CHAPTER 8

I HAD FAILED with Father Saint Francis and in different ways with Cennino and Ghiberti and I was sick with desire for Alessandra, who alone did not hold me a failure. But I would not see her until Sunday and today was Wednesday and, rejected and shamed, I was now about to meet the great Donato di Betto Bardi, called Donatello, orafo e scharpellatore, goldsmith and stone carver.

He stood before a clay armature, looking from the comely wax head he was modeling to the model himself who sat in front of him on a little platform, anxious and uncomfortable. This was to be the head of Louis of Tolosa, the boy saint who gave up his kingdom to become a Franciscan mendicant.

“We won’t disturb him while he’s working,” Michelozzo said.

Michelozzo was of course Michele di Bartolomeo, Donato’s chief assistant, who stood with me while I waited to be presented to my new master. I felt like a dwarf beside him. He was broad and tall, with huge rough hands, and so heavily muscled that his evident strength was the first thing you noticed about him. It was for reason of his size they called him Michelozzo: Big Michele, a gentle giant. The second thing you noticed was the warmth of his eyes. They were gray, going on blue, and they looked kindly on whatever they saw.

Like all apprentices in Florence, I had heard of Michelozzo but I had never thought to meet him. He was but a few years older than me and already an accomplished goldsmith and indeed something more: he was one of those rare, invaluable men who could paint fresco and carve marble and who knew everything about the difficult task of casting in bronze. It is impossible to believe, but from the age of fourteen he had been a die-engraver for the Florentine mint. Now at twenty-four he was employed by Ghiberti to assist in casting his bronze Saint Matthew for the Or San Michele and his famous bronze doors for the Baptistry. At the same time, out of love for Donato who had no gift for management and no sense of money, Michelozzo had put himself in charge of Donato’s bottega and spent time here whenever he was not needed by Ghiberti. Michelozzo organized the paperwork for Donato’s commissions—insofar as it was possible to organize that chaos—and he took charge of the apprentices, paying them and feeding them and allotting them tasks he was sure they could complete. Now he was taking charge of me.

“That is Lo Scheggia, the Splinter.” Michelozzo indicated the thin young man with flax colored hair who looked so uncomfortable as he sat posing for Donato. “He is Masaccio’s brother.”

Masaccio. The most exciting painter alive. It was a great new world I was entering and I could not find breath to answer him.

At Donato’s side there was a wooden table and on it was the bozzetto, a miniature clay model of the bronze statue of Saint Louis that he would eventually produce. It was the figure of a young man wearing the cope and mitre of a Bishop. The bozzetto was less than two feet high and only roughly finished, but it carried a sense of authority and mystery. At this moment Donato, fierce and attentive at his work stand, was modeling the head, life-sized, from wax.

Michelozzo pointed and said quietly, “First the armature, then a wax model, then the clay encasement, then we pour the bronze. You’ll get to know the process. It may be you know it already?”

“Yes,” I said. “Well, no.”

He nodded agreement and, seeing that Donato would be much occupied for some time, Michelozzo offered to show me about the shop, but in truth we were both so fascinated that we remained there watching the master at work.

I had attempted sculpting from clay and wax in my studies with Cennino and I had seen Ghiberti at work during my few months apprenticeship with him, but now in Donato I was seeing a new kind of artisan. Michelozzo had said we should not interrupt him at work, but it seemed to me that nothing short of the Final Trumpet could have interrupted him. He bent over the bozzetto with an intensity impossible to describe. His hands were quiet, they seemed to rest on the air. He had long thin fingers that hovered above the wax as if he were conferring a blessing. As I watched him, he seemed to slip out of time. I had seen this look once before on Father Alfonso at the moment of consecration and I had seen it in paintings of Father Saint Francis rapt in ecstasy. Donato looked as if he might levitate or, if the trance should end, as if he might fall down dead in the place where he stood. I thought the wax would melt beneath his gaze.

I thought I myself might have one of my spells.

I turned to Michelozzo, hoping he would say, “Enough,” but he too was caught up in the sight of Donato at work and was unwilling to turn away.

