Mona Lisa Read online

  “No,” Leonardo said, “because they’re already well known as it is.”

  “You think so? Tell me then, if you please, how many legs has a fly, for instance.”

  “A fly?” Leonardo responded, “Four, naturally!”

  “No,” the Marshal said, “six. I knew you’d get it wrong.”

  “Monseigneur,” Leonardo said, “a fly has only four legs and no more.”

  “And I, my dear sir,” the Marshal retorted, “assure you that it has six, and I won’t give up a single one of them.”

  “In a book that I wrote myself in an idle moment in my youth and which deals with various animals, I stated precisely that a fly has four…”

  “Six, I tell you, sir! But so as not to make a spectacle of ourselves in the eyes of the world, which are directed on us as though we were falling out over something the truth of which every schoolboy can verify, I will, with your permission, catch a fly and provide you with the opportunity of counting its legs. Monsieur de Bougainville! You are the youngest of my entourage. Pray, be so kind as to catch a fly for us!”

  The young man whom the Marshal had addressed was at first nonplussed by the order he had received. But he soon took a grip of himself and replied in all good humour, “Your wish is my command, Monseigneur! It is as good as done!”

  “On the shoulder of Monsieur de Bridieu,” the Marshal said, rather severely however, because he could not possibly tolerate that a command of his should not be taken seriously, “I can see a fly sitting just now. Stand quite still, Monsieur de Bridieu!” And Monsieur de Bougainville began to approach Monsieur de Bridieu to apprehend the fly. However, sensing Monsieur de Bougainville’s proximity, it rose from Monsieur de Bridieu’s shoulder and began to buzz around the room, pursued by the rest of the suite, who hit out at it with their plumed hats. Finally it disappeared behind the curtain at the far end of the hall, which Bougainville pulled aside.

  A fantastic effulgence greeted his eyes. At the first instant he believed it to be a flame, or the radiance of jewels. Only the luminance came from the perfectly flat surface of a picture, propped up at an angle on a chair and painted in a novel art on wood or metal, its brilliance enhanced not merely by egg white but certain rare oils. It could have been about two feet by three or a little bigger, was in a simple frame and depicted a young woman in a silver-grey frock with sleeves of Indian yellow. The woman, whose face was turned towards the viewer, looked a little sideways to the left, where Bougainville stood, and she smiled. Her smile was enchanting and mysterious, as if glimpsed through fine shadows or a veil, though it exuded a luminosity which dazzled the eyes; and in the background, where sky-blue streams wound around huge mountains, the azure glow was more enchanting than the lustre of paradise.

  Bougainville saw the woman only for a short space of time, because the very next moment he felt the artist’s firm arm around his shoulders and the curtain before him was pulled back again.

  “What was that?” Bougainville asked in confusion.

  “Nothing,” Leonardo said as he led the young man back into the centre of the hall. “A picture, that’s all.”

  “A picture?” the Marshal asked. “What kind of a picture? May I see it?”

  “It is not finished,” Leonardo said. “I’m still working on it every now and again.”

  “Still, could I have a quick look…”

  “I’d rather you didn’t, Monseigneur. It is woefully unfinished. It’s a mere trifle.”

  “And would you sell it? It is the express wish and command of my King…”

  “Perhaps. However, I’m not going to sell it before it’s completed, and I don’t know…”

  “You will find,” the Marshal said, “the price quite to your liking. I could impose a small levy on some neighbouring town.”

  “But who is the woman?” Bougainville exclaimed. “What’s her name?”

  Leonardo paused for a second, then said, “Gioconda.”

  “And who is she?”

  “Oh, no one of consequence.”

  “Sir,” Bougainville insisted, “may I be permitted another question…”

  “You may not, Monsieur!”

  So ended this essentially fruitless, but as will shortly become evident, very fraught meeting. The matter of the fly and how many legs it has became a total irrelevance. The Marshal, after exchanging a few more words with the artist about other affairs, withdrew, left the house and mounted his horse, and there was nothing for it but for Bougainville to follow him and his people.

