Part 17

He stole...stole shirts, shoes, brushes, gold leaf. He stole gold leaf and sold it. He took money. I was right to christen him “Salai.” It took months to straighten him out...if I really did. Yellow-headed, curly-headed, tall, foolish, loveable... when he puts his arm around me...

He is a capable artist, incapable of continuous effort; perhaps time can change him but I doubt it.

Now that he is gone...I often think I hear his voice... I think, ah, he has come back for a while...

The King and Queen have asked me how I had hoped to cast Il Cavallo, so I placed my drawings on tables in the salon, and we walked from one to another and I explained them.

“Mon Père,” Francis mumbled, as he examines drawings and sketches, “Mon Père...these are workable.”

I am silent.

“When did you begin actual casting?” the Queen asks. I try to disregard her obvious skepticism.

She is dressed in white and gold; he has on one of his dark cloaks lined with down; he has rings set with emeralds; she reeks of cologne and sweat. Her pinched face is regally ugly—somehow provincial.

“I began casting the horse in December...’93...casting it on its side. I placed the mould in a shallow cavity. I opened it on the left side. I could have completed the casting if there had been sufficient bronze. I am sure you know that cannons had priority at that time.”

They knew, too, about the Gascon bowmen.

I understand they had watched the archers, as they used my clay model for target. Watched my Cavallo disintegrate.

I watched, hating, hating those bowmen. How they cheered as arrows pierced the model.

Now I watched the King and Queen.

“In Milan, in those days, the Sforza stables were at my disposal. I chose a magnificent horse—Cermonino—as my model. Alone, or with a groom, I would ride into the country, where it was pleasant and we were free of gapers. I would dismount and sketch my horse. Or the groom would lead him back and forth, while I sketched, to record a sense of motion.

“Other times I would ride Cermonino, race him, sweat him; then I’d draw his distended mouth, his swollen nostrils, his wild mane...

“Leaning forward in the saddle, baton in hand, the Duke was to symbolize leadership and power...he was pleased...his baton would have been more than thirty feet above the ground.”

Visitors and courtiers annoy me, though I do not show my annoyance. I have learned how to patronize. I pretend I have nothing to do...my life is one of leisure. Then, at night, through most of the night, lamps and candles burning, Francesco and I work with my drawings and texts.

Francesco realizes that I am homesick but he does not quite realize that I am homesick for a Florence that does not exist. I don’t admit it but I am also remembering Vinci, the only home I ever had. I would like to walk into the rambling stone house and sit by a front window. I would like...but why go on?

Botteghe or ateliers have their points but they are never home. Guilds, with their rivalries, their rascalities, are continually broiling. Greedy apprentices. Raw apprentices. Rowdiness. So many crowns for this piece of work, so many soldi for this job. Dissension over models. Spats about religion. Muddy sex.

Perhaps I should have lived out my life in my vineyard. Much sun. Quietude. Animals. Olive trees in the sunset. The mistral. Peasants. Fidelity.

What delusions.

Tomorrow I look forward to working again on my Saint John. I have decided to darken the background.

I knew Sandro Botticelli well. Now that he is dead and I am far away, leaving this personal journal to a mere boy, I can write about him. We called Sandro “Our Little Barrel.” He was fat enough, to be sure. Success favored his belly. Drink gave him a pleasant stupor.

I thought his Primavera a piece of ostentation: the picture flaunts showmanship in many ways. The background is especially weak. I have shied away from gigantic canvases. A painting should not pretend to be a mural or a fresco.

However, Sandro’s illustrations for Dante have a lightness: his lines are right.

Maybe I am not respectful of Sandro. Michelangelo dislikes my work. Who is right?

When my fellow Florentines legally murdered Savonarola I was repelled. Savonarola was reformer, dictator, fanatic. His bigotry alarmed me; all bigotry alarms me. I prefer the Alpine heights and passes to heavenly promises; I prefer rivers and lakes to the Dantesque. Savonarola’s ashes were thrown into the Arno... I anticipate further degradations...ashes... whose ashes were thrown into the river? Ours? No matter what we say in defense of religion there seems to be another road. Some things surpass religion. My mother’s gentleness, for one thing. I say, let us worship beauty. Now, in my old age, I say let us worship beauty.

