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Print ISBN: 978-1-62872-639-8
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Printed in the United States of America
For my husband, Mike,
who gave me the courage to chase my dreams
1499
Milan
Leonardo
December. Milan
From up close, he could see that the mural was already beginning to flake off the wall. The paint was not smooth, as it should be, but grainy, as though applied over a fine layer of sand. Soon the pigment would break away from the plaster and crumble into specks that would blow away, bit by bit. The earthy tones, made from dirt and clay, would be the first to go. The vermilion, the rusty red color of blood and pomegranate, would most likely stick the longest; it had the most permanent qualities. But the ultramarine worried him most. Ground from precious lapis stones, the brilliant blue was shipped in from a faraway land in the East and was the most expensive hue on the market. By using a hint of ultramarine, a painter could elevate a picture from mediocre to masterpiece, but its use on fresco was rare. Without ultramarine, his work could be dismissed as insignificant or, worse yet, conventional. And it was already starting to crack.
“Porca vacca,” he swore under his breath. The deterioration was his own fault. He had pushed his experiments too far. He always pushed things too far. The left side of his face twitched. He took a deep breath, and his expression softened back into serenity. No need to feel ruffled. For now, he reassured himself, this was still a masterpiece, and he was still the master. He turned to entertain his audience with secrets and stories. It was, after all, what they had come for: to hear the great Leonardo from Vinci explain his latest painting, The Last Supper.
“One of you will betray me!” Leonardo boomed, his voice echoing down the vaulted stone dining hall in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where his fresco spanned the north wall.
The crowd of French tourists was delighted by his dramatic outburst. He knew that for many of them, he was a great curiosity. At forty-eight years old, the Master from Vinci was one of the most famous men on the Italian peninsula; his name had spread to France, Spain, England, and the far-flung land of Turkey. He was known for his ingenious designs of war machines and groundbreaking innovations in paint. Tourists traveled from all over the world to see him stand in front of his famous fresco, which was known for its luscious colors, still clinging to the plaster for now—for its thirteen realistic portraits of Jesus and his disciples, and its an undulating composition, balanced around a central, stable Christ.
“This is the moment immediately following Christ’s accusation,” he said, stepping away from the fresco in hopes of diverting the crowd’s attention away from the decaying paint. “At this point in the story, no one yet knows it is Judas who will betray Jesus. The revelation that there is an impostor among them is shocking. The disciples jump up, flail their arms, and cry out in alarm. One of them is a traitor. But who?” He scanned the tourists, as though hunting for a snake among them. In truth, he was studying their faces, looking for unique features and expressions that he might scribble into his notebook after they were gone.
“I hear you use your own face for Doubting Thomas,” a voluptuous French girl remarked in heavily accented Italian. “But I do not see ressemblance.” Her lips puckered over the French pronunciation, as though ready to plant a kiss.
Leonardo knew that both women and men appreciated his good looks. Although he often wore spectacles to aid his aging sight, when he looked into a mirror he saw that his golden eyes still sparked with youthful vigor. He was lithe and muscular, with a full head of wavy dark brown hair just starting to gray. If the masses were going to gawk at him as though he were some sort of mythical creature, he had a responsibility to look good, he reasoned, so he bathed every day and wore fashionable clothing that heralded his success: knee-length tunics, pastel-colored tights, and a gold ring with multicolored gemstones in the shape of a bird, worth more than most artists made in a lifetime.
He slid his eyes to the French girl’s bosom, flushed pink and corseted upward in the latest fashion. Sometimes when a tourist caught his eye, he took the boy or girl back to his studio to sketch them, and sometimes they were so excited to meet the maestro that they happily slipped into bed with him, too. “That’s because there is no ressemblance,” he replied, copying her French accent. “If I relied on my own image as a model, I would draw variations of myself over and over again and never generate a unique face. And that would make for boring pictures.”
His audience laughed, including the fleshy French girl.
Patrons often told Leonardo that when he spoke, it was difficult to tell if he were serious or joking, so he injected extra gravitas into his voice. “I’m telling the truth.”
Except for one detail.
He looked down at the bejeweled bird glinting on the ring finger of his left hand, his dominant hand. God-fearing Italians considered left-handedness an aberration. The right side was the divine side. The left, driven toward sin. Most left-handed children were forced to use their right hands, to keep them on the righteous path. Leonardo’s father had produced twelve legitimate children with a legitimate wife and all were right-handed. But for Leonardo, his bastard son, the result of a youthful affair with a lowly house slave from Constantinople, the sinister side had been acceptable.
In The Last Supper, two seats to the right of Jesus, a shadowy man in a green tunic reached for a roll of bread with his left hand. Judas was left-handed, too. “Imagine you’re part of a large family.” Leonardo stared past the French girl and into his painting. “One of twelve siblings gathered around a holiday dinner table. Your parent is in the middle, trying to keep order and balance. Imagine …” The sounds and smells of the room seemed to fall away as he meditated on Judas’s left hand. “But as with any family, beneath the surface, there are secrets. In the middle of our boisterous family, one man doesn’t belong. He is still among us, but hard to find.”
