“Attento, Cesare! Don’t let her get too close. It will bite!” But the little girl only squealed with joy and Cecilia could not help but smile, too. Her children were thriving in this peaceful estate of Count Brambilla. They all were.
But as Cecilia ran her hand over the wax seal, her brow knitted in worry. A letter from Isabella d’Este, the older sister of Ludovico il Moro’s wife, Beatrice. It had been a year since Cecilia had received a formal letter from Isabella, sharing the news of Beatrice’s death in the ducal palace of Milan.
At the time, Cecilia had found it unbelievable to hear that Beatrice, her former rival, was gone, she and her stillborn baby both victims of a ruthless childbirth. Cecilia had only shuddered, feeling the old fear reaching for her soul with bony fingers. Only luck, she thought, had spared her from the same fate. Cecilia had gotten on her knees to thank God for her life in this quiet, country paradise. For her own life, and for those of her son and daughter.
Since sharing the news of Beatrice and her baby, Isabella d’Este had continued to write to Cecilia and even to visit her, exchanging works of poetry and music composed in the court of Ferrara. Isabella sought the company of all the learned ladies of the region, Cecilia’s husband had told her. There was no reason not to welcome her company. Cecilia should consider herself flattered by the marquess’s attention, he had said. It meant that she was someone important, after all.
Now, Cecilia watched the goose leap awkwardly into the pond, then glide away. On the bank, Cesare called to it and flapped his arms like wings. Cecilia smiled, then broke the seal and unfolded the parchment.
From Marchesa Isabella d’Este, Ferrara
To Contessa Cecilia Gallerani, San Giovanni in Croce
Having seen today some fine portraits by the hand of Giovanni Bellini, we began to discuss the works of Leonardo and wished we could compare them with these paintings. And since we remember that he painted your likeness, we beg you to be so good as to send us your portrait by this messenger whom we have dispatched on horseback, so that we may not only be able to compare the works of the two masters, but also have the pleasure of seeing your face again. The picture will be returned to you afterward, with our most grateful thanks for your kindness.
89
Edith
Munich, Germany
October 1946
ON THE TRAM, EDITH SAW THE FACE OF HANS FRANK. FOR a long second, her heart stopped.
It was him; there was no denying it. There, on the front page of the newspaper. She recognized Frank’s black eyes, the slick sweep of his hair across his broad forehead. But his expression, captured in the small picture of grainy newsprint, seemed strange and uncharacteristic.
Edith felt her heart return to beating, this time hammering in her chest. A man scanned the interior spread of the paper; behind the newsprint, all that was visible were his neatly pleated trousers, his polished shoes, and his hat. Edith wanted to look away from the headline, but she could not make herself do it.
GOERING COMMITS SUICIDE; 10 OTHERS HANG
Alongside Frank’s picture, there were images of nine more men. Frick, Seyss-Inquart, von Ribbentrop, others, their names typed out in black, bold text beneath their pictures. Was he really dead? Hanged, at Nuremberg Prison, just as the headlines said?
The metal wheels squeaked to a halt, and the tram doors folded open. Edith grabbed her bag and stepped down to the sidewalk, leaving the image of Frank on the front page of the newspaper behind. Another image of Frank flashed through her mind, one of him breathing down the back of her neck as they stood before Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait at Schoberhof. Edith shuddered and pushed the memory aside.
The imposing, familiar façade of the Alte Pinakothek came into view, with one wing now little more than a pile of rubble. Stay focused on the present, she said to herself. Edith did her best to think of her father and Rita back at home, her shopping list of ingredients for a pie they might enjoy after Sunday’s dinner. She thought about her plans to meet up with an old classmate she had met by chance on the street, a girl who had also lost her fiancé in battle. She thought about the old painting on an easel in her conservation studio that she was itching to repair. Edith finally felt her heartbeat return to normal.
But memories and questions licked the edges of her mind. Where was the Lady with an Ermine now? Just a few months before, Edith had read news of the death of Prince Augustyn Józef Czartoryski, the once-owner of da Vinci’s portrait, who had become ill during his family’s exile at the Spanish court. Edith felt sad that Prince Augustyn would never lay eyes on the picture again. Would his young son ever return to Kraków to reclaim his family’s art collection? Edith hoped that in the meantime, the provisional government in Poland would have the foresight and the care to keep the picture safe.
Edith greeted the security guard at the museum’s employee entrance and exhaled as she followed the long corridor to the conservation studio. There was a picture waiting for her, a seventeenth-century still life that had been brought in from the Netherlands. The canvas was torn in transport. Edith expected to work on it for a period of weeks.
“Edith!”
Her old friend Manfred was waiting for her as Edith hung her coat on the rack. Manfred had already filled Edith in on all she had missed while she was busy working in the Allied Central Collecting Point. In spite of the fact that one wing of the museum was a mangled pile of stone and would not be open to the public again for years, many of the artworks, galleries, and offices remained intact. Edith felt fortunate that the conservation studio had remained unscathed. It was more than they could say for many of their colleagues. Two curators had been killed while traveling with German troops. Another one had died right here in Munich, the victim of excess in food and drink that had finally caught up with him. And the museum’s director, Ernst Buchner, was being detained in connection with the theft of the Ghent Altarpiece in France.
When she finally closed the door to her quiet conservation studio, Edith let her shoulders fall in relief. She adjusted the light so that it raked across the surface of the still life, outlining the edges of pieces of fruit and leaves painted three centuries before. Edith looked carefully at the fine cracks across the surface. She ran the bottle of thinner under her nose to make sure it was still serviceable after having sat on her shelf for so long. She dipped a long brush into it and ran it across a small rag to test it. She must do what is in her power, she thought: saving works of art, one piece at a time.
But the once-beloved silence of her conservation lab now brought with it a new and unbidden level of chatter in her mind. Lingering questions. Uneasy self-reflections. A new examination of conscience that, Edith feared, might endure.
Beware the beginnings, her father had said.
Edith imagined that this burden of self-reflection might stay with her, but she resolved that from now on, she would remain vigilant, her eyes open to the city and the world around her. She would be ready to act in the face of darkness, sooner rather than later.
Across Germany, were others bearing this heavy weight of hindsight? How long might it take, Edith wondered, for her countrymen and -women—and for herself—to atone for having served evil instead of good?
90
Cecilia
San Giovanni in Croce, Italy
April 1498