The Miracles of Prato (2 page)

Feast of Saint Philomena, the Year of Our Lord 1456

Lucrezia and Spinetta Buti arrived at the Convent Santa Margherita in early July, on Monday of the fourth week after Pentecost. They came in a simple carriage drawn by two fine horses that gave pause to all who saw them along the dusty road from Florence. Farmers who labored in the olive groves drew off their caps as they passed, and shepherd boys tending their flocks in the golden hills outside of Sesto Fiorentino waved, hoping a pale hand might toss coins, sweets, or small colored beads from the carriage.

Gleaming in the midmorning sun, the horses trotted through Prato's main gates and whinnied as they slowed outside the convent. Prioress Bartolommea, sitting in her small study, squinted up over her account books.

“Who are we expecting?” she asked Sister Camilla. “Is it the procurator?”

“The procurator is still in Montepulciano, at the new convent under his ministration,” the secretary answered.

“Then is it the prior general?” Mother Bartolommea asked as the gates were opened and the carriage rolled into the courtyard.

“If it is, Madre, he's not come at an appointed time,” said Sister Camilla, who stood and peered out the window. “Nor has he come in his usual carriage.”

The women crossed themselves and glanced toward heaven. Un
announced visits from Prior General Saviano, head of the Augustinian Order, were distressing: he rarely stayed less than four nights, ate heartily, and consumed more than his share of wine without replenishing the nuns' meager supply.

“Perhaps it's someone to see Fra Filippo,” said Sister Camilla.

“Perhaps,” the prioress said faintly. She patted the younger woman's hand as she thought of Fra Filippo Lippi, the famed painter and monk. Despite her distaste for the Carmelite brother's gruff voice and salacious reputation, the prioress brightened whenever he crossed her mind. Fra Filippo's acclaim for painting the most beautiful Madonnas in the Italian states was growing, and the prioress hoped his presence in Prato, along with his recent assignment as chaplain to her nunnery's small collection of souls, might yet bring some glory to Santa Margherita.

 

I
n his workshop near the Piazza della Pieve, Fra Filippo Lippi was also aware of the fine horses that trotted through the streets of Prato. As they reached the church square, the monk put down his brush and hurried to the window. Sunlight fell on his features, revealing a strong mouth, heavy brow, wide Roman cheekbones, and deep blue eyes. The passing carriage was modest, and the monk saw quickly that it didn't belong to the Carmelite Order, nor did it bear banners displaying the Medici crest of six golden
palle
. Whoever it carried, the passengers were not coming to his
bottega
to demand past-due work or debts owed, and the painter was greatly relieved.

The horses turned the corner onto Via Santa Margherita and Fra Filippo went back into his cluttered
bottega.
Well into his fourth decade, the monk moved easily among the pots and containers of paint and tempera that filled the shelves and speckled the floor with
color. With his mind on his work, the man barely noticed the wooden panels stacked against the walls and filled with images of angels and saints and patrons in various stages of living, praying, or dying as they awaited the life that came from his hand.

Running a thick palm across his tonsured scalp, the monk stood before his easel and stared at the panel he'd been laboring over for days. The painting was a commission from Ottavio de' Valenti, Prato's wealthiest citizen, and Fra Filippo forced himself to focus on this small portrait of the Madonna and Child.

“A Madonna.
Una bella Madonna con bambino,
” Signor Ottavio had requested, pressing ten gold florins into Fra Filippo's palm to seal the commission. “For my blessed Teresa, now
in attesa
. God willing, she'll bring me a son at last.”

The monk's Virgin sat on a wondrous throne painstakingly rendered with tiny jeweled detailing. Her robe was a sumptuous blue of the finest lapis lazuli
,
carefully ornamented in gold leaf and red madder. The cherubic Christ child was in her arms, looking up into the Virgin's face.

But there was no face. There was only a light sketch in red crayon on a flesh-colored oval, awaiting the painter's brush.

 

S
lowly, the Buti sisters stepped from their carriage. The local boys who tended the convent's barnyard animals stopped to watch, and the nuns within sight of the courtyard peered from under their wimples.

