The Medici Boy (26 page)

* * *

I
N THE SPRING
of 1432 Agnolo was arrested once again for sodomy. He admitted only to anonymous partners, two in number, and confessed he had received gifts from them, a leather belt, a silver buckle. When pressed for names, he denounced a known sodomite who was already under arrest. He accused himself and, under the new law, was allowed to go free.

The next day ten florins disappeared from Donatello’s hanging basket and on the day after that Agnolo fled—so he told Pagno—to Rome.

There was a great silence in the
bottega
.

Donatello locked the unfinished David in his privy chamber where it would remain, cracked and crumbling, for more than a year.

“He is dead to me now,” Donatello confided. “Now and for good.”

T
IME
L
OST

CHAPTER
26

G
OOD
, I
THOUGHT
, he is damned forever . . . and I meant Agnolo. My master Donatello once more folded in upon himself, saying little and showing nothing of his feelings, but I felt certain that this time was the last time. He would not forgive Agnolo again.

I was wrong, of course. Agnolo fled to Rome in spring of 1432 and he would not return until late summer of 1433 when once again, incredibly, all would be forgiven. And the time between—wasted, wanton—would be forgiven as well. Except by me. During his absence carvings for the Prato Pulpit lay in the work yard still only half complete, the life-cast of Niccolò da Uzzano was forgotten, and the clay David stood in Donatello’s privy closet, drying out, cracking, turning into a mockery of itself.

A week after the wretched boy’s disappearance Donatello himself packed off for Rome . . . though not in pursuit of Agnolo, he insisted. It was a matter of work to be done and money to be made. Michelozzo shook his head and said nothing. Two weeks later, having conferred with Cosimo and having bought time with the importunate members of the Prato Commune, Michelozzo joined Donatello in Rome. They had a Papal commission to fill, he said, and there were rich promises of memorial statues, marble tombs, tabernacles. Suddenly we were asked to believe that Donatello and Michelozzo had become interested in profit, they who never knew what was owed them or gave thought to what they owed.

I was left behind in Florence with Pagno, who was put in charge of the
bottega
. . . a temporary arrangement, Michelozzo said, but he could not look at me as he said it. Pagno again, as ever. It would be a matter of a month, perhaps two, until Donatello should return with the commissions for me to write up first in our common language and then in Latin for the sake of the tax laws. At that time, as befitted my age and accomplishments, I would replace Pagno. But one month became three months and then four, while Pagno preened and crowed as manager of the
bottega
. Though he pretended to consult me on all matters of commissions and payments—he was ever sly and subtle—it was I who made all the important decisions and guaranteed that work was accomplished in due order and on time. My exile—so I still think of it—was further occupied with transcriptions of Latin and Greek manuscripts for Cosimo de’ Medici. It was I who made the first copies of Cicero’s
De Oratore
, a text I came to hate as I copied it out with care and deliberation for the fiftieth time. Cosimo delighted not only in acquiring these manuscripts but in making gifts of them as well.

Meanwhile time stretched on intolerably as Donatello and Michelozzo labored in Rome on the great marble slab that would become the Giovanni Crivelli tomb in Santa Maria Aracoeli and the even more splendid Tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament for San Pietro itself. And they did much fine work in gold, work of great beauty executed at great profit.

Yet it was time lost, all of it, lost. Anyone could have done these things.

In Rome Donatello carved a small wooden John the Baptist as a boy very like the lost Agnolo, so I am told, but Michelozzo says that is not so, that Donatello was happy at this time and that he had put Agnolo from his mind. But in this I do not believe him. I think he lies only to spare me.

I am saddened even now to say that I regard these Roman sculptures with a certain bitterness since I had no part in them: the writing up of the commission was completed by some sticky-fingered lawyer in Rome and even today, among my many papers from the partnership of Donatello and Michelozzo, there is no trace of contracts or commissions for their work in Rome; only the odd note from Michelozzo promising to return to Florence—soon—and wishing me well.

It was not until 1433 that they returned to Florence—Michelozzo in April, Donatello in May—and then in truth only because the Prato Commune had run short of patience and had begged Cosimo to intercede. “Donatello is
intricato
,” they said. “He is unreliable. He has again and again violated the terms of his contract.” They were threatening to sue for completion of their Pulpit, but Cosimo intervened and sent Pagno to Rome to tell Donatello and Michelozzo that they must return to Florence and finish the Prato Pulpit. It was not a request; it was a command.

They returned and a second contract was drawn up, this one calling for new balcony ornamentation for the Pulpit with a firm date fixed and new money advanced.

To soften the harsh urgency of his summons, Cosimo rented them the Inn of Santa Caterina and two adjoining little houses for five florins a year—nearly a gift outright—for use as a much enlarged
bottega
with a foundry and a work yard and with lodgings for his apprentices. This new
bottega
stood where the Via Longa meets the Via de’ Gori and where, in 1443, Cosimo would erect the great new Palazzo Medici designed and built by his favorite architect, Michelozzo. But for now it was Donatello’s
bottega
and the time forever lost was about to be redeemed.

It is here that Donatello would carve the immortal
Cantoria
for the Duomo and the two sets of bronze doors for the sacristy of San Lorenzo and it is here that he would finally bring to completion the fatal Medici Boy.

