Painting Mona Lisa. Jeanne Kalogridis

and well-educated; she adored poetry, which she read in Italian and Latin (both of which she had insisted on teaching me). She had passionately acquired a wealth of knowledge about the city’s cultural treasures – and had long been troubled by the fact that her illness had prevented her from sharing them with me. So when the opportunity arose, on that bright December day, we took a carriage east, and headed across the Ponte Vecchio, into the heart of Florence.

      It would have been more efficient to head straight down the Via Maggio to the nearest bridge, the Ponte Santa Trinita, but that would have denied me a visual treat. The Ponte Vecchio was lined with the botteghe of goldsmiths and artists. Each bottega opened directly onto the street, with the owner’s wares prominently displayed in front of the shop. We all wore our best fur-lined capes to protect us from the chilly air, and Zalumma had tucked several thick woollen blankets around my mother. But I was too elated to feel cold; I stuck my head outside the carriage to gape at golden plaques, statuettes, belts, bracelets and Carnival masks. I gazed on chiselled marble busts of wealthy Florentines, on portraits in progress. In the early days, my mother said, the bridge was home to the tanners and fabric dyers, who used to dump their noxious-smelling chemicals directly into the Arno. The Medici had objected: The river was cleaner now than it had ever been, and the tanners and dyers worked in specified areas of the city.

      On our way to the Duomo, our carriage paused in the vast piazza, in front of the imposing fortress known as the Palazzo della Signoria, where the Lord Priors of Florence met. On the wall of an adjacent building was a grotesque mural: paintings of hanged men. I knew nothing of them save that they were known as the Pazzi conspirators, and that they were evil. One of the conspirators, a small naked man, stared wide-eyed and sightless back at me; the effect was unnerving. But what intrigued me most was the portrait of the last hanging body. His form differed from the others, was more delicately portrayed, more assured; its subtle shadings poignantly evoked the grief and remorse of a troubled soul. And it did not seem to float, as the others did, but possessed the shadow and depth of reality. I felt as though I could reach into the wall and touch Baroncelli’s cooling flesh.

      I turned to my mother. She was watching me carefully, though she said not a word about the mural, nor the reason we had lingered there. It was the first time I had stayed for any length of time in the Piazza, the first time I had been allowed such a close view of the famous hanged men. ‘The last one was done by a different artist,’ I said.

      ‘Yes. He has an amazing refinement, doesn’t he? He is like God, breathing life into stone.’ She nodded, clearly pleased by my discernment, and waved for the driver to move on.

      We made our way north to the Piazza del Duomo.

      Before entering the cathedral, I had examined Ghiberti’s bas relief panels on the doors of the nearby octagonal Baptistery. Here, near the public entry at the southern end of the building, scenes of Florence’s patron saint, John the Baptist covered the walls, but what truly tantalized me was the Door of Paradise on the northern side. There, in fine gilded bronze, the Old Testament came to life in vivid detail. I stood on tiptoe to finger the sweeping curve of an angel’s wing as he announced to Abraham that God desired Isaac as a sacrifice; I bent down to marvel at Moses receiving the tablets from the divine hand while, at the foot of the mountain, the Israelites looked on in awe. What I most yearned to touch were the delicately rendered heads and muscular shoulders of oxen, emerging from the metal of the uppermost plaque to plough a field. I knew the tips of their horns would be sharp and cold against my fingertip, but they lay too high for my reach. Instead, I contented myself with rubbing the numerous tiny heads of prophets and sibyls that lined the doors like garlands; the bronze burned like ice.

      The interior of the Baptistery was for me less remarkable. Only one item caught my attention: Donatello’s dark wooden carving of Mary Magdalen, larger than life. She was a ghastly, spectral version of the seductress: aged now, her hair so wild and long that she clothed herself in the tangles, just as St. John clothed himself in the skins of animals. Her cheeks were gaunt, her features worn down by decades of guilt and regret. Something about the resignation in her aspect reminded me of my mother.

      We three made our way into the Duomo proper then, and once we arrived in front of the altar, my mother immediately began speaking of the murder that had taken place there almost fourteen years earlier. I had only moments to draw in the astonishing vastness of the cupola before Zalumma grew worried and told my mother it was time to leave.

      So we returned to the present.

      ‘I suppose so,’ my mother reluctantly agreed with Zalumma’s urgings. ‘But first, I must speak to my daughter alone.’

      This frustrated the slave. She scowled until her brows merged into one great black line, but her social status compelled her to reply calmly, ‘Of course, Madonna.’ She retreated a short distance away.

      Once my mother satisfied herself that Zalumma was not watching, she retrieved from her bosom a small, shining object. A coin, I thought, but after she had pressed it into my palm, I saw it was a gold medallion, stamped with the words ‘Public Mourning’. Beneath the letters, two men with knives readied themselves to attack a startled victim. Despite its small size, the image was detailed and lifelike, rendered with a delicacy worthy of Ghiberti.

      ‘Keep it,’ my mother said. ‘But let it be our secret.’

      I eyed her gift greedily, curiously. ‘Was he really so handsome?’

      ‘He was. It is quite accurate. And quite rare.’

      I tucked it at once into my belt. My mother and I both shared a love of such trinkets, and of art, though my father disapproved of my having anything so impractical. As a merchant, he had worked hard for his wealth, and hated to see it squandered on anything useless. But I was thrilled; I hungered for such things.

      ‘Zalumma,’ my mother called. ‘I am ready to leave.’

      Zalumma came to fetch us at once, and took hold of my mother’s arm again. But when my mother began to turn away from the altar – she paused, and wrinkled her nose. ‘The candles …’ she murmured. ‘Have the altar vestments caught fire? Something is burning …’

      Zalumma’s expression went slack with panic, but she recovered herself immediately and said calmly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world: ‘Lie down, Madonna. Here, on the floor. All will be well.’

      ‘It all repeats,’ my mother said, with the odd catch in her voice I had come to dread.

      ‘Lie down!’ Zalumma ordered, as sternly as she would a child. My mother seemed not to hear her, and when Zalumma pressed on her limbs, trying to force her to the ground, she resisted.

      ‘It all repeats,’ my mother said swiftly, frantically. ‘Don’t you see it happening again? Here, in this sacred place.’

      I lent my weight to Zalumma’s; together we fought to bring my mother down, but it was like trying to bring down an immovable mountain – one that trembled.

      My mother’s arms moved involuntarily from her sides and shot straight out, rigid. Her legs locked beneath her. ‘There is murder here, and thoughts of murder!’ she shrieked. ‘Plots within plots once more!’

      Her cries grew unintelligible as she went down.

      Zalumma and I clung to her so that she did not land too harshly.

      My mother writhed on the cold floor of the cathedral, her blue cloak gaping open, her silver skirts pooling around her. Zalumma lay across her body; I put my kerchief between her upper teeth and tongue, then held onto her head.

      I was barely in time. My mother’s dark eyes rolled back until only the veined whites were visible – then the rigors began. Head, torso, limbs – all began to jerk arrhythmically, rapidly.

      Somehow Zalumma held on, rising and falling with the waves, whispering hoarsely in her barbarous tongue, strange words coming so fast and so practised I knew they were part of a prayer. I, too, began to pray without thinking in a language equally old: ‘Ave Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis pecatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae …’

      I