Leonardo's Swans (38 page)

“Good morning, Magistro,” she says. “Is the sky not an extraordinary blue for this cold winter’s day?”

“Your Excellency,” he says, wiping the crumbs from his beard, “the sky is not really blue. Did you know that? I have made a study of it. The blue is an illusion. The color is merely a result of the way that the sun’s rays reflect upon the water contained in the skies.”

“But if it is not really blue, then what color is it?”

“This great blue ceiling is merely covering an eternal and unfathomable darkness. As with so many things, a façade of beauty hides the dark and the unknown.”

Leonardo takes her arm, leading her toward the refectory, unaware, she thinks, of the effect his statement has had upon her. She does not think it wise for a man to make such investigations of the wonders of nature. If God wants us to see blue, then we ought to just see blue, she wants to say. The Lord would have His reasons. What good can come from revealing His secrets?

Beatrice stops Leonardo outside the double doors leading to the dining hall of the friars. “Magistro, I must ask you. Is it true that you have built a machine with wings and that you intend to fly?”

“Yes, Your Excellency. It is true.”

“But if you fail, or if the flying machine fails, will that not put an end to you? I ask you this out of concern. The duke and I have the highest regard for you. I would be remiss in my duty if I allowed a man of your talents to undo himself while in our service.”

But he only smiles at her. “I have made some preliminary tests which have left me quite optimistic. As you can see, I remain uninjured.”

“Are you not afraid that in trying to fly, you are defying God, who made the birds with wings and man earthbound?”

“Why no, Your Excellency. I believe that God Himself inspired me to create the flying machine. Even if I were trying to defy God by flying, I believe He would forgive me. Men are always acting in defiance of Our Lord, and I cannot see where He has struck too many of them down.”

They pass into the refectory, bringing a gust of cold air into the room with them. Much of Leonardo’s mural of Our Lord’s Last Supper is hidden by scaffolding, but Beatrice is happy to see that the face of Jesus is revealed. She has always taken comfort in Jesus’ face, and has sometimes of late, when visiting Bianca Giovanna’s tomb, poked her head into the refectory to gaze upon it. Eyes cast downward, palm open, Jesus is utterly serene as He announces the fact of the betrayal. He wears simple robes of scarlet and blue, the Sforza colors, a subtle tribute by the Magistro to the reigning family. His tilted head is positioned in the center of a window behind Him, so that He is framed by the bright light outside. The Magistro long ago abandoned halos in religious painting, as Isabella pointed out to her sister, but to signal Jesus’ divinity, the Magistro surrounds Him in divine light that comes from a natural source. Beatrice cannot help but think that the Magistro has intentionally given Jesus this halo of sorts. The eye of the viewer is naturally drawn to the Christ in the center, and beyond, out of the window, where the landscape has an endless horizon that seems to extend the very wall of the refectory into eternity. It is as if the Magistro is making a contrast between the finite nature of the event taking place in the picture’s scenario, and the eternal nature that is Jesus’ essence. Beatrice lets her gaze melt into that of the Lord. If Jesus could be so serene at the hour of His betrayal by someone He loved and trusted, then so can she. It is as if Our Lord is telling her to be brave in the face of this fresh pain. Look past this present drama, He seems to say, for it is temporal,
whereas the love I promise you is eternal
.

She will report to her husband that the Magistro is nearly finished with this great opus. She and Ludovico have visited the dining hall from time to time to gauge the Magistro’s progress—or lack of it. The first time, they arrived with Leonardo’s apprentices and his equipment, watching the prior’s astonished face as lumber for ladders and scaffolds, lengths of ropes, hoists and pulleys were brought into the room under his nose. These materials were followed by bowls of eggs for mixing the tempera, great jars of oil, ceramic pots full of pigments of every hue of every color, stones of lapis lazuli and the mortars to pound them into a powder for mixing the color blue, and dozens of palettes and brushes.

“But all of this in our dining hall?” the prior had asked. “Montorfano did not bring nearly this much!”