In other depictions of the Last Supper, Judas was easy to spot, often sitting on the opposite side of the table from the others. In Leonardo’s version, however, the traitor was in the middle of the group, just one of the disciples, hidden through his very inclusion, only identifiable by the small moneybag he clasped.
“In the moment immediately following Jesus’s accusation, everyone is in shock, asking who is the betrayer. Is it him? Or him? Or that one over there? Or, the most frightening question of all, could it be me? When none of us have yet been identified as the betrayer, we all are. We could all be the illegitimate other. We could all be the Judas.”
As the spectators leaned in to examine each face, Leonardo groaned inwardly. He had intended to divert their attention from the deteriorating picture, not direct them to scrutinize it more carefully.
Suddenly, the refectory door banged open and an attractive twenty-year-old dandy burst into the chamber. Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno had a panicked look on his smooth-skinned face, and his coiffed hair was mussed. “Il Moro is coming!”
The crowd fell silent and exchanged looks, as though trying to discern if this were a genuine warning or a ruse designed to entertain them. They glanced at Leonardo for a sign. “If you’re teasing, Salaì, it’s very cruel to these poor people.” He called his assistant Salaì, which meant Little Devil, because of his propensity for playing practical jokes during the past—how long had it been now? Ten years already?
“This is no trick, Master. I swear. Il Moro is returning. With an army.” Although prone to mischief, the young man wasn’t a good actor. He was telling the truth.
Two ladies screamed. The voluptuous French girl pressed her hand against her corseted stomach. Husbands ordered families to flee. If Il Moro was returning to Milan, all of their lives were at risk.
Especially Leonardo da Vinci’s.
The Sforza family had ruled Normandy for fifty years, until two months ago, when the French military invaded the capital and drove the family from town. Duke Ludovico Sforza—called the Moor because of his dark complexion—had escaped unharmed, but it was a humiliating defeat. If Salaì were right about the ousted leader’s return, Sforza would mount a vicious assault. Every Frenchman still in Milan would be in danger.
Including Leonardo. For the last eighteen years he had been living and working in Milan, serving the Milanese court, but when the duke fled, Leonardo had not followed like a loyal patriot. Instead, he’d remained in his comfortable rooms in Sforza Castle and offered his services to the French king. If the duke returned to power, Leonardo would probably be arrested for treason. And everyone knew what the Sforzas did to traitors.
“We must go to the king. He’ll take us with him to France or Naples or wherever he is headed.” Leonardo twirled the bird ring on his left hand.
Salaì’s expression darkened. “The king is already gone. He took his court with him. He left us behind.”
Leonardo’s left eye twitched. He needed time to think, so he pulled out the little notebook that dangled from his belt, sat down on the floor in front of the fresco, and began to sketch the panicked French tourists. With quick strokes, he captured rough impressions: their wide eyes, flared noses, thrashing arms, anything to give the suggestion of fear. The only way to truly understand human emotion was to study its physical effects, and having the chance to witness this kind of raw reaction was rare. He wished he could capture the sound of rustling fabric, gulped cries, and panting. If he could have drawn the taste of terror, he would have.
“Master, please, not now …” Salaì gently tried to take the notebook from his hands, but Leonardo would not let go. “We are abandoned. We must leave Milan.”
“We should think before we do anything hasty.” He must sketch that plucky French girl the way he saw her now: head thrown back, mouth open in a wail, chest heaving and flushed. Fear looked a lot like ecstasy, and he scribbled a reminder to study the implications of such an incongruous similarity. As she hustled out of the room, he lamented that he wouldn’t have the chance to indulge his desires with her.
The last Frenchman left the hall. The heavy door closed, muffling the cacophony of panic in the streets.
Salaì grabbed Leonardo’s elbow. “We don’t have time to think.”
“There’s always time to think, my young apprentice.” Leonardo calmly put away his notebook.
Having time to think was why he had tried this now-spoiling experimental fresco technique in the first place. In true fresco, an artist slathered a coat of lime onto the wall and then painted directly into wet plaster, so the picture became a permanent part of the building. However, durability had its price. One had to finish painting an area of fresh plaster before it dried. It required fast, continuous work—but fast and continuous wasn’t Leonardo’s style. He liked to take his time, to contemplate every detail. He might start a project, stop, and then start again. Moreover, many of his favorite colors, like ultramarine, were made from minerals that counteracted with lime. It was why he’d developed a technique befitting his style, applying an egg-based tempera directly onto a dry wall sealed with primer. Using that method, he could employ his favorite mineral pigments—ultramarine, vermilion, even the sparkling green-blue of azurite. But more importantly, by avoiding wet plaster, he could take his time, making changes whenever a better idea occurred to him days, weeks, months, even years later. Once, while painting this very fresco, he had thought about a single brushstroke for three days before applying a touch of umber to Jesus’s right hand.
Salaì pulled Leonardo to his feet. “I already have your notebooks and loose drawings packed.” He patted a heavy satchel slung across his torso. “We’ll have to leave everything else behind.”
