The Secret Supper (17 page)

“Miserere, Domine…,” he prayed in despair.

If Donna Elena had given him then a moment’s respite, the painter would have burst into tears. But no: blushing red as a cardinal’s hat, he gave in to all the young countess’s whims and listened in horror as she, straddling him with a laugh, asked him to tell her all about Mary Magdalene’s virtues.

“Tell me everything!” she said mockingly. “Explain your interest in her! Let me into Leonardo’s secret!”

Luini, short of breath, his breeches at his feet, sitting on the same couch occupied moments earlier by Countess Lucrezia, was trying hard not to stammer.

“Elena, please, I can’t.”

“Promise you’ll tell!”

Luini kept silent.

“Promise!”

Finally, the master sinner gave in.

When it was all over and he had caught his breath, the painter stood up slowly and got dressed. He felt full of confusion and embarrassment. Master Leonardo had warned him of the dangers of the daughters of Eve, telling him that to give in to them was to betray the highest obligation of every artist, the sacred precept of solitary creation. “Only if you keep yourself away from wife or mistress will you be able to dedicate body and soul to the supreme art of creation,” he had written. “If, on the contrary, you go with a woman, you’ll divide your gifts in two, and in three if you have a child, and if you bring two or three children into this world, you’ll lose your gifts entirely.” Leonardo’s threats surfaced now in his mind and made him feel weak and unworthy. He had sinned. In barely a few minutes, his reputation as a man of perfection had been wrecked. He had become a hideous parody of his old self. The evil done was irreversible.

Donna Elena, still sprawled on the couch, looked at her painter without understanding why he had suddenly grown cold.

“Are you all right?” she asked softly.

Once again, Luini kept silent.

“Have I not pleased you?”

Luini, holding back a grimace with moist eyes, tried to repress the feeling of remorse. What could he say to this creature? How could she understand the sense of failure, of helplessness in the face of temptation, that he now felt? And worse: had he not promised her, with the Lord as his witness, that he would reveal to her the secret she so much wished to know? And how would he fulfill his promise? Did he not wish to know it too, just as much as Elena did? Turning his back to her, he cursed the weakness of his flesh. What was he to do? Was he to sin twice in the same afternoon, breaking his vow of chastity first, and then his word?

“You’re sad, my love,” Elena whispered, caressing his shoulders.

The painter closed his eyes, still without saying a word.

“But me, you’ve filled me with happiness. Do you feel guilty for having given me what I was crying out for? Are you sorry that you’ve carried out a lady’s wishes?”

Guessing the reasons for his melancholy, she tried to set his mind at ease.

“Don’t blame yourself for anything, Master Luini. There are those, like Friar Filippo Lippi, who take advantage of their work in convents to seduce the young novices. And Friar Lippi was a man of the cloth!”

“What are you saying?”

“Oh!” she said, laughing to see him so startled. “You should know all about him, Master Luini. Friar Lippi died not more than thirty years ago. I’m sure your Leonardo must have known him in Florence. He was a very famous painter.”

“Are you accusing Friar Lippi—?”

“Of course,” she said, pulling him toward her. “In the convent of Santa Lucia, when he was supposed to be finishing several paintings, he seduced a certain Lucrezia Buti and left her with child. Didn’t you know? Well, then. Many believe that the Buti family, feeling themselves dishonored, sent him to his grave with a good dose of arsenic. Don’t you see? You, you’re not guilty of anything! You’ve not forced me to break a holy vow! You’ve simply given love to one who was asking you for it!”

Master Luini felt uncertain. But even in his doubts, he could see that the beautiful Elena was trying to help him. Moved in spite of himself, he made an effort to utter a few intelligible words:

“Elena…If you still wish it, if you still desire to know the secret that so intrigues you, the inspiration for this portrait of yours, I’ll tell you what I know about the mystery of Mary Magdalene.”

The little countess watched him curiously. Luini was making a great effort to pronounce each of the words.

“You’re a man of honor,” she said. “I know you’ll keep your promise.”

“Yes. But you must promise me now that never again will you touch me. And that you’ll never breathe a word of what I’m about to tell you.”

“Will that secret let me know the reason for your melancholy, Master Luini?”

