“Bindings and bonds; cracks and fissures,
All must be carefully made and guarded against.”
At the front of the secret studio, the women moved two of the smaller tables together, a difficult task in their long skirts and the layers beneath. They laughed at their own awkwardness as the hard oak squawked resistance, legs dragging across uneven stone.
Viviana and Mattea, Fiammetta and Natasia spread their sketches of the painting across the tables. The anonymously painted but infamously known Feast of Herod lay across the now wide and accommodating surface.
Four different versions of the same painting, the same subject, were displayed before them. Some emphasized capturing the dimension of cloth—its folds and drapes and hanging—for this painting had done much to further the treatment of the subject. For others it was the men themselves—the realism of faces, especially of shape and color. In others, the room took precedence—the décor and the placement of men and furniture, giving it depth.
“Have you made inquiries, Fiammetta? Have you had any word?” Viviana asked.
“I have, but her friends speak of nothing but fear.”
“I have knocked upon her door twice,” Natasia chimed in, “but received no answer at all.”
“I haven’t had the chance to ask at the market.” Mattea walked a circle about the table, studying the sketches from all angles. “I don’t know if Isabetta has.”
“It is quite rude of her to call the meeting yet be the last to arrive,” this from Fiammetta.
Viviana’s shoulders slumped, “Perhaps it is her husband keeping her from—”
But a grating tolled as metal met metal, as the key inserted unlocked the door, and Isabetta entered. Upon her heel, but hovering at the threshold, stood a companion—a male companion, his visage hidden by Isabetta’s shadow.
Mattea gasped. Natasia and Viviana eked startled yelps, though they, at least, had the good sense to throw themselves upon the scattered sketches, to attempt to hide them.
No man, save Father Raffaello, had ever visited their sanctuary. No persons, other than themselves and a handful of servants sworn to secrecy, knew about this place, this group, and what they did there. Even as Viviana rushed to capture parchment and flip it over, her mind screamed at Isabetta, at vows broken.
“What do you mean by…?” Viviana’s demand stuck in her throat, her gaze upon the tall man became a pop-eyed glare. Disbelief, astonishment, burned bright splotches on Viviana’s cheeks. Though Isabetta’s actions were an affront to their friendship as well as to the group, this man’s presence took all precedence.
“How dare you?” Fiammetta barked.
“Fiammetta, wait,” Viviana held a hand out. “Do you not realize who—”
Isabetta steadied herself. “Please, my sisters, calm yourselves. Let me make the introductions.”
The man with the long reddish blond hair stepped hesitantly into the chamber. Dressed in a long tunic, a cioppa, and a brimmed beretto upon his head, his attire made him unplaceable. Few noblemen wore the long sleeveless outer robes unless it was over a bejeweled tunic, not one as simple as this man wore. Those who wore such simple tunics were typically men of some religious order, but they would never be seen in a cioppa or a beretto. His very outward appearance confused them, Viviana could see it in their befuddled expressions.
He smiled at them shyly. The impact of his penetrating gaze made all the more powerful with the light color of the iris seeming to reflect both wisdom and experience. The man swept his gaze about the room, to the worktables, the easels and canvases, the paint mixing station with its riot of splashed color, and his shoulders lowered, his smile traveled up to his eyes, and the hand holding a leather portfolio before him like a shield eased its grip.
Isabetta preened, “My friends, I would like to introduce you to Leonardo da Vinci.”
“Certainly not? Truly?” Natasia quacked.
Isabetta brought her hands together with a clap in either relief or delight. “Truly.”
Of all the men to walk into this sanctuary, of all the people dared to be told their truth, Viviana could not think of another more startling, yet more appropriate.
Leonardo made his way to Natasia and took her hand, bowing over it and asking her name, as he did to all, ending with Fiammetta. Viviana knew her upbringing, her inbred manners, prevented the grandiose nobildonna from snubbing the man completely, but she acquiesced with little joviality. Instead, she turned her ire upon Isabetta.
“Why have you brought him here?” Fiammetta asked as if the man did not stand but two feet from her.
Isabetta squared her shoulders at the demanding woman, unflinching. “He is here to help us with the painting.”
“What painting?”
“The painting?”
The outcry rose again. Viviana reached back to knead tense neck muscles.
“Worry not,” Isabetta told them. “I have told him all. He is acquainted with Lapaccia. He is all too eager to help.”
“Is he eager to keep his mouth closed?” this from Fiammetta.
“Beauty and its creation know nothing of men or women and who or which its creator is, it just allows itself to be created. The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” Leonardo’s long face grew almost deathly still. “I will guard your secret like no other, to this I swear.”
“What are you working on, maestro?” Mattea asked with a small bounce on her toes.
But Leonardo held up a long-fingered hand. “I have not earned that title, signorina, though I thank you greatly for the compliment of its use. Someday perhaps.”