Leonardo looked back at The Last Supper. The paint was deteriorating, of that there was no doubt. He would not be able to save the crumbling picture. “That’s all right, Salaì,” he said, as much to himself as to his assistant. “Those who long to hold onto their belongings forever are misguided. We artists know how to let go of our possessions. Our work, after all, doesn’t belong to us, but to the patron. Besides, paintings are never finished, only abandoned.”
As they made their way out, cannon fire echoed in the distance. Outside was chaos. Galloping horses carried soldiers out of town. French courtiers and citizens frantically packed up carriages. A stormy winter wind kicked up clouds of dirt, veiling the city in a brown haze. The fashionable northern capital of Milan had descended into anarchy. In the midst of the pandemonium, a solitary French soldier stood peacefully in the piazza and gazed up into the eyes of a massive clay statue, a horse that towered taller than five men standing on each other’s shoulders.
That clay horse, a monument to Il Moro’s dead father, had been designed by Leonardo as a test model for what would have been the largest bronze equestrian statue in history. Poets composed verses about the glorious beast, and tourists traveled from far and wide to visit the model, planning to return to see the bronze statue once it was finished. But Leonardo had never even completed the mold for the sculpture, and eventually Il Moro had melted down the statue’s bronze to make cannonballs for war. When the French invaded Milan, they had used the clay horse for target practice, shooting it with burning arrows and beating it with clubs. The soldiers took off its ear, part of its nose, and a chunk of its hindquarters. If it had been a living horse, it would have died within the first few moments. But even though the clay model was full of holes, it was still standing.
“Master, come. We have to go!” Across the street, Salaì was saddling two horses.
Leonardo didn’t move. He couldn’t take his eyes off the French soldier silently communing with the great horse. Leonardo hoped the monument was giving the young man a sense of peace and purpose during this time of turmoil. The soldier reached into his belt and slowly pulled out a long sword. Leonardo imagined the young warrior placing his weapon at the foot of the statue, as though surrendering before the beauty of his art. Instead, the soldier swung his sword and yelled, “Death to Sforza!” The blade hit the horse’s front right leg with a reverberating clang. The leg shattered. The horse held strong for a moment, and then teetered forward and crashed to the ground.
“No!” Leonardo shouted. He had spent four long years designing that horse. Many nights he had fantasized about finally casting the statue in gleaming bronze.
At this point in his career he was an uncontested success, but many of his contemporaries were already dead. What would he leave behind once he, too, was gone? He had no children to carry his name into the future. Half of his paintings were unfinished. The other half, including his portraits of Il Moro’s mistresses, hung in private rooms and might never be on regular display to the public. He had a slew of unrealized inventions and a stack of notebooks full of useless ramblings. Now his Last Supper was crumbling off the wall and the model for his equestrian masterpiece was destroyed. Years from now, would anyone remember Leonardo, the painter, inventor, and engineer from the inconsequential town of Vinci?
“Leonardo!” Salaì called, already astride his horse.
He turned away from his clay horse and crossed the chaotic street. When he’d moved to Milan, he had been thirty years old, just beginning to make a name for himself as an engineer, scientist, inventor, director of spectacular social events and, of course, painter. In Milan, he had grown into an elder master. He’d thought he would die in that great city. He mounted his horse and nodded to Salaì. Side by side, they galloped out of Milan’s protective walls and into the surrounding wilderness. No one knew what the future held for the city, or for the war-torn peninsula, as kings and dukes and popes battled over territory. No one knew what the future held for Leonardo. Only one thing was certain: the Master from Vinci needed to find a new home, a new patron, a new life, and a new legacy.
1500
Michelangelo
January. Rome
As he waited for the unveiling, Michelangelo Buonarroti felt his world tilt. Then his vision blurred. He darted his eyes around in hopes of getting his bearings, but the marble columns, wood-beamed ceiling, and gold-flaked frescoes swirled around him. The edges of his sight started to go dark. Black spots appeared. He felt like he was falling, so he leaned against the cold stone wall.
He remembered to breathe, and the black dots slowly began to fade.
None of his sculptures had ever been revealed at a grand public event before. No matter where it was happening, this would have been the most important moment of his career. But this wasn’t just any location. It was the biggest stage in all of Christendom: St. Peter’s Basilica.
How heartbreaking, he thought, that the sprawling three-story basilica had fallen into disrepair over the past twelve hundred years. Along the western side, the wood-gabled ceiling was collapsing and several columns were cracked. An inexperienced mason had erected a crude wall to buttress the structure, but one side continued to crumble. Wind whistled in through gaping cracks, and tiles of marble flooring were missing. But despite the damage, he still felt the soul of the church inside those walls.
The Vatican was packed with pilgrims that morning. It was a Jubilee year, when the pope offered forgiveness to any sinner who walked through the basilica’s doors, so thousands had converged on Rome to pray and confess their sins. That day, in the chapel of Santa Petronilla, they would also witness the unveiling of a new statue by a young, unknown sculptor.
Michelangelo believed he had created something special, but he had to wait and see if it would move the masses. In a few moments, he would be either proclaimed a brilliant success or dismissed as a failure. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his tunic. In the bottom of each were small piles of marble dust. He squeezed his hands around the powder and rubbed the granules between his fingers. The ritual kept him calm.
