The Competition Read online

  “Of course,” Viviana bubbled.

  “Santa Trinta,” Lapaccia sighed.

  “Sì, Santa Trinta.” Leonardo stretched out one long spindly arm to herd them toward the door. Like most churches in Florence, it remained unlocked during daylight hours. “But we mustn’t tarry. I know Ghirlandaio and his crew are not meant to work this day, but with Ghirlandaio one can never be sure.”

  He hurried them into the Byzantine-style church, built in the eleventh century, and ushered them to the far wall near the transept. In truth, they needed no guide. The smell of paint led them, and the wooden scaffolds and piles of canvas cloth covering the floor marked their destination.

  “Dio mio,” Isabetta whispered worshipfully.

  For once, Fiammetta did not scold her for it. Like the others, astonishment held her tongue.

  Dominic Ghirlandaio had started frescoing this cappella, belonging to the Sassetti family—another Medicean, one who worked for their bank—almost two years ago. Its mammoth size, its enormity of subject matter, and the many other commissions Ghirlandaio and his workshop received, had delayed its completion far too frequently, or so Leonardo told them.

  “You can see the work is almost complete, at last,” he said. “But what we need to look at, what you need to study, is his dedication to depicting the true nature of life at the time of the scenes.”

  There were six scenes in all, a cycle representing the life of Saint Francis.

  “Do you see how the clothing is not of our time? To do otherwise in a painting meant to depict a more ancient era is a crime.” Leonardo lectured; his disciples hung on every word. “The same is true for the architecture.”

  Minutes passed, hours; their absorption was complete. Their education as artists expanded as they took prodigious notes. Only when the shadows came to inhabit the church did they realize time slipping away from them.

  They returned to the cart, making their way once more through the city as anonymously as possible, their whispers frantic and frenzied over what they had seen.

  As the simple vehicle once more brought them to the home of Natasia’s father, as they began to disperse and make their way to their own homes in groups of two or three, Leonardo called one of them to him, leaving Viviana a few steps away, waiting for her.

  “Tomorrow, Isabetta,” he said, the enthusiasm born during the day evaporating. “Il Magnifico has informed me you should report to him tomorrow to begin your sketches.”

  Viviana heard his words, their discordant note. She saw too the look upon Isabetta’s face, saw that there was far too much pleasure upon it.

  • • •

  She didn’t return home as the others did; the woman made an excuse as to why she did not, hoping it sounded believable. She had only a few spare minutes to see to her errand and make it to her own home before night’s darkness fell upon her, before the dangers it brought came to light. She did not care; she would not stop until it was finished.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “To create the correct light, one must often encounter the dark.”

  She wore her finest weeds. Though they did nothing to lessen her inner tumult, she was grateful for their gloomy obscurity. She wanted, most of all, to be taken seriously.

  Isabetta made her way to the Palazzo de’ Medici, a long walk from her meager home down near the Arno River to the center of the city, where the elite reigned and their palazzos reached ever skyward, the tall trees of wealth growing ever higher, looming over all. She walked in their shadows in more ways than one.

  The door opened at her first knock. The maggiore duomo simply nodded and led her into the palace along the same path as on her last two visits, but this time he didn’t stop in Il Magnifico’s study. The silent and stiff man led her onward, through a door veiled within a painting.

  “Wait here,” he said, but left before she could agree.

  Isabetta clenched her sketchbook tightly to her chest, arms folded across it. She stood just inside the now-closed hidden egress as if rooted to the floor; only her head with its wide-eyed gaze roved about the room.

  There was no doubt this was a private room, a wholly possessed, secluded chamber of a man who possessed many secrets.

  Why would he bring me here? Why would we do our work in such a room?

  Such thoughts intruded—nagged—as she perused the place in which she found herself.

  Much smaller than his public visitation room, this chamber overflowed with many of the same singular artifacts, antiquities, books, and luxurious furniture, though in here there were only two finely embroidered chairs and a matching settee. But here there was more, more things, and of a more different sort.

