First published in 2018 in Great Britain by Barrington Stoke Ltd 18 Walker Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7LP www.barringtonstoke.co.uk Text Š 2018 Mary Hoffman The moral right of Mary Hoffman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in any part in any form without the written permission of the publisher A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library upon request ISBN: 978-1-78112-717-9 Printed in China by Leo
CONTENTS 1 The First Born 2 Paint and Blood 3 An Ordinary Girl 4 An Engagement 5 A True Wife 6 Queen for a Day 7 Meo and Me 8 Young Mother 9 Always Crazy! 10 One Small Flaw 11 Sunshine and Tears 12 Starting Again 13 The Rivals 14 War and Peace 15 Monna Lisa 16 Two Masterpieces 17 Departures
1 7 13 18 23 29 34 39 44 50 55 61 67 72 78 83 89
ONE
The First Born
“Lovely Lisa,” he always called me. Of course, I was a baby then so I don’t know if I remember his words or if someone told me. But whenever I felt sad about something I hugged the words “lovely Lisa” to comfort me. I hugged, too, the knowledge that Leonardo, the greatest artist in Italy, drew my portrait when I was little. I was the first child born to my parents. I know now that my father’s first thought was probably, ‘A girl? Oh no! I’ll have to find a dowry if she’s to have a husband.’ But in the four golden years before my little brothers and sisters came along, I never felt that Father was disappointed in me. 1
And his second thought might have been, ‘At last – a living child!’ Father had lost two wives and the babies in their wombs before his third wife, my mother, made him a father. He loved me the more because of that, I’m sure. We were not rich, but not poor either. We lived in the magnificent city of Florence – in a rented house in a rather smelly street on the south side of the river. My father insisted that our family was noble in origin and that – as a nobleman – he had no need for a job. He owned farms outside the city and the money we lived on came from the rents that farmers paid him and the sale of wheat and animals. And as our family grew, with my three brothers and three sisters, the money had to stretch further. So, what I remember of my early childhood was lots of love, especially from my father, enough food and clothes but nothing grand, a house in stinky old Via Squazza, and the story that a great artist had drawn my picture as a baby. But I knew it was more than a story because that great artist, Leonardo da Vinci himself, had 2
left my parents one of his drawings. Of course, Leonardo wasn’t so well known then. As I got older, I asked my parents about him and found that he had left Florence when I was three to go to work for the Duke of Milan. And yet I could just remember the young man with the long fair hair and the velvet cloak the colour of roses. He was so very good-looking that I thought he was some kind of angel. Leonardo was nearly thirty when he drew me for the first time. His father was Piero, a notary in the city, and Leonardo was his only child. “But born out of wedlock,” my mother insisted. She took a strict view on such matters. “It was good of Piero to accept Leonardo as his son, when he was the result of a tumble with a servant.” Even when I was very young and innocent, I felt this wasn’t quite right. Piero didn’t deserve praise for that. I knew it took two people to make a baby. And so Piero da Vinci accepted this son, who turned out to be such a remarkable man. Piero and his first wife – for old Piero would go on to have four wives and twelve children – both raised that first boy. 3
Because he was born out of wedlock, Leonardo couldn’t be a lawyer or a doctor or even a notary like his father. And so, when his talent began to show, Leonardo was made apprentice to one of the city’s great painters – a man called Andrea with the nickname “of the True Eye”.
* “Lovely Lisa, lovely Lisa,” my little brothers and sisters chanted when they wanted to tease me, which was often. They thought I gave myself airs, because a famous man drew me. Just imagine if they had known about when he would do it again! I did give myself some airs and graces, to be honest. But that’s because I was the first born and my father made much of me, even when he had sons later. As well as that, I soon learned that the family’s fortunes depended on me, and that was a heavy burden to bear. “You will have to marry well,” my mother repeated often. By “well” she meant I must marry a man with money. I learned this along with my
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Ave Maria and Pater Noster soon after I could first walk and talk. My best friend as I grew up was a girl called Ginevra. She too was from one of the old families who were no longer wealthy and she too had been taught from her early years that she must “marry money”. I think we both thought husbands were made of gold and silver until we were older and knew better. It was clear that our family fortunes were in trouble. There was less meat on the table and more mending for me and Mother to do. I saw the frown my mother sometimes wore become a fixed crease between her eyebrows. We started moving house, never to anywhere smart. It felt as if we were restless, rootless. For the first time in my life, I felt scared. What if our money troubles got worse? I knew my father’s family were too noble for him to have trained for any kind of work. I didn’t have to wonder what my mother thought of that. Her mouth went into a tight, straight line that matched her frown. But she would never complain about my father to me –
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she too came from a noble family, so she knew what he expected from life. The trouble was, Mother had her own expectations, which didn’t include living in rented rooms in dark, grimy streets. It was my grandparents – my mother’s parents – who found us somewhere a bit better. We rented a house from a rich widow, and my father was very grateful. “It’s only a few paces away from Ser da Vinci’s house,” he said. Leonardo was away in Milan and there was little chance that I would see him again, but the closeness to him made me feel better too.
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