A scruffy twenty-four-year-old, Michelangelo knew he must look like an unrefined brute to the audience. He was short and strong, with muscles developed during years of cutting into marble. He had coarse black hair, rough hands covered in calluses, and a nose that had been flattened during a childhood scuffle with a fellow apprentice who was jealous of his talent. He didn’t care what others thought of his appearance; he washed once a month and wore the clothes of a stonemason: a long linen tunic, baggy pants, and heavy boots. But he had been told that his brown eyes flared with such intensity that most who met him didn’t notice his dress or smell. They were usually too taken in by his passion.
The archpriest of St. Peter’s basilica, his black robes swishing along the marble floor, glided through the mass of pilgrims. His beak-like nose close to Michelangelo’s ear, he whispered, “Are you ready, my son?”
Michelangelo tried to speak, but his voice caught. He nodded silently.
As the archpriest murmured a blessing, a cold layer of sweat formed on Michelangelo’s forehead and upper lip, and when the archpriest grabbed the rope hanging over the statue, Michelangelo’s ears began to ring. He clenched his fists around the mounds of marble dust until his fingernails dug into his palms. The people would probably hate his statue. They wouldn’t understand it. They would mock it, curse it, curse him.
The archpriest yanked the rope.
The thick black curtain dropped to the floor, unveiling a colossal marble statue of the Virgin Mary cradling the crucified Christ. When Michelangelo was six years old, his mother died in childbirth. He was the second oldest of five sons, so she had often been too pregnant to give him much attention, and he’d spent his first two years with a wet nurse, as was customary. Although his own mother had been a distant figure, he was bereft when she died. This sculpture was an expression of that pain: a mother and son alone in their grief, locked in a mass of shadow and light, forever intertwined yet separated. The white stone gleamed with a high polish. Jesus’s body lay limply across his mother’s lap. His skin rippled with life recently lost. Mary’s gown cascaded to the floor in deep folds, while her serene expression revealed resignation to her divine fate.
For the first time, the public was viewing Michelangelo’s Pietà.
The crowd was silent. He scanned their blank expressions, but he couldn’t tell what they were thinking or how they were feeling. His head was pounding, he couldn’t breathe, and pressure was building up in his chest.
Two years ago, when the French Cardinal Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas hired him to carve a marble Pietà for his grave site, Michelangelo had already sculpted a few pieces for his own edification and even been paid for a full-sized Bacchus, but he had never received such a high-profile commission. Despite his inexperience, he’d guaranteed in writing that he would carve the most beautiful statue ever produced in Rome. If he were ever going to fulfill his promise of becoming a great sculptor, a statue of mother-and-son grief was his best chance.
For two grueling years, he’d toiled over the gigantic block of marble. He often forgot to eat, drink, or sleep. The first winter he fell ill, but kept working despite the fever. During that first year, Cardinal Bilhères had often stopped by his studio to check on progress. The Frenchman had praised what he saw emerging from the marble, but then the old cardinal died, never seeing the completed sculpture and never anointing it a success. Michelangelo would have to rely on strangers to decide whether it was a masterpiece or not.
And now, several agonizing moments after the unveiling, the audience was still staring at his creation in silence. Michelangelo pressed his fingernails into his palm.
Finally, one red-haired pilgrim fell to his knees. “Grazie mio Dio.”
Then a young mother, grasping two toddlers, dropped to the floor in prayer. Soon the entire congregation broke out in praise. Some wept, some sang, some mumbled heartfelt adoration. Others sat in stunned silence, mesmerized by the sculpture’s beauty.
He had created his first masterpiece.
Relief rushed over him. The black dots faded. His vision cleared. When he was a baby, his parents had sent him into the quarries around Settignano to be nursed by a marble quarrier’s wife. His first memories were of men digging white slabs out of the earth, the sound of metal hammers clanking against stone, and the taste of marble dust on his tongue. Spending the first two years of his life living among those stonecutters and drinking the milk of a quarrier’s wife had given him an unquenchable thirst for marble. He had sacrificed his whole life to sculpt. He had no wife, no betrothed, no children, no hobbies, and now, he was finally going to reap the benefits of his obsession.
“Who sculpted it?” he heard one pilgrim ask another.
Michelangelo sucked in a breath and prepared to feel the delicious tingle that would surely run up his spine at the sound of his own name.
“Our Gobbo, from Milan,” the other pilgrim responded.
Michelangelo’s throat closed. What had that pilgrim said?
Before he could stop it, that name swept through the crowd like the Arno River rushing through the Tuscan landscape after a heavy rain. “Gobbo, Gobbo, Gobbo,” the pilgrims whispered until everyone seemed to be chanting that name. Gobbo, a second-rate hunchbacked stone carver from Milan. Gobbo, whose figures were static and thick, practically deformed. Gobbo, who didn’t have the talent to mold the Pietà’s pedestal. Michelangelo had toiled his whole life to raise up his family’s name through his art, and now those fools were attributing his masterpiece to that lazy, untalented, godless Gobbo.
