The Botticelli Secret

Naples, June 1482

16

“It’s Naples.” He spoke with great confidence. “We’re going to Naples.”

I groaned inwardly. I’d hoped never to have to go to the savage south. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. We’re sailing at seven degrees of latitude, in a southerly direction, at twelve knots. A goodly rate. The wind is favorable.” He scribbled more numbers. “We’ll travel ninety leagues a day at the least. With a following breeze, we could reach up to one hundred seventy leagues.” He scribbled still, and muttered some calculations under his breath. “We should be there in three days.”

“What!” I could not countenance three days in this hole, but Brother Guido seemed fairly cheerful, damn him. “Take heart. They will not harm us. They spoke of taking us to some southern potentate—’Don Ferrente’ they named him. We must just hope he is a man of honor and will treat us with kindness.” I thought of remarking at this point that all I had heard of the south was that it was full of criminals and vagabonds, who fucked monkeys when women were in short supply. But Brother Guido was in full flow. “We know my uncle meant me to be aboard this fleet, for he told me to follow the light to the Muda, which I did. Perhaps he meant all along for me to go to see Don Ferrente. And at least we have now, surely, left behind the assassins that pursued us from Florence to Pisa.” He looked confident and almost happy. “In any case, we have already passed one night aboard. We must simply resolve to use our faculties and prepare an investigative mentality for what we might find in Naples.”

I raised my brow at him.

“I meant only that we should peruse the Primavera further and concentrate on the third Grace for any signs of how this southern kingdom might be connected to this plot.”

I hated him at that moment.

“But we should wait till they have fed and watered us. For then we may be sure that they will leave us alone for a while, for us to begin our conference.”

I was slightly cheered by the thought of food, for I am a girl who thinks of my stomach more than almost any other part of my body. But the feast that eventually arrived was never going to satisfy my greedy organ—an unseen hand threw down a couple of ship’s biscuits and a quart of water in a goatskin, which tasted more of goat than water. Even this mean repast revived us a little, though, and we retired to a bright corner of the hold to examine the painting, which was thankfully unaffected by our adventures.

“All right,” said Brother Guido. “Let us consider the three Graces together, since they are so intimately connected, and then we must learn all that we may about the one we identify as ‘Naples.’ “ He glanced at me fondly. “Why don’t we begin with your observations, signorina, as that methodology seemed to work last time?”

I registered swiftly that he had begun to name me formally again. Clearly he only called me by my given name when he was off guard. I sighed. “Fine,” I said. “But try not to be so fucking rude if I say one of them looks like a tree goblin this time.”

He suppressed a smile despite my profanity. “Very well.”

“I suppose I am to give you the benefit of my layman’s opinion, then you steam in with your academic bullshit.”

Now he definitely smiled. “As you say.”

I looked closely at the three graceful maidens with their hands entwined. “Well,” I began. “I don’t know if it’s because we are aboard ship, or because we already know that they’re maritime states, but they look like their dresses are, well, watery. You know, sort of see-through, and swirly, and glistening.”

“Diaphanous.”

I shot him a look. “The right-hand Grace has her sleeve blown back by the breeze and it looks sort of like an angel wing.” I stole a glance at the monk, lest he deride me for my fantasy, as he had for my tree goblin pronouncement.

He peered, doubtful “All riiight.” He dragged the word out like a strand of hot glass.

“And their hair too. It looks sort of windblown, as if by a sea breeze.”

“Good. What else?”

“As we said before, they’re dancing. They’re sort of stepping in toward each other, not pulling away. Their weight is on their forward foot, like this.”

I got up to demonstrate, and knew that I cut a graceful figure in the bright hold as he watched me. Then the effect was ruined by a sudden lurch of the ship, which sent me tumbling to my arse. Gentleman that he was, Brother Guido got up to right me, but I had already taken my seat, and covered my shame by carrying on. “I guess that could mean they are banding together in a huddle.”

“An alliance! A maritime alliance!” He almost shouted it. “They are completely linked together and absorbed in each other. Except, no.”

“What?”

“Pisa. The other Graces are looking at each other, but she’s looking directly at Botticelli, in the ocher cloak, as we said before.”

“And,” I said, noticing for the first time, “she’s let her gown slip from her shoulder, an old trick.”

“To entice his interest?”

“If that means to get him to screw her, then yes.”

“But look,” Brother Guido said, ignoring me, “he has a bare left shoulder too, as he wears his cloak flung across him in the classical fashion. In his persona as Mercury might she not be mimicking him, to show their connection?”

“Or maybe her gawking at the artist is just to make it really clear that she is the starting point of the puzzle?”

Brother Guido rubbed the back of his neck, where the Capitano had slugged him. “Well, let’s leave that to one side for now. We are getting ahead of ourselves, for I think that Botticelli—Mercury—is one of the last figures in the quest.”

“Why?” I challenged belligerently.