“You cannot expect the Magistro to cover a thirty-foot expanse of wall with just a smidgeon of paint,” Ludovico answered, as the apprentices and hired laborers carried in easels so that the mural might be copied and studied even as the Magistro painted it. They set up long worktables on which were spread his hundreds of studies for the various parts of the mural—heads, profiles, faces, feet, hands, noses, robes, drapery, plates, cups, even different sorts of foods, all sketched in red and black chalk. Soon the room was overtaken and the prior was demanding to know how long his clergy was to be expected to eat their meals with the strong smell of linseed that already permeated the room.

“My dear Father,” Ludovico said, “Giotto could paint a mural in ten days. How much behind him could a greater genius like our Leonardo be?

“Besides,” Ludovico added. “You are men of God, sworn to make every sacrifice to His glory. What is the sacrifice of dining in clutter compared to the sacrifice that the Savior made upon the cross for all of us?”

The prior could not counter this point and so closed his mouth—for the time being.

The Magistro, wishing to explain his conception for the mural to his patrons, ceremoniously quoted from the Gospel according to Matthew, “‘Now when the evening had come, He sat down with the Twelve. And as they did eat, He said, “Verily I say unto you that one of you shall betray me.” And they were exceedingly sorrowful and began to say unto Him, “Lord, is it I?” And He replied, “He that dip his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me.” ’

“The task of an artist is twofold,” the Magistro continued. “To portray the person and to portray the person’s state of mind. I shall portray each apostle and his state of mind at the moment that the Lord announces that one of them shall betray Him.”

Satisfied that the Magistro was sufficiently interested in pursuing and completing the mural, Ludovico left him alone. He and Beatrice visited the refectory some weeks later to see, to their happy surprise, that the figures were already outlined on the wall in thin black paint. Slowly, in the ensuing months, a great sweep of color began to wash over the wall, and the prior ceased to complain because he could see daily progress. Though he wanted the artist and his team of assistants and their various sloppy materials out of the dining hall, he could also foresee that the Dominicans of Santa Maria delle Grazie were going to be in possession of a great work of art.

But that was two years ago.

Though most of the painting is complete, Judas—Beatrice assumes that it is Judas because the figure is clutching a purse—remains headless. And unlike all other representations of this event, Judas sits on the same side of the table as the others.

“Judas is always portrayed as isolated from the rest, sitting on the opposite side of the table from Our Lord and the Apostles. Why have you seated him on the same side?” Beatrice asks.

“Because, Your Excellency, he would have been,” he answers politely, as if all the painters through the ages until himself have simply been wrong. “One must consider the state of mind of the betrayer. He would have done anything to keep his wicked deed secret. He would have tried to look most innocent. He would not have separated himself from the Twelve. It would have aroused suspicion. A drama must be as true to life as possible to convince.”

The painting is, in fact, and as promised, a drama. Each of the Twelve is frozen in the moment, the contents of his mind, and his fear that he is the one who will betray the Lord, etched on his expression and in each movement of the body. Beatrice has never seen a painting that so perfectly captures one moment in time. It is as if the Magistro stopped Time itself and preserved it in his mural. The effect is eerie, she thinks, another of Leonardo’s mystical tricks, undoubtedly borne out of his inquiries into the inner workings of man’s brain and body. She decides to bring the conversation back to a more practical level.

“And why is the head of Judas not yet painted?”

“Because I have yet to find the correct model for him, a face that might embody betrayal itself.”

“But a betrayer might have many faces, some of them beautiful or comely or quite handsome.” Beatrice feels the words choking her as they exit her mouth. Does the Magistro realize that the duchess has recently been betrayed by two faces, one beautiful and the other handsome? Has he, too, heard the gossip? Does he pity her even as he must patronize her?

“That is true,” he says darkly. “Treachery is too often hidden by a sweet or handsome face.” He says it not in a condescending way, as if he is responding to court gossip, but as someone who has also been slain by the deceiver behind the beautiful mask. She has never seen him look so vulnerable. His eyebrows cinch together, and she notices the exquisite web of lines shooting from the corners of his eyes like pencil drawings of the sun’s rays. A line of worry bisects his forehead, making it look as if his face might split in two if he continued with whatever thought was passing through his brain.

“Why is it that in others’ renditions of Our Lord’s Last Supper, Judas is isolated, but in yours, it is Jesus who looks so very much alone?”

