Painting Mona Lisa aka I, Mona Lisa

crushed; Claudio came limping back to the carriage with her in his arms. Amazingly, he had managed to collect some of the pilfered grain in a pouch. I half expected Francesco to demand that he return it-it was, after all, stolen-but my husband said nothing.

News of the crowd’s call for the Medici was everywhere, even on our servants’ lips, and when Francesco returned from his shop that afternoon, he was stone-faced and uncharacteristically silent. Upon learning of Agrippina’s injuries, he went straightaway to her bed, murmured a few sympathetic words, then sent for his own physician.

But I had never seen him in such foul temper. When Elena dared ask timidly whether he had heard about the cry of “Palle!” he turned to her and said, quite nastily: “Utter that word again in this house, and you will find yourself on the street!”

That evening, my father failed to come for supper and Francesco chose to forgo it, instead leaving-he claimed- to meet with the Signoria.

Zalumma and I spoke little. But when we had retired for the night in the bedchamber-when she lay on her cot, and I on my bed-I said softly, in the darkness:

“You had a knife. I would like one, too.”

“I will give you mine,” she said.

And in the morning, she made good on her promise.

The following day was Ash Wednesday. At noon, Francesco, my father, and I went to San Lorenzo to hear Fra Girolamo deliver a sermon open to all.

I looked up at the prophet in the pulpit, at his gaunt, homely face with its hawkish nose, and wondered whether he understood that his inspiration did not spring from a heavenly source.

He said nothing about Pope Alexander, but he spoke of “those vile prelates who mewl about God yet adorn themselves with jewels and furs.” And he vehemently denounced women who paraded about in “immodest” gowns made of fabrics so fine that the sale of even one would feed many of the starving beggars who were, at that very instant, dying of hunger in Florence’s streets.

I shot a sidewise glance at my husband. Francesco seemed to be listening intently, his brow furrowed in sympathy, his eyes soft with calculated innocence.

At sunset, Zalumma dressed me in a drab gray gown with a plain headdress. I eschewed all jewelry; I had not worn any in months for fear of the fanciulli. These were the members of Savonarola’s “army”: boys ten years of age, perhaps younger, who dressed in white robes and patrolled the streets of Florence looking for women who flouted the laws prohibiting immodest dress. Any bodice that hinted at the presence of breasts, any glint of gold or gems, was a crime. Necklaces, earrings, brooches, all were confiscated as “offerings” for the poor. In the preceding months, the unforgiving cherubs had gone from house to house throughout the city, seizing paintings, statuary, curios-anything that might serve, on this Ash Wednesday, as a lesson to those who indulged in ostentatious displays of wealth.

But they never came to our palazzo.

Once I was dressed and ready, I waited until Francesco called for me. As I came down the stairs, he studied my dull attire, my unremarkable coiled braids, my modest black veil, and said merely: “Good.”

Then he handed me a painting the breadth of my arm from elbow to fingers. “I would like you to offer this tonight.”

I glanced at it. I had seen it before, on the wall in the corridor near the nursery. Rendered on a wooden panel was a portrait of Francesco’s first wife, Nannina, costumed in the guise of Athena. Her bust was shown in profile; on her head, she wore a small silver helmet from which spilled long, carefully crimped black locks. The artist’s style was crude, lacking any depth. Her skin was unnaturally white, her eyes lifeless, her posture stiff when it was intended to be dignified.

We had many paintings in the house with pagan themes-one in Francesco’s study portrayed a nude Venus-yet he had chosen this innocuous one, perhaps to suggest to the public that this was the most sinful item we could find.

And he had taken it out of its wrought silver frame.

I took it without comment, and we rode in silence-Francesco was still in ill sorts-to the Piazza della Signoria.

It was a starless, moonless night, thanks to the clouded sky, but I could see the glow as we approached the crowded piazza. As our carriage rolled in front of the Signoria’s palace, I saw torches everywhere: torches next to the high platform where the prophet and his army of white-robed fanciulli sat; torches flanking either side of the entry to the Palazzo della Signoria; torches in the hands of the onlookers; torches flanking, on all four sides, the great Bonfire of the Vanities. Every window in the palazzo, every upper-floor window of the surrounding buildings, glowed with candlelight as people gazed down to watch the spectacle in the square.

Francesco and I climbed from the carriage and joined the crowd standing before the pyre. My husband was an important man in the government; those who recognized him made way so that we could join the innermost circle.

The bonfire was a massive wooden structure-almost the height and breadth and depth of a two-story bottega, or a humble merchant’s house-consisting of eight tiers hammered together like a great makeshift open staircase, so that the children could easily make their way from the bottom level to the top. At its apex stood a straw-stuffed effigy of fat King Carnival, with a painted canvas head. His face was not that of the benevolent monarch I had seen in Carnivals past, but rather that of a gruesome demon, with fangs protruding from his mouth and blood-red eyes.

Crowded together upon the freshly constructed, unpainted wooden tiers were all the vanities collected by the friar’s little soldiers in the preceding months: golden necklaces, heaps of pearls, piles of embroidered velvet and satin and cangiante silk scarves, gilded hand mirrors, silver hairbrushes and combs, spun gold hairnets, fringed tapestries, carpets from Persia, vases and ceramics, statues, and paintings. Statues of Zeus, Mars, Apollo, Eros, Athena, Hera, Artemis, Venus, and Hercules, symbol of Florence’s strength. Painting after painting, on wood and canvas and stone; sketches on paper in silverpoint, red chalk, pencil, and ink. The crimes contained therein were all the same: pagan themes and nudity. I felt as I had upon first entering Lorenzo’s study: awed by the sheer magnitude of so much beauty, so much wealth.

Trumpets sounded; lutes began to play. Francesco nudged me, nodded at the painting in my hands.

I stepped up to the bonfire alongside other prominent citizens eager to make a public display of piety. The tiers were crowded with items, the raw planks soaked with turpentine; I averted my face from the fumes and wedged Nannina’s portrait in sideways between a pair of tall, heavy candlesticks whose cast-bronze bases were nude women with upstretched arms.

As I turned away, I brushed against a moving body and glanced up to see a bulky older man in a high-necked gown of black; the sight of him gave me pause. He was in his sixth decade of life, with red-rimmed eyes set in a pale, bloated face; a wattle of flesh hung beneath his prominent chin.

Sandro, I heard Leonardo say, and at once, I envisioned this man several years younger, holding the leg of a roasted quail to his lips, grinning and quipping archly: Alas, sweet bird…

Sandro was not smiling now; the glittering torchlight in his haggard eyes reflected infinite misery.

He looked at me and did not know me; his attention was consumed by the painting he clutched in his arms. It bore the image of a woman-slender, with elongated limbs and skin of incandescent pearl. She was naked save for a lock of amber hair that flowed down over one breast. One arm reached for an unfinished sky.

He stared down at it, tenderly, grieving-and then with a spasm of determination thrust it from himself, onto the nearest tier, atop a large urn, where it rested precariously.

I watched him disappear into the crowd, then went back to my husband.

As the bell in the tower of the palazzo began to chime, four leaders of the fanciulli came down from the platform and took up waiting torches. Wads of straw and tinder had been stuffed beneath the bonfire at four locations: two front and back near the center, two near either end.

Trumpets blared, lutes sang, cymbals crashed; as the crowd fell silent, the white-clad boys gathered beside the