The painter looked the little countess in the eyes but found it hard to sustain her gaze. Elena’s concern for his well-being disarmed him. He recalled what he had heard Leonardo say about the race of Mary Magdalene: that their eyes were capable of melting any man’s heart, thanks to the powerful charm of their love. The troubadours had not lied. How could such a creature be denied the knowledge of her own origins? Would he be such an insensitive monster as not to show her the path?

Forcing himself to smile, Bernardino Luini agreed at last to fulfill her heart’s desire.

26

“Listen then,” Luini said.

“I had just turned thirteen when Master Leonardo accepted me as an apprentice in his bottega in Florence. My father, a soldier of fortune who, thanks to the Visconti of Milan, had managed to set aside a fair amount of money, thought it convenient that I should be instructed in the art of painting before giving myself over to the monastic life or, at the very least, to a secular existence ruled by the laws of God. His purpose was clearer than mine at the time: he wished to keep me away from the horrors of war and grant me protection under the thick mantle of the Church. And as, in his opinion, there was no artist’s workshop in Milan that was good enough for me, he assigned me an annual allowance and sent me to Florence, which was then still governed by Lorenzo de’ Medici.

“That is where it all started.

“Master Leonardo da Vinci set me up in a large dilapidated house. The outside was all black and looked fearful. The inside, on the contrary, was well lit and had almost no walls to divide it. Its rooms had been pulled down in order to create a vast space full of the strangest devices imaginable. On the ground floor, close to the entrance, were nurseries for plants, seeded flowerpots and cages full of larks, pheasants and even falcons. Next to them were molds in the shapes of heads, horses’ feet and tritons’ bodies, to be cast in molten bronze. There were mirrors everywhere, and candles. To reach the kitchen, you had to make your way along a corridor lined with wooden skeletons and strange wheels, enough to terrify anyone. Just to think of what the Master might be hiding in the attic filled me with panic.

“Other apprentices of Leonardo lived also in the house. They were all older than I was, so that, after the taunts of the first days, I found myself in a more or less comfortable position and was able to begin to adapt myself to my new life. I believe that Leonardo took a fancy to me. He taught me to read and to write in Latin and Greek, and explained to me that without this schooling it would be useless to teach me another form of writing known as ‘the science of images.’

“Can you imagine, Elena? My duties were doubled or tripled. They included such peculiar things as learning botany or astrology. In those years, the Master’s motto was ‘Lege, lege, relege, ora, labora et invenies,’ that is to say, ‘Read, read, reread, pray, work and thou shalt find.’ His favorite texts—and consequently mine as well—were the lives of saints by Jacobus de Voragine, the book known as The Golden Legend.

“Tommasso, Renzo and the other apprentices hated those readings, but for me they were a marvelous discovery. In those pages, I learned incredible things: dozens of curious anecdotes, miracles and adventures of the saints and the apostles, which I would never have otherwise imagined. For example, I read there that James the Less was known as ‘the Lord’s brother’ because he resembled Him as one drop of water resembles another. When Judas agreed with the Sanhedrin to identify Our Lord by kissing him, it was because they were afraid He’d be confused with James.

“Of course, there’s not a word about this in the Gospels.

“I also enjoyed the adventures of the Apostle Bartholomew. This disciple who was built like a gladiator had the other eleven in awe because of his ability to tell the future. Alas, such foresight did not help him much: he was unable to see that he’d be skinned alive in India.

“These revelations took root in me, granting me a unique talent to imagine the faces and characters of the men and women who’ve played such important roles in the history of our faith. This was what Leonardo was after: to stimulate our imagination of the sacred stories and to provide us with the special gift of transferring them onto our canvases. He gave me then a list of apostolic virtues drawn from Jacobus de Voragine, which I still have. Look here: he called Bartholomew Mirabilis, ‘He Who Is Miraculous,’ because of his talent for telling the future. Jesus’ twin brother, James, he called Venustus, ‘He Who Is Full of Grace.’ ”

Elena, amused by the respectful veneration with which Luini unfolded the piece of paper he had taken out of his pocket, tore it from his hands and, without understanding much of it, proceeded to read: Bartholomew Mirabilis He Who Is Miraculous James the Less Venustus He Who Is Full of Grace Andrew Temperator He Who Prevents Judas Iscariot Nefandus The Abominable One Peter Exosus He Who Hates John Mysticus He Who Knows the Mystery Thomas Litator He Who Placates the Gods James the Elder Oboediens He Who Obeys Philip Sapiens He Who Loves High Matters Matthew Navus He Who Is Diligent Judas Thaddeus Occultator He Who Conceals Simon Confector He Who Fulfills

“And you’ve kept this all these years?” Elena asked, playing with the brittle piece of paper.

