The Florentine Treasure

By Rowan Speedwell

Art history professor Daniel Wollek is delighted to assist the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in cataloguing a cache of Renaissance artworks uncovered by an earthquake. But when a second earthquake pitches him headlong into the fifteenth century, Daniel finds himself more involved than he expected in rescuing precious artifacts from a fanatic’s bonfires. Then he meets Leonardo di Vinci’s assistant, Giacopo di Careggi, and finds in the beautiful young model a treasure even greater than art from the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781613726297

Rowan Speedwell

Rowan Speedwell is a cynic who believes in romance, an obsessive-compulsive who lives in chaos, and an introvert who loves to start conversations with strangers. Everything is fodder for a story, so be careful what you say to her. While not plotting either a novel or world domination (which will never happen because she’s far too lazy, but the world would be run so much better if she was in charge), she can be found reading, watching superhero movies, reading, and trying to avoid being bitten by her cat, Psycho. (Just kidding—her cat’s name is Pandora. Not kidding about the biting, though.) And reading. She loves history but hates historical novels, because people never get them right. Historical romances are okay because no one expects them to be remotely accurate. Her other hobby is buying craft supplies. Not doing crafts, just buying the supplies. Her favorite activity is untangling yarn snarls. She is a longtime member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. She has a website, www.rowanspeedwell.com, but is terrible about keeping it updated.

Book preview

The Florentine Treasure

MY BOSS, Harry, had come in during the second half of my lecture and spent it lurking in the back of the hall. As soon as the last of my students had filed out, he climbed down and leaned back against one of the seats in the front row. Interesting lecture, Daniel, he said. Is it true about John?

"Well, Leonardo didn’t leave any notes regarding his models, so we can’t be sure. And despite the recent renovations, The Last Supper had deteriorated so badly that it’s impossible to tell for sure who was who. All I know is that it is probably not Mary Magdalene, or a hidden conspiracy. I snorted my disdain for a popular novelist’s flight of fancy—not the first one to think that way, to be fair, but I preferred scholarship to imagination. It might be a woman—Leonardo preferred painting women—but the fact is that it bears a remarkable resemblance to drawings in his notebooks, which, despite the femininity of the facial features, are definitely those of a young man. Possibly Giacopo di Careggi or one of his other apprentices. Leonardo had a fondness for attractive young men."

Was he gay?

Leonardo? Or Giacopo?

Leonardo, but either.

Leonardo was, probably. He’d been arrested on sodomy charges in Florence as a young man. Everyone thinks of him as this bearded old man, but from contemporary references, he was quite a beautiful youth himself, tall and muscular. There aren’t any known portraits of him from his young adulthood, unless you believe that Verrocchio’s Angel Rafael is one. Some do.

Don’t you?

I shrugged. It’s possible, but impossible to confirm. I closed my laptop, turned off the projector and disconnected it, and packed the laptop in my battered leather satchel along with my lecture notes. At any rate, the drawings in the papers discovered at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence three years ago are definitely Leonardo’s, and definitely male. Even if the painting of John looks decidedly female.

Why do you think it could be one of his apprentices?

He used them like that, quite frequently. Just as his old master, Verrocchio, did. Assistants in artists’ workshops did a lot of everything. Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I headed for the door. I had about an hour to catch some lunch, then I had office hours. With final projects looming, I expected I’d be busy all afternoon. Why the sudden interest in Leonardo? While Harry was the head of the Art History department, his tastes ran more toward Georges Braque and the Cubists.

I got a call from the Uffizi this morning.

I stopped, my hand on the classroom door, and turned back toward him. The Uffizi?

Yeah. There’s been another discovery. You remember hearing about the earthquake in Tuscany last weekend?

Yeah, I said slowly. I thought there hadn’t been any significant damage….

There hadn’t—not to any buildings or anything. But apparently there was a rockfall in the hills near Florence, and yesterday a hiker found a cache of what they think are fifteenth-century artworks.

"What?"

Yep. Paintings, drawings, gold cups and bowls, jewelry—all neatly wrapped and stored in a wooden wagon. They’ve closed off the site, of course, but your old friend Luca wants you to call him back. Seems like he was impressed with your work identifying those papers as missing Leonardo notes, and he wants you to take a look at the cache to see if there’s anything of value.

"‘Anything of value’? Jesus Christ, of course there’s stuff of value there!" I yanked the door open and took off at a run for my office. I had to call Luca Anzione and find out what he could tell me.

DANIELE, my friend! How is New York?

Crowded and extremely noisy. Luca, what’s going on?

He told me. In great detail, as Luca was wont to do. Half the time I tuned him out, but this—this was way too exciting. I needed every detail Luca was ready to give me, and then some.

The basic story was this: after the earthquake—a very minor one, by Italian standards—a hiker came across a tumble of rocks from a minor avalanche. He was skirting the rockfall when he caught sight of something gold higher up the scree, and on investigating, found a battered gold cup and more importantly, an opening in the rocks. He recognized the cup as something valuable and took it along to the Uffizi for them to look at. Much excitement ensued.

They’d been keeping it hush-hush, with the hiker’s cooperation, but Luca, who was a High Muckety-Muck at the Uffizi Gallery, was hungry for the publicity that would bring more attention to the museum. Museums live and die on publicity, and the Uffizi, while it held some of the greatest treasures known to mankind, was no different. If anything in the cache was related to any of the great Renaissance artists, that would be fantastic publicity. If anything was directly related to Leonardo, arguably Florence’s most famous son, the museum’s fortunes would be made. They’d had a major find in the four pages of Leonardo’s notes discovered three years earlier, but notes, even Leonardo’s, weren’t flashy.

A secret stash of Leonardo’s artwork, when only about fifteen known paintings still existed? That would be flashy. And given the ongoing fascination with that epitome of the Renaissance Man, the benefit to the Uffizi would be stupendous. No wonder Luca was excited.

But for that very reason, he wanted me to come help identify and catalogue the find. It wasn’t unheard of for unscrupulous curators to discover entirely fraudulent pieces in order to draw attention to their facilities, and the museum wanted to avoid any hint of fraud. I had published a well-received monograph on the four Leonardo pages in addition to my doctoral and post-graduate work on Leonardo’s apprentices, notably his most notorious apprentice, Andrea Salaì. Most notorious for those who’d ever heard of him, anyway—he was still pretty obscure. And not in Leonardo’s class as an artist, either. Anyway, I guess that gave me some chops as far as Luca was concerned, and since he’d been given the task of analyzing the find, I was The Guy.

Harry