Florence, spring 1476
Lorenzo de Medici hosted a gathering last night that I will not forget in whatever time I have remaining, which is a phrase that continues to mean something different to me than it does to most people. Poliziano recited from his new translation of Homer. Pico della Mirandola argued about the nature of angels with a velocity and precision that left the room slightly breathless. Ficino played the lyre and sang from his own Platonic hymns, and the room was quiet in the way a room goes quiet when something real is happening.
I am eighteen years old by the calendar. Rinaldo called me damned three years ago. I still carry it. I carry it in every room I enter in this city, in every conversation I have with men who know about the condemnation and have chosen, in Lorenzo’s circle, to judge it as Rinaldo’s failure rather than mine. This is what this city does for me: it reverses the verdict without erasing the brand.
I sat next to Leonardo da Vinci for part of the evening. He does not talk much in social gatherings. He listens with an intensity that most people find uncomfortable, as though cataloguing everything anyone says for later use. He showed me three pages of notes afterward: observations about the acoustics of the room, the way firelight changed the modeling of faces, and an idea about the relationship between music and mathematics. Three pages. From one evening.
This is what it feels like to be inside a moment that will be called a golden age. Slightly overwhelming, mostly wonderful, impossible to fully receive.