When Michelangelo was still in the womb, his mother had tumbled off her horse and was dragged behind the beast for several minutes. Doctors predicted the babe inside would not survive, but inexplicably he’d lived. To celebrate the miraculous birth, his parents had bestowed upon him a unique, divinely inspired name: Michelangelo, one who is protected by the archangel Michael.
Surely God did not save him, give him a rare and beautiful name, and instill in him an unwavering desire to carve marble, only to allow all the credit for his masterpiece to go to that undeserving impostor, Gobbo.
Michelangelo was so angry he was dizzy. The church whirled around him, and the ceiling felt like it was caving in. The archpriest, who might point him out to the crowd, was nowhere to be seen. He had to find a way to ensure that no one ever attributed his sculpture to anyone but him. But how?
Then an idea popped into his head, so perfect that it must have been sent from heaven. To set God’s plan for his life back on track, he needed to inscribe his name directly into the Pietà, so no one could ever mistake who carved it.
There was only one problem. Michelangelo didn’t own the Pietà anymore. It belonged to the church. He couldn’t simply walk up to it and start hacking into the stone. Someone would stop him. Maybe even arrest him. No. To carve his name into the sculpture, he would have to do it late at night, when all the worshipers were gone, the doors closed and locked, and the priests fast asleep.
And to do that, Michelangelo was going to have to break into the Vatican.
Michelangelo peeked out of his hiding place behind a tomb in a decaying side chapel. He had been lying in wait for hours. Finally, all was quiet. Dark. He told himself to stop obsessing about what might happen if he were caught vandalizing church property. He was protecting his family name. He would risk anything.
“God, please forgive me,” he whispered as he crept out from behind the tomb and across the shadowy nave. He had removed his boots to quiet his footfalls, and he clasped his leather satchel tightly against his body to prevent his metal tools from jangling.
In the chapel of Santa Petronilla, a shaft of moonlight cast a soft blue glow across his Pietà. It had been weeks since he had been alone with Mary and Jesus. While he’d prepared for the unveiling, priests or pilgrims had always been milling. But now, in the quiet church, he could hear the marble humming. Whenever he carved, the marble spoke to him, a communion between his soul and the soul of stone. The Pietà had talked, chanted, and sung to him at all hours of the day and night. Now they were alone again, reunited like old friends. Opening his bag, he dumped his tools onto the floor. They clattered loudly. “Cavolo,” Michelangelo hissed. He held his breath, bracing for someone to run into the church and catch him, but the only sound was a gust of wind blowing through a crack in the walls. The clanking tools hadn’t seemed to wake anyone.
He grabbed a hammer and chisel and climbed onto his Pietà. Grainy darkness obscured his vision, but he had labored over this statue for two long years. Even if he were struck blind, he would know every grain.
He ran his hands across the stone and found the familiar marble strap crossing the Madonna’s chest. He slid his chisel down and to the left, and then pulled his hammer back to make the first cut.
Once he started, he couldn’t stop and leave some half-written word scrawled upon his stone. If he made even a single mark on the perfectly polished statue, he had to finish, or else he would have ruined his own masterpiece for nothing.
Michelangelo swung. The hammer clanged against the chisel. The blade made a heavy, reverberating thunk when it hit the rock. The noise echoed through the cavernous church, much more loudly than he had anticipated. Cold fear gripped his chest, but he couldn’t stop now.
Clang, thunk, clang, thunk, clang, thunk.
Marble dust swirled and settled into his hair and clothes. Sweat mixed with grime, creating a gray paste that slid into his eyes. It stung.
The serene face of the Virgin Mary stared down at him. He stopped hammering. Silence engulfed him as he waited for the lady to admonish him for cutting into her chest. Most believed marble was nothing but inert rock, but Michelangelo knew life coursed through its veins, just as blood pumped through the hearts of men. He whispered to Mary, but even he wasn’t always sure what he said when he spoke the language of the stone.
A swish of movement caught his eye. Was it a rodent scurrying across the nave? A bird stuck in the rafters? A cloud passing over the moon? Then he saw the outline of a torch-bearing figure gliding down the far aisle outside the chapel. The maniacal sound of carving must have woken the priests.
Michelangelo lunged off his perch and ducked into a nearby arched recess, hoping to find cover under the veil of heavy shadows. When he looked back, he saw something that made his stomach sink.
His tools were still lying at the base of the sculpture. The pile would prove to the patrolling priest that there was an intruder. If Michelangelo were caught, he could be excommunicated, drawn and quartered, or hung. The pope would damn him for his sins. His flayed skin would burn in Dante’s inferno for eternity.
He didn’t have time to grab the tools. The priest, walking up and down the aisles, was quickly advancing. Michelangelo believed men of God could hear fear, and in that quiet church, his panic must sound like thunder. He sucked in a deep breath and held it.
The priest rounded the far end of the apse and started up the transept toward him, waving the torch across each dark corner. Michelangelo counted the approaching footfalls, each bringing him one step closer to capture.
