The Medici Boy by John L'Heureux

twittering and slightly mad and Donato was kind but firm with him, taking in what was useful and dismissing the rest with thanks, while Uccello returned to his solitary house in the hills and his paintings of every kind of animal, to his sad wife and his cages of wild birds. Donato’s oldest friend and companion, Brunelleschi, was in and out, working in secret on his miraculous dome, and my friend Michelozzo was there, whom I called Michele, learning from the master and keeping accounts for him and leading him out of the financial disaster he seemed to want to embrace. The great patrons would sometimes appear: the Medici—old Giovanni di Bicci and Cosimo himself—and Niccolò da Uzzano, the Rucellai, the Riccardi, and even the Albizzi who would later try to destroy Cosimo, our patron. The entire world came around to see what Donato was creating and to applaud the work and to ask a favor. And among all these, invisibly, I too was there, a man in years but still a boy in the craft of sculpting, unskilled, unsubtle, but full of hope and not yet possessed by the demon of . . . of what exactly I could not yet say.
    * * *
    I T WAS A sweltering day in June—hot in the way that only Florence can be hot—and the huge double doors to the courtyard had been thrown open in hopes of a breeze. There was none. The sun seemed to have settled over the city with the intention of putting it to fire. We had all laid aside our stockings and doublets and, dressed only in our long shirts, we gave ourselves over to lethargy. The stone floor was cool on our bare feet.
    I was at the big table doing the accountant’s work Michelozzo had assigned me and I had finished sorting through the sheaf of commissions still unfulfilled. I had separated out the commissions that were fulfilled but not yet paid for—a tondo , a marble bust, two cassoni —and I had begun to add up the sums owed and the sums paid. But it was June, and hot, and I was distracted from thoughts of money by thoughts of Alessandra. I was set upon continually by desire for her. By—I must tell truth—by a lust that never seemed possible to slake though she was always willing to try. I shifted Donato’s commissions in my hands, but my mind was on her body, the soft skin of her inner thighs and the sweet mound there. I began to sweat and I began to go hard. It was lust, I knew, and I pressed my legs together to make myself harder. Yes, it is lust. And lust is evil but, since we are not angels, it is necessary. But was it only lust? I shut my eyes to see her the better and thought, Surely this is love.
    Suddenly, the master was standing before me, and I realized he had been standing there for some time, staring. He had, as Michelozzo promised, remembered me. I leaped to my feet.
    “How old are you, Luca?” he asked. “About twenty-three?”
    “Twenty-one or maybe twenty-three.”
    “Sit down. Sit down. And you were a Franciscan brother for a time.”
    I nodded and sat down.
    “Louis of Tolosa was twenty-three when he died. He was a Franciscan mendicant.”
    He was thinking aloud, not truly looking at me now, and then suddenly he was, and it was as if he was seeing me for the first time. It was that same look he gave to whatever he was sculpting.
    The look of a great artist is not a devouring look or even a penetrating look. It is illumination, as if a great light is turned upon you and all the dark places of your mind and heart are suddenly revealed. It is how God will look at you at his Final Judgment. It is naked, it is not decent.
    I felt myself go hot under his stare, and then cold, and I began to sweat. My leg began to tremble and my sight went dim and I had fear of the worst but—a great mercy—the spell did not descend on me. I felt tears come to my eyes. I had never been looked at in this way. Would I be found out? Would I be acceptable?
    Donato had already turned away.
    “Rinaldo,” he called out, “set up a new armature. I am going to sculpt my Louis.”

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