Painting Mona Lisa

Two days after the murder, Leonardo had dispatched a letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici.

My lord Lorenzo, I need to speak privately with you concerning a matter of the utmost importance.

No reply was forthcoming: Lorenzo, overcome with grief, hid in the Medici palazzo, which had become a fortress surrounded by scores of armed men. He received no visitors; letters requesting his opinion or his favour piled up unanswered.

After a week without a reply, Leonardo borrowed a gold florin and went to the door of the Medici stronghold. He bribed one of the guards there to deliver a second letter straightaway, while he stood waiting in the loggia watching the hard rain pound the cobblestone streets.

My lord Lorenzo, I come neither seeking favour nor speaking of business. I have critical information concerning the death of your brother, for your ears alone.

Several minutes later he was admitted after being thoroughly checked for weapons – ridiculous, since he had never owned one nor had any idea of how to wield one.

Pale and lifeless in an unadorned black tunic, Lorenzo, his neck still bandaged, received Leonardo in his study, surrounded by artwork of astonishing beauty. He gazed up at Leonardo with eyes clouded by guilt and grief – yet could not hide his interest in hearing what the artist had to say.

On the morning of the twenty-sixth of April, Leonardo had stood several rows from the altar in the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. He’d had questions for Lorenzo about a joint commission he and his former teacher Andrea Verrochio had received to sculpt a bust of Giuliano, and hoped to catch il Magnifico after the service. Leonardo only attended Mass when he had business to conduct; he found the natural world far more awe-inspiring than a manmade cathedral. He was on very good terms with the Medici. Over the past few years, he had stayed for months at a time in Lorenzo’s house as one of the many artists in the family’s employ.

To Leonardo’s surprise that morning in the Duomo, Giuliano had arrived, late, dishevelled, and escorted by Francesco de’ Pazzi and his employee.

Leonardo found men and women equally beautiful, equally worthy of his love, but he lived an unrequited life by choice. An artist could not allow the storms of love to interrupt his work. He avoided women most of all, for the demands of a wife and children would make his studies – of art, of the world and its inhabitants – impossible. He did not want to become as his master Verrochio was – wasting his talent, taking on any work, whether it be the construction of masks for Carnivale, or the gilding of a lady’s slippers, to feed his hungry family. There was never any time to experiment, to observe, to improve his skills.

Ser Antonio, Leonardo’s grandfather, had first explained this concept to him. Antonio had loved his grandson deeply, ignoring the fact that he was the illegitimate get of a servant girl. As Leonardo grew, only his grandfather noted the boy’s talent, and had given him a book of paper and charcoal. When Leonardo was seven years old, he had been sitting in the cool grass with a silverpoint stylus and a rough panel of wood, studying how the wind rippled through the leaves of an olive orchard. Ser Antonio – ever busy, straight-shouldered and sharp-eyed despite his eighty-eight years – had paused to stand beside him, and look with him at the glittering trees.

Quite suddenly and unprompted, he said, Pay no attention to custom, my boy. I had half your talent – yes, I was good at drawing, and eager, like you, to understand how the natural world works – but I listened to my father. Before I came to the farm, I was apprenticed to him as a notary.

That is what we are – a family of notaries. One sired me, and so I sired one myself – your father. What have we given the world? Contracts and bills of exchange, and signatures on documents which will turn to dust.

I did not give up my dreams altogether; even as I learned about the profession, I drew in secret. I stared at birds and rivers, and wondered how they worked. But then I met your grandmother Lucia and fell in love. It was the worst thing ever to happen, for I abandoned art and science and married her. Then there were children, and no time to look at trees. Lucia found my scribblings and cast them into the fire.

But God has given us you – you with your amazing mind and eyes and hands. You have a duty not to abandon them.

Promise me you will not make my mistake; promise me you will never let your heart carry you away.

Young Leonardo had promised.

But when he became a protégé of the Medici and a member of their inner circle, he had been drawn, physically and emotionally, to Lorenzo’s younger brother. Giuliano was infinitely lovable. It was not simply the man’s striking appearance – Leonardo was himself far more attractive, often called ‘beautiful’ by his friends – but rather the pure goodness of his spirit.

This fact Leonardo kept to himself. He did not wish to make Giuliano, a lover of women, uncomfortable; nor did he care to scandalize Lorenzo, his host and patron.