The clergyman reached Santa Petronilla chapel. Michelangelo saw a stern face with sagging, wrinkled skin peering out from under a cleric’s hood. The old man looked the severe, unforgiving sort.
The priest scanned the statue. His gaze moved toward the incriminating pile of tools. As Michelangelo pressed back into the arched recess, the top of his head bumped against a small metal shelf positioned just above him. Metal clanked against stone.
The priest swung his torch toward the sound. Light flew across the chapel, heading for Michelangelo. He smashed his eyes closed. The heat of the torchlight crossed his face. He expected to hear a surprised roar, but instead the warmth passed right over him. He squinted one eye open in time to see a rat scurry over the priest’s sandaled feet. The padre yelped and shook the torch at the animal. “Rats!”
As the rat skittered back into the dark, the priest glanced around, but seemed content with his search and eager to escape the rodents. He hurried off, vanishing out the back door.
Michelangelo was alone again. He took a heavy, rattling breath.
That rat, he thought, must have been the Holy Spirit sent to scare the clergyman away. God was blessing him and his art once again.
Michelangelo crept out from his hiding place and went back to work. Periodically, a priest checked in on the church, but Michelangelo always slipped back into hiding and evaded capture. Knowing he was under heaven’s protection, he took his time carefully fashioning each ornate Roman letter and even spent an extra hour polishing the Latin words, Michael Angelus Bonarotus Florent Faciebat.
Michelangelo Buonarroti of Florence made this.
Michelangelo completed his job and ducked behind a sarcophagus moments before the cardinals filed in for morning mass, a private affair in which the church elite could mingle before the doors opened to the public. A few minutes into the service, he heard a murmur of excitement ripple through the congregation, but he didn’t look out for fear of being spotted. Instead he hid silently, waiting for his chance to slip out unnoticed.
After the service, the priests opened the front doors and welcomed throngs of pilgrims into the church. Michelangelo waited until the building was full, and then slid out of his hiding place and mixed in with the multitudes. The layer of marble dust helped him blend in. The travelers were covered with dirt from the road.
As he walked by his Pietà, he slowed to listen to the chatter. The pilgrims were all trying out a new, unique name on their tongues. “Michelangelo Buonarroti,” they murmured, passing his name from person to person. Michelangelo flushed with pride.
“One of these days, you’ll learn to let your art speak for itself.”
Michelangelo turned to see Jacopo Galli, the wealthy Roman banker who had recommended him to Cardinal Bilhères for the Pietà, walking beside him. Michelangelo was glad his friend was there to witness this triumph.
Jacopo thrust his chin at the Pietà. “But in the meantime, I’ll admit that when he saw it this morning, he was …” He paused as though savoring a drop of honey on his tongue. “Impressed.”
“When who saw it?”
“The pope, of course.”
Michelangelo stared. Had he heard correctly, or was Jacopo suddenly speaking in tongues? Alexander VI was famous for his power-hungry corruption and fervent sexual appetites, but he was also the revered head of the Catholic Church, man’s closest connection to the heavens. The pope complimenting his work was akin to God sending down heavenly approval.
“His Holiness wanted to see your Pietà unencumbered by the general masses,” Jacopo said, waving to a cardinal lingering nearby. Jacopo always had something brewing with someone important. “And the archpriest invited me for the viewing, hoping I might be able to extol your hard work and talent …”
So that’s why there had been a commotion at morning mass, Michelangelo realized. The pope had been in attendance. “What did he say?”
“He praised it for its beauty. Said it moved him to Godly charity. And we all know that’s an impressive feat for this Holy Father. He even laughed at your ego in signing it. Said you reminded him of Cesare.”
Michelangelo’s stomach flipped. Cesare Borgia was the pope’s illegitimate son and a notorious rogue. Reared for the church and elevated to the rank of cardinal by the age of eighteen, Cesare had become the first man in history to renounce the cardinal’s hat, an unforgivable rebellion in Michelangelo’s opinion. Worse still, according to rumors, Cesare had killed his brother, consummated his love with his sister, and murdered her husband out of jealousy. Currently he was leading the pope’s army on a bloodthirsty rampage across the peninsula to take control of papal lands that were in revolt. Being compared to the infamous Cesare Borgia wasn’t a compliment, unless of course that comparison was uttered by his father, the pope.
“Il Papa said you are all heart and passion,” Jacopo continued. “A beguiling arrogance, I believe he called it. He said, let’s see, what precisely did he say …”
Michelangelo clutched the strap of his leather satchel as he waited for Jacopo to remember the exact words.
“He said, ‘I think that Michelangelo Buonarroti will make something of himself one day.’ It sounded like, if you keep it up, His Holiness might even hire you. Wouldn’t that be something? Working for a pope …”
Michelangelo dropped to knees.