“Because, Your Excellency, if you had just prophesied that you would soon be betrayed by someone whom you loved and trusted, and if that betrayal were inevitable, which you knew because it had been revealed to you by God, and was therefore beyond question, would you not feel isolated?”

“O
UR
task together is simple,” Leonardo says, guiding Beatrice to the south wall of the refectory, where he is to insert her portrait into Montorfano’s mural. The room has no hearth, and the warmth from the burning fire bowls seems to dissipate into the tall ceiling before it can do anyone any good. Beatrice shivers as the Magistro explains. “You will see on the left side of the painting where I have outlined the profile of the duke and your elder son. See how they are kneeling, as if being blessed by the Pope and St. Francis? On the right side of the mural, I will paint you in profile too, Your Excellency, with your younger son at your side, kneeling in the shelter of the Dominican nuns, whom the excellent Montorfano has so interestingly painted into the scene of the Crucifixion of Jesus, some thousand years before.”

Was he mocking the other artist? Leonardo kept himself in a host of legal battles by refusing to make these allowances meant to glorify those holding the purse strings in the commissions he accepted. The Montorfano mural, in fact, embodied all of the present-day conventions rejected by the Magistro—a blatantly Italian backdrop to the Crucifixion; angels with many-colored wings flying about; demons perched on the shoulders of the wicked while saints whisper into the ears of the good; the presence of the pope and other clergy; and soldiers and Crusaders on horseback, witnessing the suffering of the Lord. The mural gives an overall effect of sorrow, whereas the Magistro’s painting witnesses the climactic moment of a great drama. One can see not only the character but, as Leonardo himself said, each character’s state of mind.

“I need only make a sketch of your profile,” he says as his assistants bring him sheets of paper of various size and weight. Wordlessly, he rejects each piece of parchment until he finds one to meet his approval. “And I would like to also make a sketch of your hands folded in prayer.”

The assistants return to their task of mixing colors, presumably so that Leonardo can later continue to work on the Last Supper. This is what Beatrice will report to Ludovico, anyway. Easels sit about the room, some upon which rest copies of the Last Supper, and some of which are covered with long white muslin cloths, hiding the paintings. One in particular looks ghostly, Beatrice thinks, sitting in the chair the Magistro has brought for her. She cannot take her eyes off of the tall, white form. Its conical top stretches from the crest of the easel as it stands alone like a specter, looking very mysterious, yet at the same time daring its revelation. Isabella always allows that there is no excitement like pulling the drape back on the work of a great artist. If she were here, she would ask the Magistro to reveal his work to her, as if it were the most natural thing to do. But Beatrice is not comfortable asking to see that which the artist has cloaked. If he has covered it, he must have his reasons.

Because Leonardo says he wishes to sketch her hands, Beatrice pulls off her leather gloves, revealing her pale, dry skin. She is twenty-one years old; how is it that the skin on the tops of her hands can look more wrinkled than the unpressed cloth covering the paintings? The room is very cold, colder even than the church where Bianca Giovanna lies, causing Beatrice’s skin to shrivel even more.

“Your Excellency, your hands shake. I will have the friar in the kitchen send a bowl of hot broth to warm you,” the Magistro says, his eyes full of concern as he leaves her to order the soup.

Beatrice wraps her cloak about her, standing so that she can pace the room to keep warm. She is drawn to the covered painting. She thinks that she will peek under the cloth, perhaps discovering some masterpiece in the making that she will be able to describe later today in a letter to Isabella. Beatrice has already made up her mind that she will invite Isabella to Milan to be with her when her baby is born. As a gift to her sister, she will make certain that Isabella sits for the Magistro—and not in this frigid refectory for a mere sketch, but in a room in the Castello near a warm fire, where drawings will be made for a fine oil painting like the one Leonardo made of Cecilia. Beatrice will not trust this enterprise to Ludovico, who will only carry it out if he can think of something to ask from Isabella in return, but she will appeal to the Magistro herself. How foolish were the competitions between the sisters in the past. Now they are two grown women, both suffering from losses. Giving Isabella the gift of a portrait by the Magistro is the least Beatrice can do for her sister.