Thinking of beauty, I hoped for many years to do a bronze of Hercules, Hercules firing his arrow at the Stymphalian birds, head back, eyes upward, his right arm tensing the cord, fingers ready to let the arrow go: Hercules in the nude, among rocks, one knee cocked at the same angle as his bow arm.

1518

Cloux

February 1, 1518

I

t is snowing again.

The ground is white. Trees are white. About two years ago, on our long ride from Milan, we stayed at the Pericord Monastery; snow was falling. Outside my one-eyed cell lay a deep drift. A path led nowhere through the snow.

While at Pericord, most of us ate in the refectory or the kitchen. Were there thirty monks at the monastery? All of them were dirty and resentful. This hermitage wanted no outsiders. Although we paid, we were gross intruders. This order had the Biblical fish engraved on its coat-of-arms but these men no longer remembered what that symbol meant.

Bread, cheese, dried fruit, sunflower seeds, eggs, wine, herbal tea—they offered us these and we tried to express our thanks.

Each enormous deal table had IHS chiseled in its center. IHS...smoke from cheap table candles mixed with kitchen smoke as we ate with shutters closed against the snow and cold.

Painted black, a large wooden cross leaned against a corner of the refectory.

Fealty far from any hamlet—what is this monastic fealty?

As I stayed there, recovering, troubled, I compared those thirty faces with the faces of the disciples in my Last Supper: I understand more about human nature now than I did twenty years ago. So did the artist who had painted a primitive fresco of demons in the Pericord Library. His demons are Borgian nightmares.

We have more snow this winter than in many winters, I am told. The Loire has frail ice edges and some of that ice traps leaves and twigs and resembles tortured stained glass. I like to walk alone, along the river—snow tracking: fox, rabbit, deer, raccoon, and boar.

Snow crystals in my hand, on my glove, I analyze their geometry.

In the comfort of my studio I sketch from memory: I am able to reproduce plants, birds, people, machines. Years ago I lost an important sketchbook and was able to reproduce more than fifty drawings. Any capable artist should be able to do this.

As the snowfall continues, I shall go on tonight, red chalk and charcoal.

Rome proved to be a harsh experience.

Living in the Vatican was an impoverishment: the roof of my apartment leaked with every rain; the light was bad; sewage odors were frequent. Gamins—so many gamins! Threatened. While others hunted rabbits in the Coliseum, I sought libraries and worked in my own laboratory. But work was difficult because my old kidney complaint afflicted me. For a time I was at the Hospital Spirito. I became as desolate as Hadrian’s Tomb. I ate only fruit and nuts, but fruit is often scarce in Rome at certain seasons.

Rafael was friendly; Paciola was faithful; Bramante was friendly. I blame the city, its somber tufa buildings. Cities, like mistresses, betray. Fleeing Rome, I visited my vineyard; then, again lured by the wrong magnet, I returned for more Roman punishment.

Tibullus and Ovid were there. I opened their pages and read. But my optical experiments were thwarted: a violent quarrel with my optical expert undid the work of months. He smashed all the equipment in my laboratory. As soon as possible, half-recovered, I joined Salai and Francesco in Milan. They had located an apartment for me, Salai lauding its grand style, its perfect studio. But the stu- dio was not for me. Milan was not for me. At Vaprio, I began to recover in the bracing air. My friends helped deceive me: I was not growing old; so, I began a little fresco for the Melzis.

Throughout my life I have been willing to attempt various disciplines. I am alien to most men because they limit their interests. Almost all of my friends thought in terms of a single field of endeavor. Ambrogio cared nothing for geology. De Predis shunned mathematics. Boltraffio scorns cartography. Fra Luca shrugs off all but church music. Luini favors frescos. Who is interested in oceanography? Or flying?

I think men should reach out. A rut can lead to a dead end. The portrait artist need not paint portraits all his life. Andrea was one of those rarities (an inspiration!): his world was brush, pastel, oil...marble, bronze, porphyry...cenotaph, altar, sarcophagus...portrait.

Cloux

March 12, 1518

Sleep comes hard: there is frequent pain in my back and legs: insomnia exhausts me: I think of stairways, dikes, weaving machines, cylindrical sails, cadavers, faces...

Many times I have seen Christ’s face—as I painted him in my fresco. I remember him, lying in his ghetto... I remember him so ill he could scarcely walk... I remember taking food to him...there, over there, on the wall, is his face in the candlelight.