  PHILIPPE DE BOUGAINVILLE, who came from a family which about 200 years later became very famous on account of a major sea voyage which one of his namesakes performed, was twenty-three years old when he agreed to march to Italy under the banners of La Trémoille. The impression which the painting of the unknown woman had made on him was quite extraordinary, and on the return journey he questioned the Florentines closely as to who she might be. The young people replied that they didn’t really know a Gioconda, except that, judging by her name, she could be the wife or relative of a gentleman by the name of Giocondo; and there was only one such in Florence, a certain Francesco del Giocondo who resided in the vicinity of Bargello. The only thing being that he was a widower. “So, if the picture, which you had no opportunity of seeing, is that of his wife, or more accurately one of his wives, because he was married three times, she is well and truly dead, and we have no knowledge of any other relative of his going by that name.” Moreover, he was hardly ever to be seen in public. He was of course a nobleman, but though he held a number of civic posts, he kept himself to himself by and large.

  It struck young Bougainville as totally improbable that Leonardo would have painted a woman who was no longer alive. Yet he found out from other sources too in the course of the same day, which he spent exclusively on his enquiries, that Giocondo’s three wives had died, the last of them—Mona Lisa di Antonio Maria di Noldo Gherardini, a relative of Cesare Borgia’s private secretary Agapito Gherardini—of the plague in 1501, and that Giocondo had not married again.

  Bougainville, who immediately concluded that the painting with which—or more precisely its model, with whom—he had fallen madly in love was another woman, resolved to make her acquaintance and decided, despite the offensive manner in which Leonardo had concluded the discussion with him, to pay him another visit.

  Much to his surprise, as Bougainville reached the Via Ghibellina and approached da Vinci’s house, he once more heard music issuing from it, and it was again a dance tune which people played and sang, yet on this occasion it did not cease as the young man proceeded. Evidently, as he was alone and on foot, no one had noticed him. He stepped into the entrance hall, mounted the stairs and stopped on the landing.

  The music came from the same hall in which Leonardo had greeted the Marshal the day before.

  After hesitating a little, Bougainville pushed the door open and saw—

  The curtain, which he himself had pulled aside yesterday, was now fully open, and Leonardo, his back to the door, a box (such as artisans carry their tools in on a strap over their shoulder) filled with paints on the floor beside him and a small bundle of paintbrushes in his right hand, was sitting on a chair looking at Gioconda’s picture, which was propped up on another chair in front of him. This manner of painting appeared most makeshift in character; besides, a number of musicians, evidently the same as yesterday, filled the air with music. Also the two gleemen were about, dancing and beating their tambourines.

  The spectacle was all the more remarkable because it was not enacted before Leonardo’s eyes, rather at his back, so that he could not see the musicians, his eyes resting on the image of the woman alone. Also, he was not doing anything; instead he sat motionless in a peculiarly tense, almost provocatively unnatural posture, with just the fingers of his left hand beating in time with the music.

  Bougainville, as soon as he again beheld the astonishing lustre of the picture, also came to a complete standstill, until the musicians noticed him
and broke off their song.

  The artist turned around sharply and a few seconds later sprang to his feet.

  He was more than taken aback to see Bougainville, and his face went red.

  “My dear sir,” he spoke after a pause, “to what do I owe the honour of this second visit?” He threw the brushes into the paintbox, and with a majestic sweep of his arm dismissed the musicians and the two gleemen. “Please pardon the presence of these people,” he added hastily. “But I was not prepared for visitors. I decided just recently to try my hand at painting again, but my work bores me, and these good people help me to forget myself.” (He had evidently forgotten that they must have been noticed yesterday too.) “Via, via!” he called out, and the minstrels, who had already picked up their belongings, left the hall. He was just about to draw the curtain shut when Bougainville rushed up to him and fell across his arm. The young man moved so softly and swiftly that his feet hardly seemed to touch the ground.