He had come to Rome four years before in hopes of making a name for himself in the ancient capital. The Eternal City excited his imagination. Ancient remains, buried for hundreds of years, were gradually being excavated. Marble columns and triumphant arches were half-exposed, their deteriorating tops rising out of the dirt like tombstones. Every day a new building, statue, or artifact was unearthed. The old Roman Forum was a perfect home for an artist who wanted to study, copy, and imitate the art of the ancients. But despite the great art, Rome disappointed him. The once-powerful capital was now a small, dirty, rural town, teeming with prostitutes, beggars, and thieves. Executed corpses hung on scaffolding, rotting for weeks as a warning to others considering crimes. For a man who was used to the refined beauty of Florence, the coarseness of Rome was shocking. Michelangelo had been ready to flee almost as soon as he arrived, but he couldn’t slink back to Florence a failure. He’d bragged to his family that he would become a great master in Rome. He would return home either a success or not at all.
Even though he had dreamed of triumphing in Rome, he had never imagined compliments from the pope. “His Holiness knows my name?”
“Of course,” Jacopo said, taking Michelangelo’s hand and pulling him to his feet. “Pilgrims will carry word of you and your Pietà all across the peninsula and even to the barbarians beyond. Like the French.”
“And in Florence?”
“In Florence, they’ll throw parades in your honor.”
Michelangelo grabbed Jacopo’s shoulders and kissed both of his cheeks. “Thank you, mi amico. Come. Help me close up my workshop. It’s time for me to go back to Florence.” Honor, after all, was always worth more at home.
Leonardo
Winter. Mantua
Leonardo lit the last fuse. He and Salaì ducked behind a wooden fence for protection as six metal barrels shot out projectiles. The shells whistled into the air and exploded into gold and silver fireworks. As sparks rained down, the population of Mantua cheered. Though it was a cold night, they had all gathered outside the Palazzo Ducale to welcome the visiting Duke Valentinois, Cesare Borgia, commander of the papal armies, to their city.
“That is an extraordinary contraption,” Cesare Borgia said, pointing to the multi-barreled firework launcher. Leonardo had heard the rumors that Cesare’s skin was often covered in purple pox, a sign of the French disease, but he saw no such affliction tonight, not even when the fireworks illuminated his face. The duke was inarguably handsome—tall and muscular with eyes of purest ultramarine blue.
“Well, our maestro is quite extraordinary,” said Isabella d’Este, nestling her hand intimately into the crook of Leonardo’s elbow. She was quite plump these days, even for her. Her husband had been busy on his last extended stay at home, leaving not only Isabella pregnant, but three other local ladies as well.
Leonardo laid his hand over hers. “I gladly accept the compliment from such a beautiful patron.”
Upon fleeing Milan, Leonardo and Salaì knew they could not stay in the countryside for long. It was too dangerous. The Italian peninsula was not a peaceful, unified country, but a collection of battling city-states and kingdoms. The invading French military was marching down the peninsula to lay claim to Naples. In the west, Florence was at perpetual war with Pisa, while in the east, the Republic of Venice was at war with everyone. And Cesare Borgia, commanding his father’s papal army, had recently started his rampage across Romagna. In need of a safe haven, Leonardo set his course for the nearby city-state of Mantua, ruled by his longtime friend, the fiery redheaded Marchesa Isabella d’Este, and her husband.
While living in Milan, Leonardo had become friends with Isabella, who often traveled north to visit her younger sister, Beatrice, wife of Il Moro. Whenever Isabella visited court, she insisted on dining next to Leonardo and discussing art, politics, and nature long into the night. When Beatrice died, Leonardo and Isabella exchanged heartfelt letters of grief.
Since the French invasion of Milan, Leonardo had not corresponded with the lady, but he believed she would welcome him to her city. He was right.
So, for over a month, he had been serving as Mantua’s chief engineer, and on that night had been charged with impressing Cesare Borgia. Isabella was eager to keep Cesare on Mantua’s good side; they didn’t need the pope’s son as an enemy.
“I came up with the idea for this device while composing a song on the harp,” Leonardo explained as Cesare stepped past the protective barrier to inspect the multi-barreled launcher. “I thought, if an instrument can emit multiple notes at once, why can’t a launcher discharge multiple projectiles at once?”
“But I’ve never even seen pyrotechnics launched into the air before …” Cesare said.
Salaì flashed Leonardo a triumphant look. Marco Polo had brought fireworks back from the East over two hundred years before, but they were still considered new and experimental. Most pyrotechnic displays were small and safe: eruptions of sparks that never left the ground. But Leonardo preferred the more dangerous method of launching shells high into the air and watching the colors pour down from the heavens.
“So, now you see the advantage Mantua has gained by employing our dear Leonardo.” Everything Isabella said sounded like a flirtation.
“I just can’t believe you’ve had him here for over a month, but don’t yet have a painting off of him.” Cesare raised one eyebrow. “I wonder if he thinks himself above the patronage of a simple marchesa. After all, he is used to serving dukes and duchesses.”
“My marchesa is much more generous than any duke or duchess I’ve ever known,” said Leonardo.
“You hear that, Duke Borgia?” Isabella hit the word duke hard.
“Besides, why would I waste my time with paint when I can light up Mantua’s sky?” he asked. Smoke from the fireworks still hung in the air.
Borgia turned his blue eyes on Leonardo. “Tell me, then. Do you have other inventions such as these?”