  Isabetta’s mouth snapped closed as she spied a human skull atop a small marble plinth, its vacant eye sockets seemingly trained upon her. She had taken one step toward it when another hidden door opened and he walked in.

  Free of his distinguishing red berretto, Lorenzo de’ Medici stood before her in a red brocade farsetto trimmed with gold braids, trunk hose to match, and tight black stockings that hugged the muscles of his firm and powerful thighs. Il Magnifico filled the room, denuded it of its grandeur; his dominant energy barely left enough air for her to breathe.

  With a blink, a hard swallow, Isabetta remembered herself and whom she stood before; she dropped quickly into a deep curtsy.

  “Signora Fioravanti.” Lorenzo raised her up. “No need for such formalities. We shall be spending far too much time together to abide by ceremonies, yes?”

  Without time or the ability to think of another response, Isabetta simply nodded; he filled her mind as he did this room.

  Lorenzo led her to the settee. The small table before it gleamed with crystal, carafes of wine, goblets from which to drink it, platters of meat, cheese, and fruit, some of which she did not recognize.

  “Will you drink with me?” he asked, though with Lorenzo, there was never any question in such a question.

  Isabetta had lost her tongue; it seemed to have run away from her mouth at the moment of his entrance. She’d be fallacious if she thought she didn’t need a long draught of some strong wine. She sipped it, as a lady should, but often. It helped her find her errant tongue.

  “Perhaps we should begin our work, Magnifico,” she said, quickly adding, “if it pleases you.”

  Lorenzo’s dark eyes slanted. He stood and walked to stand before the three windows, the only windows in the small chamber. “Very well. I see it would please you, as I hope to do, so let us begin.”

  Though Isabetta had known only one man in the intimate sense, she finally knew why she was in that room. What she didn’t know was how she felt about it. She clung to her sketchbook and her work as if they would save her from any decision.

  “I need the light before you, ser de’ Medici, not you before it. Could you please stand there,” she pointed, “behind the chair in the corner?”

  With a swagger worthy of a man half his age, Lorenzo stepped to the assigned location.

  “Yes, that’s it, now rest one hand upon its back, for your likeness will be rendered with a hand outstretched.”

  Once more, he followed her instructions without a word.

  “Now turn, give me your left profile, but not fully, in three quarters.”

  Lorenzo laughed as he angled his body. “Well, that is good. There is no need to see this nose from the side.”

  Unwittingly, Isabetta laughed with him, at his easy self-deprecation. Their laughter slipped away like lark song at dusk, and she set to her task. Her penetrating gaze followed every curve, every sharp edge of the man from head to toe. More than once Isabetta sharply reminded herself that she was an artist in this moment, not a lonely woman.

  “Tell me about yourself, madonna,” Lorenzo asked with as little movement as possible; he had posed before. “How did you come to be in Florence? You are far too pale to be a native of our fair city. Your tresses of gold are those you were born with.”

  She ignored the fancy of his words, which
took flight in her mind. Isabetta coaxed her concentration back to her task as she answered his questions, about her family, her childhood home in Venice, how she had met her husband and come to Florence with him. Time unmeasured ticked away.

  “And when did you become a painter?” Lorenzo dug deeper. That question did stop her.

  Isabetta tilted her head, stared far off into her past, and then simply shrugged her shoulders. “You know, I do not remember when I was not one.”

  “And your husband, did he approve of your work? How did he die?”

  Lorenzo turned his head out of its pose; their eyes met and caught, but only for an instant.

  Isabetta returned to the beginnings of the sketch before her, began to move her slim pointed piece of charcoal once more, the gritty chafe of it upon the parchment becoming the background noise of her tale.

  As she worked, Isabetta told all, though why the words came so easily she did not know. She told him of the illness that had plagued Vittorio for years, how she had nursed him for years, how the business and its income followed him downward.

