O, Juliet (34 page)

Lucrezia bit her lip and blinked back tears of gratitude.

“Thank you, Cato,” Lorenzo said. “We all thank you.” He grinned. “First thing in the morning we’ll be descending on your apothecary like a pack of hungry dogs.”

Now everyone was smiling. Even Piero looked hopeful.

“Forgive my tardiness,” I heard from one of the garden arch-ways. We all looked up to see a sweet-faced man of perhaps thirty-five, hurrying to take his place across the table from me, next to Clarice.

Lorenzo nodded at me. “Let me introduce you to our beloved tutor and longtime family friend, Marsilio Ficino.”

I was startled, to say the least. Ficino was a legendary scholar, one of the greatest writers and translators in the world. “Silio,” Lorenzo went on, “meet our new friend, Cato the Apothecary.”

“I fear I must go back to bed,” Piero said suddenly. “The pain has simply overtaken me.” His hands were flat on the table and he attempted to push himself to standing.

“Wait, Papa!” Botticelli cried, standing in his place. “Please, I have something to show you.”

Piero’s face softened, and a pleasant expectation crinkled his mouth. He relaxed back in his chair.

Sandro stood. “Don’t anyone move,” he said, and dashed from the table, “except you, Giuliano. Come help me!” The younger brother followed Botticelli, and they moved toward a closed door that appeared to lead into the palazzo from the loggia.

A moment later, to the sound of crunching on the marble floor, they returned, rolling on a wheeled contraption a huge, paint-smeared sheet covering a rectangle that looked to be six feet high and twelve feet across.

Facing us all, the artist beamed. Then he carefully removed the cloth and stood aside. Every jaw in the room loosened and fell. Then there was silence as a dozen eyes drank in the splendor.

“I call it
Birth of Venus
,” Botticelli said.

The first sight of it was simply startling. It was blatantly pagan and openly erotic, and an unquestionable statement of its maker’s genius.

A woman, magnificent in her nakedness, was stepping lightly from a half shell at the edge of a placid sea onto a fecund shore. Her features were delicate and proportioned as if by the hand of the Creator.The color of her skin was pale, tinged with roses, but so fine in texture that one could almost see through her body. Venus’s hair was glorious—red gold and so thick and long and flowing it draped the whole length of her torso, where, holding it with one hand, she modestly covered her pudenda.

So deeply drawn was I to her image that it was only by virtue of a hank of that lovely hair blown sideways from her head that I became aware of other figures in the painting. On the left in the air, amid a storm of flowers, hovered two winged wind gods—one male, one female—entwined in each other’s arms, and with puffed cheeks they were creating the breeze around the Goddess of Love.

To the right of Venus was another figure, a woman—perhaps Spring—who in her pretty floral dress held aloft a posy-embroidered cloak with which she seemed to be urging the newborn goddess to cover her nakedness.

But my eyes could not long stray from Venus herself. She was slender, and the one breast not covered by her right hand was small, but her belly and thighs were prettily plump and rounded. Only her left arm seemed oddly shaped—too long, and almost disconnected from her shoulder. But nothing diminished the overall beauty of face and form, and her expression of unutterable sweetness.

I think Botticelli had not expected from the viewers this profundity of emotion, this stunned hush.

“Do you see what I have done?” he said to us, breaking the silence. “How the image holds a reflection of Idea? How

I have used the greens for Jupiter, the blues for Venus, gold for the sun? Is she not a perfect talisman to draw down the power of the planet Venus, the very life force of Heaven, and store that echo . . . that taste . . . that substance of the divine Idea of Love, for our use?” His hand was clutching his own heart, and his eyes were limpid with tender emotion.

But we were all quite speechless.

“My darling boy,” Lucrezia finally said, “you have done far more than paint a magical talisman. This is a masterpiece for all time.”

“I would venture that she is the most beautiful woman ever painted,” Lorenzo offered, “ever in the history of the world.”

“What incantations are needed to bring her to life?” Giuliano asked in a hushed whisper. “I want to make love to her. Instantly.”

Everyone laughed at that, and the spell seemed all but broken . . . except that I caught, out the corner of my eye, Lorenzo staring at me. He was, I think, unaware I had seen him.

“Come here, Sandro,” Piero said to the young man that he and his own father had raised from a boy. His voice was stern and serious. Botticelli went to the patriarch’s side and knelt at his feet, laying his head on one swollen knee. The older man’s gaze fell on Ficino.

“This is your influence, Marsilio. I see it. I hear it. All your lessons of spirits and occult forces, magi controlling the influences of the stars . . .” Everyone was still. Afraid to breathe. Piero looked up at Botticelli’s panel.

“This painting . . .” His voice choked with emotion. “. . . it makes me want to live another day.”

A sob escaped Lucrezia’s throat, and she clutched her husband’s arm. There was a general outcry of relief and celebration. Sandro began kissing Piero’s hands in gratitude. The rest of us stood from our chairs and edged closer to the painting to study its perfection.

Clarice was clucking with quiet indignation to her mother-in-law over the total nakedness of Venus on her clamshell. I overheard Ficino and the Medici sons’ conversation.

“I’ve always told you,” the boys’ tutor said, “that images can be used as medicine.”

“Perhaps as strong as an apothecary’s,” Lorenzo suggested.

“Indeed,” their teacher murmured appreciatively. “Indeed.”