“As we discussed in Fiesole, he stirs his caduceus—cloud stick—clockwise to the right. And the landscape, seen in thin slices through the trees, moves from cold blue on the left to golden yellow on the right, with the coming of Flora.”

“Hmm,” I said doubtfully. “Well, the other thing I was going to say is, they’re all wearing pearls, which are the fruits of the sea!” I said triumphantly, feeling my own pearl where it rode in my navel.

Brother Guido looked closer. “I can see that the right-hand and left-hand Graces are wearing a rich brooch and fine pendant on a chain.”

“On her hair,” I put in triumphantly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“On her hair. Look closer.” I was beginning to enjoy myself. “The left-hand Grace is wearing a brooch pinned to her bodice. But the right-hand Grace wears her pendant on a plaited lock of her own hair.”

“You are absolutely right!” He flashed me his rare and dazzling smile, all the reward I wanted ever. “Both pieces are adorned with rubies too. But where are the pearls on ‘Pisa,’ the middle Grace?”

I pointed smugly. Clearly, in matters of fashion I could be of use. “Look, they’re woven into the collar of her gown. Seed pearls, much less valuable, but still pearls.”

He nodded. “Perhaps the richness of the jewels denotes the relative wealth of the three states? Perhaps Naples and Genoa are richer than Pisa.”

“Really? The south?” I shook my head. “I heard that when the goat’s udders are empty they drink her piss, they are so poor.”

“I cannot concur with those particulars,” he said dryly, “but in essentials you are right. The northern states are richer. That cannot be the reason.”

“For all we know, Pisa may be wearing a brooch but we can’t see it, because she has her back to us.”

Brother Guido looked at me blankly, clearly unable to appreciate my logic. Then he shook his head as if my statement were a bothersome fly. “Well, we cannot get into the question of what may be present but unseen in what is, in fact, a fictional representation of an imaginary tableau. Philosophical though your question is.”

Now it was my turn to look stunned. I had never been accused of being philosophical in my life. “I’ll tell you something though. The jewels look real.”

“Real?”

“Yes. Real. Everything else looks, well, made-up. Fantastical. But the jewels on the two Graces, they look real.” I pointed. “Look at Naples’s pendant—the dark gold setting, the ruby in the center; three pearls hanging with the right weight and shadow, topped and tailed with white gold.” I’d picked up plenty of jargon from Bembo.

Comprehension dawned. “You mean that everything else is a trope, sorry, a type drawn from Botticelli’s imagination, but that the jewels are actual jewels, that actually exist, taken from life?”

“Yep.” I hadn’t really meant all this exactly, but I am never one to shy away from taking credit.

“So . . .” You could almost see Brother Guido’s mind leaping ahead of his more sluggish tongue. “You think the Graces are real people.”

All right. “Yes,” I said. “Why not? I am real and I sat for Flora. May not these three maids be real people too? Maybe not Pisa. I think she is a type—’trope,’ did you call it?—and she is looking at Botticelli to show that she leads the way. But the other two, on the right and left, are real ladies. Look, they even look like ‘people’—their features are quite distinct from each other.”

“You’re right. I know that at first we thought they were almost interchangeable in their similarity. But I think at first glance one is supposed to garner that impression, so that the discerning viewer sees that the ‘cities’ are similar in nature, that is to say, maritime. But when one looks closer, one sees that the places are quite different. The devil is in the details. Clues, Luciana, we’re being given clues.”

I warmed at the use of my Christian name. “So who are they?”

“At one of them I can guess,” he said. “For here on the left is a face once seen and never forgotten. I saw her, long ago, when my cousin and I went to Florence with my uncle, God rest his soul. We were to attend a tournament given in honor of Giuliano de’ Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent’s unfortunate brother.”

(You remember, he was the one carved up by the Pazzi family in the cathedral.)

“She was there, watching from the loge, looking like Guinevere.”

“Like who?”

“Never mind.” He was lost in his reverie. “She was as beautiful as the day. She was Giuliano’s mistress, Simonetta Cattaneo.”

I jolted. “The ‘pearl of Genoa’?”

Now he started in turn. “You have heard her called so?”

I laughed. “All the time. It was Bembo’s sales pitch when he was hawking his pearls. ‘There you are, my lady,’ I mimicked my dead client, ‘there’s only one pearl more beautiful, and that is Simonetta Cattaneo, the pearl of Genoa.’ I remember it well, for when she died of the consumption he was quite put out, for he had to think of a new slogan.”

I smiled at the oddities of my old lover’s ways, but then looked up, fearing Brother Guido would disapprove of such callousness. But he was too excited to note it, if indeed he had even heard.

“It all makes sense! I thought at first that they were wearing white because they were—virgins . . .” He choked on the word. “I mean that in the vestal sense”—I shrugged—“but now I think they are deceased. You were right about the angel wing. The right-hand Grace and the left-hand Grace were real women, who are now dead.”