  “Not long ago, he seemed to improve,” she said without a glance upward, save to study more closely the bend of Lorenzo’s arm, “but once he returned to his bed again, he never again rose from it.”

  “I am sorry, madonna.” Sincerity laced his sympathy. “You have had a hard life.”

  She shrugged again, kept working. “There are many others who have suffered far worse than I.”

  “You are made of strong will.”

  Isabetta looked up sharply, not even attempting artifice as she looked him dead in the eye. “Do I have any choice?”

  For once, the great Magnifico had no reply, not even in defense.

  He returned to his pose and she to her work; she lost herself to it, wholly and completely, so engrossed that she did not hear him step toward her, or step behind her to look down at her work.

  “You possess talent. It cannot be denied.”

  Isabetta jumped, craning her neck to see him. She followed his gaze downward; he looked at other things from his vantage point.

  “Do not seem so surprised, Magnifico. It does not become you.”

  Isabetta kept her gaze upon her work; she had just insulted, if indirectly, the most powerful man in Florence, one of the most powerful men in all of the Italian states. She held her breath as she awaited his censure.

  “You sketch as beautifully as you look,” he purred instead of punishing her, a masculine rumble.

  Isabetta turned fully; turned to face him, to see his face. She knew what it told her.

  “I think it best—” She stood.

  Lorenzo moved in front of the chair, stood beside her. His touch upon her shoulders was only a touch, no more, yet he drew her to him, brought his large nose to her neck.

  “I knew you would smell so sweet.”

  For a lightning strike’s worth of a moment, Isabetta swayed into him, but just as quickly, pulled herself back. For the first time in a very long while, she knew not what to do. If she turned away too quickly, spurned him, it could jeopardize their commission, the very existence of their work. If it had been any other man, her palm would have already met his face, and it would not be a tender introduction.

  Yet the pull of him was so strong, and she had been alone—untouched—too long. This magnetic man ignited a surge of desire within her. It had been so long since she’d felt a strong man’s arms about her, to be taken by lust and wanting. To be wanted.

  Isabetta closed her eyes against it, against the picture she painted in her mind, of their naked bodies writhing together. Yet another image barged in: her dying husband as he had withered away in his bed. She took a small step backward.

  “Magnifico, I—”

  A knock came upon the door. Isabetta closed her eyes with a prayer-like sigh.

  “What is it?” Lorenzo grumbled.

  A young man, barely out of boyhood, stuck his head in the door he had opened just a crack.

  “Signore Bernardo del Nero is here to see you, Magnifico,” the page said, gaze plastered to the floor.

  Lorenzo heaved his own sigh, dropped his hands from her shoulders as if they weighed more than he could bear.

  “Tell him to wait, I’ll be along presently,” he instructed the page, who retreated with all due haste. Lorenzo turned glistening, dark eyes upon Isabetta. “I fear my work is forever nipping at my heels.”

  Isabetta had already turned from him, turned and snatched up her sketchbook and charcoal, making tentative steps toward the just closed door.

  “I will leave you to your work, ser de’ Medici,” she said with a dip of a curtsy, one done while still in motion.

  “You will come again, signora, sì?” Lorenzo called out.

  Without turning, merely raising her sketchbook, Isabetta replied, “Of course, Magnifico. I must finish my work.”

  With those words she was gone from his sight, from his reach, though it was so very long. As Isabetta rushed through the palazzo, she could have pinched herself for her poor choice of words. She knew men well, knew a man such as Lorenzo de’ Medici would take her words as encouragement. He would think it his work—not hers—that she would return to finish.

  Isabetta stopped just outside the palazzo door, the busyness of life flashing past her on the street pulling her from the void she had fallen into, but not from the pinch of her thoughts.

  Which business did she truly wish to finish?

  Chapter Twenty

  “That which we most fear is often that which we most desire.”

