The next morning dawned warm and fair, as though Mother Gaia herself was in love. I met Chiara’s eyes in the mirror as she dressed me and smiled. “Let us go out today, Chiara,” I said. “We shall go for a stroll. It is such a lovely day.”
She met my smile with one of her own. “Why, whatever you wish, Madonna. If you are certain that you are well enough.”
Today, even her well-meaning concern would not irritate me. “I have never felt better,” I said.
Her smile widened. “Indeed. I can see that is true. You seem exceedingly well, Madonna, and if I may…” She trailed off, and I nodded for her to go on. “Happier than you have been in some time.”
I could feel the warmth of Sandro’s words of love beneath my breastbone, where I carried them now and forever. “I am. Oh, I am.”
Chiara did not, as I half expected she might, inquire as to the source of my newfound happiness. Perhaps she had made her own conclusions, and I cared not if she had. All she said was, “Then by all means, Madonna. You are right; it is a beautiful day, indeed.”
Once we were both fittingly attired we left the palazzo, stepping out into the golden sunshine. “Perhaps a stroll along the Arno?” Chiara suggested. “Or did you have a destination in mind, Madonna?”
“I thought we might walk to Santa Maria Novella, to see Maestro Botticelli’s new painting,” I said. “It has been installed in one of the chapels there, I hear.”
If Chiara had any private thoughts on my wish to see this painting, she kept them well to herself. “That sounds most illuminating,” she said, and we set off through the narrow streets into the heart of Florence.
We were nearly sweating by the time we reached the Dominican basilica, presiding serenely over a large piazza. The exterior was adorned with geometric patterns in marble, and the interior—much like the Duomo or San Lorenzo with its plain, graceful arches—featured columns patterned in green-and-white-striped marble.
I had been in this church a few times before and had always liked it: it was simple but beautiful, and not so large that the light from its windows did not brighten and warm the interior. It was much less gloomy than the Vespucci family church of Ognissanti, where we usually attended Mass and which only let a minimum of light in.
As Chiara and I stepped inside Santa Maria Novella that day, I found that what I was looking for was not far to seek. We had just dipped our fingers in the holy water by the door when I saw the painting, adorning a chapel immediately to the left of the entrance.
I would have known Sandro’s style anywhere. Eagerly I approached it, gazing up at it like a child might at a tray of sweets.
The canvas was a good size, large enough to dominate the small chapel but not, I noted, as large as the canvas for Venus. The scene of the Three Kings paying homage to the Christ Child was a riot of color, of movement, of action. Gold lined the robes of the kings, their large entourage, and the Virgin’s blue mantle as well. The Kings knelt before the baby Jesus in the barn of crumbling stones and beams to which he had been consigned. The Blessed Mother, meanwhile, had eyes only for her beloved son, while Joseph watched over them both protectively.
As I stepped closer, however, I began to find some familiar figures. The king in the red robe, kneeling directly before the Christ Child with his hat cast to the ground, his face in profile—why, he looked much like the late Piero de’ Medici. And in the far left corner was a handsome young man in a rich, gold-trimmed scarlet doublet, leaning on a sword with something of an arrogant expression on his face—Giuliano’s face. Then, as my eyes swept back across the painting to the other side, I saw a young, dark-haired man in a black doublet regarding Christ with a thoughtful expression: Lorenzo. And, finally, in the far right-hand corner I was surprised to see a familiar blond man in a plain yellow robe, staring straight back at the viewer: Sandro.
I smiled widely, stepping so close to the painting that my gown brushed against the chapel’s altar. I began to laugh, softly, almost gleefully, as I studied the figure of Sandro gazing out of the canvas, his painted eyes meeting my real ones. Slowly, I reached out and, ever so briefly, touched my fingers to his painted image.
For just a moment, I felt as though I might weep at the beauty of it all.