Sleepless, I have gotten up and sketched those who have been dead for years. Friends, neighbors, filthy seamen on the coast, mountaineers, shepherds, brigands at the Borgia castle.

Here, at Cloux, I have found a girl whose profile is perfect: I have asked her to pose for a silverpoint.

Here, in the heart of France, when I am listening to Francesco talk French I am listening to a clever Frenchman. He could speak the language fairly well before coming—he has perfected his pronunciation, his pauses. He says he learned from a boyhood tutor. I ask him to correct me but he never does. Most of our château friends speak several languages. When I am explaining technical drawings to the King or members of his court I have to have help when it comes to the vocabulary relating to hydraulics, gears, fossils, and such.

March 18, 1518

My journal is in danger.

Time is leaving me.

I go weeks without adding a thought.

If I see a horse riddled with arrows, a mural that is scaling off—where is the joy? Where the beauty?

Let’s go to that valley along the Adda River, in May. We were laughing then: being alive pleased us. Let’s go to Piombino where I sketched the little ships in the harbor, ships and pounding waves. Let’s walk in the castle garden, among the senatorial statues; I played the lute and both of us sang. And Rustici’s! What about Rustici’s and that pet porcupine of his?

In Pavia, I lost my way among narrow lanes; it was dusk; it was summer; it became dark; a lantern appeared, another; I found myself at a house of prostitution: the loveliness of that meeting, those unexpected caresses, that girl... O, sleeper, what is sleep? Sleep resembles death. Yet, there are happy dreams. And actual dreams, such as rolling the Colossus into the square and seeing the Milan populace mill around it. And another...my mother, Caterina, embracing me when last we met.

There have been other dreams: working with wood and silk, to perfect a wing...there was that brief moment of flight...my wing...being aloft...lifted above trees and town... I feel that lift as I write. Joy. Beauty.

There were rows of candles and water-lamps shining in front of my Last Supper; I stepped back to contemplate my work; I looked around; I realized that the fresco was finished. I felt tears of joy, tears that never fell, yet existed. I felt another overwhelming satisfaction in my Anghiari: the horses were alive and came to me as I looked at them... I remembered their names.

Andrea Verrochio came through the refectory door and shook my hand. When I write to him I will remind him...but he is dead.

I have always thought the penis handsome during copulation, otherwise pitiful. I have never worshipped it as have some men—and women! As a boy it was tantalizing, always there, always a reminder of sex, most often a mystery. I saw copulation enjoyed before I enjoyed it with a girl. It seemed to me that it wasn’t much fun. I had to mature. It seems to me that the penis often has a life of its own, as during the night when it rouses a man, a sentiency of its own perhaps. I note that women like the size of the penis as large as possible, but a man wants the opposite in a woman’s organ.

The Greeks and Romans were penis worshippers. As a fertility symbol it amuses me. I wonder how the Egyptians regarded the penis? They have had centuries to think about it. Young women enjoy displaying their breasts; some men want to show their masculinity. There is something quite amusing about these sex thoughts. Juvenile! Life has so many serious problems: hunger, plague, crime. The ecclesiastics laud the cross and crucifixion; I suspect that some of their fervor is part of the penis contemplation. With the penis there can be a kind of holy ecstasy, for certain. I had an ivory penis in my studio in Florence: was it African? Some thought it Babylonian. It does not matter.

Men will always fight among themselves, sexually, politically, socially. I have realized this for years. Can it be that this realization urged me to fly, to escape perversion and mediocrity? Flying can be a celebration of the mind.

Well, sex means little to me now. Silence means more. Friendship. Calm. Hope. Ai, those workshops of my youth were so noisy. On crowded streets. Near alleys. Vendors howling their wares. Mule teams. Horsemen. One of my workshops was close to a smithy. Steel on steel mixed with palavering.

Amboise is my silent bottega, walkways, garden, flowers. Here I have so many of my favorites: nasturtiums, ranunculas, roses, poppies, violets, iris, pansies.

Maturina keeps flowers in my studio and my bedroom.

Writing in the sun along the Loire, remembering, remembering:

I recall details of my dissections of pigeons... Sketching, measuring, I concentrated on bone structure of the wings, then the tail, the balancing properties of the entire bird. Using those dimensions I calculated wing lengths and wing widths for my glider. I laid out a narrow area for a man to lie on, exactly between the wings.

