The Medici Boy (40 page)

After Donatello’s death in 1466, Piero arranged that all the documents of the
bottega
—notes, sketches, commissions, records of payments made and payments owed—should be delivered to me here in Santa Croce so that I might create a record of the man himself. These documents, along with the many I myself have secreted away, I have arranged in sequence that the reader might know what work Donato did and when he did it and where it rests today.

As to Donatello himself, who could ever recreate him to the life? The facts, yes, I have those in writing. And the documents that date his commissions and record his payments and list his triumphs, but what of the man himself? His passion, his devotion to work, his great rollicking laughter, his kindness, his cruelty, his irreverence, his disdain for the great and the proud, his humble nature and his overarching pride, his sudden rage, his love of children, his patience with them and his impatience with his patrons, his blind fear of failure and his conviction that he could do anything he tried, his loyalty, his generosity of spirit and of mind: Who can capture this? I cannot write his life and so I have written my own and considered his only at a glance, a life caught from the corner of my watchful eye. I asked him once what he thought was Ghiberti’s most significant accomplishment and he responded, instantly, “Selling that useless farm land in Lepricino.” And when he looked upon Brunelleschi’s crucifix, he said, “It is for you to sculpt the true Christ; I am the sculptor of peasants.” And in this comment I hear two Donatello’s: the humble giver of praise and the other, the confident sculptor who knows that the peasant in Christ is in truth our redemption. How do you capture such a spirit?

Donatello died in his little house on the Via del Cocomero and ascended to his Maker on 13 December 1466. He was perhaps eighty years of age.

He never recovered from Agnolo’s death and he never forgave me for causing it. He recovered his health, however, and though his eyesight continued to fail, he went on sculpting—in Siena, in Florence—and his last great works, I am told, are the bronze reliefs of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ for the pulpit of San Lorenzo. They are rough-hewn bronzes, left unfinished at his death, but as powerful and poignant as anything he ever sculpted. So Michelozzo says. I have not seen them.

Donatello was buried with a royal funeral. Some two thousand Florentines filled the streets for his funeral procession. There were prayers and masses and praise for his completed works, and the feeling that perhaps he had not been rightly appreciated, that with the Medici boy he had changed the shape and nature of sculpture forever, that mere beauty would never again be enough.

How did he go to meet his Lord Jesus? With humility, I think, and with pride for work well done.

And how will I meet my Lord? As a murderer, as a penitent, as a spy. I still cannot imagine he will damn me. I will be one of those ragged street urchins he invites to the banquet at the eleventh hour. And I will eat and drink with him and rejoice that he is merciful.

I had always thought the Black Pest would carry me off but I have come to think—within these celestial prison walls—that it will be a fatal lightning bolt in the brain that will do for me. The brain will crack finally, and the heart as well, and then all will be quiet, everlastingly. And will I at the end remember Agnolo? I think at last I bear him no ill will. I wish to repent invoking his damnation. He was destined to be the life and death of Donatello and who am I to come between that great man and his fate? Perhaps Agnolo too will be at that final feast. If a man loves much . . . And yet . . .

* * *

P
OST-SCRIPTUM

I
N THE YEAR
of our Lord 1467 on the thirteenth day of December Luca di Matteo passed to his eternal reward, taken as he sat writing of the life and works of Donato di Betto Bardi. He dwelt as a prisoner for twelve years in this monastery of Santa Croce and it is a sad and great hurt to record that he died in disgrace, impenitent, and with small remorse for his sins. It is to be hoped that he loved much for it is certain there is much to be forgiven.

May God have mercy on his soul.

Donato Michele di Matteo, OFM

Author’s Note

O
N MY FIRST
visit to Florence I had the exhilarating experience of seeing Michelangelo’s David at the Accademia and later that same day seeing Donatello’s David in the Bargello. Michelangelo’s deeply moved me but Donatello’s was a revelation. It was naked in every sense and seemed to me personal, erotic, a testament to the sculptor’s sexual obsession for the teenaged boy he had created. Someone, I thought, should write a novel about it.

I spent years reading in a general way about early Renaissance art, politics and religion, and during those years revisited Florence many times, always with a long stop at the Bargello. In 2006 the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded me a generous grant that allowed me to spend an extended period in Italy doing research. Research aside,
THE MEDICI BOY
is pure invention, whose purpose it is to entertain, provoke, and disturb. The statue of David is its own narrative.

I want to thank the Guggenheim Foundation and especially Edward Hirsch and André Bernard. And for their generous critical support: Eavan Boland, Edie Wilkie Edwards, Nancy H. Packer, and Arnold Rampersad. And for all those years of faith and patience: my agent, Peter Matson.

A Brief Bibliography

F
OR READERS WHO
want to know the true history of this amazing period of Renaissance Florence I offer this small list of works to which I’ve been most indebted in writing
The Medici Boy
.

Bassett, Stephen.
Death in Towns: Urban Response to the Dying and the Dead.
Leicester University Press.

Bennett, Bonnie A. and David G. Wilkins.
Donatello
. Oxford: Phaidon.

Brucker, Gene A.
Renaissance Florence
. University of California Press.

Brucker, Gene A., ed.
The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study
. University of Toronto Press.

Cagliotti, Francesco.
Donatello e i Medici, storia del David e della Giuditta
. L. S. Olschki. Studi, 14.

Cennini, Cennino d’Andrea.
The Craftsman’s Handbook
(
Il Libro dell’ Arte)
. Dover Publications.

Chapman, Hugo.
Padua in the 1450’s
. British Museum Press.

Cohn, Samuel Kline.
The cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy
. Johns Hopkins Press.

Crum, Roger J. and John T. Paoletti.
Renaissance Florence: A social history
. Cambridge University Press.

