“The final layer of varnish glitters with brilliance;
The brush looks to the next blank canvas.”
“Forgive me, forgive me!” Fiammetta barged into the studio, the last one to arrive. Her cheeks flushed, her smile bright. “I am so sorry to be late for this gathering, of all our gatherings.”
It was, perhaps, the most poignant meeting of the group since its inception. For the first time in too much of it, every member was present.
“Patrizio took me on a small trip, only to Ferrara for the day, to hear a new friar speak,” she babbled even as she held tightly to Lapaccia. “He was quite stirring, like no preacher I have ever heard. Savonarola is his name, a very intense young man.”
“Have no fear, amica mia. I have only just arrived myself,” Lapaccia appeased.
Isabetta stepped to her and held her colleague out at arm’s length. “You look wonderful,” she declared, inspired by what she didn’t see.
No longer did dark circles rim the noblewoman’s eyes, nor did pallor or cough plague Lapaccia as they had for so long. Though it had been many a day, she still recovered from her ordeal, from the months in the convent without the proper medicines, from the two days in the Palazzo della Signoria tower, two days of non-stop questioning.
In the end, she had kept the secret of her son’s whereabouts, confusing the Gonfaloniere by telling him her son’s truth, the small part Andreano had played in the cataclysm and his motivations for doing so. Lapaccia had even told Cesare Petrucci she had instructed Andreano to seek refuge among family, but realized she herself did not know to which he would turn if the Pope turned him away. As Viviana had thought, in the words there had been enough truth for the Gonfaloniere, and after consulting with Il Magnifico, he had granted Lapaccia her freedom, proving the success, no doubt, of dear Leonardo’s mission. The woman, still gaining her strength back, agreed with Viviana; they would both be watched.
“We are lucky to have you back,” Isabetta declared.
Without announcement or fanfare, the group returned to their ways, working and talking, talking of working, gossiping while working as crepuscular rays of afternoon sun found them, lit them as if from within. The pungent, sharp scent of freshly mixed paints, of flowers and herbs and oils and stone dust filled the air, and they breathed it in like a panacea.
“I feel very lucky, very blessed to be here,” Lapaccia replied. “I cannot believe so many are dead, so many banished.”
They rattled off names of the deceased then, some knowing those others did not.
“Can it really be as many as they say?” Viviana mused as she arranged her brushes on the table before her by size, and the pigments she would use by brightness. The next painting lived in her mind already and therein would lay no more darkness. “I have heard it said over eighty have been hung.”
“I think ’tis more near to one hundred,” Isabetta murmured between gentle taps of la mazza upon the pointed and petite la subbia. Creation gave her cheer never more needed, wondering how soon her husband would join the departed. “Il Magnifico and the Gonfaloniere believe they have them all, save Andreano, whom they may consider too lowly to hunt, and Bernardo Bandini, one of the worst. I wonder if they will ever find him.”
Mattea wondered too, aloud, putting down the mortar and pestle in which she mixed some gesso. “And will I ever see my Andreano again?”
In silence, Viviana deliberated as well, on seeing someone again, a man with green eyes who would not leave her dreams, a soldier who in the impending days of war may not be glimpsed.
“You will, my dear. True love always finds a way. As for Bandini, I have no cl—” Isabetta began, stopped by the grating of the door latch.
It was with a flash of fear—they all felt it—that they held their breaths as the door pushed open. Once it did, the sun shone yet again.
Before the man had fully crossed the threshold, Lapaccia was on her feet, making her way to him with outstretched arms.
Reaching Leonardo, she rose up on the tips of her toes and wrapped her arms about his neck. With an expression of pure delighted surprise, the tall artist lowered himself to return the embrace.
“You put your life to the hazard for me,” Lapaccia said, pulling back to speak to this stranger. “How can I ever repay you?”
“We are all each other’s keeper, madonna,” he replied. “And those who do not do so, will not be saved when their time comes.” Leonardo scanned the room and the women in it. “I was as much saved as you, I swear it.”
Lapaccia rose up once more, kissing him loudly upon his bristly cheek. Leonardo’s pink blush turned scarlet and the women laughed aloud as Lapaccia pulled him into the room and to the preliminary sketches upon her table.
“Will you give me some advice on my newest endeavor, maestro?” she asked. “For I am, as are we all, one of your disciples, da Vinci’s disciples.”
“That is who we are,” Isabetta crowed with great delight, “we are da Vinci’s Disciples.”
Though the artist shook his head, trying to shake off the accolade, the women would not be dissuaded.
“I am your servant, madonna,” Leonardo said and the two put heads together, two artistic minds at work on composition and color.
Lapaccia observed. “It is indeed sorry I am to have missed your lessons. You have taught me so much in these few minutes.” Lapaccia regarded him with admiration. “What will you teach us next?”
Leonardo eyed each woman. “I think you are ready.” It was a calmly strident pronouncement.
“Ready for what?” Isabetta stepped round her bench.
Leonardo made yet another slow turn, scanning the room and all its astounding works.
“Frescoes.” The word spoken, he smiled wide, wider still at the women’s gasps.
“Truly?” Viviana fairly squealed. The technique of buon fresco had eluded the group for so long. If they did apply the wet plaster to the wall correctly—that which must be the base for the painting—they seemed to create the pigments wrong, for frescoes must be done with pigments suspended in water so that the plaster absorbed the color and the painting can truly form part of the wall. Or if the pigments were perfect the plaster failed utterly.
“We are ready,” Isabetta crowed, whether for the delight of the craft or its teacher, Viviana could not discern, and in that moment, she did not care. And yet a weed of concern blossomed in her mind.
“Will your involvement with us take away from your own work?” Viviana asked, unable to squelch the note of guilt in her voice.
Leonardo shook his head gently, “Cara mia le donne, it is your devotion, even though denied to the world, that has helped me see how grateful I am to have such freedom as a man can have. I need to be grateful and to show that gratitude by pursuing my work. We will grow together in creation.”
A silence fell upon them then, a contented one full of relief and promise. Suddenly the very air they breathed together changed, it crackled as if from lightning.
“Men believe they are the power,” Isabetta said, raising more than one eyebrow with surprise. “And perhaps, on the surface, they are. But what we have done proves it. Together, there is not a greater power than the strength of women bound to each other.”
“If more women realized it,” Lapaccia whispered, “I wonder what might happen?”
Viviana smiled; she felt the joy of it in the very blood pumping through her body.
“I wonder indeed.”
La fine è solo l'inizio
(The End, for now)