“Should we go?” I asked finally, though it was not my place to speak.

Michelozzo said nothing, not even when a boy arrived from Ghiberti with the message that Michelozzo was needed. He must come at once. Michelozzo nodded agreement but, raising his hand in dismissal, he continued at my side watching the master at work.

Donato had been famous for as long as I could remember: his marble statue of St. Mark and his bold St. George had dominated the eastern face of Or San Michele for years now. In my mind, he was not of this world and so to see him at work in his bottega came as a shock. He was dressed like anybody, in shirt and drawers, with a length of towel around his head to hold back his hair. His face was smoothly shaven, and I would discover later that beneath that head towel he had a mass of red-brown hair the color of my own. He was short and square and I wanted to think him handsome, though he was already a man of thirty-four. He had a nose like a blade and even in profile he gave off a sense of great power. His looks were completely unremarkable. It was only the intensity of his gaze that set him in a world apart.

He was staring, now at the boy’s head and now at the wax model. The boy—Masaccio’s brother!—must have felt that intensity because his leg began to tremble and his hands clenched in his lap. I wondered if he too was subject to spells.

Donato picked up an ivory finishing tool, and after a moment put it down again. He raised his right hand over the sculpture, hovering there. He touched the right cheekbone with his index finger and then with his thumb. He stared for a long time at the wax head as if he might somehow perfect it just by looking, and then he raised his eyes to the boy and stared at him, an inquiry of some kind.

The sculpted head looked absolutely flawless to me.

Whole minutes seemed to pass. “What are you thinking?” he asked, but it was not a question and Lo Scheggia did not answer. The boy’s leg continued to tremble and my own legs trembled in sympathy with him. How was it possible to be stared at like this and not crumple to the floor?

Finally Donato shook his head, no. Quietly, still deep in thought, he approached the posing platform and placed his hand gently on the boy’s head. He touched his right cheekbone and then his left. Once again he shook his head. “You can take a rest now, Scheggia mio,” he said, and his voice was very soft.

He came over to us and put his hand on Michelozzo’s shoulder. “It is impossible, Lozzo,” he said. “It is not possible.”

Michelozzo said nothing but it was clear that Donato expected a response.

I was watching them closely.

“Tomorrow,” Michelozzo said, “all things will be possible.”

They exchanged a look. Michelozzo’s look was merely sympathetic, understanding, but Donato’s was a look of love and need. For an instant I felt a twinge of jealousy, but I did not know of what or of whom.

Michelozzo raised his hand, farewell, and left us for Ghiberti.

Donato stared after him and then, with a pained look, sat down at a work table littered with drawings for the statue. There were piles of them, sketches of Lo Scheggia in a Bishop’s mitre and cope, some with him holding the crosier and some of the crosier alone, but most of them were sketches of the boy’s head, a handsome young man who looked determined in some images and desperate in others. Donato shuffled the drawings for a moment and then pushed them into a pile to the side. He had decided to get on with this matter of duty.

“Now,” Donato said, and looked across at me. His intense stare that could melt wax had disappeared completely. “Dimmi. Tell me everything.”

I fell absolutely mute.

He asked where I was from, who my father was, why I had agreed to be a Brother of Saint Francis and why I had left the Order and I answered him in single syllables, as if I were not only frightened but slow of mind as well. He was interested that I had been a Franciscan Brother.

“Louis of Tolosa was a Franciscan,” he said. “And a saint, of course. And a fool.”

I was not sure what to make of this.

“He gave up a kingdom to become a beggar,” he said, as if in explanation. He shrugged and for a long while he sat there silent. “Do you read Greek?” he asked. “I read only Latin and very little of that. Enough to know the old stories. Abraham and Isaac, David, Susannah and the Elders.”

An orange cat that I had not seen before suddenly leaped onto his lap and then onto the table where it curled up on his drawings. “Do you like cats?” he asked. “Lots and lots of cats?” He tickled the orange cat beneath the chin. “They keep down the vermin.”

He lapsed into silence again and then, a second time, he asked my name.

