The Poet Prince (43 page)

Colombina nodded. “I do not know what to do about Sandro. Or Lorenzo and Giuliano for that matter. They will be distraught, as will we all. But at least you and I are prepared for it. We have watched death stalk her for the last years, watched as it came closer and closer to our sweet girl. But the men in our midst are unprepared. They know she is fragile, but I don’t think any of them have actually accepted that we will lose her.”

“And soon.” Ginevra shivered.

“How long, I wonder? I need to hug her against me one more time and tell her that she is my sister of spirit and let her know just how much I love her.”

“Then I suggest you do so immediately, Colombina. After seeing her today, I do not think we have much time left with her. Perhaps we should send a messenger to Lorenzo and Giuliano. They will want to see her as well.”

Colombina paled. “Oh God, they aren’t here. They’re in Pisa on business, both of them. But they’ll be back in a few days, and I will have a messenger waiting for them as soon as they return to Florence. You don’t think . . . we will lose her that soon? Oh, please don’t say so.”

Ginevra, usually the pillar of strength, began to sob. Simonetta was
like her little sister, and she had grown to love her over the years. Losing her would be challenging to all of them, to everything they believed. What was God thinking, giving the world such beauty and then taking it away like this?

The messenger Colombina had prepared to send to Lorenzo and Giuliano ultimately made the long ride to Pisa with the message that she had most dreaded: Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci had died suddenly that same day, April 26, 1476.

No one had a chance to say good-bye.

Lorenzo and Giuliano took a long walk together that night, to talk about Simonetta and to share their grief over the young woman who had moved all of them with her purity and sweetness. They all loved her completely; she had become the official little sister of the
Order.

“April twenty-sixth. It will forever be a day of sadness in our world, Giuliano. We must always honor her on this day.”

Giuliano nodded and pointed to the sky. “See that? The star that is brighter than the others? Is it Venus?”

“Perhaps,” Lorenzo answered. “Or perhaps our Simonetta is with God, and the light of her soul has merged with that star to create something as beautiful and bright as she was.”

“I will never have your gift of poetry, my brother. I can only say that I loved her and I will miss her, and I will pray that she is surrounded now by the same beauty and grace she brought to all of us.”

Lorenzo smiled at his little brother. “Who said you weren’t a
poet?”

Returning to his room that night, Lorenzo wept at the loss of their beautiful little sister. As Angelo always prodded him, Lorenzo used his pain to inspire a poem, which would become a favorite of the Tuscan people, “O Chiara Stella,” Oh Beloved Star.

Simonetta was a piece of heaven now.

The funeral of Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci was an elaborate and somber occasion. Her casket was carried from her home to the church in Ognissanti by the Vespucci and Medici men who loved her. Thousands turned out in the city of Florence to mourn her. Perhaps the enormous attendance at her funeral was an indication that at the end of her all-too-short life, the people of Florence did indeed understand that they had lost a unique treasure.

Marco Vespucci did mourn her, but he remarried quickly. His new bride was homely but sturdy, a woman of the earth with whom he could lustily mate and actively procreate. While drinking in the Tavern at Ognissanti one night, he was overheard saying, “Goddesses are to be worshipped, but they are not meant to become wives. Simonetta was never meant for me. She belonged to the world. Ultimately, she belonged to God, and he called her back home, as heaven was incomplete without her.”

La Bella Simonetta.

She was the most exquisite thing I have ever seen. She was the troubadour muse—perfect, untouchable, divine.

People say that I was in love with her. Of course I was. So was everyone in the Order. Simonetta embodied love, and anyone who knew her experienced that love. But it was not something as simple as Eros would definite it. It was not a physical yearning to possess something so lovely. Simonetta moved all of us beyond that and into an understanding of the nature of the living female aspect of God on earth. I truly believe, with all my heart and soul, that Simonetta was the true incarnation of Venus. And I painted her as such.

In Lorenzo’s garden there is a statue from ancient Rome that is called the Medici Venus. She is naked perfection, her right hand covering her breasts in part, and her left draped over her most personal female area. I used that statue as the model for Simonetta’s body, but the rest is all her: lengths of golden hair, creamy skin, copper-flecked eyes. She arises from the sea in a scallop shell, symbols of Asherah, our mother in heaven who is Beauty, and who is later known by the Greeks as Aphrodite and the Romans as Venus.

To the left, Zephyr and Chloris blow life into her, helping her to incarnate while moving from heaven to earth. She is surrounded by touches of real gold, a reminder to the viewer that what they are seeing here, True Beauty, which is also Love, is priceless and to be treasured.

