He smiled at me. “Please, do call me Lorenzo.”
“You do us too much honor,” Marco said, taking my hand. “We would be delighted, and I am sure our parents will be equally so.”
“It is settled, then!” Lorenzo said. “Consult with your parents, and then you shall name the date.” He lifted his wineglass. “To the bride-and-groom-to-be, Marco Vespucci and Simonetta Cattaneo!”
The rest of the party lifted their glasses to toast as well. “To Marco and Simonetta!” they cried as one, and drank.
Clarice Orsini de’ Medici had a somewhat pinched, sour look on her face as she drank the toast. I thought how her husband had, before all those present, consulted his mother about his plan, but not his wife. I felt a stab of pity for her. It could not be easy to be married to such a man as Lorenzo de’ Medici, nor to be under the thumb of such a mother-in-law as Lucrezia dei Tornabuoni. For all the prestige that Clarice’s own name garnered, she did not rule in Florence and never would.
Yet I was too happy, in that moment, to pay her much mind. I smiled at Marco as he squeezed my hand, his cheeks flushed with wine and excitement. Our lives in Florence were off to a much grander start than I could ever have anticipated.
*
As the dishes were cleared away and we rose from the dining table, Lorenzo again turned to Marco and me. “Perhaps you would like to see the chapel where you are to be married?” he asked. “I hope it will meet with your approval and that you do not change your minds upon seeing it.”
I laughed. “I think that nothing could dissuade us from accepting your kind and generous offer, but I would very much like to see it.”
“Indeed,” Marco said.
Lorenzo led us out of the garden, back through the courtyard and past the statue of David, and up a staircase located to the right of the main entrance. We climbed two flights and then followed him down a short corridor, at the end of which was a door on the left-hand side.
“Here we are,” Lorenzo said, opening the door and motioning for the two of us to precede him inside. I could not help but gasp as we entered.
It was a very small room, but such was the artwork that adorned its walls that it seemed quite grand indeed. Covering three of the walls was a series of paintings depicting the procession of the Magi, in glorious, vivid colors.
Lorenzo smiled at my reaction. “Beautiful, no?” he gestured to the frescoes. “My great-grandfather, Piero, commissioned the frescoes from Benozzo Gozzoli.”
“They are incredible,” I said, moving toward the wall across from me to more closely inspect the work. The detail was astonishing; each face with its own individual expression, each color gleaming brightly down at the viewer. And such a large work: there were scores of people, of animals, all processing through the familiar Tuscan countryside toward the Christ child.
“It never ceases to astound me what man is capable of,” I murmured, walking along the wall, following the steps of the Wise Men. “To conceive of such beauty, let alone to capture it for eternity…”
I trailed off, and paused to look back at the two men, still standing near the door. Both of them were staring at me with an expression of naked adoration. I turned my gaze back to the frescoes, uncomfortable.
“Your intended is a most intelligent and perceptive woman,” Lorenzo said to Marco, though I could feel that his eyes were still on me. “She is a true child of this renascimento.”
“Indeed,” Marco murmured. “This is a beautiful place for a marriage ceremony. I can think of none better. I shall never be able to thank you enough, Lorenzo.”
Lorenzo waved his words aside. “It is quite enough for me to be able to make you and your bride happy.”
I paused before the altar and genuflected. Then I took a step closer, that I might better see the painting that hung over it. It depicted the Virgin, blond and delicately featured in her robe of blue, kneeling beside the Christ Child. The Holy Child lay on a lush green forest floor, with a copse of trees surrounding them, and angels watched over the Virgin’s worship.
“Ah,” Lorenzo said, moving toward me. “The altarpiece is entitled Adoration in the Forest, by Fra Filippo Lippi. It was commissioned by my esteemed late grandfather, Cosimo.” He chuckled. “Grandfather had quite the job in getting the work he paid for out of the monk, of course.”
“Why is that?” I asked, turning back to Lorenzo.
“Surely you’ve heard the stories of Fra Lippi.”
I shook my head.
He smiled. “It is perhaps not suitable conversation for a chapel. But Fra Lippi was a monk who absconded with his favorite model, a young nun named Lucrezia Buti. She quite distracted him from his labors, not to mention his vows.”
I gaped at him, shocked at such a tale, and shocked that Lorenzo would speak of it so casually.
He seemed not to notice my reaction, but instead stepped closer to the altar. “She later bore him a child,” he said. He pointed to the figure of the Blessed Mother in the painting. “And she can be seen there. He has immortalized her in many other paintings besides this one, so I am told.”
I quickly forced myself to recover. That monks with their nun mistresses should be so openly spoken of—that a monk should use his mistress as a model for the Virgin, no less—was something else I must accustom myself to about this Florence, it seemed. Was this what my father sought to warn me of, when we arrived in the city? I wondered. Yet since Lorenzo clearly thought nothing of the tale, nor did Marco seem at all scandalized, I knew I must master myself. I stepped closer to the portrait. “She is quite beautiful,” I said softly, studying the figure that Lorenzo had identified as Lucrezia Buti.
“Indeed,” Lorenzo said. “It is easy to see how she may have tempted Fra Lippi from his vows, no? Ah, but,” he said, taking notice of the deep blush that still clung to my cheeks, “I have offended you, Signorina Simonetta.”
“No, no,” I assured him. “I have just … never heard such a tale before, that is all.”
“Indeed,” Lorenzo said. “Sadly, Holy Mother Church is beset by such tales often enough. Celibacy is a difficult thing to ask of a man.” He turned to face Marco, who had come up behind us. “You shall have yourself a wife who is a pillar of virtue, amico mio,” he said jovially.
“Indeed,” Marco said, his eyes seeking mine. “She is beautiful in her soul as well.”
“That she is,” Lorenzo said. “Come. Let us rejoin the others.”
I followed the two men to the door of the chapel, but before I left I felt my eyes drawn back to the altarpiece again, and to the face of a woman so beautiful she had made a man forswear his vow to God. Was such beauty a gift or a curse?
And would the punishment from God that surely awaited this woman be worth what she had gained in return: being immortalized in such a work of art?
Still, I thought, in spite of myself, in a place I did not think I could ever share with anyone, it is a terribly romantic tale.