The Birth of Venus (35 page)

So now I sit in my cell waiting for Erila, who comes tonight to deliver me the draft and say her goodbyes. It is to her I will entrust this document. She is no longer anyone’s slave and she must do with the rest of her life as she sees fit. All I have asked is that she dispatch it to the last address I have for my daughter and the painter, in an area of London near the Kings Court called Cheapside. Still, we both know my father would never let a document or contract of any worth out of his hands unless he had either a copy or proof that his agent was there to receive it, and even then he might take out insurance against its safe arrival. Recently Erila has talked of travel with a kind of hunger that comes only to those who were born in a place other than that in which they will die. If anyone can find my daughter, she will. I can do no more.

The night is coming in, a blanket of heat and humidity. Once Erila is gone I will swallow the draft quickly. In accordance with my mother’s wishes I have prepared my confession and the priest is called for. Let us hope he has a strong stomach and a silent tongue.

T
HERE IS ONE THING I HAVE FORGOTTEN: MY CHAPEL.

It took so long—in some ways it was my life’s work—and yet I have said so little of it.

The lives of the Virgin and John the Baptist. The same subjects as Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Capella Maggiore of Santa Maria Novella, which my mother and I had seen together when I was just ten years old. It was my first taste of history, and just as it remained the greatest Florentine memory for my painter, so it is also mine. Because while there may be better artists and greater achievements, Ghirlandaio’s frescoes tell you as much about the glory and the humanity of our great city as they do the life of any saint, and in my opinion it is that which makes them so affecting and so true.

So in the spirit of that truth which was once so central to our new learning, I will not hide this fact now.

My chapel is sadly mediocre. Should future connoisseurs of the new art come upon it they will glance at it for a moment and then pass on, noting it as an attempt by an inferior artist in a superior age. Yes, it has a feel for color (that passion I never lost), and there are times when my father’s cloth moves like water, and the occasional face speaks of character as well as paint. But the compositions are clumsy and many of the figures, for all of my care, remain staid and lacking in life. If kindness and honesty were to be held in mutual regard, one might say it was the work of an older artist without training who did her best and deserves to be remembered as much for her enthusiasm as for her achievement.

If that sounds like a statement of failure from an old woman at the end of her life, you must believe me when I tell you it is absolutely not. Because if you were to put it with all the others—all the wedding panels and birth trays and marriage chests and frescoes and altarpieces and panel paintings that were produced during those heady days when we brought man into contact with God in a way he had never been before—then you would see it for what it is: a single voice lost inside a great chorus of others.

And, such was the sound that the chorus made together, that to have been a part of it at all was enough for me.

NOTES

MICHELANGELO
’
S WHITE CEDAR CRUCIFIX WAS LOST FOR MANY YEARS
after Napoleon’s invasion of Italy. It was rediscovered in the 1960s, reattributed, recently restored, and now hangs in the sacristy of Santo Spírito church on the south side of the river. When he was a very young man, Michelangelo also worked as an assistant to Domenico Ghirlandaio on the frescoes for the Capella Maggiore in Santa Maria Novella.

Botticelli’s illustrations for Dante’s
Divine Comedy
disappeared from Italy soon after they were painted, only to turn up in various parts of Europe centuries later. In 1501 his name appeared in one of the church’s denunciation boxes, and he was brought before the Night Police on the charge of sodomy. There is dispute among scholars as to whether the charge was slander or truth.

The Night Police operated throughout the fifteenth century and beyond, policing sodomy and other forms of indecent fornication in Florence. With the exception of the Savonarola years, 1494 to 1498, their control was much lighter than in many other cities.

In the early sixteenth century, as dowries rose and the number of unmarried women increased, certain convents in northern Italy were found to be operating with particularly lax rules on behavior. The Church investigated, and the offending convents were either cleansed or closed down.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK IS BUILT ON A SCAFFOLD OF HISTORY CONSTRUCTED
from a number of contemporary sources, eminent scholars, and art historians. The facts are theirs; any mistakes are entirely my own.

I could not have written it without the love, intellectual encouragement, and support of Sue Woodman, who has given me more than she will ever know (though I daresay she suspects). Berenice Goodwin, a great art teacher and a good friend, read the manuscript at an early critical stage and was inspirational, both in saving me from my worst mistakes and substantially enriching my understanding of the period. My deep thanks go to Jaki Authur, Gillian Slovo, Eileen Quinn, Peter Busby, and Mohit Bakaya, each of whom in their unique way fed my spirit during difficult times. For their assistance in Florence, thanks to Isabella Planner, Carla Corri, and Pietro Bernabei. Also, thanks to Kate Lowe, who helped me firsthand with her scholarship. And finally to my agent, Clare Alexander, who had infinite patience and clarity of criticism, and to Lennie Goodings, my longtime editor and friend, who was the best midwife one could have on a book which, in keeping with its title, had a colorful labor. For your tenacity and vision, Lennie, I remain in your debt.

For those wanting to read more about this extraordinary period, I offer the following short bibliography:

Leon Alberti.
On Painting.
Penguin Classics.

Francis Ames-Lewis.
Drawing in Early Renaissance Italy.
Yale University Press.

Ugo Baldassarri, ed.
Images of Quattrocento Florence.
Yale University Press.

Michael Baxendale.
Painting and Experience in 15th Century Italy.
Oxford University Press.

Elizabeth Birbari.
Dress in Italian Painting.
John Murray.

Anthony Blunt.
Artistic Theory in Italy 1450–1600.
Oxford University Press.

Eve Borsook.
Companion Guide to Florence.
Companion Guides.

Cennino Cennini.
The Craftsman’s Handbook
(Il Libro dell’Arte).
Dover Publications.

Christopher Hibbert.
The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici.
Penguin Books.

Graham Hughes.
Renaissance Cassoni.
Art Books International.

Lisa Jardine.
Worldly Goods.
Macmillan.

Luca Landucci, trans. Jervis A. Rosen.
A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516.
Ayer Company Publications.

Jean Lucas-Dubreton.
Daily Life in Florence in the Time of the Medici.
Macmillan.

Michael Rocke.
Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence.
Oxford University Press.

Paola Tinagli.
Women in Italian Renaissance Art.
Manchester University Press.

Giorgio Vasari, trans. George Bull.
Lives of the Artists.
Penguin Classics.

Martin Wackernagel.
The Work of the Florentine Renaissance Artist.
Princeton University Press.

Evelyn Welch.
Art and Society in Italy 1350–1500.
Oxford University Press.

Christine Klapisch Zuber.
Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Florence.
University of Chicago Press.

For permission to quote from Cantos I and XIII of Mark Musa’s translation of Dante’s
The Divine Comedy, 1: Inferno,
published by Penguin Books, I would like to thank the Indiana University Press. For permission to quote from Canto XXXIII of Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds’s translation of
The Divine Comedy, 3: Paradise,
also published by Penguin Books, I would like to thank David Higham Associates.

PHOTO: © ELLEN WARNER

S
ARAH
D
UNANT
has written eight novels and edited two books of essays. She has worked widely in print, television, and radio, and until recently hosted the leading BBC Radio arts program,
Night Waves.
Now a full-time writer, she is adapting her novels
Transgressions
and
Mapping the Edge
for the screen. Dunant has two children and lives in London and Florence.

ALSO BY SARAH DUNANT

Mapping the Edge

Transgressions

Under My Skin

Fatlands

Birth Marks

Snow Storms in a Hot Climate

THE BIRTH OF VENUS

SARAH DUNANT

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