The women would not divest him of his modesty; it sat too well on shoulders too thin.
“I am presently setting up my own studio,” Leonardo told them, receiving, graciously, the oohs and aahs such a proclamation deserved. “Il Magnifico himself is assisting me, though I would imagine progress will stall, for a time at least.”
Lorenzo de’ Medici had taken him in as the artist’s troubles resolved themselves, though not indisputably. Only a chosen few, the greatest of talents, were brought under Il Magnifico’s wing, a finely feathered one.
“But we are not here for you to hear my tale. I am here to serve you, to help you in your creation,” Leonardo graciously turned the conversation away. “But first I must learn a bit about you, about you as artists, about your studiolo. Who is the maestro here?”
“We are all learning, signore,” Viviana answered. “There can be no maestro.”
“I have been painting the longest, no doubt.” Fiammetta crowed.
Beside her, Viviana saw Isabetta roll eyes at Mattea, who smiled to hide a smirk.
“It was Viviana’s cousin, Caterina, who truly brought us together,” Isabetta offered. “She was a nun, if you would believe it. But she kept careful notes and journals of her progress as a painter. They were the beginning of our study. We’ve based our alliance and our work upon them.”
Leonardo spun on Viviana; she flinched back against a man moving on her so quickly.
“Your cousin was Caterina of Bologna?” he whispered urgently, almost breathless.
Viviana blinked, at his vehemence, at hearing her relative called thusly. “You know of her?”
“My dear,” Leonardo took Viviana’s hands in his, “All true artists know of her. Giotto, Masaccio, even my master, Verrocchio, spoke of her. She was the first some…” he shook his head, “…she was the only woman any have yet speak of as artist. I am…grateful, deeply grateful, to meet her heir.”
It was then it happened; Viviana fell under his spell. With this man’s words, his reverence, unlike ever before, Viviana realized the importance of the work they did here, not just for themselves, but for the women who would come after them, women who should be allowed to wield a brush, to brandish hammer and chisel. If progress could not be made for their own sakes, she would dedicate her life to creating it for others.
She dipped her head with true gratitude. “The pleasure, sig—”
“Leonardo.”
Viviana smiled. “The pleasure, Leonardo, is all mine.”
The air changed then, in that pinpoint of time; he became one of them. The reedy man put hands to hips. “Now, you must all show me your work. I can only tell you where to go if I know where we begin.”
As it was closest, they led Leonardo to Mattea’s easel, and the partially painted canvas upon it. He could not know she was the least experienced among them, or the most hesitant, regardless of her proficiency. Once their apprentice, she didn’t realize how talented they thought her.
Leonardo stood before the half-finished painting propped against the triangular wood stand. The cartone had been drawn upon it, the fully articulated composition in the thinnest of lines, and the artist had just begun to fill in the nearly empty meadow landscape with its color. Mattea chewed upon her bottom lip as Leonardo’s gaze touched every inch of the painting’s surface—as he squinted, as he pulled back, all in the sake of differing viewpoints.
“You have washed your colors with an abundance of gesso, sì?” he asked her. “Egg white, I think.”
Mattea’s thin pointed brows jumped up her high forehead. “I have, yes. Should I…is it wrong?”
He turned, head tilting as he pulled on one ear. “Do you think it is wrong?”
Mattea studied her own painting, as did the others. Viviana thought the girl had perfectly captured the depth of the scene; it appeared as if the field continued as far as the eye could see, as if one could run through it with abandon, never reaching the end, never to be found. Her pale colors of citrine and jonquil merged and overlapped in a dreamy wash, as if looking through squinted eyes or a waterfall.
“No,” Mattea’s soft answer broke the silent scrutiny, the ever slight straightening of her shoulders broke her self-doubt. “No, it is as I wish it to be.”
Leonardo lips spread beneath the bristles of his facial hair and Viviana saw the girl’s pleasure in the dip of her round chin and the flush on her pink skin.
“All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.” The truth of his words gave them pause.
“Why do you paint?” Leonardo asked her, a question out of nowhere, but the only question.
Mattea looked at him shyly, through the tops of her eyes.
“It is not something I want to do or would like to do, though it is both. It is…more.” She closed her cherubic mouth, opened it, and closed it again. And then, “It is something I have to do, an itch I must scratch or go mad.”
Viviana turned to catch a glimpse of her own work. But her gaze got stuck, caught on Isabetta’s face. While the others perused Mattea’s work, Isabetta perused Leonardo, brightly, as the thief craves his prize.
Viviana almost groaned aloud; as thrilled as she was to have the Leonardo da Vinci as an honorary member of their group, clouds scudded across the joy of his tutelage. Isabetta’s desire could bring them trouble, could only bring her friend heartache.
