The Giant, page 27
“L’Indaco,” Paolo the blacksmith turns to us. My brother and I nod and tap fists with him. Many guildsmen call my brother and me by the same name, so we respond in unison. “Coming to get an eyeful, I see.” The other men in the line chuckle.
“I suppose we’re already on to a new spectacle,” I say.
“I heard Master da Vinci has set aside all his other commissions,” he says. “The monks at Santissima Annunziata aren’t happy he hasn’t finished the altarpiece they commissioned years ago.”
The man next to him in line pipes up. “I heard that Francesco del Giocondo is planning to bring legal action against Master da Vinci because he hasn’t finished a portrait of his wife.”
The unruly line of people surges forward and we press into the cool shadows of the refectory. People fill the voids left by those exiting the great Sala del Papa. Finally, we catch a glimpse of what we have come to see.
A great drawing, covering many hundreds of sheets of paper glued together and pinned to the wall, is displayed for everyone to admire. The drawing progresses across several giant sheets of paper that had been fastened together to create a wall-sized preparatory cartoon. Guards from the Signoria have been stationed at each end of the cartoon to keep the crowd back, unsuccessfully.
“How could he be expected to work in these conditions?” Francesco mutters into my ear above the din. But there is no sign of the artist at all; only a jostling, admiring crowd—a crowd that suddenly seems to fade away as I lay eyes on the giant cartoon.
A swirling, chaotic mass of horses and men, some injured, others holding lances. The very heart of battle, an agonizing, horrific entanglement of human and animal bodies.
“A battle scene,” I murmur back to my brother.
“Yes,” Francesco says. “Look, the fight for the standard. The Florentine soldiers are taking the Milanese flag just before our victory at Anghiari.”
“You suppose Buonarrotti’s version looks anything like it?” Paolo the blacksmith presses in, breathing down my neck.
“We’ll never know,” Francesco says, “right, brother? You won’t find any crowd like this over there. I would be surprised if he allowed any assistants at all.”
“Don’t think we can go and see it?” Paolo pushes.
“No chance,” another man says. “Brother Bartolomeo told me that the Signoria has made its first payment and that paper has been delivered to the site to make the cartoon. No one else is in there. You saw how he worked on that giant.”
“Well, Master da Vinci’s seen it, at least that’s what I heard. He’s saying the Buonarroti created a scene with men so muscular they look like nothing more than a sack of walnuts.” The other men howl with laughter.
“We must try to go see Buonarroti’s work,” Francesco says as we exit the monastery refectory.
“What for?” I say. “The old man has already said it probably looks like a sack of walnuts.”
“You know he’s only jealous,” Francesco laughs.
Of course, I know it’s not a sack of walnuts. It will be a work of genius and I am not sure I am ready to see it. More than that, I’m not ready to see him.
The rented, mule-drawn carriage has been loaded with Lucia’s meager trousseau: a discarded crate filled with our mother’s lace, a set of copper wine cups from our grandmother’s kitchen, a dozen books bound with parchment pages decorated by our father’s hand. On top of this small hoard, Lucia has carefully folded the table and bed linens she has sewn or embroidered over her months of waiting. In another crate, she has carefully arranged her brushes, pens, and paper.
In less than an hour, we will arrive at the bookbinder’s door. Francesco and I will reach for our sister and lift her from the carriage. By then, it will all be in the past—the blessing of our parish priest, the small gifts exchanged, the sharing of wine and bread at our meager feast, the gold rings hammered by Il Riccio the goldsmith. The entourage of neighbors will envelop the door to the bookbinding shop, and a round of cheers will rise into the air. Lucia will step over the wooden threshold. She will no longer be ours.
For now, she sits alongside Battistini, her arm looped through his, as the carriage bumps and rattles through the narrow streets toward his house by the river. From my position walking behind the carriage, I can’t see her face, but in my heart, I know she is beaming.
They are my finest clothes: an old gown not worn since we buried our father, which is therefore clean. A pair of leather clogs I have polished with oil, but which are still stained with paint drips and the filth of the street. My sister wears a velvet-trimmed gown our neighbor has altered for her, surrounded by garlands of flowers our neighbors’ daughters have strung together for the occasion. My brother and I trail behind the carriage, carrying the ends of the long strands of flowers.
It is a meager beginning, but no matter. My sister is happy. She will be welcomed by a loving husband, children to raise, the honest work of her hands. A life full of work and family. It is all she wants, and I am happy for her. Best of all, she will finally be free of caring for the likes of me.
Behind the carriage, Francesco and I look silly, I think, holding onto strings of flower garlands, which do little to mask the odor of the horses. Behind us, the bookbinder’s sons follow. The oldest holds the hand of the youngest, and the third son skips and straggles behind, darting in zigzagged patterns, picking up small pebbles between the cobbles. Taking advantage of the fact that his father is preoccupied, he bats at a birdcage with a stick. The second son, Bartolomeo, trails close behind us. As part of our contract, my brother and I have promised to teach him the art of painting fresco, panels, and canvas.
