I, Mona Lisa (63 page)

I
did not die, nor did Francesco. The blow I dealt Salvatore de’ Pazzi downed him, and as he lay bleeding, he was killed by another.

His mercenaries, who rode into the Piazza della Signoria at the chiming of the bells, were met by formidable opposition. Upon encountering Piero’s men—and upon learning that Salvatore would not arrive to incite the crowd against the Medici and lead the storming of the palazzo and the overthrow of the Signoria—the mercenaries disbanded and fled.

Messer Iacopo never was avenged.

It was not time, my husband explained, for the Medici to return to power in Florence; there was insufficient support in the Signoria. Piero had learned the wisdom of patience. But the time will come. The time will come.

I have learned, to my amusement, that Francesco has told everyone in Florence that I am still his wife, that I have merely gone to stay in the country with my child because of nerves caused by the fright I experienced in the Duomo. He used his wits and connections to escape
the noose, but he is disgraced. He will never serve in the government again.

At last I am in Rome with Giuliano and Matteo. It is hotter here, with fewer clouds and less rain. Mists and fog are less common than in Florence; the sun reveals everything in sharp, crisp relief.

Leonardo has come to visit us now that I have regained some of my strength. I am sitting for him again—despite the bandage on my neck—and I am beginning to think he will never be satisfied with the painting. He alters it constantly, saying that my reunion with Giuliano will be reflected in my expression. He promises that he will not remain in Milan forever; when he fulfills his obligations to the Duke, he will come to Rome, with Giuliano as his patron.

Shortly after Leonardo’s arrival, when I first sat for him in Giuliano’s Roman palazzo, I asked him about my mother. The instant he had told me I was his child, I knew it was true. Because I had always looked for another man’s face in my reflection, I had never seen his. Yet I looked on his features, in feminine form, every time I smiled down at my image on the gessoed panel.

He had indeed been smitten with Giuliano—until, through Lorenzo, he met Anna Lucrezia. He never expressed his feelings to her because he had sworn never to take a wife, lest it interfere with his art or his studies. But the emotion became quite uncontrollable, and when he first realized my mother and Giuliano were lovers—that evening on the shadowy Via de’ Gori, when he had first yearned to paint her—he was overtaken by jealousy. He could, he confessed, have killed Giuliano himself at that moment.

And the following morning in the Duomo, that jealousy distracted him from sensing the tragedy about to occur.

That was why he had never told anyone about his discovery—shortly after coming to Santissima Annunziata as the Medici’s agent—that my father was the penitent in the Duomo. How could he arrest a man for yielding to jealousy, when he himself had been so tormented by it? It had made no sense; nor did it make sense to pain me unnecessarily with such news.

When the murder occurred, Leonardo had been devastated. And on
the day of Giuliano’s funeral at San Lorenzo, he had left the sanctuary, overwhelmed, and gone out to the churchyard to silently vent his sorrow. There he found my weeping mother and confessed his guilt and his love to her. Shared grief bound them together, and beneath its sway they lost themselves.

“And see what misery my passion caused for your mother, and for you,” he said. “I could not let you make the same error. I would not risk telling you Giuliano was alive, for fear you would try to contact him and endanger him and yourself.”

I looked out the window at the relentless sunshine. “Why didn’t you tell me this from the beginning?” I pressed gently. “Why did you let me think I was Giuliano’s child?”

“Because I wanted you to have full rights as a Medici; they could care far better for you than a poor artist. It harmed no one and gave Lorenzo joy on his deathbed.” His expression grew sadly tender. “Most of all, I did not want to tarnish the memory of your mother. She was a woman of great virtue. She confessed to me that, in all the time she was with Giuliano, she would not bed him—though all the world believed she had. Such was her loyalty to her husband; and so her shame, when she lay with me, was all the greater.

“Why should I confess that she and I—a sodomite, no less—were lovers, and risk damaging the respect due her?”

“I respect her no less,” I said. “I love you both.”

He smiled brilliantly.

I will send the portrait back with Leonardo when he returns to Milan. And when he finishes it—if he ever does—neither I nor Giuliano will accept it. I want him to keep it.

For he has only Salai. But if he takes the painting, my mother and I will always be with him.

I, on the other hand, have Giuliano and Matteo. And each time I gaze into the looking glass, I will see my mother and father.

And I will smile.

A Reading Group Gold Selection

by Jeanne Kalogridis

A
Conversation with Jeanne Kalogridis

· Personal History · Literary Inspiration

H
istorical Perspective

· The Medici Family of Florence: A Time Line

K
eep on Reading

· Recommended Reading

· Reading Group Questions

For more reading group suggestions
visit
www.readinggroupgold.com

ST. MARTIN’S GRIFFIN

A Conversation with Jeanne Kalogridis

Could you tell us a little bit about your background and when you decided that you wanted to lead a literary life?