I constructed the glider with the aid of my apprentices. I launched it at Mount Ceceri. Ceceri seemed the likeliest hill since wind currents had to be strong, and constant. Men lifted, pushed, yelled.

“Now...now!”

I dipped into the wind, slid with the wind, lifted. It seemed to me that I hovered for a while above a big willow. Rooftops. Then, in spite of my attempts at balancing, the wing swung down, dropped, spun... I crashed.

That wing measured 15' x 3' x 9'.

I can visualize Milan’s pink and red buildings, its fortress Castello between moats, its drawbridges, the fumbling city walls, the filthy streets. Though not as old as Rome, I often felt Milan’s shabby antiquity. It was a lesson in futility. So many sieges: 1497, 1500, 1512...military engagements that disrupted every fiber of living. (There is nothing like the filth of a city under siege.)

During the last siege, in 1515, the cannonades drove me out of the city. In my absence my apartment—with its view of the Alps—was looted by riffraff.

The city gates...I remember them: Porta Comasina, Porta Romana, Porta Orientale. Near the Orientale I found a bronze figurine, on one of my walks. Its small head had been uncovered by a recent rain. A priest, carrying a rice bowl.

How I worked during those Milanese years: apses, loggias, transepts, windows, frescos! Survival jobs. “This door needs immediate repair...place that medallion lower...no red marble here...” I could not equal Donato Bramante’s architectural skill. Friend, I wished him well.

Did I spend almost three years in the Castello, in those maddening salas, those perfumed rooms? The only place to avoid the stench of sewage. I urged the Duke to plan a city with upper and lower thoroughfares, a city where there was air space to lessen the danger of plague. Fifty thousand dead in ’09.

Sieges...death...

Milan...all focused on my cenasolo...my Maria delle Grazie...that refectory...that was my world...those faces, those outspread hands, that table...there is more than one way to break bread...more than one cup.

Cloux

It is satisfying to return to my study of curvilateral stars: evenings, after I have had supper, I begin—if there are no royal interruptions. The cat now curls at my feet, as I sit at my desk among my lamps.

Perhaps Michelangelo and I can become friends.

To amuse him I roll balls of paper and snap them across the floor. He responds—with an obvious effort.

I work to reduce a segment of a circle proportionally so I can make any number of identical segments which in sum are equal to a segment subtended by a side of a hexagon inscribed in the circle. I can make any number of curvilateral stars of which the sum of the triangles is equal to the sum of the segments subtended by the side of a hexagon inscribed in a given circle.

I much prefer doing this to working on the plans for the château at Romorantin.

The point of the center, where there is no movement, suggests peace.

Cloux

April 9th

Today, I had a brief letter from Salai.

I remember the Arno at sunset, the yellow and the gold, the yellow underneath the gold, the gold identical to gold leaf, a metallic sunset overlaid with misty hues, the bridges silhouetted, the darkest spans cut out of charred steel. The force of sunlight lay between each bridge and turned the river banks violet, the violet merging into cobalt.

Ai, to walk there, to think there, again!

As a boy I used to fish there, but never had much luck. Papa insisted that the tastiest fish came from the Arno. He was a good fisherman and should have known. Maybe fishing was better in his day. I wonder if there are any fish in the Arno now?

Fishing or wading or splashing in the river—that was a half century ago.

April 11th

IL CAVALLO

I solved all the construction problems in 1493. Bronze horse. Bronze rider. Weight of horse: 185,000 pounds. Horse to measure 23 feet from hoof to mane. Total height: 34 feet from hoof to helmet of rider. Total weight of horse and rider: 205,000 pounds.

THE HORSE:

We began to pour the metal at night, a team of sixteen men. We had metal from salvage. Our caldrons blazed as the metals combined. We had our supply of wood stacked under a thatch, another supply in a shed. As we worked the shed ignited and burned. Shouts. Orders. Warnings.

Shortly before dawn some militiamen arrived—drums, not sunrise. The commandante of the city fortresses—on the Duke’s orders—requisitioned all bronze for armament. I read the Duke’s order... I read, and stepped aside.

And the Duke lost his city, and his life. His horse.