  The heavy clouds dispersed slowly, as if they feared losing one another. The sun defeated them, crepuscular rays reaching through them to touch the earth. One such ray touched Viviana’s face, beyond the dark gray-green pietra serena stone façade, beyond Brunelleschi’s simplistically brilliant architecture, to the small cross that sat upon the peak of Santo Spirito.

  “May the strength of all the gods be with us,” she muttered to herself, lifting her skirts and with them her spirit as she climbed the few steps and entered the church.

  The light clacking of her heeled slippers broke the solemn silence so thick and heavy, pungent with the scent of incense forever clinging to the rarefied air.

  Viviana could not count how often she had walked this path, entered this church, for each time she was captivated by it, its muscular energy, by the strength of the pietra serena columns capped by scrolled capitals, their vanishing perspective—culminating in the altar with its seemingly delicate baldacchino—drawing the penitent forward, ever closer to God. Its rigorous continuity of geometry pleased the eye of both the woman and the artist in her. Yet on every occasion before, the majesty of Brunelleschi’s architecture—one he had not lived to see completed—had merely been a place she passed through to reach the studio. Today was not such a day.

  Today her work—their work—would take place under the very eyes of God.

  Viviana stepped to her left, to the side aisle that ran between the columns and the chapels. As she passed each one, she studied their ornamentation. Some boasted great sculptures, others freestanding gold and jeweled triptychs glorified with painted canvasses, while many more were frescoed. She read the names above each cappella, inscribed on placards of gold. She need not. The Serristori placard gleamed brighter with its newness, calling her to it.

  She stood beneath its arched entryway, curved, matching those connecting the columns in the nave. The chapel was in poor repair, in its untended state as withered as flowers beneath an early frost; the frescoes—of an age she could not imagine—were faded and peeling, the coffer beams splintered.

  “Well, we can most certainly do better than this.”

  Viviana jumped with a squeak; she pushed upon her chest lest her heart jump from it.

  “Oh, Fiammetta, must you do that?”

  Fiammetta merely chuckled. “Did I scare you, or are you as frightened as I am?”

  “Both, I think,” Viviana answered sheepishly.
r />   Fiammetta walked past her and into the chapel. Even the corpulent woman appeared small within its depths, though it was not nearly as large as some chapels. Walled in on three sides, each measured fifteen meters. There was succor to be found in its diminutive size.

  “It is a quarter the size of the cappella in Santa Trinta,” Fiammetta mused on the fresco Ghirlandaio worked on, the one that Leonardo had brought them to.

  “And our work is far simpler than della Francesca’s,” Viviana added.

  The women faced each other. It was born then, a faith so strong it could conquer all, like the tip of a crocus that dares to break through the hard frozen ground, knowing that the sun awaited it.

  “We can do this, Viviana, we truly can.”

  “Of course we can.” Isabetta plunged in like a burst of rain feeding the flower. “Do you really question it, fear it?” She shook her head, face scrunched with dismissal. “Fear more those who wish us failure. They begin to gather.”

  “What’s that you say?” Fiammetta asked, puzzled.

  Isabetta jerked her head to the large main door of the basilica. “See for yourself.”

  Viviana and Fiammetta hurried to the door, opening it merely a crack, and peered out.

  “Oh dear me,” Fiammetta groaned.

  At the base of the four narrow steps leading to the door, a small brood of men huddled together. Even from their hidden post, the woman could hear, if not the words, most surely their surliness. Their denigration of women as artists—with a paying commission—rumbled ever louder as the storm of them drew nearer.

  Viviana closed the door. “We need not see them, or hear them. We need only ourselves.”

  They returned to the Cappella Serristori, finding not only Isabetta, but Mattea and Natasia as well.

  At the sight of their surprised faces, Mattea explained, “We entered through the back, through the bell tower.”

  “Very wise of you.” Fiammetta tipped a maternal nod.

  “Perhaps we will need to—”