“Luca,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Luca is a good name for a painter. Saint Luke, as you know, painted the Virgin Mother. We revere him for that, though he was probably just a sincere painter and not a very good one. We do little painting in our bottega—wedding cassoni, mostly—but there are always things that need doing, Lozzo will tell you, and there is always someone to show you where you’ve gone wrong.”

He smiled and again he seemed to drift off in thought.

“Nencio”—he meant Ghiberti—“says you are gifted, though he does not say at what.” He shot me a sharp look and then turned away.

“A gift, plus hard work, and you’ll fit in well here.”

He shifted the drawings on his desk, gazing for a long moment at one of the full-length sketches and then at one of the head alone. He picked up a stylus, twisted it between his fingers, and handed it to me. “You must have this,” he said, and I could see that with its ivory handle and fine point it was of some considerable value. “You must draw constantly,” he said. “Do you draw all the time?”

“No, my lord,” I said, so nervous that I told the truth.

“Good,” he said, “designe sempre. Drawing helps to train the eye as well as the hand. Drawing . . .”

As he spoke, it was clear that he was reciting merely and that his mind was elsewhere.

“You will learn from the others, and from me too, I hope. By watching. And doing. You’ll like them. That meager boy with the red hair is Pagno di Lapo. We call him Rosso. He is in first youth, only twelve or thirteen, but he shows promise of being very good with stone. And, in time, with fine marble.” He paused, thinking, and then he said, “I like him.” He shook his head, as if dismissing some thought. “The boy over there is Francesco Bottari. Even at his young age he shows clear to be a carver in relief.” He smiled to himself. “He is very fair. And the others, Rinaldo Franco and Caterina Bardi. Caterina is family.” He gestured to a far corner where a young woman was applying gesso to a panel. She was dressed like a boy—her skirts were hitched up about her legs—but she was very clearly a girl and, seeing her, I longed for Alessandra. “My cousin’s daughter. She paints.” He did not mention Masaccio’s brother, Lo Scheggia, who I noticed had returned to the posing stool.

Donato stood up suddenly. “Go and give a greeting to Rosso and the others. I have to get on with this.” As he left the worktable and moved toward his sculpting stand, he turned back to me and said, “If you have need of money, there’s some in the basket.” He pointed up to the ceiling where a small wicker basket hung from a rope.

At that moment he seemed to disappear. Certainly he stood there, square and solid in front of the wax head, but the Donato who had welcomed me and made pointless, polite conversation was gone. I felt a deep hollow in my chest. I was too nervous to think what this meant. While he talked to me he had seemed an ordinary man, but as he moved away he became once again the terrifying artist I had first seen at work. I clutched to my chest the ivory-handled stylus he had given me.

I met the others, nervous likeable young men who frightened me by their quick wit and their rare accomplishments and by how comfortable they all seemed at work in Donato’s bottega. I was not comfortable with them. I was new and a possible threat, I suppose, but I sensed they made a show of politeness because I was older and came recommended by Ghiberti. Caterina alone seemed pleased to see me.

In truth I gave them only half my attention. My mind was fixed on Donato who stood motionless before his work stand as if incapable of movement. He did not stir. The air itself seemed to have congealed around him. He was looking only, from the wax head beneath his hands to the model posing for him, and again back and forth, and again. He said nothing and there was no expression I might read on his face. He seemed resolved to stand there forever.

“You can go now,” I heard him say at last.

Lo Scheggia slipped from the posing stool, grateful, and went outside to the privy closet.

Donato stood looking at the empty stool. Then he looked long and hard at his unfinished sculpture. At last, expressionless still, he leaned forward and drew the sculpture to him. He crouched above it, lowering his chin to the crown of the wax head and hugging it close, embracing it hard. He pressed the sculpted face against his chest, harder and harder, until there was a small cracking sound and the head shattered. A long minute passed. He pulled away from the ruined sculpture finally—bits of wax and clay clung to his shirt—and, still with no expression on his face, he placed a rag over the shattered head and held it there for a moment.

The apprentices continued talking, knowing it was better to pretend not to notice, and I joined in their talk, thrilled and frightened at what I had seen and what it all meant to my new life.