Two Rare Birds

Karen Essex had so much élan and verve when I met her at the recent Historical Novel Society’s conference that I couldn’t wait to get one of her books. She had a great deal of marketing savvy and cast a steely eye on the publishing scene. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted her work to be as excellent as she seemed, or whether I was actually filled with envy and hoping to be able to feel superior to a creature of publicity (oh really I’m above all that. I wish.)

Essex has written two biographical novels about Egypt, Kleopatra and Pharaoh, but I happened to stop in at the local and massive Little City Used Book Sale and there, in a pristine cover, was her book Leonardo’s Swans. It was Fortuna, as one of her characters would say. This book (344 pages, Doubleday) is a fictional exploration of the lives and relationships of two incredibly gifted and powerful women who were also sisters: Isabella and Beatrice d’Este. Both were patrons of the arts: Isabella supported Andrea Mantegna and many others, while Leonardo da Vinci did what some consider his best work while under the patronage of the Duke of Milan, Beatrice’s husband Ludovico Sforza. Leonardo’s Swans does an excellent job re-imagining what might have been the psychological truths and interpersonal relationships among these people based on the known facts. This is what the best historical fiction does: helps us to see as living people those who are frozen in artistic styles that look like no one we know, or who have accomplished deeds (or descended into infamy) that we, on the surface, can hardly imagine.

Essex makes these women so human that you can almost think of them as members of your book club or someone you might have lunch with. Also, they both seem so accessible that I had to keep reminding myself that these were two of the most powerful and influential women of their own (indeed of any) time. During the period the story covers, both Isabella and Beatrice were only in their late teens and early twenties. Maybe speaking several languages and being well read in the classics can produce this, but it’s still very hard to believe that teenagers could achieve the levels of intellectual, political and artistic sophistication that these women apparently did. The details of their lives are better than any complicated family saga, and I polished off the book in a few very late nights.

While I highly recommend this book for either a long day at the beach, a time when you are stuck in an airport for twelve hours (that’s where I cracked the covers) or in front of a fire with a nice afghan cradling you, I must say that certain aspects of the book made me angry at her publishers. First, the cover. The hardcover has a very sensuous nude reproduction of a painting by Cesare da Sesto of Ledo and the Swan. This is purportedly a copy of a lost Leonardo. While the theme of the painting is certainly part of the book, so many other great paintings are mentioned in the book that the reader craves to have them at hand while reading. Leonardo painted very few portraits of contemporary women, and four of them are integral to the plot of this book: Cecilia Gallerani ( a mistress of Ludovico Sforza), the gorgeous Lady with an Ermine, which toured the U.S. several years ago; La Belle Ferronière, reputed to be Lucrezia Crivelli, another mistress of Ludovico Sforza; a portrait of Beatrice (Ludovico’s wife—busy guy) and a sketch of Isabella, who spends most of the book consumed with envy of the oils of the others. (The other two non-religious portraits are, of course, the Mona Lisa and Ginevra de’ Benci, the only Leonardo in the U.S., at the National Gallery in Washington.) The paperback version has another beautiful painting, but not of these ladies.


My other (minor) gripe is that I spotted two paragraphs (or their very near cousins) that were each repeated in other sections of the book. After my own experiences with editing, I can well understand how multiple revisions and edits can make that happen. Still, I’d have been happier if someone caught that. It may not be noticeable unless you are reading through the entire book in two sittings, as I did, while stuck sleeping on the floor of an airport at 1 am.

Ludovico Sforza and Isabella d’Este aren’t exactly household words, and unless you have a particular interest in the Renaissance, you may not have run across them before. But once you read this book, they’ll seem like fascinating people from your past. As indeed, they are.