As the man traversed the room, Viviana kept to his side, kept insinuating herself between Isabetta and the handsome artist, but she soon lost herself to his thoughts and opinions, as he had something distinctive and unique to say about each of their styles and accomplishments.
Leonardo exclaimed brightly over the fine rooms Fiammetta preferred to capture. He blushed at the deeply romantic tones of Natasia’s work, at the flesh so perfectly rendered, the brush of hands upon faces, lips upon lips. Leonardo offered his congratulations at the news of her betrothal and Viviana smiled at the girl’s passionate whimsy.
“Are you truly convinced this is wise?” Fiammetta hissed in Viviana’s ear.
Viviana held her tongue, but only for a moment. The right and wrong came quick and clear.
“Yes, Fiammetta, I do,” she whispered back, fearing to offend the man least he overhear. “I can well appreciate the risk we take by bringing him into our confidence, but we have great need of him, of his knowledge and expertise, for Lapaccia’s sake as well as our own.”
Fiammetta pursed her lips, nostrils flaring. “But he is a sodomite.”
It was a nasty condemnation spoken with a nasty, hard edge. It was a damnation by its very vociferation. Viviana had never felt such impatience with her friend.
“It was never proved and you know it.” Viviana snipped, a verbal push back.
Fiammetta threw her hands up, no longer attempting to keep their private conversation private, though she leaned in and hissed at the woman standing beside her.
“Not one, but two accusations.” She held up two fingers in front of Viviana’s eyes as if she spoke to an uncomprehending child. It served only to hinder her case.
“Accusations,” Viviana laughed the word quietly. “Accusations such as these are made every other day.”
Fiammetta could not refute this truth. The tamburo at the Palazzo della Signoria sometimes overflowed with denunciations. In this letterbox, one citizen could make a claim of wrongdoing against another. Created as a form of justice, such contentions had become contorted, a vehicle for vengeance, for rivalries to further elicit harm on one another.
Two such allegations had been made against Leonardo, that he and two other men, a goldsmith and a male prostitute—such as were often used as artist’s models—had been party to wretched affairs and to pleasuring, each to the other, who requested such wickedness of him.
“And you know well, for it was you who told me,” Viviana continued her defense as if she were da Vinci’s consigliore, “these claims came at the same time as he began to gain notoriety with his brush, to outshine his master. Such envy incites the most false of denunciations.”
“He knew the men, it was proved,” Fiammetta countered.
“It was the only thing proved.” Viviana entwined a stiff arm round the woman’s arm, stiff as a branch in winter though it was, and walked her a few steps away. She hissed softly, “It is a discussion long since over. The charges were dismissed for no signature was writ upon them.”
“But…” Fiammetta began, scrambling to counter, without a hold. Accusations could be made secretly, but not anonymously.
“Would Il Magnifico take a sodomite into his home? Into his life?”
Fiammetta’s lips thinned into a slim line of fury, her angry gaze lingering upon Viviana’s face. She mumbled as she withdrew—one word quite clear, spoken on fetid breath, “Medici.”
Viviana would ask of it, but she had not the moment.
Leonardo and the others came to Viviana’s table, finding no work in progress, for she had just finished her last. It stood propped against the wall drying. Leonardo regarded it silently for a time—too long to Viviana’s mind. She saw it through the eyes of another for the first time.
The palazzo stood atop a rocky hill, alone, without neighbors. Its stone dark, its portals devoid of any light shining from within, the sky above gray and bleak with a coming storm.
“Your clouds,” Leonardo said.
Viviana waited, breath baited.
He turned from the painting to drop his probing glare upon her. “They frighten me with their premonition.”
“I—” she began, but to say more could only reveal more. This gallant man saved her.
“Your use of shadow and light without color is masterful,” he patted her hand with the softest of touch.
All thoughts of her artistic mystery fell by the wayside; Leonardo da Vinci had used the word masterful in speaking of her work. She would live off the notion for a lifetime.
As he stood before Isabetta’s endeavors, his handsome face darkened. His smooth skin crumpled. “This is not what I would have expected. Is it in response to the strife of the city?”
“No,” Isabetta replied flatly. “This last was finished…before. It is part of a series.”
Leonardo followed her pointing finger to the paintings leaning upon the walls; they were a series of nightmares, shades of gray and darkness, set to paint. Viviana almost nudged Isabetta, hoping she would tell the artist of her husband and the tribulations of the last few years. But she did not. Leonardo looked at Isabetta differently than when they had entered the chamber.
“So now.” He opened his arms. “To the crux of the matter. To the Feast of Herod.”
They led him to the two tables made into one and the sketches upon them.
“Ah yes, Isabetta,” Leonardo nodded as he taped a tapered finger on his lips. “You spoke true. I do remember this work. It was quite the talk among the guilds, most particularly as no one took credit for it.”