When Giuliano had appeared in the Duomo, Leonardo – only two rows behind him – could not help but stare steadily at him. He noted Giuliano’s downcast demeanour, and was filled with neither sympathy nor attraction, but a welling of bitter jealousy.

The previous evening, the artist had set out with the intention of speaking to Lorenzo about the commission.

He had made his way onto the Via de’ Gori, past the church of San Lorenzo. The Palazzo Medici lay just ahead, to his left, and he stepped out into the street towards it.

It was dusk. To the west lay the high, narrow tower of the Palazzo della Signoria, and the great curving cupola of the Duomo, distinct and dark against an impossible horizon of incandescent coral fading gradually to lavender, then grey. Given the hour, traffic was light, and Leonardo paused in the street, lost in the beauty of his surroundings. He watched as a carriage rolled towards him, and enjoyed the crisp silhouettes of the horses, their bodies impenetrably black, set against the backdrop of the brilliant sky, with the sun behind them so that all detail was swallowed … Sundown was his favourite hour, for the failing light infused forms and colours with a tenderness, a sense of gentle mystery that the noon sun burned away.

He became lost in the play of shadow on the horses’ bodies, on the rippling of muscles beneath their flesh, the spirited toss of their heads – so much so that as they came rumbling down upon him, he had to collect himself and move swiftly out of their way. He found himself standing on the southern flank of the Palazzo Medici; his destination, less than a minute’s walk away, was the Via Larga.

A short distance in front of him, the driver of the carriage jerked the horses to a stop and the door opened. Leonardo hung back, and watched as a young woman stepped out. The twilight turned the marked whiteness of her skin into dove grey, her eyes to nondescript darkness. The drabness of her gown and veil, the downward cast of her face, marked her as the servant of a wealthy family. There was purpose in her step and furtiveness in her posture as her gaze swept from side to side. She hurried to the palazzo’s side entrance and knocked insistently.

A pause, and the door opened with a long, sustained creak. The servant moved back to the carriage and gestured urgently to someone inside.

A second woman emerged from the carriage and moved gracefully, swiftly, towards the open doorway.

Leonardo spoke her name aloud without intending to. She was a friend of the Medici, a frequent visitor to the palazzo; he had talked to her on several occasions. Even before he saw her clearly, he recognized her movements, the cant of her shoulders, the way her head swivelled on her neck as she turned to look up at him.

He took a step closer, and was finally able to see her face.

Her nose was long and straight, the tip down turned, the nostrils flared; her forehead was broad and very high. Her chin was pointed, but the cheeks and jaw were gracefully rounded, like her shoulders, which inclined towards the Palazzo Medici although her face was turned towards his.

She had always been beautiful, but now the dimness softened everything, gave her features a haunting quality they had not heretofore possessed. She seemed to melt into the air; it was impossible to tell where the shadows ended and she began. Her luminous face, her décolleté, her hands, seemed to float suspended against the dark forest of her gown and hair. Her expression was one of covert joy; her eyes held sublime secrets, her lips the hint of a complicitous smile.

In that instant, she was more than human: she was divine.

He reached out with his hand, half thinking it would pass through her, as if she were a phantom.

She pulled away, and he saw, even in the greyness, the bright flare of fear in her eyes, in the parting of her lips: she had not meant to be discovered. Had he possessed a feather, he would have whisked away the deep line between her brows and resurrected the look of mystery.

He murmured her name again, this time a question, but her gaze had already turned towards the open doorway. Leonardo followed it, and caught a glimpse of another familiar face: Giuliano’s. His body was entirely obscured by shadow; he did not see Leonardo, only the woman.

And she saw Giuliano, and bloomed.

In that instant, Leonardo understood and turned his cheek away, overwhelmed by bitterness, as the door closed behind them.

He did not go to see Lorenzo that night. He went home to his little apartment and slept poorly. He stared up at the ceiling and saw the gently lucent features of the woman emerging from the blackness.

The following morning, gazing on Giuliano in the Duomo, Leonardo dwelled on his own unhappy passion. He recalled, again and again, the painful instant when he had seen the look pass between Giuliano and the woman, when he had realized Giuliano’s heart belonged to her, and hers to him; and he cursed himself for being vulnerable to such a foolish emotion as jealousy.

