virgin. Of course! Ludovico keeps the boy in a dissolute state, all the while ruling Milan, making alliances with foreign powers, building the army, consolidating his powers, and waiting for the day the boy will drop dead of decadence.”
“What does any of this have to do with our daughter?” asks Ercole.
“Madonna Beatrice is a lovely girl, but—how shall we say?—somewhat flighty. Madonna Isabella has an accomplished and astute mind, and already at her young age, the judgment necessary to be duchess of a world power. Not to mention—the Moor loves blond hair and a womanly figure. Madonna Isabella would be a formidable rival for Cecilia Gallerani, who is also a very brilliant woman, and like Madonna Isabella, has the intellect of a man.”
The duke is silent. Isabella wonders—fears—that he will begin to intrigue with Trotti to make her forsake Francesco and marry the horrible and cunning Moor.
The duchess sighs. “There is nothing to be done. Isabella’s betrothal to Gonzaga was negotiated years ago. At this point, it is a love match as well as a consolidation of the powers of two ruling families.”
Trotti sighs too. “It’s just a pity that the brilliant daughter is going to the provincial, and the one who loves horses as much as the provincial is going to a true man of learning in a city like Milan.”
ISABELLA has been listening to this conversation holding her breath. She tiptoes away, slowly opening the door to the colonnade and walking outside. The air is freezing cold, and she has no cloak to keep her warm. She leans her back against the wall, breathing in the frigid atmosphere. She would like to murder that gossipmonger Trotti for calling her beloved a provincial. Francesco is intelligent and masculine and worldly and courtly. She feels disloyal just having heard what was said about him.
At the same time, there is another conversation going on in her mind, battering her love for Francesco and her joy in anticipating her life with him. This conversation she cannot stifle. Her sister is going to preside over a kingdom in which its ruler might achieve the immortality of Pericles; where an artist the caliber of Pheidias is building monuments as spectacular and perhaps as eternal as the Parthenon. Is this not what she, Isabella, was born for? To reign over one of the most powerful realms in the world. To sit for the genius Leonardo. To supplant this beautiful Cecilia Gallerani in the famous Castello Sforzesco and in Il Moro’s heart. To take her place among the immortals who are creating this kingdom of mythical proportions whose monuments and structures and artistic achievements and legends will live on and on long after their bodies have turned
to dust.
These are challenges for Isabella, not the wild and naïve Beatrice.
Has Isabella been a fool all along, thinking that Fortuna has been on her side? What irony is this, to find out these things now? Now that she is in love with her betrothed. Now that nothing can be done.
What if Isabella has been cheated out of her true destiny by Chance? Can one challenge Fortuna? Would that be the same as trying to challenge God? Even if there was a way, would she dare?
But, she reminds herself, the Ferrarese have always believed in miracles. Wasn’t that what she was saying to Francesco? If God made manifest the body and blood of His Son in St. Mary’s Church, surely He would not allow anything so terrible as missing out on one’s own destiny to happen to a princess of Ferrara. Surely.
She calls upon her sensibilities to save her. After all, Ludovico is old. He is twenty-three years older than Beatrice. By the time he marries her—if he ever decides to honor his contract—he will have an old man’s musty smell. His skin will be hanging off his bones. His flesh will be decrepit, and his gait bent and crooked. He may even be too old to perform his marital duties, and Beatrice will die childless, whereas Francesco is virile and young and has eyes only for Isabella. The two of them will make gallant sons who will have the best qualities of the Gonzagas and of the Estes. There will be no scheming decadence in Mantua, no evil regent contributing to the ruin of the true ruler of the realm in order to steal his title.
Yes, surely Isabella will be better off after all. She and Francesco are noble people who will rule a noble society; Il Moro and the court of Milan are corrupt.
And if it comes to pass that Fortuna has played some clever trick on her, then she will take her destiny into her own hands. She will know what to do to remedy Fortuna’s mistake. She has often wondered if Fortuna is in God’s jurisdiction, or reigns over a realm of her own. Though she is certain that this thought is heresy, she cannot help but to ponder it. She has been taught that God is, was, and always shall be. But this singular idea of Fortuna has survived centuries of the church’s doctrine. God’s power is omniscient, but Fortuna is left over from the meddling Olympian gods so interested in worldly affairs. While Zeus and Hera and the like are only alive today in paintings, sculptures, myths, and the ruins of antiquities, Fortuna is still active in the daily intercourse of human events. Isabella is not alone in this belief, she knows. Doesn’t every kitchen maid, every soldier, shout pleas and gratitude to Fortuna?
God, Fortuna—one or both will take care of her, or she will take care of herself. It’s as her devout father has always advised: “Believe passionately in Our Lord. Pay tribute to His greatness day and night. Build cathedrals to His glory. Have faith in His will. But don’t always rely on Him to do your bidding.”
Chapter Two
0 * IL MATTO (THE FOOL)
FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF LEONARDO:
An old man, a few hours before his death, told me that he had lived a hundred years and that he did not feel any ailments other than weakness. Thus while sitting upon a bed in the hospital, without any movement or sign of anything amiss, I watched him pass from this life. I made an autopsy to ascertain the cause of so peaceful a death, and found that it was from weakness through failure of blood and the artery that feeds the heart and the lower members, which I found to be parched and shrunk and withered.
The other autopsy was on a child of two years old, and I found everything to be contrary to that which was in the case of the old man.