We were hardly settled in the new
bottega
when, without warning and without reason, Agnolo came back. Incredible as it must seem, he was accepted into Donatello’s life without rebuke. In truth he was accepted without warmth and without forgiveness either—it was a chill homecoming—but he was accepted nonetheless. He hung about uselessly—“a decoration,” the apprentices said—while everyone else worked hard at their given tasks, but for once he did not complain and did not put himself forward. He made no offers to grind paints for Caterina or to carve marble for Pagno or to pose for Donatello. He was simply there, modest and humble, as passive as the donkey Fiametta.

I knew him, of course, and I knew his calculations. He was waiting to be noticed and therefore loved. I, in turn, was waiting to see what would happen.

1433–1434

CHAPTER
27

W
HAT HAPPENED NEXT
took all the world by surprise. Cosimo de’ Medici, in his forty-fourth year, the richest and most admired man in Florence, was arrested and charged with treason. This was the work of Rinaldo degli Albizzi, a man whose hatred and jealousy of the Medici had led him to plot against Cosimo for years, to fabricate plot after plot, and finally to bribe the Signoria successfully and convince them to put Cosimo under arrest. He wanted nothing less than Cosimo’s death and it was his great mistake that he settled for less.

The plot unfolded over a period of years but, as I think of it now some thirty-six years later, it seems to have begun at the foolish siege of Lucca, when Cosimo resigned from the war committee and took his family away with him to Verona. The blame for the disastrous war with Lucca naturally fell on the Albizzi, and the crushing financial burden as well, and this is when Rinaldo’s conspiracy against Cosimo took fire.

To crush the Medici Rinaldo would first have to take control of the Signoria. This took time and much money, but by spring of 1433 Rinaldo had bought the votes of six of the nine members of the Signoria. He then paid off the debts of Bernardo Guardagni so that he could be elected Gonfaloniere—head of the Signoria—and with Guardagni in office Rinaldo was ready to spring his trap.

Rumors were circulated about Cosimo and his ambition. He acted modestly and went about with only a single servant, they said, in order to distract honest citizens from his prodigious wealth. He was a friend and intimate of sodomites and perverts. He was a usurer, not a banker, and his donations to the poor and his civic building projects were hypocritical gestures to buy men’s good will in this life and God’s mercy in the next. His famous sympathy with the little man was a ruse to disguise his drive toward absolute power. What he intended in fact was to hire
condottieri
and, with their aid, to overthrow the Republic.

These rumors drifted back to Cosimo but he shrugged them away as the cost of doing business in Florence. The rumors spread, growing more vile and vengeful. Finally words led to actions and one night the Medici insignia that framed the great palace doors were publicly desecrated with black paint and a week later with human shit. This happened not once but several times until finally, when those same doors on the Via de’ Bardi were smeared with blood, Cosimo chose the way of caution and withdrew from the city to his newly fortified palace at Trebbio in the Muggelo.

* * *

F
IRST
,
HOWEVER
,
HE
took care to protect his money. Only Cosimo would have thought how to do it and only he would have been able to execute his plan.

On a single day in May he emptied his palace vaults and transferred three thousand gold ducats to the Benedictines at San Miniato al Monte, nearly five thousand gold florins to the Dominicans of San Marco, and to the Venetian branch of the family bank over fifteen thousand gold florins. To end the day right, he transferred all his family stocks in the Florence Commune to the Medici bank in Rome. Do whatever they might to him, the Signoria would have no access to Cosimo’s wealth because, though they might dare to tear down his palace, they would never dare to move against the monasteries.

I was witness to this transfer of gold, and I am proud to say I was a participant in it as well. Cosimo had long depended on me to copy out in my best hand the rare manuscripts that he collected, and over the years he had come to value my loyalty. Thus it came about that on the third day of May I was summoned to his palace and told to bring Fiametta, saddled with the stout leather
borsette
used for hauling limestone and marble, and to come quietly with no show of haste.

It was a fair day to be out in the streets and I was flushed with pleasure at being singled out by Cosimo for some important task. Secrecy always makes the heart beat faster.

I was admitted to the palace through the small side doors and, since Fiametta could not well fit through the opening, the great fortified doors were swung open long enough to admit her, and then they were closed again. In the courtyard a dozen men set about their business. They worked in silence, bringing out sacks from a storeroom within the walls and piling them in a neat circle around the central well. Cosimo was there, standing beneath the arch of the stairs, and his lady was there as well, and Giacomo stood silent behind them. I bowed from the waist but they gave no mark of seeing me and I realized that, officially, this was not happening.

Cosimo’s men selected four heavy sacks and packed them firmly in the
borsette
. They placed cypress chips on top and tightened the straps on the pouches. They stepped back, silent still, and waited. And then Giacomo appeared from beneath the arch of the stairs and approached me where I stood beside Fiametta. I noted that even here in the courtyard Giacomo wore the sword and dagger that seemed to mark him out as Cosimo’s special servant. He said simply, “Monasterio del San Miniato al Monte. You will be expected.” I was not told what was in the sacks and I knew not to inquire. I guessed that it was a cache of rare books. I did not suspect that I was bearing through the streets of Florence three thousand gold ducats.