Spinetta, the younger of the two, came first. She was pale in her brown traveling cloak, but her cheeks still had their fullness, and wisps of blond hair framed her face. She kept her gaze on the ground as she moved aside to let her sister descend.

All eyes were on Lucrezia as her boot stepped from the carriage, followed by the hem of her bold magenta
cotta,
a gloved hand, a narrow waist, and a braided blond head wrapped in a
reta
of gold netting. In her twentieth year, Lucrezia Buti was beautiful, with an eye trained for finery in the home of her father. Her features were placid and delicate: a high, smooth forehead, wide-set eyes, full lips. She stood by her sister, and raised her chin to look at the dusty courtyard.

Lucrezia took in the goats and boys, the limestone cloister walls, the fragrant bay laurels that stood beside the prioress's study, the quiet solemnity of the convent yard. She saw the tight face of an old nun staring from a narrow window, shadowed by a younger, gape-mouthed nun with a large nose and thick, furrowed brows.

“Mother of God,” Lucrezia murmured. She brought a small linen satchel of dried flowers to her nostrils, remembering how her fingers had deftly sewn the crushed petals into the clasp of fabric on her last night at home. “Mother Mary, give me strength.”

 

At the study window, Sister Camilla took in Lucrezia's beauty, the sisters' silk gowns trimmed in impractical velvet brocade, and in a glance she knew they'd been whisked to the convent with little understanding of what lay ahead.

“It must be the young novitiates sent from Florence by Monsignor Donacello,” she said to the prioress. “They've arrived a day early.”

A moment later, the secretary was striding toward the carriage, raising dust around the hem of her black robe.

“Welcome to the Convent Santa Margherita,” she said evenly.

Lucrezia presented a sealed parchment to Sister Camilla, and waited as she carried the note inside.

The letter, from the Monsignor Antonio Donacello of Florence,
contained a brief summary of the young women's diminished circumstances due to the untimely death of their father, Lorenzo Buti. It promised that alms would be given to the convent in gratitude for the sisters' safekeeping. And it extolled the virtues of their character and piety.

“They are the daughters of a silk merchant, recently taken by God,” the prioress said, peering at the note. “The youngest of five girls and a single brother. Apparently there has been some dispute as to the nature of their father's mercantile dealings.”

The two nuns again looked out the window of the study, which was housed in a building of pale stucco, the words
Sanctus Augustus
carved above the door.

Oblivious to the women's gaze, Spinetta pressed her palms into her quartz prayer beads and moved her lips. Lucrezia lifted a hand to her face and inhaled the chamomile fragrance of her sachet.

“She has the face of an angel,” Sister Camilla said.

“But it will do her no good here,” Mother Bartolommea replied.

 

F
ra Filippo selected a thin-handled brush from a jumble on his worktable. He dipped it into the fresh tempera and raised the bristles to the blank oval, preparing to make a mark that would define the Madonna's cheek.

“I don't see it,” Fra Filippo mumbled to himself as his hand stopped. “I don't see the Madonna I've promised.”

Fra Filippo knew he needed only to follow the lines he'd drawn in order to have a Madonna that would please his patron, Ottavio de' Valenti. But the monk was never satisfied by simply filling in the lines he'd sketched onto a panel. His Virgin had to be beautiful and tragic; a Mary full of grace yet already seeing beyond the joy of her son's birth, to His sad end.

“Matteo!” The painter's voice echoed through the open rooms of his
bottega,
and Fra Filippo remembered that again that very morning he'd dismissed yet another young assistant—the stupid oaf had left the gesso brushes unwashed, and they lay stiff and useless on the ground. The monk kicked the brushes across the floor, and grabbed up a heavy jug of wine.

Fra Filippo had accepted the commission from de' Valenti knowing that he would need to work swiftly. He rarely turned down work, and never refused a wealthy man who might protect him from the vagaries of an artist's life. Being a monk was no insurance against the perils of his own passions, as Fra Filippo well knew. Although Cosimo de' Medici had recently called him the greatest living painter in all of the Italian states, Fra Filippo was heavily in debt, often short of money, and always behind in his work. His growing reputation as a brilliant painter brought him ever-increasing commissions, but hadn't altered the monk's tendency to procrastinate, or to make trouble for himself.

