The Poet Prince (41 page)

“You cannot make a man what he is not.” Lorenzo smiled wanly at the man whom he loved and trusted so completely. “Even you, my friend, as brilliant a teacher as you are, cannot transform a man who does not want to be thus changed. No man ever achieved true greatness using just his mind. One must also engage the heart. I do not think Leonardo will do that, because he does not desire to.”

Andrea looked at Fra Francesco, who had taught them both the meaning of love as it had been brought to them all through the teachings of Jesus Christ. “And what do you think, Master?”

Fra Francesco answered carefully. “What do I think? Or what do
I feel? Because that is what this comes down to, isn’t it? Leonardo knows how to think, but he does not know how to feel, and he chooses to stay in that place of isolation. I do not think anyone will draw him away from that choice, as he holds it too close. There is great darkness in that heart, a darkness that comes from sadness. It is not of his own making or of his own doing, but it is there all the same.”

“Do you think he is an angelic?” This was Lorenzo’s question.

“Undoubtedly,” the Master answered, startling both men with his certainty. Never before had any artist, no matter how difficult, been dismissed if it was determined that he was born with the angelic gifts. Would Fra Francesco insist on keeping him, then?

“But I think he is an angel who has been damaged by his human experiences, and this happened at a very young age. It would take great love to crack him open and release the pure divinity that is trapped within his spirit. I do not foresee that happening. However, we are taught through the greatest of prayers that forgiveness must be for all men, and we must therefore allow Leonardo to continue awhile longer under Andrea’s tutelage. We will treat him with love, tolerance, and forgiveness, as our Lord has taught us through his commandments, and see if that brings about a change in him.”

“And if it does not?” Lorenzo asked.

“If it does not,” Fra Francesco said with a little smile, “then we find him a new patron, elsewhere in Italy, some noble family whose favor you wish to secure who will celebrate the name of the Medici for selflessly surrendering their most talented young artist as an act of friendship.”

Lorenzo raised his glass to the ancient man with the scarred face. Now
that
was genius.

The year 1475 was turning out to be an important one for Lorenzo, one in which the blessings of God were being showered on all of Tuscany through the arrival of several children, deemed to have potentially
angelic gifts, based on their parentage combined with the position of the stars at their time of birth. The astrological and numerological predictions of the Magi had foretold that this would be an exalted year. Indeed, Clarice was expecting again, due in December, and the Magi were predicting a son with a destiny to carry the mission of the Order into the future. Lorenzo had great hopes for this expected child, as his elder son, little Piero, was already showing signs of being a product of his mother. He was sullen and spoiled, and Lorenzo argued with Clarice regularly about the boy’s pending education. He was still too young for these battles to matter overmuch, but in the next few years Lorenzo would have to be firm in guiding the direction of Piero’s education. Clarice wanted him schooled from the Psalter, learning to read and write only from the sanctified teachings of the Church. Lorenzo, of course, wanted him immediately immersed in the classics.

Lorenzo’s greatest joy as a parent came from his daughters. The elder, named after his mother, Lucrezia, was a sweet girl who loved to sing for her father. But his baby, the joy of his life, was little Maria Maddalena. Madi was precocious and playful and had her father wrapped around her pudgy little finger. The first thing Lorenzo did when he entered the palazzo after a day away was scoop her up and toss her about until she squealed with delight. Maddalena was special, not just for her sunny, feisty personality—she was born under the star sign of Leo, on the twenty-fifth of July—but because she had healed Lorenzo’s broken heart after the loss of the twins. In the previous year, Clarice had given birth to twin boys, but they were tiny and weak and did not survive longer than a few days. He was shattered by the loss, as was Clarice. But the arrival of Maddalena restored him. Strangely, Clarice had the opposite reaction and seemed less inclined to favor Maddalena than she was the other children. This caused Lorenzo to pamper his Madi even further.

Still, the Medici dynasty required boys to continue with their grand plan, particularly one whom they could devote to the Church. Piero was not shaping up to have the personality, temperament, or intelligence of his father. He was young enough to change, perhaps, but he was Clarice’s child so completely that such a thing seemed unlikely.
What Lorenzo needed was a son with Maddalena’s intelligence and temperament. He prayed daily for the safe delivery of this new son. And he prayed for the other baby.

Colombina was also expecting.

They no longer bothered with the charade where Niccolò was concerned, but for the rest of Florence and for the sake of this baby’s name and future, it had been necessary to ensure that Niccolò Ardinghelli was in Florence long enough to appear to have impregnated his own wife. Then Lorenzo shipped him off again. He had an agreement with Niccolò now, which was very lucrative for the Ardinghelli family. As a result, Niccolò maintained the appearance that he and Colombina were man and wife and did exactly as Lorenzo bid in public. Most of all, Lorenzo insisted that Colombina have absolute freedom to live any way she pleased.

Still, it was widely rumored in Florence that the Ardinghelli marriage was a sham. Supporters of the Medici defended it, but their detractors were quick to gossip and point out the various pieces of evidence that indicated that Lorenzo and Madonna Ardinghelli were engaged in adultery and had been for years. Sandro was nearly imprisoned for breaking the nose of one of these loose-lipped men, an old drinking partner from Niccolò’s bachelor days, in the Tavern at Ognissanti. The lout had shouted in response to the news that Colombina was expecting, “The Medici balls really are everywhere in Florence—but particularly in Lucrezia Ardinghelli!”

