Work Text:
“I understand the model was a man of means,” said Alessandro. “He didn’t pose for want of money. The story is that Leonardo had asked him to sit for his portrait, just a sketch, and then mentioned being frustrated by his studies for the San Sebastian. The gentleman actually offered. Usually it’s the street boys that model for the barely clothed pictures. Or the artist’s lover.”
Not for lack of Leonardo trying, thought Aziraphale. He’d sensed the painter’s attraction to Crowley, the overtures barely hidden in his praise of the demon’s grace, his acid wit and cleverness; suppressed the faint pang he experienced when he saw it. It was none of his business.
But that Crowley had never mentioned sitting for this – if you could call it sitting – it nagged at him somehow. There was no good reason. They had an Arrangement; it didn’t mean they knew all each other’s affairs, like back-fence gossips.
In the painting the saint, lean and perfect, clad only in a strip of cloth around his loins, twisted in transcendent anguish against the tree to which he was bound. His head was tilted back, eyes rolled upward, one hand out of sight but the other arm stretched above his head, against the gnarled trunk. The face was unmistakably Crowley’s – angular, hawk-nosed, sharp-jawed – and the mass of flowing hair vividly red. Crowley had worn it to his jawline in those days, it was the fashion, but the artist had recreated to an astonishing degree the way it looked when the angel had first seen him on the Wall.
Arrows pierced the lean torso from all directions. It hurt to look at. Da Vinci, whose work was often formal, choreographed, had experimented with a style that made the wounds unpleasantly realistic: Aziraphale remembered how the man had practiced (quite illegal) dissection in aid of his art. But the expression on the face was oddly transported, as if being pierced were a consummation. It was a trope, Aziraphale knew, but he had rarely seen it done so vividly.
The background was da Vinci’s: the Piemontese slopes, a chaotic grey-blue sky from which, not so typically, a light shone on the figure from a distinct angle. He remembered what it was like to face upward into Her light, the only way She'd manifested since the Fall.
“The face reminds me of someone,” said Aziraphale carefully. “Not a friend, but a respected adversary – “
“I understand,” said Alessandro. “Sometimes it is a matter of allegiance, sometimes of the purse.”
“Yes. And sometimes – those who should be allies find themselves on opposite sides of the same battlefield.”
“A fact of life. We fall out with family, friends, sometimes it cannot be remedied. One reason I, like my forebears, pay the artists. Our lives could end at any moment, what we build can be snatched away in a season, but the work lives. Look how the master captured that emotion in his features, as if he beheld God.”
Did it feel like that? thought Aziraphale. The face, turned into the fall of light from the tumbled Tuscan clouds, said I have served you, is this my reward? Then I will convert it to ecstasy. He tried not to gaze too fixedly. Crowley’s expression could be sly, angry, arch, amused; he had never thought to see rapture there. (Had he?)
“The eyes,” said Alessandro. “Leonardo was known for the way his subjects gazed back at you, out of the painting. But these – they glow almost golden, as if they reflected that Divine light. The Spirit of God infusing the saint.”
“I had heard your education was humanist,” said Aziraphale. Leonardo saw his eyes. What else did he see?
“I do not sacrifice to the Olympians, but I am humbled by the beauty of Botticelli’s Venus,” said the prince. “All gods illuminate the human heart. We see ourselves in them, for good or evil. Sometimes we see the evil that must be done to further good. There are those who say the Serpent did God’s will, in leading Man to the Tree of Knowledge.”
“Actually, he – “
Aziraphale realized how unguarded he had become, and thumbed the velvet of his doublet nervously.
“And what does the – the martyrdom of this saint represent to you?”
“It was not his final martyrdom, you know. He survived the attack, as if his body were not destructible by ordinary means.”
“They all are, eventually.” Aziraphale had kept as far as possible from Heaven’s grand programme of making saints, gotta give the groundlings someone to cheer for, Gabriel liked to say, few showy miracles, a good death speech, not everyone’s as crazy for books as you are, Az. But he knew that already, among men of a -- certain sensibility, portrayals of the Roman martyr were cherished not so much for their holiness as for their celebration of the youthful, trussed masculine form.
“Media vita in morte sumus. I know. But this shows a man near the article of death, converting his suffering to enlightenment. Knowledge is ecstasy. His eyes fill with the light of Heaven, as if to say that the Divine gnosis dwells in all of us, inextinguishable.” He regarded the play of the sun’s rays on the dem – the saint’s features. “You know the theory of this Prussian Copernicus, that the Earth circles the Sun? Leonardo may have concluded something of the sort. The proposition has even found favour with great-uncle Giulio. Our spiritual father.” Alessandro's tone was sardonic. "Though some call him my father in truth."
