The Botticelli Secret

In 1492 three things happened.

Cosa Uno: I gave birth to a daughter whom we called Simonetta after the pearl of Genoa. Appropriately, the pearl in my navel, which had stayed determinedly put through all manner of adventures, popped out at Simonetta’s birth, making her name a certainty. I sent the pearl to Bonaccorso Nivola, who had been freed at my mother’s word and now lived peacefully with his family on Burano, while his grown sons fished the lagoon. I played with Simonetta constantly, told her I loved her every day. She was my weakness, the apple of my Eden. I was joined in this preference by my mother, who visited our palace much more after Simonetta was born, dandling the baby, feeding her comfits, bringing her toys and treasures from Venice to surprise and delight her. And the greatest gift of all: just being there and playing with her, reveling in the girl’s growing beauty as her own faded. She found joy in every stage of her granddaughter’s development, was there for her first steps and words. The child loved her too, and my mother had her second chance to be a Vero Madre. Sometimes they sit in the atrium of our palace, and I watch the old lady and the little girl play at marbles or skittles beneath the framed cartone, which hangs on the wall there. It is cracked and stiff with salt, all the vivid colors almost gone, bleached by the sea when I cast it into the Genoan tide. All the figures have dissolved away save one—my own. I don’t know whether the extra pigments used to paint her garden of flowers had fixed the paints to the paper more firmly, but at any rate, Flora now stands alone in her ruined bower.

Cosa Due: Lorenzo de’ Medici died after ruling Florence justly and well for nine last years of peace and profit. At the instant he died lightning struck the church of Santa Maria del Fiore and set the great dome aflame. Il Magnifico’s dreams of empire died with him. But:

Cosa Tre: a certain Signor Cristoforo Colombo of Genoa sailed to the world’s edge as he always said he would. There he discovered a new vision of imperium—the Americas, an empire destined to become the new Rome.