The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence by Alyssa Palombo

Author:Alyssa Palombo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

18

Within the week, a messenger came to our house with an invitation for a dinner at the Medici palazzo, to “celebrate the newest work by Maestro Sandro Botticelli, and his beautiful subject, Signora Simonetta Vespucci,” so the wording went. It would take place in a week’s time.

“Your painter wastes no time,” Marco commented to me, handing me the letter to read over dinner.

“He is hardly my painter,” I said quickly. “He is just eager to show off such an exceptional work, as he should be. I am proud of it as well, for my own small contribution.”

After that our talk turned to other matters, though Marco sent a reply the very next morning stating that we would, of course, attend.

Time, which had flown by at an exceptional pace when I was sitting for the painting, slowed to the pace of the oldest, most broken-down horse in the week before the unveiling festa. I finished reading The Republic, though since my first urge was to discuss it with Sandro, it hardly served as a distraction. For that, too, I would have to wait until the party. I tried to implore Marco to read it yet again, and again he told me that he was too busy. “Perhaps in a few months, if business should slow down,” he told me.

So I went back to my copy of Dante, and the book of Petrarch that Lorenzo had given me, and tried to read the poetry with the same critical mind with which I had read Plato. Truly the purpose of the language, especially in Dante’s Divina Commedia, I found, was threefold: to tell a story; to create a beautiful, pleasing phrase; and to enfold within it another, more subtle meaning. Of course this, too, I wished to discuss with Sandro, and so my plans for distraction were once again foiled.

Fortunately, one day that week Clarice invited me to take a midday meal with herself and her mother-in-law, so I passed a happy afternoon with the Medici women, discussing plans for the upcoming party, as well as matters of fashion.

“I do not know if you noticed, Simonetta,” Clarice said, her eyes bright with mischief, “but half the women at Mass last week were wearing gowns just like the one you wore to dinner here last.”

My eyes opened wide, shocked. “I did not notice,” I said. “Surely you are mistaken. Why would anyone have copied my gown?”

Clarice and Lucrezia exchanged knowing looks, united, for once, in their teasing of me. “Why, can it be that you do not know, my dear?” Lucrezia asked. “You are the reigning beauty of Florence. You are the one who decides the trends, the fashions.”

“Surely not,” I protested. “Why, what silliness! I have not even met many people in Florence, save your friends and acquaintances, and Marco’s—”

“Simonetta, those are all the people that matter,” Lucrezia interjected. “And just because you have not met the rest of Florentine society does not mean they do not know who you are.”

“Why, surely you notice how everyone—men and women—stares at you in the street,” Clarice said.

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