The loudmouth had it coming, Sandro said simply in his own defense. Besides, it was a great risk to the hands of any painter to punch someone that hard. Sandro had suffered enough for the offense. The judge, from a long line of Medici supporters, agreed and let Sandro go with no penalty and chastised the plaintiff for attempting to sully the good name of Madonna Ardinghelli. The judge was later given a lovely portrait of his wife by the grateful Sandro.

Lorenzo’s commitment to his one true love never wavered, and it was devastating for him that he could not be with her during her pregnancy. Colombina, heavy with his child, was the most beautiful thing
he had ever seen. Lorenzo sent Sandro over to sketch her, as he wanted her captured in this ripe beauty, looking like Venus incarnate. The drawings Sandro returned with were stunning, and Lorenzo and Sandro pored over them for hours, trying to determine precisely how they would want to include them in a painting that would grace Lorenzo’s private studio.

But the abundance of blessed children was not limited to Florence alone. The Magi had been giddy with their predictions for a child who was due to the Buonarroti family in Southern Tuscany. The Buonarroti, the descendants of the great Matilda of Tuscany, were watched closely by the Order, as their children were often highly gifted in some way. There was a Buonarroti among the Magi, and it was in fact this same astrologer who cast the birth chart of the baby boy who entered the world on March 6, 1475, near Arezzo. The horoscope of this infant was so exalted that the Magi recommended he be given a special name to identify him as an angelic from the moment of his arrival. Thus the baby had been called by the unusual name that evoked the Archangel Michael.

Michelangelo.

It would be interesting to keep an eye on this boy, and Lorenzo and the Order had compensated the Buonarroti family handsomely to secure their move north to Florence, where he could be educated and observed. Lorenzo was excited about the prospects. Surely a boy named for the greatest of the archangels had extraordinary promise for the future Order.

Le temps revient.

For years, Lorenzo and I had been discussing the merits of creating an ultimate work of art that would encapsulate all the teachings we held so dear, one which
we would entitle
The Time Returns.
It would need to be large enough to capture all the concepts that we laid out, and thus he ultimately commissioned a mural that would cover the majority of the wall of his private
studiolo.

It was the pregnancy of Colombina that inspired this painting. She was unspeakably beautiful in her fullness, the essence of the mother goddess in flower. When I sketched her, I wept with the beauty that was so evident in this state of impending motherhood. Thus I placed Colombina, as the female aspect of God, in the center of the work. Call her what you will, and it matters not. She is Venus, she is Asherah, she is our mother who guides and nurtures us by any name. She is Divine Beauty. I have cloaked her in the red of Our Lady Magdalena, which is embroidered with the diamonds of divine union, and she is wearing the sandals referenced in the Song of Songs: “How beautiful are your feet in sandals, my love,” says the sacred bridegroom to his eternal bride.

Our Lady presides over the cycle of souls as they experience the beauty of human love here before ascending to the love of God and then returning back to earth as it all begins again. Her garden is lush and magical, filled with the symbols of the Medici family and the flowers and plants that grow around the gardens we all love so much in Careggi. She blesses us with her right hand, and yet also signals that we move our attention to the dance of the three Graces. This is the dance of life, a celebration of earthly love in its three guises: purity, beauty, and pleasure. Purity, or chastity, does not and should not remain once true love has come into the mix, and thus the figure of Cupid hovers above the scene, with his bow aimed squarely at Chastity. Soon she will become Beauty and then Pleasure as she moves through the threefold cycle of love.

Of course I have used the sketches I made of Ginevra, Simonetta, and Colombina, on the night they all danced together like this in the Antica Torre.

Another sketch I have used for this family portrait of sorts was the one I made of our Angelo, on the day he arrived in Careggi, depicting him as Hermes, stirring things up for all of us. I used this idea of Angelo but combined it with the face and figure of Giuliano de’ Medici, who is the more beautiful model for a god. Here, Mercury/Hermes is stirring the weather, but he is also acting as the conduit between heaven and earth. He is the embodiment of his own teachings within the Emerald Tablet: that which is above is also below, as we all come together to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.

And what is that One Thing? It is creating heaven on earth through the utter appreciation of Beauty in all its forms, through the veil of love. This is the Way.

To the right of the painting I continued to pay tribute to the Emerald Tablet of Hermes with the image of the wind, Zephyr. “The wind carries it in his belly” is an allegory for the miracle of life, returning the soul to earth. Here Zephyr is giving birth to Chloris, who was his true beloved. According to the Greek masters, Zephyr and Chloris were souls twinned by God to rule over the weather together, and thus I used them to illustrate this concept of one twin giving birth to the other, which is the essence of what occurs when true beloveds are reunited. They are reborn. As Chloris, she is making the transition from the heavenly realms to the earthly realms. She ultimately incarnates as Flora, showing the full cycle of incarnation as she steps in to her role as the fully realized human woman. Flora is
anthropos,
she is
humanitas,
she is all that is beautiful about flesh-and-blood mankind. The flowers in her apron are held over her womb to indicate fertility, for she is lush with life. She throws the blooms about, scattering joy through the understanding and celebration of Beauty in its most exalted form.