We pass the Bargello, that hulking palace where I have seen countless bodies hanging from the battlements. But today, there is only celebration around us. Children skip alongside the carriage. From high windows along the street, people whistle and call out their well-wishes to the newlyweds. A shopkeeper rushes out and presses a container of honeyed almonds into Lucia’s hand.
Today of all days, I should feel joy. I should feel pride for my family, satisfaction that Lucia has gotten her wish, at last. Peace that she has found love and will continue the work of her heart. But as we proceed toward the bookbinder’s house, fear and anxiety begin to well up from somewhere deep inside. I am ashamed to admit how fully I have depended on my sister for all these years. I feel selfish. Ugly. Ashamed.
“Don’t forget to pick the white blooms off the basil in the garden,” she told me, just before we left the house for the marriage celebrations. “Otherwise it will taste bitter. And remember to use up the cured pork before it goes bad.”
“But Francesco is a lousy cook,” I teased her. “Surely we will only live on stale bread and swill.”
“I rather think you know how to boil an egg,” she said, reminding me of di Cosimo’s daily regimen. “And anyway, it’s about time that you two start doing your own laundry!”
“I can’t promise that we will stay very clean,” I said, “but we will manage.”
Suddenly, my sister’s brow knits into deep lines and she reached for my hand. “Jacopo. I do worry about you.”
I only shrugged and sighed loudly, making a valiant effort not to cry. “I’ll be fine. Plus, I’ll make sure Francesco is here to do all the work.”
She made a clucking sound, as if she knows my brother and I can never recognize what she has done for us. “You will have your hands full.”
“No, you will have your hands full, Lucia.”
“I rather think that caring for four boys plus a husband will be easy compared to caring for you.” She pushed my shoulder, and I feigned injury, stumbling sideways. She pulled me back, and then stopped and grabbed the front of my gown.
“I am only a neighborhood away,” she whispered, then pecked a kiss on my cheek. “Don’t forget.” Then she walked away. I hoped that she couldn’t see that my eyes stung.
Now, around the carriage, neighbors and passersby have joined our procession, running alongside the creaking wheels, whooping, clapping, and offering their congratulations. As we turn into the area around the Mercato Vecchio, a group of patrons at the Porco tavern break out into a song. My sister and her new husband laugh and wave.
At last, the carriage turns into the Piazza della Signoria. Dozens of people are now following us, and the crowd rises into a roar of a communal song.
Before us, the giant. Around the clock, there are armed guards to make sure no one else tries to vandalize it.
My eyes follow the veins of marble, up to the intense face of the boy-hero, the one whose barely carved eye I peered into all those months ago. He is frozen in the moment when he spots his terrible enemy. It seems as if he is holding his breath. In the flash of a second, he will lower the sling from his shoulder and load the rock. A young warrior, apprehensive yet ready. Not some god of centuries past, but a modern hero for all of Florence. A small man doing something larger than life.
And whereas seeing the sculpture in progress might have made me feel like I myself was a small man who might do something big, today, as I walk my sister to her new home, I feel small again in the face of this massive achievement.
The David stands strong and defiant, facing Siena, where Michelangelo’s frustrated patrons, the Piccolomini, still wait for his drawings—for my drawings. But David glares past Siena toward Rome, where the pope stands looking at his beautiful marble sculpture carved by a boy from Florence, and the Medici family resides in exile, perhaps planning their return. David stands in a posture of rest, but his brow is knitted in an expression of ferocious uncertainty. His fate is as unsure as our own, as mine, as all of ours in Florence.
But I am compelled to admit that this sculpture seems to have surpassed any others, even those of antiquity and perhaps of the whole of history. Michelangelo has taken the old theme of the biblical David and made him young and vulnerable, passionate and strong, ready to move. He is captured in the instant before the battle. David, at the same time an Adam and a Hercules. A man made in God’s image. God made flesh. A stone that seems to breathe life. He is a victorious man, but only with the help and grace of his creator. He is unspeakably beautiful.
And there is a new word whispered in the streets. Few are talking about the sculpture when they say it. They only speak of its maker, the stooped little man—my tormented friend—whom they are starting to call Il Divino.
Between my feet, I watch the Arno rush by in a torrent.
From the railing of the Ponte Vecchio, I see that even though I slicked them with oil before the wedding procession, my clogs are still stained with paint and grime. I have loosened my collar and sit on the railing in my finest clothes.
My brother has returned home from the festivities, but by some twist, I find myself sitting once again on the railing of the Old Bridge, just like we did when we were kids, when I was trying to trick all those foreign visitors that Michelangelo might jump.
But this time it is no joke.
It would be easy to jump, I think, to sink slowly to the bottom as my lungs fill with green, silted water.
Just as when we were kids, I stare down into the water and imagine the fish swimming there. On the edge near the tanneries, I see carts stacked high with tanned hides. I see the long, green grass clinging to the bottom of the brown riverbed and flowing swiftly southward toward Pisa, toward the coast. The day has turned hot, and I hear the cicadas making their infernal noises from the branches of the trees.