I was a shy, scrawny, unpopular kid with frizzy hair and thick glasses; since I had no social life, I read. I adored dark fantasy and science fiction, and I was writing my own stories as soon as I could hold a pencil. My mom and sisters were always dragging me to the mall on weekends, so while they shopped, I hung in the local bookstore. I think the defining moment for me came when I picked up a copy of Ray Bradbury’s
The Illustrated Man
in a Waldenbooks. His writing was so beautiful, so lyrical.... I decided then I wanted to write like that.

“
Of course, I had heard of
The Da Vinci Code—
who hasn”t?’

Who are some of your favorite authors?

Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Philippa Gregory, Tracy Chevalier, and Chuck Palahniuk.

Is there a book that most influenced your life or inspired you to become a writer?

The Illustrated Man
by Ray Bradbury. And his
The Martian Chronicles
. When I worked on my first novel, I bought new copies of those books and consciously tried to imitate his style.

You have already authored a historical novel about Renaissance Italy
, The Borgia Bride.
What was the inspiration for
I, Mona Lisa
?

Italy at the turn of the sixteenth century is pure gold for an author. The times were turbulent, the advances in the art world amazing, the characters mesmerizing. I fell in love with the period while writing
The Borgia Bride
. When I started reading about Renaissance Florence, I realized I had to write a novel set there. Of course, I had heard of
The Da Vinci Code
—who hasn’t? In every bookstore, Mona Lisa’s eyes were staring at me. I began to wonder about the woman who had posed for Leonardo’s painting. The more I read about her, the more intrigued I became.

Do you scrupulously adhere to historical fact in your novels, or do you take liberties if the story can benefit from the change?

I scrupulously adhere to historical fact. If a fact is recorded, I don’t contradict it. I
do
take liberties in writing possible scenes behind the scenes, and in giving the characters motivation to explain their actions. We can never really know what the characters were thinking or what they really intended; that’s where fiction enters the story.

And to what extent did you stick to the facts in writing
I, Mona Lisa
? How did you conduct your research?

Let me answer the second question first. While I rely on the Internet, I don’t trust everything I read online—I use the Web to direct me to published experts on the topic. Then it’s off to a bookstore or a university library, where I usually check out thirty or forty titles on my subject.

Now, for the first question: I was forced to speculate more while writing
I, Mona Lisa
for the simple reason that little is known about Lisa Gherardini. While I adhered to my historical time line—to the very day, where the Medici and other historical figures were involved—I took advantage of the freedom offered by Lisa’s relative anonymity. This allowed me to involve her in a conspiracy.

“We’ve seen the Mona Lisa’s image so often that we dont’t really see it anymore.”

What is it about Mona Lisa that you hoped to reveal to your readers?

We’ve seen the Mona Lisa’s image so often that we don’t really
see
it anymore. It’s been copied so inelegantly so many times that she now seems homely, even mannish. If you look at a fine print of the original and try to forget all the cartoonish rendering of it, you’ll begin to see the breathtaking beauty of the woman who posed for it.

I wanted people to lose their jaded reaction to that person. I would like them to realize that they’re looking at a five-hundred-year-old image of a real woman who left her session with Leonardo and lived a real life.

Why do you think readers are so drawn to historical fiction?

Because history is fascinating—and fact is often stranger than fiction. Also, readers of historical fiction love to learn, and this permits us to do so in a very enjoyable way.

What do you see when you look at
the Mona Lisa
? Please share a few thoughts about your reaction to da Vinci’s famous portrait
.

As I mentioned above, when you stare at a fine print of the original—I have one, and I stared at it every day that I worked on the novel—you begin to see the woman’s true beauty. And you see how fine and elegant and tender Leonardo’s rendering was. She literally melts into the shadows. But bear in mind that we are looking at a painting that, sadly, is distorted by an ugly yellow film and was retouched by insensitive “artists” over the centuries. I read Vasari’s comments about the painting, written fifty years after
Mona Lisa
was painted. He describes the fresh bloom of pink on Lisa’s lips, the blush on her cheeks, the vein in her neck that seems
almost to be beating. He speaks of the very pores from which her eyebrows emerge. All of those details have been lost, but when I look at the portrait now, I try to imagine them.

Who are some of your favorite historical figures?

My namesake, Joan (in French, Jeanne) of Arc—yes, she was deluded, but she kicked butt and made a man a king. I read a lot of biographies of strong women when I was growing up; I admired Marie Curie, Elizabeth Blackwell (first female M.D. in the U.S.), Elizabeth I, Boudicca (who gave the Imperial Roman army a run for its money), Jane Addams, and Susan B. Anthony.

There are, of course, fascinating men. I always adored Leonardo because he was passionately interested in
everything
and pursued knowledge without the encumbrance of a formal education. Vlad the Impaler is another favorite of mine, for much grislier reasons, as is Cesare Borgia.