Free The Medici Boy by John L'Heureux Page A

but cross him in some other way—on design or workmanship or the pains necessary to get something right—and he would kill you. He had thunderous rages, they said. He would shout long and threaten much. He had been known to take a hammer to a marble bust, shattering it in a hundred pieces, rather than sell it short to a patron who accused him of charging overmuch. They were bursting with such stories and they were proud to work in the bottega of such an important and dangerous man. They made small mention of his kindness and generosity, of his booming laugh, of the late nights he spent with them drinking deep and telling fond stories of Cosimo de’ Medici and wry stories of working for Ghiberti. I would come to understand that the obvious point of each tale was that the great Donatello was unlike any sculptor before him; the less obvious point—but the real one—was that they were unlike any apprentices before them, chosen as they were by him.
    I came to know them well, all except Pagno di Lapo. He was a boy of twelve or thirteen, silent and surly with the others but full of light and charm with Donato, who thought him greatly gifted and called him Piccolo Mio . I did not trust him, though he gave no reason why I should not, unless it was his sliding smile. During this time I shared a small room with two other apprentices, Francesco Bottari and Rinaldo Franco, across the Ponte Trinità next door to the Palazzo Frescobaldi. Lo Scheggia lived at home with his brother, Masaccio, and of course Caterina Bardi lived with her own family. Francesco and Rinaldo were youths of fourteen and fifteen and I was expected to look after them, whatever that might mean, and I did so by making sure they were in bed each night before I locked the door. I did not want to inquire what they did with their free time. They were serious young workers, gifted beyond my own capacities, and though I suspected they sometimes visited whores near the Mercato Vecchio and undoubtedly pleasured themselves privately in ways I knew only too well, I made a point of not inquiring. Next door to us, in a little house rented from the Frescobaldi, Donato himself lived with Michelozzo. They had two rooms and a small kitchen garden as befitted men of substance and accomplishment. It was whispered by apprentices of Ghiberti—and, I must acknowledge, by others as well—that Donato and Michelozzo were lovers, sodomites, but I who saw them together each day knew that this could not be true. There was never that curious physical tension between them that is the mark of desire. They were simply men who loved one another. And in truth the laws were clear: the ultimate penalty for sodomy was death by fire.
    Gifted, but not gifted enough, I held a special place in the bottega , but it was not one of expertise as a craftsman and so it did not rankle. I got on with the others, I helped keep peace at work, I was useful and needed no special care.
    In this way, Michelozzo brought me, little by little, to the attention of the master himself.
    * * *
    R AW AND CLUMSY as I was, Michelozzo took pity on me and instructed me in the basic needs of Donato’s bottega . For weeks he let me grind paints and embellish panels and assist at plaster casting, but then it came time for work in sculpture.
    “You paint well, and we always need painters, but if you are to be of use to the master, you must learn to carve. Painting and sculpting are very different things.” He looked at me hopefully and nodded agreement with himself. He was teaching an idiot, he knew, but he was very patient. “Painting fills a particular space. You see?” He indicated the flat oaken wedding panel that Caterina was painting: Solomon meets Bathsheba. “But painting remains flat. Sculpture has depth. Not only the illusion of depth, but true physical depth. You can walk around a sculpture. You can touch it. It has life and motion from behind as well as from the front. If it is well done, you can feel it