“Yes. I remember it as one of Leonardo’s most important lessons.”

“Well, now you’ll never see it again.” She laughed.

Elena lifted the paper over her head, expecting the painter to try and retrieve it. Luini pretended not to notice. He had seen the list so many times, he had studied it with such intense devotion, trying to express the qualities of the Twelve Apostles, that he no longer had any real need for it. He knew it, in every sense, by heart.

“And what about Mary Magdalene?” the little countess asked in a disappointed tone of voice. “Her name is not among these. When will you tell me her secret?”

Master Luini, his eyes fixed on the crackling logs in the fireplace, took up his story.

“As I said, I was profoundly affected by Jacobus de Voragine’s book, The Golden Legend. Now, so many years later, I realize that the passage that marked me most was the one concerning Mary Magdalene. For some strange reason, Master Leonardo wanted me to study it with particular attention. And I obeyed.

“In those days, the revelations with which the Master completed his lessons on Bishop Jacobus did not horrify me in the least. At thirteen, I made no distinction between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, between what the Church found acceptable and what it found inadmissible. Maybe that’s why the first thing that I learned was the meaning of her name. ‘Mary Magdalene’ means ‘Bitter Sea,’ ‘She Who Sheds Light’ and also ‘The Enlightened One.’ About the first, the bishop wrote that it referred to the sea of tears she wept throughout her life. She loved the Son of God with all her heart, but He had come into the world with a mission that precluded their union, and Mary Magdalene had to learn to love Him in a different way. Leonardo explained to me that the symbol best suited to show her virtues was the knot. Already in Egyptian times, the knot was associated with the magic arts of the goddess Isis and—Leonardo explained—Isis had helped the god Osiris resurrect. The method she employed was based on the art of untying knots, a bitter art, since who isn’t made bitter by the prospect of disentangling a well-tied knot? ‘Whenever you see a knot clearly depicted in a painting, you’ll know that it has been dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene,’ were the Master’s words.

“Regarding the two other meanings of the name, deeper and even more mysterious, they are related to a notion dear to Leonardo and about which he often spoke to us: the notion of light. According to him, light is God’s only resting place. God the Father is light, the heavens are light, everything, deep down, is light. That is why he kept repeating that if man succeeded in mastering light, he’d be able to summon forth God and speak to Him whenever he needed to.

“What we then didn’t know was that this notion of light as the medium by which we can speak to God had arrived in Europe precisely through Mary Magdalene.

“I’ll also tell you this: after Christ’s death on Golgotha, Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, John His Beloved Disciple and a small number of the Messiah’s most faithful followers fled to Alexandria to save themselves from the repression that had fallen upon them. Several remained in Egypt and founded there the first and wisest Christian communities that are known to us, but Mary Magdalene, keeper of the greatest secrets of her Beloved, didn’t feel safe in a land so close to the city of Jerusalem. That’s why she ended up seeking refuge in France.”

“What were those secrets?”

The little countess’s question brought Luini back sharply to the present.

“Important secrets, Elena. So important, that since that time only a few select mortals have had access to them.”

The young woman opened her eyes wide.

“Do you mean the secrets He revealed to her after rising from the dead?”

Luini nodded.

“The very same ones. But they have not yet been revealed to me.”

Master Luini picked up the thread of his tale.

“Mary Magdalene, also known as Mary of Bethany, set foot in the south of France, in a small town that ever since carries the name of Les Saintes-Maries de la Mer, because there were several Marys who sought refuge there. She preached the good word of Jesus and initiated people into the ‘secret of light’ that several heretics made theirs, such as the Cathars and the Albigensians, and ended up becoming the new patron saint of France, Our Lady of the Light.