To her right, a woman arrives to cover her with a red cloak draped in flowers. The woman is Colombina, who here represents the sister who would protect her against the harshness of the world. Though Colombina knows she is beautiful in her nakedness, she also knows that the world will not understand it and will abuse her for it, and she seeks to cloak her from the eyes of a world that does not deserve her.

I have draped Colombina in Lorenzo’s symbol, the laurel leaves, and given her a girdle of pink carnations. Those flowers are a pun, carrying as they do the root of the word
incarnation
within their name.

The Birth of Venus
is my tribute not only to Simonetta but to the beautiful sisterhood that exists within the Order. It is love personified.

I have asked to be buried at Simonetta’s feet, in the same way in which Donatello chose to spend eternity alongside Cosimo. I shall submit the request in writing to Marco Vespucci to prove that I am indeed serious. I have no doubt that even her bones will be beautiful and will inspire me into eternity.

She was, indeed, the Unparalleled One.

I remain,
Alessandro di Filipepi, known as “Botticelli”

FROM THE SECRET MEMOIRS OF SANDRO BOTTICELLI

Florence
present day

“T
HE ARRANGEMENTS
are made, Bérenger. Meet me tomorrow afternoon at two in the Palazzo Vecchio,” Vittoria informed him from her cell phone. “We will be married by the magistrate in the Sala Rossa. The Red Room. It was once Cosimo de’ Medici’s bedroom. He conceived his children there. Appropriate, no?”

“Vittoria, why the mad rush? Why must we do this tomorrow? I need time. For the love of God, my brother is in jail and my family in chaos.”

“I told you, Bérenger, that this is just a civil ceremony at the town hall. Just between you and me. I need to see your commitment to our son and his destiny. No one else even has to know. Yet. We will plan a society wedding that the entire world will talk about for later in the year. October is beautiful in Tuscany.”

“Vittoria, please. I need—”

She wasn’t listening to a word of it. “I am not going to allow you to buy me off—or attempt to take my son. We are a package, Bérenger, and you will get both of us together. Which you should be grateful for. Do you know how many men would kill to have the chance to marry me?”

He tried another tactic. “Vittoria, I want to see you tonight, before the wedding. Just to talk. May I come over to your place? Some time after ten?”

Vittoria was delighted by the implication of a late-night rendezvous with Bérenger in her apartment. He was finally coming around, as she knew he would. Men always did. Always.

The time returns. That was the heretic’s favorite catchphrase, wasn’t it? It was their sickening motto that dated back even beyond the anti-Christ spawn Lorenzo de’ Medici and his adulteress whore. There was once a time when her uncle, Father Girolamo, could not even utter the
name of Medici without choking on his own bile, so abhorrent was
the legacy of that family to him and his ancestors. And combating that heretical legacy was the reason this sacred confraternity had been created in the first place all those years ago in Florence, created by his namesake, Girolamo Savonarola.

The diminutive Dominican friar came to Florence in 1490, somewhat ironically, through the invitation of Lorenzo de’ Medici himself. History was unclear as to why Lorenzo would have welcomed the fire-and-brimstone preacher, installing him at the head of the monastery in San Marco, the retreat so beloved of Cosimo de’ Medici. Savonarola’s sermons against sin and frivolity were shocking to Florentines, who were not used to having the wrath of God rain down upon them in the way that Savonarola called for it. Lorenzo would come to regret his decision as soon Savonarola would condemn the Medici as tyrants, all the while preaching the evils of art. The Madonna was painted as an overpriced whore, he shrieked, taking Botticelli to task for his elaborate and beautiful
Madonna of the Magnificat.
He would escalate this campaign with the infamous bonfires of the vanities, mockeries of the elaborate festival events that Florence and the Medici had once been famous for. In Savonarola’s Florence, the “festival” consisted of his followers knocking on doors and demanding items of vanity—luxury goods of any kind—to be donated to the enormous bonfire that would take place in the Piazza della Signoria. But the real treasure for Savonarola’s followers, who were called by the cowed people of Florence the Piagnoni—meaning “the snivelers”—was art and literature. Nothing fed Savonarola’s flames like paintings and poetry. These instruments of heresy had to be weeded out at any cost. And Girolamo Savonarola had been expert at destroying hundreds of pieces of art, which would be worth countless millions today.

Good riddance to bad rubbish,
Felicity thought. As it stood, too much of it had survived.