“Even in the taverns?” Mattea queried, finding it as strange as the others. “It seems too fine a work for no man to desire the accolades of its creation.”
The women twittered, trying their best to not. But Leonardo joined them.
“Too true, mistress,” he chuckled. “There is nothing so large as a man’s assurance of his own prowess.”
“But to take credit would be to take incrimination,” Isabetta whispered harshly with dawning realization. They held a moment in the horrid truth of it. An artist was part of the despicable conspiracy.
“What if we…” he muttered, and with sure hands, moved the sketches about, using particular ones to elucidate different parts of the whole. Soon they saw his intent. Hands and parchment flew, put in place, discarded and replaced.
The rustling slowed, their dance about the table stilled, then…stopped.
There it was. The painting lived upon the table, a haphazard rendering, true, but a wholly conceived one, one they could reproduce.
“Are you absolutely sure this is what you intend to do?” Leonardo asked.
He saw what they all did, the signs proclaiming the intentions of the men in the group portrait, the portent of what was to come. Many faces were unmasked. Together, the group knew almost all of them, almost. Nor were all dead, some not even captured.
“It is.” Viviana spoke softly.
“It is well,” he said, and they heard that he did indeed think it so. “Then the first thing you must do is decide whether just one of you will paint it or all?”
Mattea spoke, her voice quivering. “All. For if any one of us is asked, ‘did you paint this painting?’ we could all answer, in a truth of sorts, ‘no, I did not.’”
Leonardo barked a laugh, took Mattea by her rounded chin, giving it an affectionate tweak. She blushed with pleasure.
The group knew the brilliance of it the moment they heard it. They would succeed or fail, together. It had always been their way.
“Then you must all decide on a technique all can replicate.” Leonardo rubbed his hands together, rushed to a worktable and grabbed a piece of charcoal. Gently moving aside some drying paintings, he made the largest wall of the chamber his teaching canvas.
He made the simplest sketch, explaining the mathematical basis of dimensionality and depth, of the shortening of lines, of lines drawn closer together to give the illusion of distance, of diminishing perspective. Viviana watched every move, how he held the charcoal, how his arm moved. With every revelation, her breath quickened. How quickly and with such ease he designed. Apprenticed late, at fourteen, Leonardo had spent only six years under a master’s tutelage and yet he spoke with utmost authority, moved without hesitation, created with the same ease with which he breathed.
Her wonder became a craving, as a starving man looks upon a rich man’s table scraps. Leonardo moved by pure instinct. Viviana had such moments, remembered them with the clarity of a blazing fire, but they were not the norm. Too often she found herself struggling with her craft. But she knew too only more work could bring those blazing moments more frequently, a vow hard to keep when one was forced to work sporadically and secretly, hard to do when one was a woman forced to pretend her talent was nothing more than a hobby.
“You must learn to see through the same eye,” Leonardo turned from the jumble of drawings upon the wall, pointing around the chamber to their individual works. “Look, see how each of you sees differently. What one notices the other doesn’t—forms, shapes, shadows, light, lack of light, color, lack of color. Each viewpoint is, in a way, a reflection of the life of each woman.”
Viviana suddenly worried if her work showed too much, exposed all she tried so hard to keep hidden.
Leonardo offered a knowing look as he continued. “A bird cannot fly if it carries too much weight. As you begin your work, you must study the others, and you must make your decision and learn cohesively from there. You should look at certain walls stained with dampness, or at stones of uneven color. If you have to invent some backgrounds you will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, woods, great plains, hills, and valleys in great variety. You will see expressions of faces and clothes and an infinity of things which you will be able to reduce to their complete and proper forms. In such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of bells, in whose stroke you may find every note imaginable.”
The women began to murmur, the artist’s enthusiasm infectious.
“May I ask a question?” Mattea held her hand up like a schoolchild, head buried between scrunched shoulders.
Leonardo bequeathed her with a most tender of smiles; Viviana found love for him, not the artist, but the man, in that smile.
“You may ask me anything, cara,” he told the shy girl.
“What you have done here, could you explain it again, please?”
“Of course, of course,” Leonardo replied gladly. This time putting the charcoal in her hand, instructing her to do it as he informed. “The true, scientific principles of painting…well, they are grasped by the mind alone, without recourse to any manual effort.” The rest of the women crowded round, the questions coming fast and quick.
Viviana whirled round to find Isabetta beckoning her aside. Viviana went gladly, something of her own to say.
“You took a grave chance,” she chided Isabetta with equal parts censure and admiration.
Isabetta shook her head, waved her hand before her friend’s face in dismissal. “I know, but you are thrilled I did so.”
Viviana waggled her head; she could not deny the truth of it.
Isabetta smiled conspiratorially, a child who won the toy. “There is another chance to take, one we must take together. I cannot do it alone and you are the only other among us who may.”