He had been so ensnared by his reverie that he had been startled by the sudden movement in front of him. A robed figure stepped forward a fraction of a second before Giuliano turned to look behind him, then released a sharp gasp.

There followed Baroncelli’s hoarse shout. Leonardo had stared up, stricken, at the glint of the raised blade. In the space of a breath, the frightened worshipers scattered, pulling the artist backwards with the tide of bodies. He had thrashed, struggling vainly to reach Giuliano, with the thought of protecting him from further attack, but he could not even hold his ground.

In the wild scramble, Leonardo’s view of Baroncelli’s knife entering Giuliano’s flesh had been blocked. But Leonardo had seen the final blows of Francesco’s unspeakably brutal attack – the dagger biting, again and again, into Giuliano’s flesh, just as Archbishop Salviati would, in due turn, bite into Francesco de’ Pazzi’s shoulder.

The instant he realized what was happening, Leonardo let go of a loud shout – inarticulate, threatening, horrified – at the attackers. At last the crowd cleared; at last no one stood between him and the assassins. He had run towards them as Francesco, still shrieking, moved on. But it was too late to shelter, to protect, Giuliano’s good, innocent spirit.

Leonardo dropped to his knees beside the fallen man. He lay half-curled on his side, his mouth still working; blood foamed at his lips and spilled from his wounds.

Leonardo pressed his hand to the worst of them, the gaping hole in Giuliano’s chest. He could hear the frail, gurgling wheeze of the victim’s lungs as they fought to expel blood and draw in air. But Leonardo’s efforts to staunch the flow were futile.

Each wound on the front of Giuliano’s pale green tunic released its own steady stream of blood. The streams forked then rejoined, creating a latticework over the young man’s body until at last they merged into the growing dark pool on the marble floor.

‘Giuliano,’ Leonardo had gasped, tears pouring down his cheeks at the sight of such suffering, at the sight of beauty so marred.

Giuliano did not hear him. He was beyond hearing, beyond sight: his half-open eyes already stared into the next world. As Leonardo hovered over him, he retched up a volume of bright, foaming blood; his limbs twitched briefly, then his eyes widened. Thus he died.

Now, standing in front of Lorenzo, Leonardo said nothing of Giuliano’s final suffering to Lorenzo, for such details would only fuel Lorenzo’s grief. He spoke not of Baroncelli, nor of Francesco de’ Pazzi. Instead, he spoke of a third man, one who had yet to be found.

Leonardo recounted that he had seen, in the periphery of his vision, a robed figure step forward on Giuliano’s right, and that he believed it was this man who had delivered the first blow. As Giuliano tried to back away from Baroncelli, the figure had stood fast – pressed hard against the victim and trapped him. The unknown did not even recoil when Francesco struck out wildly with the dagger, but remained firmly in place until Francesco and Baroncelli moved on.

Once Giuliano had died, Leonardo had glanced up and noticed the man moving quickly towards the door that led to the piazza. He must have paused at some point to look behind him, to be sure that his victim died.

‘Assassin!’ the artist had shouted. ‘Stop!’

There was such outraged authority, such pure force in his voice that the conspirator had stopped in mid-stride, and glanced swiftly over his shoulder.

Leonardo captured his image with a trained artist’s eye. The man wore the robes of a penitent – crude burlap – and his clean-shaven face was half-shadowed by a cowl. Only the lower half of his lip and his chin were visible.

Held close to his side, his hand gripped a bloodied stiletto.

After he had fled, Leonardo had gently rolled Giuliano’s body onto its side, and discovered the puncture – small but very deep – in his midback.

This he relayed to Lorenzo. But he did not admit what he knew in his tortured heart: that he, Leonardo, was responsible for Giuliano’s death.

His guilt was not irrational. It was the product of long meditation on the events that had occurred. Had he, the artist, not been so overcome by love and pain and jealousy, Giuliano might have lived.

It was Leonardo’s habit to study crowds – faces, bodies, posture – and from this, he usually learned a great deal of information. Almost as much could be read from a man’s back as from his front. If the artist had not been absorbed by thoughts of Giuliano and the woman, he would surely have noticed the exceptional tension in the penitent’s stance, for the man had been almost directly in front of him. He might have noticed something peculiar in Baroncelli or Francesco de’ Pazzi’s demeanour as they waited beside Giuliano. He should have sensed the anxiety of the three men, and deduced that Giuliano was in great danger.

