CHAPTER 39

DONATELLO LOST ALL interest in the Gattamelata. By 1451 he had completed the design for horse and rider—he had spent weeks studying the anatomy of horses—and he had made a rough sketch of the immense pedestal on which the bronze figures would stand, but now that it was time to make a cast, he turned over the work to bronze experts hired for this purpose and gave his attention solely to the John the Baptist requested by the Doge of Venice.

He was still wavering between marble and wood when good fortune brought him a huge trunk of native walnut, fine grained and with an even texture, perfect for carving the most delicate detail. He sketched Pagno di Lapo and discovered at once that Pagno was all wrong for the Baptist. Donatello’s vision was a Baptist burned by the sun and bent under the burden of his message. A desert saint for whom all worldly needs had passed away, the ghost of a man made spirit by the slow disintegration of his flesh and bones. His vision was of Agnolo, not Agnolo the dying bardassa but an Agnolo who had been rescued from his excesses, haggard, beaten, and now at last sanctified.

It seemed clear to all of us that Agnolo was dying. His month long imprisonment had failed to finish him off only because he was released in time for Donatello to provide him a doctor’s care and good food and a lengthy period of rest. Months passed and he gained back some weight and his cough became less troublesome. He rested much of the day, walking a little in the cool of evening but remaining always close to home. He was ever anxious, looking about in the piazza as if without reason and without provocation he might again be arrested and thrown behind bars. Though Pagno asked him once and I asked him repeatedly, Agnolo would not talk of his time in prison and he would not say how he came to be released.

He was eager to pose again for Donatello though he found it hard to remain in position for very long. He placed a three-legged stool on the posing platform and, with apologies and sighs of regret, he would sit on it when he could no longer stand.

“I am of little help to you,” he said.

“You are fine. You are excellent,” Donatello said.

I said nothing, but listened and waited for the moment when the change in Agnolo might assert itself. As it assuredly would.

Donatello had finished making sketches and as I looked them over I was astonished to see that he had caught the ghostly eyes in Agnolo’s dying face in a way that transformed hunger and lust into a holy austerity. But I wondered if this miracle could survive the transfer to a block of wood. Would not Agnolo by his very nature remain simply Agnolo?

* * *

WE WALKED TOGETHER in the evening. It was May and there was always a cool breeze and the air seemed to help with his breathing. The frogs had begun to croak and the night crickets rubbed out their crackling music. Clouds scudded before a sickle moon. It seemed a time for trading confidences.

“You are posing well,” I said. “Is it not a strain for you?”

“A small matter if I can be of help to Donatello.”

“You are a great help. The sketches are miraculous.”

“Donatello is miraculous.”

This chaff was getting us nowhere.

“He has saved your life.”

He said nothing.

“You are free once again. Did you fear never to be free again?”

Still he said nothing.

“You can trust me,” I said. “We are almost brothers.” There was a silence between us and I added, “My own son was imprisoned for . . . as you know.”

“I fear for Donatello,” he said.

Now, at last.

“Yes?”

“Because they wish him ill.”

“They? Who are they? Do they have names?”

“The Ufficiali di Notte. The magister of the Ufficiali.”

“The Albizzi? Palla Strozzi?”

He cast me a sharp glance. “You know of this?”

“I know they conspire against Cosimo. And what shorter route to Cosimo than through the heart of Donatello?”

“But what could be gained by ruining Donatello?” He paused to study the stones at our feet. “It makes little sense.”

“But you agree that someone wants to ruin Donatello,” I said. “By any means.” I did not say, By means of you. “They are canny and we are simple workmen,” I said. “Is it not so?”

“They want me to watch him,” Agnolo said. “I promised nothing.”

“Watch him? What did they ask? What exactly did they say?”

“They say nothing. They hint at everything. They want only that I should spy on him.”

“Spying is betrayal. Spying is detestable,” I said. “Judas was a spy.”

“I promised nothing,” he said.

I pursued this line of questioning further but without profit. He had confessed enough, however, for me to understand the grounds of his release from prison: in return for his freedom he would spy on Donatello.

But there was nothing to fear, I told myself. For many years now Donatello had had no sexual interest other than Agnolo and Agnolo would scarcely give reports against himself.

“I will keep your confidence,” I said.

WHEN I TOLD Pagno what I had learned, he was appalled.

“Spy on Donatello? To what end?” Pagno asked.

“To destroy Cosimo.”

“Agnolo destroy Cosimo? It is too fantastic,” Pagno said. “You read too much in Boccaccio.”

* * *

THE CARVING PROCEEDED well. The walnut trunk was immense, close in grain and smooth in texture, and Donatello worked with firm control and a sure hand. He cut with the grain in strong clean strokes. He moved from chisel to chisel as if he had never left off working with wood. It was a wonder to see him carving again, perfectly, even with his imperfect eyesight.

Agnolo posed for him with a rare patience. He tired quickly and he had trouble breathing but he never complained. Nor did he object to being portrayed as ugly. Donatello had dressed him, as he imagined the Baptist would look, in a long, ragged tunic, shredded at the bottom to resemble a tattered animal skin. About his shoulders he wore a rough scarf to shield him against the night cold. His legs and feet were bare. In his raised right hand he clutched a small reed cross and in his left he held a parchment scroll. His matted hair hung in clumps. There was no trace left of that beautiful youth of the Medici boy.