“Of course. I can take you to my studio …”
“I apologize, Duke Borgia,” Isabella said, her eyes as cold and impenetrable as volcanic glass. “Your inquiries will have to wait. I am in need of my maestro’s counsel.”
“Can you believe that man, trying to poach you out from under me?” Isabella’s anger echoed off the walls as she led him up the final few steps of the tower in the old Castello di San Giorgio.
“No one could steal me from you, my lady.” Leonardo followed her into her private apartments.
“Mark my words, that man wants your talents for himself.” Isabella opened the doors to her studiolo, where she kept her art collection and often hosted lively discussions about humanism, literature, and politics. The room was a magpie’s nest of treasures, including marble and bronze statues, contemporary and aging paintings, stacks of illuminated manuscripts and newly bound books, gold and silver miniatures piled up on ancient tables, and even a selection of dried animal skins, tusks, and antlers. In addition to art collecting, the marchesa had a reputation as an audacious hunter. “Don’t ever let that Borgia monster sink his claws into you, Leonardo. God knows what he would make you do,” she said, as she dropped into a high-backed, gold-plated armchair. “Do you know what upsets me most about tonight? That tyrant exposed my secret. My intentions for you can no longer be denied.”
He held her stare. “You know I will not deny you anything, my lady.” In the confined space of her studio, he could smell her scent of lavender and peaches.
“I had planned to spend a few more months plying your ego, letting you play with my husband’s military toys. But now you must know why I want you here so badly.”
He took a step closer. “For my talents with a lute?”
She shook her head.
“For my legendary dexterity when tying and untying knots?”
She laughed.
“For my fine seat on a saddle?”
“Paint me, Leonardo.” She sat forward in the chair. “I have wanted it since the first time I saw you apply brush to surface.”
“Oh, that.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Your husband has mentioned only towers and moats and stables.” He walked over to a stack of panel pictures leaning against one wall and flipped through them. There he found mediocre copies of masterpieces: Giotto’s St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, Masaccio’s Tribute Money …
“Horses, whores, and wars are my husband’s passions, but not mine. And since he leaves me in charge more often than he is here himself …” She rose and crossed toward him. “Besides, I am carrying the heir to the Gonzaga throne, God willing, so my will is the way.” She had a daughter already, but had predicted this one was a son. “Whenever I pawn a jewel to purchase a painting, it is well worth the sacrifice.”
“Why do you have this rubbish?” He pulled a cheap copy of his Last Supper out of the stack. “My God. By whose hand is this?” He turned to face her. She flushed. “You know more about my fresco than this—this unskilled fool, whoever he is. During your visits to Milan, you watched me develop the design. You sat there while I applied pigment to the wall.”
She took the copy from his hands. “You did enthrall me.” She’d watched him superimpose geometric shapes over the faces and figures to apply the aesthetics of mathematics. She’d asked him to explain the perspective lines in the ceiling, and the three windows representing the Trinity. He’d even told her about the secret musical score written out in the rolls and plates on the table. “When my sister died, my visits to the north ended. I never saw the final product. This is all I have.” She gave a sudden laugh. “You’re right, though. These figures are wooden, indeed.”
“Let me burn it.” He tried to grab the reproduction, but she was too quick. She laughed and fluttered it behind her as she ran across the studio, darting around busts of Roman emperors.
“How do you do it? The figures you create always look so alive, it’s as if you pay models to sit and pose inside your picture frames all day.” She faced him from behind a table stacked with ancient orange and black pottery. “It’s impossible.”
“After being struck by steel,” he said, moving slowly around the table toward her, “a piece of flint cried, ‘Why are you attacking me? I haven’t harmed you.’ And the steel replied, ‘Be patient and see what wonderful things you can do.’ So the flint patiently let itself be struck again and again until it finally gave birth to fire. And so it is with me. By steadfast patience, I too learned to achieve marvelous results. Nothing is impossible.”
She gazed up at him. “My sister never managed to get a portrait out of you, did she? Why is that?”
“My dear Isabella,” he said, reaching out and tracing her jawline with his finger, “you know I am not at liberty to discuss the private lives of my patrons.”
“A device like that would put you out of work.” Isabella, wrapped in a boar’s skin, lay on the floor of her studiolo. Leonardo had just slipped out of her embrace to sketch her. He didn’t know why he so often ended up in bed with his subjects.
“Perhaps,” he said, leaning against a heavy bronze statue of Apollo and pulling a rug, an heirloom shipped in from Turkey, over his bare lap. “But just imagine: a machine that could capture the image of a person in flash, so true to the real thing that there would be no discernible difference between the person and the picture. Scientists, artists, and engineers would be able to maintain an extraordinary level of objectivity.” He opened his notebook and turned to a page half-covered in sketches of horses, several polyhedrons, and a list of the belongings he’d brought with him from Milan. “I wouldn’t care if I couldn’t make one more soldi as a portrait painter if I could use such a device. Just once.”
“But if machines, and only machines, were responsible for duplicating images, human connection would disappear altogether. Humanity would be destroyed.”
With one line, he captured the curve of her chin. “Getting too close obscures the vision.”
“Keeping such a distance is not only ignorant, but dangerous.”