I think about my father then, when he was alive and what he expected us to do, and how I have failed to do it. My sister has been successfully married off to a husband better than I could have imagined. My brother will go on to be prosperous with or without me. And me? I am still here sitting on the bridge. In my mind’s eye, I imagine letting the heft of my body sink, the euphoria of a moment’s free fall, then the cool water, refreshing at first, then closing over my head.
It would be a relief, surely, for my sister and my brother, who would no longer have to live with my burdens. My sister would no longer have to worry about how I will take care of things all by myself. My brother will be free to go off into the countryside and pursue his livelihood without wondering how he will take care of his new burden, his older brother.
I push my hands into the stone railing and feel its cool hardness under my palms. I close my eyes and begin to heave my body forward. I feel the time suspended on the air.
“L’Indaco.”
It takes me a moment to decide whether the sound is coming from my own head or from somewhere else outside of it.
“L’Indaco.”
I hear it again. This time the gravelly voice is unmistakable. Just as I open my eyes and turn my head I feel his hands on me, pushing me forward and pulling me back, just as when we were boys sitting on this very bridge, teetering in that suspended moment when we didn’t know if we would fall or be saved.
Does he want me to live, or will he help me die? Why will I bargain for life? What is there yet to live for? I wonder if he has the answer.
I feel him pull me back into his chest, his arms hard and tight around me. I open my eyes.
“Idiot,” he chuckles, but I see his expression waver. Has he sensed my uncertainty? I swing my legs around, placing the bottoms of my feet solidly on the bridge.
“I have been looking for you,” Michelangelo says.
“You have?”
“I caught sight of you at the front of the marriage procession, but then you disappeared. Come, you silly ox.” He pulls me up to standing.
“What are you doing here?” I stumble, still reeling from the vertiginous feeling of sitting on the railing of the bridge. “I thought you were busy with that cartone for the town hall, anyway.”
“A stupid project.” For a fleeting moment, he casts his eyes southward, in the direction of Sant’Onofrio, the workshop the Signoria has given him to work on his plan for the town hall frescoes. Then he turns his eyes back to me. “I thought it was about time you showed me that workshop of yours. And anyway,” he says, “I have news.”
In the dim workshop, I rummage through the shelves for an old bottle of my father’s homemade wine, nearly turned to vinegar. I pour two glasses. We toast, then grimace as the sour liquid sears our throats.
“You are leaving for Rome.” I study his face to make sure he’s telling the truth. “Now?”
He runs a charcoal-stained hand through his hair. “I am done with this… this nonsense,” he says, gesturing toward the door as if dismissing the entire world beyond my workshop.
I struggle to understand. “But why would you leave this all behind? You have the attention—the favor—of the entire Signoria. Of Soderini himself! Perhaps you already know that they are calling you the Divine One.”
Now he dismisses me, too, with the wave of a hand.
“And the battle scene in the Palazzo Vecchio? The competition with Old Man da Vinci. You’re just… walking away?”
He huffs, and I don’t know whether it’s meant to be a laugh or a scoff instead. “I’m especially walking away from that mess,” he says.
For a moment I am speechless. I rake a wooden stool across the floor and sink onto it. “Well,” I say, “at least you have made enough to live comfortably in Rome.”
He shakes his head. “His Holiness will provide me with food and accommodations, of course. But otherwise, I am leaving for Rome empty-handed.”
I sputter on the second sip of wine. “What? How is that possible?”
“Everything I have made I owe to my father and my family. We have also invested in two farms in the countryside. While I am gone, that and the fruits of those lands will sustain them. All those brothers of mine.”
He begins to pace the studio, taking in the dusty shelves, the sparse walls. He runs his hands over our cartoons for the new fresco, then thumbs through a new set of drawings my brother and I have made for another fresco Francesco has secured for us.
“You had the magic in your hands all along,” he says, turning away from the drawings to look around the workshop. “Look at this studio. You are deserving.”
“You exaggerate—”
“No,” he says. “I am serious. Do you want to know the truth? I have always been envious of you, envious of any guildsman who could just set up a workshop and hire people to work for them. I have never been able to do that. I make a big show of working alone, but things would be simple if I could just… do it in a normal way.”
“Normal,” I say. “Never heard anyone use that word in relation to your work.”
He huffs himself down on the stool at my worktable, and I pour another glass of the soured wine. “Perhaps you are right.” Somehow, a veil of angst has been lifted; we reminisce of old friends, the way our city used to be. We toast to my sister and her new family. The sun sets, and the workshop is cast into darkness. I empty the bottle and light a wick in an oil lamp.
“I am leaving you these.” He places a sketchbook full of drawings he prepared, perhaps years ago, for that nagging commission in Siena. “They might help you.”
I sit in silent shock, having never known him to share a drawing with another artist. “I don’t know what to say.” I run my finger over a delicate drawing of an architectural frame for a large-scale sculpture.
“Say you won’t make it look like it was drawn by that stupid Sansovino,” he says.
“My father always said I should draw at least three pages each day,” I say, thumbing through Michelangelo’s evolving designs on the Sienese altarpiece.
“Your father was a wise man.”