Many had heard tales of his great bravado, the power of his appetites, and the roar of his pride. But few understood the hours Fra Filippo spent warding off doubt whenever he feared his talents would elude him. And as he often did at such moments, Fra Filippo felt overwhelmed by all that God and man asked of him.

“Why do you ask me to paint what I don't see, Lord?” the painter asked aloud, letting his brush fall to his side. “If this is your will, then show me a face worthy of the Virgin.”

 

L
ucrezia and Spinetta followed Sister Camilla past the convent's small barn, stinking pigsty, and herd of braying goats. Ignoring the sweat that ran down her back, Lucrezia stepped carefully
along a crooked stone pathway, past a fountain in the cloister garden that seemed to mock her with its cool, bubbling water.

“When you enter the convent you surrender all worldly goods and vanities,” Sister Camilla said, her voice floating to them through the thick morning air. “Everything for a life of prayer and work is provided by the Lord, and the healing herbs from Sister Pureza's garden help us to maintain a healthy balance of our humors.”

Lucrezia gazed at a stooped nun who was looking at them across a stone wall. The woman held a basket filled with yellow flowers in her arms and watched as they entered a low stucco building. When Lucrezia looked back over her shoulder, the old nun's bright eyes were still on them.

“You'll wear these robes,” Sister Camilla said after she'd led the sisters to their cells, barely large enough for a narrow cot and small washbasin, and handed each a black garment. Her eyes passed over their ornate dresses. “Someone will come for your clothes.”

The secretary looked at the young women's long hair, and swatted at a fly that buzzed near her cheek.

“The convent has abandoned the custom of shaving our novitiates' heads,” Sister Camilla said. “The prioress believes hair is not a vanity but a necessity provided by the Lord to keep us warm in the cold winter months.”

She left without another word.

 

Alone in the airless cell, Lucrezia sat on her cot and wept. Until this moment she hadn't believed that God would let her fate come to this. But neither pleas, prayers, nor tears had kept her from being carried inside the convent walls and locked behind its heavy gates.

Wearily she began to undress, laying each piece of clothing on top
of her fragrant sachet. Before she finished there was a knock on the door and the thin wooden plank was pushed open by the old woman she'd seen in the garden.

“I am Sister Pureza,” the woman said. “You must finish dressing.
Vieni
.”

Over the old woman's shoulder, Lucrezia could see another nun knocking on her sister's door and issuing the same brief instructions. Spinetta came to the doorway wearing her black robe, and thrust her favorite gown into the waiting nun's arms.

“Everything, please,” said the other nun. “Your
mantello,
and also the traveling bag. It will be sold for your dowry, of course.”

Sister Pureza gazed at the novitiate in front of her.

“
Andiamo,
Lucrezia. I know it is warm, but there is much to be done.” Sister Pureza smiled kindly, revealing even more wrinkles in her old face, and nodded at the robe with her chin.

“Yes, Sister,” Lucrezia said. “Forgive me.”

She turned her back to the old woman and removed her silken
gamurra,
her boots, and the linen stockings soaked with perspiration. She stood in her thin undergarments, the
panni di gamba
she'd stitched by hand.

From the doorway, Sister Pureza watched. Like Lucrezia, the old nun had also been the beautiful daughter of a merchant who lived in a fine palazzo. She'd traveled to Rome to see Pope Martin V's coronation, and tasted fine wines from her uncles' cellars. But her beauty had led her to shame and finally to the gates of the convent where, in time, she'd surrendered her baptismal name and taken the name Sister Pureza Magdalena.

At the sight of the novitiate standing in her chemise and bloomers, her thin back heaving with emotion, the old nun let out a small sigh.

“My father,” Lucrezia said softly.

Turning, she dropped to her knees and fingered the
panni di gamba
at the place where she'd secreted her silver medallion of Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence, into its hem.
“Mio padre.”