If he had been paying attention, he would have seen the penitent surreptitiously reach for the stiletto; he would have noticed Baroncelli’s hand tensing on the hilt of his sword.

And there would have been time for him to take a single step forwards. To reach for the penitent’s hand. To move between Giuliano and Baroncelli.

Instead, his passion had reduced him to a witless bystander, rendered helpless by the panicked, fleeing crowd. And it had cost Giuliano his life.

He bowed his head at the weight of the guilt, then raised it again and looked in il Magnifico‘s sorrowful, eager eyes.

‘I am certain this man was disguised, my lord.’

Lorenzo was intrigued. ‘How can you possibly know that?’

‘His posture. Penitents indulge in self-flagellation, they wear hair shirts beneath their robes. Then slump, cringe, and move gingerly, because of the pain each time the shirt touches their skin. This man moved freely; his posture was straight and sure. But the muscles were tensed.

‘I believe, as well, that he was from the upper classes, given the dignity and gentility of his aspect.’

Lorenzo’s gaze was penetrating. ‘All this you have ascertained from a man’s movements, a man who was draped in a robe?’

Leonardo stared back unflinching. ‘I would not have come if I had not.’

‘Then you shall be my agent.’ Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed with hatred and determination. ‘You shall help me find this man.’

So, over the past year, Leonardo had been summoned several times to the prison in the Bargello, to carefully examine the lips and chins and postures of several unfortunate men. None of them had matched those of the penitent he had seen in the cathedral.

The night before Baroncelli’s execution, Lorenzo, had sent two guards to bring Leonardo to the palazzo on the Via Larga.

Lorenzo had changed little physically – save for the pale scar on his neck. If his unseen wound had similarly healed, this day had torn it open, rendered it fresh and raw.

Had Leonardo not been so stricken, he might have delighted in il Magnifico‘s unique features, especially his prominent nose. The bridge rose briefly just beneath the eyebrows, then flattened and abruptly disappeared, as if God had taken his thumb and squashed it down. Yet it rose again, rebellious and astonishing in its length, and sloped precipitously to the left. Its shape rendered his voice harshly nasal

That evening, il Magnifico wore a woollen tunic of deep rich blue; white ermine edged the collar and cuffs. He was an unhappy victor this night, but he seemed more troubled than gloating. ‘Perhaps you have already deduced why I have called for you,’ he said.

‘Yes. I am to go to the piazza tomorrow to look for the third man.’ Leonardo hesitated; he, too, was troubled. ‘I need your assurance first.’

‘Ask and I will give it. I have Baroncelli now; I cannot rest until the third assassin is found.’

‘Baroncelli is to die, and rumour has it that he has been tortured mercilessly.’

Lorenzo interrupted swiftly. ‘And with good reason. He was my best hope to find the third assassin; but if he does know him, he will take the secret to Hell.’

The bitterness in il Magnifico‘s tone gave Leonardo pause. ‘Ser Lorenzo, if I find this third assassin, I cannot in good conscience turn him over to be killed.’

Lorenzo recoiled as if he had been struck full in the face; his pitch rose with indignance. ‘You would let my brother’s murderer go free?’

‘No.’ Leonardo’s own voice trembled faintly. ‘I esteemed your brother more highly than any other.’

‘I know,’ Lorenzo replied softly, in a way that said he did know the full truth of the matter.

Gathering himself, Leonardo bowed his head, then lifted it again. ‘I want to see the man brought to justice – to be deprived of his freedom, condemned to work for the good of others, to be forced to spend the remainder of his life contemplating his crime.’

Lorenzo’s upper lip was invisible; his lower stretched so taut over his jutting lower teeth that the tips of them showed. ‘Such idealism is admirable.’ He paused. ‘I am a reasonable man – and like you, an honest one. If I agree that, should you find him, he will not be killed but instead imprisoned, will you go to the piazza to find him?’

‘I will,’ Leonardo promised. ‘And if I fail tomorrow, I will not stop searching until he is found.’

Lorenzo nodded, satisfied. He looked away, and stared at a Flemish painting of bewitching delicacy on his wall. ‘You should know that this man …’ He stopped himself, then started again. ‘This goes far deeper than the murder of my brother, Leonardo. They mean to destroy us.’