On the contrast between old and young:
The veins in the young are straight and full of blood, but in the decrepit they are twisted, flat, shriveled, and the blood is blocked from its passages.
The liver, which in youth, is of deep red color and strong consistency, in the old is pale, without the redness from the healthy flow of blood, and the veins stay empty. Moreover, in the old, the thin texture of the substance of the liver may be likened to bran steeped in a small quantity of water.
The colon in the old is thin, becoming as slender as the middle finger of the hand, whereas in the young, it may have the width of the larger part of the human arm.
In life, beauty perishes; not in art.
IN THE YEAR 1491; IN THE CITY OF PAVIA,
IN THE REGION OF MILAN
BEATRICE kicks the stomach of the fiery evil spirit who is pulling on her arm, trying to drag her through the gates of Hell. Her high-heeled boot passes right through the flames of his belly, and he laughs at her while his red eyes shoot yellow sparks into the air, momentarily blinding her. She is screaming, writhing, trying even to bite his flaming flesh. She is arguing that she is not that Beatrice, not the poet Dante’s lover, not his inspiration or salvation or anyone’s for that matter. “Leave me alone,” she yells at the demon. She can see smoke and flames in the distance. She feels hot, but the heat is coming from her insides. She knows that if she cannot escape, she will implode even before the devil’s fires engulf her. “I’ve done nothing,” she says over and over again, trying to yank her arm from the devil’s claws. The monster is stronger even than her big horse, Drago, and has no compunction to obey her. “I’m not the one,” she cries. “I’m not the one that you want.”
“Beatrice d’Este!”
Suddenly, the devil has the voice of a woman.
“Beatrice!”
The devil’s claws sink deeper into her arm. With his other hand, he grips her face, shaking it violently until she opens her eyes.
Her mother’s insistent face shocks her out of her dream state and into the bedroom, where she sweats beneath the thick blankets. Her face is hot, her brow damp, but her nose, sticking out into the air, is cold. She is not certain where she is, but she wonders how her mother knew that the devil had come for her, and that she needed to be yanked from his deathly grip.
“The ambassadors are coming, child. You must get up.” Duchess Leonora rolls her daughter over on her side, pulling the blankets down and her nightgown up.
Beatrice is aware that heavy drapes are being pulled aside, allowing stark gray morning light to replace the devil’s glittering flames.
“Not much, but it will have to do,” Leonora says.
Before Beatrice can ask what she means—is she speaking of her daughter’s behind?—two of her ladies are pulling Beatrice off the bed and slipping a heavy embroidered robe over her shoulders.
“You accommodated your husband, thank God!” Leonora exclaims, examining the messy sheets. “Or you know what would have happened. We would have had to write to your father. He would not have taken kindly to a daughter’s skittishness on her wedding night. You know how he is about duty.”
Officious footsteps marching in threes, echoing off stone floors, approach. Messer Trotti and two dour gentlemen Beatrice does not recognize enter the room. Ignoring her, their attention goes directly to the pink-stained, rumpled bedsheets.
“There is little blood,” says one of the men to Leonora. “Either Il Moro was not allowed full access, or this is a well-traveled tunnel.”
Messer Trotti is stone-faced, his thin eyebrows arched and indignant, but the other man snickers.
“The girl spends her days on the back of a horse,” Leonora says. “I will not have you suggest such things about a princess of the House of Este. If you take that idea out of this bedroom, I assure you, it will cost you your position at this and any other court in the land.”
The man is silent. No one would doubt Leonora’s ability to carry forth the threat.
Beatrice marvels at her mother’s ability to intimidate not one but three men with nothing but a pair of big brown eyes and a haughty voice. Not only that, but how is it that someone can be so alert so early in the morning? Would this be expected of her now that she is a wife?
“The child pleased her husband. There is the proof. Now take the sheet and carry out your duty. The marriage is officially consummated.” The men start to back out of the room, like the servants from exotic eastern lands that Beatrice saw once in Venice.
“Your every word will reflect nothing but happiness over the success of this event.”
Beatrice is surprised that all of her insides have not spilled out onto the sheets. The smattering of blood staining the white cloth brings back last night’s event. Avoiding the faces of the receding men, of her mother, and of the two ladies who are removing the evidence, she wraps the robe tightly around her frame and turns to look out the window. Snow has fallen overnight, weighing down the landscape. The trees seem burdened; the branches, ready to drop under the weight of the icy overlay. Beatrice’s womb, jostled from its virgin’s slumber the night before, also feels similarly heavy. She squints her eyes against the white vista, which reflects its brightness back to her, startling her memory. As images come rushing into her mind, the activity in the room falls away, and the memories of previous days flush her face with shame.
Could the weather have been more inauspicious for a wedding? It was so cold this winter that Beatrice’s father had to hire ice cutters to chop great frozen blocks out of the Po River so that the wedding party could depart for Milan. Beatrice had watched the men hack away with their giant axes, hoping as the frozen splinters flew like sparks into the brittle air that the ice would prove too thick, and the wedding would have to be postponed. Perhaps in the interim, she would fall off of one of her horses and die.
But she had no such luck. After many cancellations and excuses, Ludovico had finally confirmed the date, but for the most frigid time of year, when traveling down icy rivers and through frozen paths was usually impossible. Beatrice and her family were certain that he was trying to buy himself yet more time.