Leonardo's Swans by Karen Essex

Author:Karen Essex
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

ISABELLA’S train parades up the wide avenue that will pour into the great brick piazza fronting the Castello. The pace of her party is slow. Though the weather is bitter, shopkeepers, workers, and children race into the street to catch a glimpse of the royals, or more likely, to catch whatever the gentry might be throwing their way. Coins, trinkets, tiny dolls, tops, bright baubles, buns, hunks of cheese, and other tokens of goodwill, all brought from Mantua to appease the poor, the greedy, and the curious, make their way from the pockets and purses of the nobles to the cold hands—young and old, mottled, stained with cow’s blood, dyes, dirt, metal, grease—reaching out to them as they pass by.

Isabella is grateful to be under thick blankets riding in a carriage. She slips her hand out of her rabbit-fur muff to pass a toy soldier—nicely painted for a cheap toy, she cannot help but notice—to a green-eyed boy who has rushed out of the butcher’s shop and snatches it from her like a hungry dog grabbing a bone.

As the boy runs away with his treasure, she looks up to see a conical helmet that seems to float in the air. The nose guard is up, exposing a face with strong features and a hawklike countenance. As the train approaches the piazza, she sees that the helmeted head is not floating at all but belongs to a colossal statue standing alone in the square. The figure, a soldier, sits on a strutting horse, supported by a marble plinth. The monument must be twenty feet tall, but the sinking afternoon sun casts a shadow across the piazza twice the length, making it appear that the entire square exists to house the beast and his master.

Isabella asks her driver to circle the statue so that she can see it from all angles. The horse is a wonder, as if the sculptor caught the animal in the act of prancing. Two hooves dance jauntily in the air, while the other two are firmly planted, and the tail swinging as if whipping the air around it. The nostrils flare and the mouth is agape, revealing big square teeth and a long, curling tongue. Though it appears that the rider has pushed the animal to the point of fatigue, there is an air of infallibility about the beast.

The Horse, the gigantic clay sculpture that the Magistro had promised for years, had finally been completed and displayed in honor of the marriage between Emperor Max and Bianca Maria Sforza to great accolades for the statue, its creator, and of course, Il Moro, who had commissioned it. One of the many reasons Isabella had regretted her illness at the time of that event was that she had missed the unveiling. She had only heard the descriptions in letters from those who were present—and who was not?—and the poems written in honor of Leonardo and his accomplishment. She could not remember the words now, but they were oft repeated—Victory to the victor, and you, Leonardo, have the victory, or some such.

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