  “Don’t!” he implored with a movement which by its grace and youthful passion touched the artist deeply. “Allow me, Messere, to enjoy for at least a few minutes the sight of this wonderful woman, who has occupied my mind since yesterday to the exclusion of everything else. I’ll admit to you openly that she is the reason behind my present visit. Otherwise I’d not have had the audacity to encroach upon your valuable time. You may consider me childish, but I don’t have the ability to draw a distinction between the beauty of an artwork and its model. Who is this model? I beg you, Messere, to name her! Yesterday you declared she’s the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, only…”

  “What was that?” Leonardo interrupted him in surprise. “I said she was Giocondo’s wife?”

  “Yes, of course! You mentioned her name…”

  “Ser Francesco’s wife?”

  “That’s right.”

  “One moment!” Leonardo exclaimed. “I never said he was her husband! All I said was she’s Gioconda!”

  “Quite so, quite so! Only Mona Lisa is dead. She has been for the last two years, and Ser Francesco’s other two wives have been dead for years too.”

  “What, did he have two more wives?”

  “That’s right. Mona Vanna and Mona Bice.”

  “Well, well! I never knew that,” Leonardo muttered under his breath. “But how do you know all that? And what precisely do you want from me?—Would you at least do me the honour of taking a seat!” And he brought up two chairs.

  “Messer Leonardo,” Bougainville said as he sat down and laid his plumed hat over his knee, “I beg you, tell me who the lady is! I implore you! Could she be the wife of someone other than Ser Francesco? Is she one of his relatives who lives in another town? Or is she your own mistress and you simply don’t want to say who she is?”

  “Young man,” Leonardo said with dignity, “if she were my paramour, it would have been my pleasure to introduce her to you. You would have made a beautiful couple, and I personally, even if it cost me dearly, would have left no stone unturned to behold such a couple. For in the main one sees only very ugly couples. I’m afraid though that you will be unable to make the acquaintance which you so ardently desire. You said yourself that Ser Francesco’s wife was dead, didn’t you?”

  “Well then, is this painting that of Gioconda?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Mona Lisa is really dead?”

  “No doubt about it.”

  “Then,” Bougainville exclaimed, convulsed with pain, “nothing is left for me but to weep on her grave! For, just when I thought I’d found her, I had already lost her long ago. But you, Messere, who knew her, had spoken to her, had breathed the same air, tell me all you know about her, tell me absolutely everything in the minutest detail, and out of this ether I will fashion me a picture which will be more wonderful than yours!”

  “Oh,” Leonardo said, raising his eyebrows, “I knew her only fleetingly, and the picture of the woman before you is neither her nor anyone else. The truth is, even had I wanted to paint her, it would have immediately turned into the likeness of someone else. After all, one always paints women who never exist, and the same goes for women one really loves. But of course it is possible that this painting bears a certain likeness to her. It is not unthinkable that this Gioconda and the other one… that, in view of the matching names, certain memories… The reason I’ve called her Gioconda is because she smiles, for in Italian the word means the happy or the smiling one. Mona Lisa was someone else. But in the event it would not have been quite outside the realms of possibility that, precisely for that reason, the memories of the other one, the real person, had found their way into the crafted picture, had displaced the imagined outlines… For none of us knows what it is that speaks for us, writes for us, moves our brush, or how many lives, long since passed away, still continue to respire within us! If the truth be known…”

  Bougainville had got to his feet. “Had I not been sure,” he said, stepping a little to the right so that the eyes of the painting, looking slightly to the left, met his, “had I not been convinced that the woman, whose likeness I took this picture to be, was dead, had it not been absolutely certain that she’d been dead and buried for years, I could have sworn that she looks more alive than many a living one. It is quite unthinkable that these eyes no longer see, that this bosom no longer heaves, that the smile on her lips is not a live, but an immortal one! I—”

  “The smile,” Leonardo interrupted him as he put one foot on the paintbox and, leaning forward, picked up a few brushes which he then let drop one by one, “the smile is not immortal, it’s merely unfinished, that’s all.”