Duby, G.
A History of Private Life
. Harvard University Press.

Ewart, K. Dorothea.
Cosimo De’ Medici
. Cosimo Classics.

Father Cuthbert.
The Romanticism of Saint Francis
. Longmans, Green.

Gilbert, Creighon E.
Italian Art, 1400–1500: Sources and Documents
. Northwestern University Press.

Glasser, H.
Artists’ Contracts of the Early Renaissance
. Garland Press.

Greenhaigh, Michael.
Donatello and His Sources
. Duckworth.

Hartt, F.
Donatello: Prophet of Modern Vision
. Abrams.

Hibbert, Christopher.
The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici
. Penguin.

Hoffman, Malvina.
Sculpture Inside and Out
. Bonanza Books.

Janson, H. W.
The Sculpture of Donatello
. Princeton University Press.

Lightbown, R. W.
Donatello and Michelozzo
. Harvey Miller Publishers.

McBrien, Richard P.
Lives of the Popes
. HarperSanFrancisco

Mills, John W.
The Encyclopedia of Sculpture Technique
. B. T. Batsford.

Najemy, John M.
A History of Florence, 1200–1575
. Blackwell Publishing.

Newman, Paul.
Daily Life in the Middle Ages
. McFarland.

Origo, Iris.
The Merchant of Prato: Daily Life in a Medieval Italian City
. Penguin.

Parks, Tim.
Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth Century Florence.
Norton.

Plumb, J. H.
The Italian Renaissance
. Houghton Mifflin

Poeschke, Joachim
. Donatello and His World: Sculpture of the Italian Renaissance
. H. N. Abrams.

Pope-Hennessy, Sir John.
Donatello: Sculptor
. Abbeville Press.

Rich, Jack C.
The Materials and Methods of Sculpture
. Oxford University Press.

Rocke, Michael.
Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence
. Oxford University Press.

Rosenauer, Artur.
Donatello
. Electa.

Singman, Jeffrey.
Daily Life in Medieval Europe
, 1476–1492. Greenwood Press.

Strathern, Paul.
The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance
. Vintage Books.

Turner, A. Richard.
Renaissance Florence: The Invention of a New Art
. Abrams.

Vasari, Giorgio.
The Lives of the Artists
. Oxford University Press.

Waley, Daniel Philip.
Later Medieval Europe, 1250–1520
. Longman.

Walker, Paul Robert.
The Feud That Sparked the Renaissance: How Brunelleschi and Ghiberti Changed the Art World
. William Morrow.

Wirtz, Rolf.
Donatello, 1386–1466
. Könemann.

Ziegler, Philip.
The Black Death
. Harper and Row.

About the Author

Photo by Dagmar Logie

J
OHN
L’H
EUREUX IS
the author of eighteen books of poetry and fiction. His stories have appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper’s
,
The New Yorker
, and in Best American Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. Since 1973, he has taught fiction writing, the short story, and dramatic literature at Stanford University. His recent publications include a collection of stories,
Comedians
, and the novels,
The Handmaid of Desire
(1996),
Having Everything
(1999), and
The Miracle
(2002).

An Afterword

“I
N THE COURTYARD
of the Palazzo Vecchio there is a life-size bronze David who has cut off the head of Goliath and places his raised foot on it; in his right hand he holds a sword. This figure is so natural in its lifelike pose and its rendering of the soft texture of flesh that it seems incredible to artists that it was not formed from the mold of an actual body. This statue once stood in the courtyard of the Medici Palace.” Giorgio Vasari,
Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
, 1550.

The Medici Boy
relies for its fictional characters on a fairly long list of historical figures and for its events on several important moments in the history of Florence. For information about these people and events I have depended on a great many historical and literary sources to which I am much indebted. The facts are theirs; the errors are mine.

Here are some thumbnail biographies of a few real people who appear in this novel.

Brunelleschi.
(1377–1446) Filippo Brunelleschi was one of the foremost architects and engineers of the Italian Renaissance. He designed and executed the dome of the Florence Cathedral. He had a lifelong friendship with Donatello and a lifelong feud with Ghiberti.

Cennino Cennini. (
1370–1440) Cennino d’Andrea Cennini—a student of Gaddi—composed
Il libro dell’arte
, an early how-to book on the techniques and ambitions of late medieval art.
The Craftsman’s Handbook
is still in print.

Cosimo de’ Medici.
(1389–1464) Cosimo di Giovanni degli Medici, founder of the Medici dynasty, was first of the de facto rulers of Florence during the Italian Renaissance. His vast new wealth derived from his banking business and by the 1430s he came to be seen as a threat to the old wealth of the Strozzi and the degli Albizzi. He is the archetypal patron of painters, sculptors, architects of the early Renaissance.

Donatello.
(1386–1466) Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi—goldsmith, artist, sculptor—carved the way from Gothic classicism into early Renaissance modes of realism and human emotion. His nude David, the first freestanding bronze in a thousand years, is sometimes said to have altered the history of Renaissance sculpture.

Ghiberti.
(1378–1455) Lorenzo di Bartolo, later called Ghiberti, trained as a goldsmith and at age twenty-three defeated della Quercia and Brunelleschi in a contest to create the monumental bronze doors of the Cathedral Baptistry. Brunelleschi never forgave him.

Michelozzo.
(1396–1472) Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi. Intimate friend and sometime partner of Donatello, he was a goldsmith, sculptor, and architect. He followed Cosimo into his Venice exile in 1433 and designed and built the library of San Giorgio as Cosimo’s gift of thanks to his hosts. Michelozzo designed the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi and rebuilt the Convent of San Marco. He married at age forty-five and fathered eight children.