John the Baptist gradually emerged from the walnut trunk while all about Donatello and Agnolo the giant equestrian statue was coming to life as experts in bronze created a giant bozzetto from Donatello’s designs. Now and then he left off the Baptist to give instructions on the rough casts for the horse and rider, but his first concern remained his wooden statue of the Baptist.

IN THIS YEAR, 1451, tensions between Venice and Florence grew worse and as a result we Florentines were daily less welcome in Padua. Venice closed Cosimo’s banks. Cosimo opened new ones in Milan. Venice ended all trade with Florence. Milan took up the trade that Venice left off. Threatened by the Holy Roman emperor, Cosimo decided he had no choice but to request the aid of the king of France, the ancient enemy of the emperor.

My enemy’s enemy is my friend.

Cosimo sent ambassadors to France and won a guarantee of trade between the Republic of Florence and the kingdom of France, conceding only that Florence would remain neutral should France some day decide to pursue its claim to the kingdom of Naples. But in the year 1452 that is exactly what France did and the king of Naples marched north against Florence to punish Cosimo for his pact with France. The Neapolitan army swept everything before it as the soldiery penetrated the countryside and harried the outlying villages, plundering and looting. All of Florence trembled under the imminent attack.

Cosimo de’ Medici, an old man of sixty-four, took to his bed, broken.

And then when all hope seemed lost, the ferocious French army appeared on the northern borders hastening south to defend the Florentine republic. The Neapolitan army fell into retreat as the citizens of Florence drew a deep breath and offered prayers of gratitude in all of its many churches. For the moment Florence was saved. Cosimo left the city for his fortified villa in the Mugello.

* * *

DONATELLO’S JOHN THE Baptist possessed a soft silken glow before he painted it in brown and gold. In its silken state the statue was ethereal: here was a man no longer of this world. But painted, it became something new, unlike anything Donatello had yet done, unlike anything any of us had seen. At first glance it was supremely ugly: the portrait of a dying man whose flesh was desiccated and whose limbs were mere bone. Sunken eyes. Gaunt cheeks. What in Agnolo Mattei was the wasting of a human being became in John the Baptist the triumph of the spirit over flesh. In him humanity approached the awesome nature of divinity. Ugliness became a new kind of beauty. Weakness became a source of perfection. His statue was an act of faith: Donatello had revealed in it what happens when you draw too close to God.

Yet he did not surrender it to Palla Strozzi or to Venice. He kept it locked in his private chamber, unwilling or unable to let it go.

* * *

DONATELLO NOW DISCOVERED that the Gattamelata was well advanced under the care of Pagno di Lapo and the bronze experts he had hired. It was still able, however, to receive the impress of his own hands. He sculpted a new head for Gattamelata—in a rage he had taken a hammer to the earlier head because it lacked nobility—and he made corrections in the arch of his back and the thrust of his legs and the position of the lance. He took great care too that the front left leg of the horse balanced perfectly on the canon ball beneath it. And then, finally, he turned over the many finished pieces to the care of Andrea del Caldiere who had cast the bronzes for the high altar of the Basilica.

At the same time the immense pedestal was being completed, with its mourning angels and its winged putti and the two great marble doors that made it both a monument and a tomb. Donatello was eager to finish the work on schedule and with a perfection worthy of the statues of the high altar. And he was eager to make amends for the time lavished on John the Baptist.

“I AM NO longer so ugly. Say I am not.”

“You are transformed. You are made a saint,” I said.

“In the statue, you mean.”

Donatello had brought the statue of John the Baptist from his locked chamber to examine it once more in the light of day. It stood in the great room of the bottega where it had been admired all through the long May afternoon.

Agnolo was contemplating the finished statue with something less than satisfaction. In the year since its completion he had indeed put on weight. He looked more his old self and he had taken on some of his old restlessness. I knew where this would lead.

“You will not go night prowling once again.”

“Never. I will die before I go back to prison.”

“Well done.”

“I have such nightmares,” Agnolo said. “No young boy is worth it.”

I thought of Franco Alessandro somewhere in Venice in exile. I could not look at Agnolo without thinking of my lost son. I offered each day a small prayer that God would be merciful to him and help him change his ways, though I understood that Franco’s ways were not his own, that somehow he could not help himself, that he was fated to be what he was. And which of us escapes our fate?

“Yet you remain restless,” I said.

“It is as if I cannot help it. As if I were possessed by the need . . .”

“The need to fuck?”

“The need to love.”

“You are a sad creature,” I said.

“But I will never suffer prison again,” he said.

I did not hate him then. He too was bound by fate.

Is one’s fate the same thing as God’s will? I wonder about this even today.

IN LESS THAN a year—in 1453—Florence would again face the likelihood of disaster, this time from the mercenary armies of Venice, and once again it would be God’s strange interventions that would save the Republic. In June of that year Constantinople would fall to the Turks and his holiness Pope Nicholas V would call upon all of Christendom—even Venice and Florence—to unite against the Muslim enemy. It was a fine excuse for peace and the renewal of trade. Let us unite to crush the Turks. My enemy’s enemy is my friend.

* * *

IN SEPTEMBER 1453 Gattamelata was mounted on its pedestal and all Padua came to marvel at it.

Donatello’s work in Padua was complete.

Mine, alas, was not.