“And?” Alessandro had been born to an African servant in the House of Medici, and no one had ever accounted for his paternity.
“The Pope? A Prince of the Church? How could that be?” Alessandro’s eyebrow lifted, an arch expression that all but mimicked Crowley in his playful moods, and for a moment the present was layered on the past. How long had it been? “You are forward, Signior Fell. Yes, and they also call me The Moor. But you see the Devil is not so black as he is painted, is he?”
“I have never believed so.”
“So to our earlier discussion. I cannot countenance the return of any followers of Savonarola. They call themselves godly, but they would drag us down to darkness. They would call even this a vanity.” He nodded at the painting. “For its beauty. Its ecstasy.”
“I did not say return. Only show lenience. Vengeance need not be pursued beyond the city walls.”
“Weakness draws predators.”
“And mercy issues from strength.”
“As for Ippolito, my brother will never cease seeking what he thinks is justice. There is only one way.”
“I cannot persuade you otherwise?”
“What is your stake in the matter?”
“I am… a friend. No more than that.”
“You are an odd man, Signior Fell. Yet I find that I like and trust you, even though I cannot accept your counsel in this matter. Perhaps I shall stay my hand a while. Come, let me show you the rest of the villa.”
It was several years later, in Naples, that he encountered Crowley again, leaning against the arch of a loggia and gazing into the setting sun. The light made mirrors of his smoked lenses, prinked out the links of the gold chain he wore. He’d found wine, and a glass somewhere; miracled another for the angel.
“Here for the peace conference?” he said. There had already been a confusing maze of peace treaties among the warring Italian states. Doubtless there would be more.
“You too, I suppose.”
“What else? Hell’s got an agenda. Besides, you can always tempt politicians on travel. Good time to fill up the quotas.”
“It’s all complicated by Florence.”
Aziraphale didn’t have to elaborate. Only a few months before, Alessandro de’Medici, Duke of Florence and increasingly autocratic ruler, had been knifed on his way to an assignation and hurriedly buried. The supporters of a Florentine Republic failing to rise, he’d been rapidly replaced by Cosimo de’Medici, who’d promptly begun working to consolidate a Kingdom Of Tuscany.
“I hear you paid him a visit,” said Crowley. “Take it Heaven wanted it to turn out this way?”
“No, they seemed to prefer something different.” The motives of Heaven and Hell in manipulating all these interconnecting schemes remained inscrutable. "I... expressed an interest in the family's art treasures as my cover."
Crowley sipped – it was good red wine, Chianti, something the Italians had just brought forth – and didn’t look round. “You saw it?” he said, with an odd hesitation.
“The painting.”
“I looked for it after he died. Went missing in the confusion, somehow.”
“You were in the area?”
“Hell wanted me to be the one to deliver a note. Give him a little push, y’know? Come-hither from some hot widow. Guess it didn’t work out for him. Gather the Head Office got what it wanted, it’s Italian politics, who knows.”
They were silent a while, gazing out over the Bay, remembering Caligula and Claudius.
“Leonardo,” said Aziraphale finally.
“I have the portraits he did of us,” Crowley said. “And the cartoon for one of his others, the Gherardini woman. Reckoned I could start a collection.”
“You seem to have cherished a special regard for him,” said Aziraphale, more acidly than he’d meant to. Crowley seemed to intuit that it was a question, and finally turned his head.
“Demons don’t love, angel. If that’s what you mean.”
“Yes. So they say.” You could sound more casual sipping wine, as if the conversation were something idle to pass the time while you got to the serious business of getting hammered. “It seemed an odd choice of subject. Whatever were you thinking?”
“Just amused me. Gettin' to be a saint, and all.”
“The expression was remarkable.”
Crowley leaned his velvet-clad forearms on the railing of the loggia, dangling his wineglass in two fingers. “Devil can quote Scripture to his purpose.”
“I was amazed at the – ahem, quality of the emotion he captured.”
“Okay, angel. I hear what you’re getting at. He was fishing. I didn’t bite. Demons tempt, we don’t fulfil. We leave that to the mortals.” He pushed himself up, the last rays of the sun glinting in his short-trimmed hair. An almost Roman look was coming back into fashion. “Still died one of ours. Have to disappoint Gabriel.”
That wasn’t why I cared, Aziraphale tried out inside his own head, and decided against it. He always came close to speaking eventually, and always decided against it.
“Tell you what,” said Crowley. “Let’s go back to my rooms and get arseholed. Way this is goin’ on, we’ll each have loads to take credit for. Humans’re bloody genius at makin’ a mess. We’ll just pick up the pieces.”
“Capital idea,” said Aziraphale.