  “It is wonderful,” Bougainville said.

  “No, it is not. Women are without a doubt the most perfect creations, and when they smile they are at their most perfect. A smile is the expression of perfection par excellence. All that has been shifted, is distorted, all that is in a state of rest, smiles. But nothing can be more worthy of a dismissive smile than the unfinished depiction of perfection, and despite my efforts to capture it, the smile of this woman has eluded me. Every smile is a mystery, not only of itself, but in every other respect too. But I have no clue to this mystery. I know not what she is smiling at. You are no doubt surprised, sir, to find me surrounded by musicians and gleemen. Well, I allowed myself to be persuaded that this lady could raise a smile at the sight of people dancing. They were charged, so to speak, to entertain the painting and to evoke an expression in it which I myself was incapable of doing. For myself, I find the expression on the picture absurd. The smile of a real woman, be she the commonest one of all, is in any event more accomplished than any attempt to depict it even by the greatest painter in the world. Perhaps the point is that there is no perfection in things artistic. I’m sure there isn’t. Only the real is perfect.” And after a pause he added, “Not until the woman in this painting becomes real will it be said that she really smiles.”

  “Well,” Bougainville muttered, “she’s real enough for me. The agony I’m going through that she’s no longer alive exceeds the grief over the loss of the most beautiful inamoratas…”

  “So you’ve fallen in love with this painting?”

  “Not with the painting,” Bougainville said. “With the lady.”

  “Which, at least in this case, comes to the same thing.”

  “For you it does, Messere,” Bougainville said. “But not for me.” And he stared into the void. “However,” he finally added, pulling himself together, “it’s pointless going over what has been lost. Besides, I fear I have exceeded my welcome. Still, I know you will pardon my intrusion, my questions and my madness. Put it down to the dreams, yours and mine, that they can be far more authentic than life itself.”

  And without giving the painting another glance, he bowed and left the hall, suppressing his emotions.

  MONA VANNA AND MONA BICE del Giocondo, as well as a child daughter of Ser Francesco, were buried at the outer wall of Santa Maria Novella, Mona Lisa, however, in Santa Croce; in fact, on account of her fami
ly’s nobility, within the church itself, in the right aisle.

  The tomb was in the wall between the so-called Baroncelli Chapel and the entrance to the sacristy. A marble plate, framed in the style of the times and bearing an inscription in Latin which Bougainville did not understand, was sunk into the stonework. It was about midday when, accompanied by a servant who carried a garland of dark red roses, he entered the church. The Mass that was in progress was for late risers, the “scented Mass” as it was known, attended by richly turned-out and heavily perfumed nobility who actually came only to see and be seen, to criticize, to laugh and to gossip. As for the priest and what went on at the altar, no one bothered in the slightest.

  The spectacle of the elegant, happy-go-lucky, chattering crowd filled Bougainville with foreboding; he noticed the looks which the ladies cast him. Shoving aside their escorts, who could not be induced to move out of the way, and ignoring their protests, he allowed himself to be conducted to Mona Lisa’s tomb.

  He crowned it with the garland of roses. Then he stepped back and stood still in deep contemplation.

  His intention had been to seek peace and remain at the grave for as long as possible right up to the moment of his departure, never letting the deceased out of his mind. Now that he was standing before the tomb, however, he was suddenly overcome by a strange sensation of not knowing at all what had led him to the place or what he actually sought.

  Looking at the painting, he could not imagine she was dead. At her grave, he could not imagine that she still lived for him in any shape or form. That he could have crowned the tomb of a complete stranger with roses struck him suddenly as a tasteless imposition, an inexcusable intrusion into the personal affairs of others; had he just then been confronted by one of her relatives, or even her husband, he would have been at a loss what to say. The red of the roses offended his sight. He turned away and let his eyes wander over the ornate walls, the rich hangings and the long rows of triangular wooden shields covered in deeply tanned leather, hanging from the brightly coloured roof beams.