‘To destroy you and your family?’

Lorenzo faced him again. ‘You. Me. Botticelli. Verrochio. Perugino. Ghirlandaio. All that Florence represents.’ Leonardo opened his mouth to ask Who? Who means to do this?, but Lorenzo lifted a hand to silence him. ‘Go to the piazza tomorrow. Find the third man. I mean to question him personally.’

It was agreed that Lorenzo would pay Leonardo a token sum for a ‘commission’ – the sketch of Bernardo Baroncelli hanged, with the possibility that such a sketch might become a portrait. Thus Leonardo could honestly answer that he was in the Piazza della Signoria because Lorenzo de’ Medici wanted a drawing; he was a very bad liar, and prevarication did not suit him.

As he stood in the square on the cold December morning of Baroncelli’s death, staring intently at the face of each man who passed, he puzzled over il Magnifico’s words.

They mean to destroy us …

PART II LISA

XI

I will always remember the day my mother told me the story of Giuliano de’ Medici’s murder.

It was a December day more than thirteen and a half years after the event; I was twelve. For the first time in my life, I stood inside the great Duomo, my head thrown back as I marvelled at the magnificence of Brunelleschi’s cupola while my mother, her hands folded in prayer, whispered the gruesome tale to me.

Midweek after morning Mass, the cathedral was nearly deserted, save for a sobbing widow on her knees just beyond the entry, and a priest replacing the tapers on the altar’s candelabra. We had stopped directly in front of the high altar, where the events of the assassination had taken place. I loved tales of adventure, and tried to picture a young Lorenzo de’ Medici, his sword drawn, leaping into the choir and running past the priests to safety.

I turned to look at my mother, Lucrezia, and tugged at her embroidered brocade sleeve. ‘What happened after Lorenzo escaped?’ I hissed. ‘What became of Giuliano?’

My mother’s eyes had filled with tears. She was, as my father often said, easily moved. ‘He died of his terrible wounds,’ she said, and sighed. ‘And the executions of the conspirators were horribly brutal … It was a horrible time for Florence.’

Zalumma, who stood on her other side, leaned forward to scowl a warning at me.

‘Didn’t anyone try to help Giuliano?’ I asked. ‘Or was he already dead? I would have at least gone to see if he was still alive.’

‘Hush,’ Zalumma warned me. ‘Can’t you see she is becoming upset?’

This was indeed cause for concern. My mother was not well, and agitation worsened her condition.

‘She was the one who told the story,’ I countered. ‘I did not ask for it.’

‘Quiet!’ Zalumma ordered. I was stubborn, but she was more so. She took my mother’s elbow and in a sweeter tone, said, ‘Madonna, it’s time to leave. We must get home before your absence is discovered.’

She referred to my father, who had spent that day, like most others, tending his business. He would be aghast if he returned to find his wife gone; this was the first time in years she had dared venture out so far and for so long.

We had secretly planned this outing for some time. I had never seen the Duomo, even though I had grown up looking at its great brick cupola from the opposite side of the Arno, from our house on the Via Maggio. All my life, I had attended our local church of Santo Spirito, with its interior classical columns and arches made of pietra serena, a fine, pale grey stone. Our main altar was also centred beneath a cupola designed by the great Brunelleschi, his final achievement; I had thought Santo Spirito, with its thirty-eight side altars impossibly grand, impossibly large – until I stood inside the great Duomo. The great cupola challenged the imagination. Gazing on it, I understood why, when it was first constructed, people were reluctant to stand beneath it. I understood, too, why some of those who had heard the shouting on the day of Giuliano’s murder had rushed outside, believing the great dome was finally collapsing.

Magic it was, for something so vast to rise into the air without visible support.

My mother had brought me to the Piazza del Duomo not just to marvel at the cupola, but to slake my yearning for art – and hers. She was well-born and well-educated; she adored poetry, which she read in Italian and Latin (both of which she had insisted on teaching me). She had passionately acquired a wealth of knowledge about the city’s cultural treasures – and had long been troubled by the fact that her illness had prevented her from sharing them with me. So when the opportunity arose, on that bright December day, we took a carriage east, and headed across the Ponte Vecchio, into the heart of Florence.