“All right,” I said. “So we know that the left-hand Grace is Genoa, as she is a portrait, we think, of Simonetta Cattaneo.”

“I’m sure of it, now I have studied the face.”

“And look! She wears a pearl above her forehead! There could be no clearer sign!”

“Indeed. I have never seen a larger. ‘Tis settled.”

I thought of flashing him my midriff, but did not think I should upset our current amity.

“Well,” I went on, “if she is Genoa, and we are definitely heading for Naples, then she’s the last figure of all, not the next.”

“Precisely. So we know where the hunt ends, at least.”

I could not bear to think, for the moment, of the journey that stretched ahead, all the way to alien Genoa, at the other end of our great peninsula. “We know a little of the figure of Genoa, then,” I continued, “but absolutely bugger all about Naples, which is where we’re about to wash ashore.”

“You’re right,” Brother Guido agreed, visibly descending from our recent triumph. “Let us concentrate on ‘Naples.’ To recapitulate: she is dead; she wears a pendant on her rope of hair. She is very fair.”

I shrugged. “She’s all right”

He smiled. “You might even say the fairest of them all.”

Now I was getting annoyed. “That miserable milk-skinned moppet? Are you blind?” Any fool could see I was much better looking.

“You misunderstand me. I merely meant, she is very fair-skinned.” Brother Guido ceased his teasing. “More so than the other maids.”

“Oh. Oh, I see.” I cursed my lack of poise. “And much blonder too.”

“So, in summary, our clue would be a blond, white-skinned maiden, dead, who is connected to Naples. Hmm.”

For once, Brother Guido looked flummoxed and began to rub his neck again. He looked so crestfallen that I attempted to cheer him. “Isn’t this where you gallop in with your book learning?”

But even this fail-safe did not seem to lift his spirits. He gave half a smile. “I’m not sure it would be of much benefit in this case. Your own observations, taken from the Primavera itself, are worth far more.”

‘Twas a great compliment, one that should be repaid. “But I’d like to hear.”

He settled to his elbow, stretched out like a Roman senator, and I did likewise. The sun was lowering, and I settled down as if I were a child hearing a tale at bedtime. “The three Graces are a well-known classical theme of antique texts, identified by Horace, Hesiod, and Seneca as Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia. They were three sisters who signify mutual benefit, for one sister gives, the second receives, and the third returns the favor.”

“Then,” I interrupted, “it seems that the idea of an alliance is not such a stupid one. Otherwise why is this fleet of ships—the Muda, as I suppose we must call it—heading to Naples?”

He brightened a little. “It’s possible.”

“There you go! And what more do you know?”

“Actually, more relevant to us than these august writers is the fact that Marsilio Ficino wrote a letter about the three Graces to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici.”

“Hang on. Who, wrote to who?”

“To whom.”

I flapped my hands impatiently and he took the hint and carried on.

“Marsilio Ficino is a fine poet at the Medici court.”

“I thought that was Polly something. The one you and your uncle went on about?”

“Poliziano, who wrote the Stanze, on which I believe the Primavera to be based. Yes, he is the poet laureate, but there are many poets at Florence’s court. It is a seat of great learning.”

“So, this Ficino fellow wrote to Lorenzo de’ Medici about the Graces?”

“Not Lorenzo the Magnificent. Lorenzo di Pierfranceso de’ Medici, il Magnifico’s ward and favorite young cousin. The one that lives at Castello. Men say Lorenzo the Magnificent is closer to Lorenzo di Pierfranceso than to his own sons.” He looked suddenly desolate, and I knew then how much the loss of his beloved uncle grieved him. I tried to place his mind back on course.

“All right. So?”

“Lorenzo di Pierfranceso is Botticelli’s patron. He has commissioned many paintings by him; I’d be very surprised if this Primavera was not one of them.”

Light dawned. “And what did the letter say? Wait, tell first—how do you know about this letter?”

“I am an amanuensis.”

“An ama-what-sis?”

“An amanuensis. A monastic copyist. Because these poetic letters contain beautiful prose and verse of great merit, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco lends them to the monastery of Santa Croce.”

Once again I was impressed by his accomplishments, more so because I myself couldn’t write “bum” on a privy door.

“We copy them in the scriptorium and bind them into volumes to be kept in the library and appreciated by the ages yet to come.”

“So what did it say?” My voice was slurred and drowsy.

I was prone by this time, and the light had faded. We had talked the hours around, and my eyes fought sleep. My last consciousness was his soft voice in the dying day.

“Sol autem inuentionem uobis omnem sua luce quaerentibus patefacit. Venus deniqe uenustate gratissima quicquid muentum est, semper exornat. ‘The Sun makes clear all your inventions by its light. Finally Venus, with her very pleasing beauty, always adorns whatever has been found.’ ”

At the last, I could swear he gently touched my cheek.

I slept.