Cloux

April 12th

ALBIERA AMADORI—My friend Albiera was as beautiful as her name, beautiful to me, beautiful to her family, her friends—all who knew her. In my sketches she appears as an angelic one, an ideal woman. She was delicate. Always. Busy with her large family, her housework, yet stealing time for her lute. There in her garden, among her irises. There in her garden, by her fountain. Singing as she played. Dark hair, dark tint under her eyes. Her voice a little frail. Perhaps she was too good for us, although we loved her dearly.

After she died I used to visit her grave and bring or arrange flowers. Her little bronze bust had a special place in my studio.

“Albiera,” I hear Florentine voices calling.

Somewhere perhaps in the château garden—a bird sings and seems to say: “Al - bi - era.”

Cloux

April 14, ’18

Tomorrow evening, Pietro Papini will play his lira da braccio for us, music I composed in Milan, when friend Atalante and I played and sang. Papini is Court maestro and master of the lira. He’ll be playing his amusing instrument—moustached mascherone on the sound box.

Good Francesco has searched through my manuscripts for rebuses and notations, and he and Papini have put together a song that begins:

Amore sol la mi fa remirare, la sol mi fa sollecita.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Princess d’Arezzo will wear a gold mask I designed for her. Pity to hide beauty behind a mask. The King is wearing my skeleton cloak. Three dwarfs will appear as miniature elephants. I will wear a replica of a camel’s head. Francesco is to impersonate a Hindu seer. Countess Benci—sixteen years old—will be naked except for silver slippers and an Etruscan helmet of silver foil.

It will be gala!

Cloux

I did not know it was raining until one of the King’s pages brought me a rain-spattered note, ink and coat-of- arms smudged.

“What is it?” Francesco asked, standing by me protectively, holding the door.

The page grinned and wiped rain off his face. Probably he was perplexed since he could not understand Italian.

“The King is sick,” I said, reading the note. “He wants me to come to the château and talk to him.”

“In this awful rain!”

Water was sluicing off the page’s cap.

“I won’t let you go out...in this cold rain,” protested Maturina. “You have no umbrella...it’s being fixed.”

Francesco tugged my sleeve.

“The tunnel,” he said. “We’ll walk through the tunnel, to the château. It’s been worked on...we’ll keep dry... Shall we?”

So, with torches, the page, and a couple of my servants, we entered the old shaft. Almost at once our torches died out; there was a brisk draft; some of our torches were wet. Somebody went back to the manor house for candles. The passage was difficult for a tall man. I had forgotten there were several curves. Bats annoyed us. We had to wade across rain pools where water was oozing in. I stumbled over bricks and stumbled over a rusty cuirass someone had leaned against the wall.

Holding up my torch I made out crude foreign names and initials and dates... VITELLI...was it really VITELLI? I thought I saw 1502 on the wall. Latin names. Gascon. 1601. 1502 again. Cesare Borgia, that Papal bastard had had Vitelli strangled on December 1, 1502. His name went on and on, as we tramped through the tunnel.

My hatred was everywhere.

The page opened the château door, and we ascended several flights of stairs, walked along halls, were stopped by guards at the King’s suite.

“His Majesty is asleep now,” a guard said.

Borrowing umbrellas and raincoats, we returned to the manor, preferring the paths and the road to the tunnel route.

How fitfully I slept while in Cesare Borgia’s camp...like Alexander the Great I slept with the Iliad and a dagger under my pillow.

It was Niccolò Machiavelli who stole horses for us—made our escape possible...horses...rain...all night the two of us rode through the rain.

Fibonacci’s dog-eared book, Liber Abaci, still interests me: what tattered covers, foxed pages, and scribbled margins! Too many fingers have flipped through this book. No matter... I have tried his famous rabbit problem once more and then once more. I see that each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers, continuing ad infinitum. And it is true I can divide Fibonacci’s number (after the fourteenth in his sequence) by the next highest in number: it is precisely .618034 to 1.

.618034 is nature’s proportion—her golden mean: it exists in sunflower seeds, shell spirals, spider webs, ferns, the perfect rectangle, in playing cards, the Parthenon’s façade.

Another night of memories, a night for murder. Incessant wind, rain...

Vitelli...

But there was more than this young man’s death. There was Giamina Andres da Ferrara. GAF.