Inserting himself into the crowd, unseen and unnoticed, he passed under the narrow archway and into the celebrated Chiostrino dei Voti, or Cloister of the Votives. For centuries, pilgrims to the church, who had come to see its marvelous fresco of the Annunciation, had left their own wax candles and figurines—often of themselves—as offerings here. On that night, February 15, 1571, the whole motley collection, in white and yellow and brown wax, was lighted, along with a hundred torches in the basilica beyond.
The church itself was a simple affair, erected in 1260 by the Oratory of the Servants of Mary. Beneath its dome, there was a single long nave, flanked by altar niches and culminating in a rotunda, where the famous fresco could be seen. Legend had it that the painting had been begun by a member of the Order, a Servite, who had despaired of ever making it beautiful enough. Throwing down his brushes in defeat, he had fallen into a deep sleep, and when he awakened, the painting was done … finished by an angel.
At that moment, crowded as the church was, and illuminated only by the flickering torchlight, the painting was almost impossible to see. The casket was placed on a trestle, as monks, chanting and swinging censers, slowly paraded around it. Their voices gradually stilled the commotion, and the family and friends of the artisan, accompanied by his many admirers, filed into the pews, or stood respectfully, silently, in the side chapels, hands folded and heads bowed.
So far, Cellini was pleased with the turnout. Even some of his enemies, he noted, had come to hear the obsequies—though it was possible, he thought, that they just wanted to make sure he was dead.
A young friar, someone he had never so much as seen in his life, stepped up to the altar and began to recite the formal prayers. To be frank, Cellini had never had much use for all the Church’s pomp and ritual. He had seen too much of life, too much of men and their venality, to put much stock in it. And he had seen things—done things—that no monk or priest or Pope could condone. He had crossed swords with too many, both in the Church and out of it, ever to expect all the acclaim he felt was his due. He had worn out his welcome—not only in Florence, but in the papal court, too—and he knew that if he hoped to keep the dark secret he possessed, there was nothing to do at that point but publicly stage his own interment.
And so he had arranged it, as meticulously as he had constructed and erected his grand statue of Perseus for the central square of the city.
Over a period of years, he had laid the groundwork, letting his beard grow long and powdering it to assume the mantle of age. He had walked with an increasing stoop and pretended to forget things he remembered quite well. He put it about that he was suffering from the pleurisy, and on days when he was expected at the studio, he stayed in bed. His crowning touch had been Michelangelo’s funeral—an event that he had largely planned, and which he then did not attend. Instead, he had met the body in private, when it was first transported by mule from Rome. He was shocked to see that it was packaged in a bale of hay, as if it were a crate of pottery—this, the Divine Michelangelo!—and he had personally groomed the body and said his farewells. This was more than a man, this was a force of nature, whose name would still resound long after every preening king and Medici prince had been forgotten.
But speak of the devil … there was the Grand Duke himself, in a long black cape and velvet cap, down from his villa in Castello. On his own breast, he wore the silver mirror given to his late wife as a ward against misfortune. An early cast, Cellini had bestowed upon it ruby eyes, which winked in the torchlight.
For the thousandth time, Cellini wondered what had happened to its secret counterpart, a simpler affair, with no bright gemstones but an unimaginable power, ripped from his neck by the Duke of Castro and secreted somewhere among the papal treasures. Would he ever see, or possess, the true La Medusa again?
The duke was bowed by age, and his long, sloping face was lined with sorrowful creases. In 1562, on a trip to Pisa, his wife, Eleonora de Toledo, and two of his sons, Giovanni and Garzia, had been struck down by the malaria that haunted the marshlands of Italy. Cosimo had never recovered from the blow. Cellini studied his face, the face of his patron and persecutor, his friend and his enemy, over so many years … and, though he knew he could do no such thing, he longed to reach out and touch him, to reveal himself one last time. Cosimo, always a great enthusiast of alchemy and magic, had become even more interested in the unseen world since the deaths in his family. He would be mightily impressed at Cellini’s feat.