Botticelli in the Fire

A play by Jordan Tannahill

1
Characters

Sandro Botticelli, a painter and bon-vivant in his thirties

Clarice Orsini, a rich and powerful woman in her early thirties

Lorenzo Di Medici, a rich and powerful man in his early forties

Leonardo Da Vinci, a painter in his early twenties

Girolamo Savonarola, a charismatic friar in his sixties

Madre Maria, a woman in her fifties

2
I
Darkness.

Spotlight on BOTTICELLI with a microphone. He holds an open bottle of wine in his free hand.

BOTTICELLI
Do you know what—
Sorry just before we start the show
Do you know what they just asked me in the greenroom?
If I’d stick around after the show to sign calendars in the lobby
A calendar of my paintings
Uh— no fucking way
Sorry
Proceeds go to the Actors Equity Fund or something
For sick actors
Uh sorry no

(Takes a swig of wine)

Oh, and turn off your fucking cell phones

Alright?
This has been five hundred years in the making
I’ll kill you
I’m serious

(Improvised quip — perhaps about some topical news story from the day).

I was talking with a friend the other day and he said:

“don’t you think performing a play about yourself is a bit of a vanity project?”
And I was like “bitch, Mozart got a play”
From that guy who wrote Equus or whatever
George Seurat got a musical
And I ushered in the fucking Renaissance
So
You know
I deserve at least an hour-long one-act in Canada
Maybe an hour twenty
If you can manage it

(Takes a swig of wine)

I’m kidding I told him — listen honey

if you had an eternity to tell yourself the same story over and over
to pick apart every mistake

3
eventually you’d want an audience too
Because where do you go from here?
Where does it end?
Another five hundred years, over and over — no
No
It stops tonight
Vanity project
Fuck your very much
It’s a Hail Mary in the darkness

And I promise you this isn’t going to be another tortured fag-artist sob story, okay
I mean yes this a fag-artist sob story but
thankfully I was never tortured
Some people in this play are tortured mind you
Just thankfully not me

It’s more of a downfall story I guess

And we all like a good downfall, don’t we?
Especially when you’re the King Shit
And I was, for a time
State dinners
Commissions
I painted the fucking Vatican
They called me a wunderkind
They called me the poster child of my generation

(Takes a swig of wine)

Back in those days people would come up to me at a party

and they’d be just dripping with jealousy
I remember this one queen, he said to me
“I heard you once had an orgy with thirty people that lasted a whole weekend”
AndIwaslike: “Once?”
Please
Do your research girl
Do. Your. Research.
Once
Cute
Perhaps this queen was morally outraged
But most likely he was titillated
Maybe even fishing for an invite

And yeah okay fine the truth is I was a dog

A dog doesn’t understand moderation
A dog eats till it pukes
But I wanted to live so badly I couldn’t get enough
It was like a madness
I wasn’t saving up for anything cause I knew there wasn’t anything
After I mean
Heaven
Or samsara or nirvana or whatever

4
And look

(Gestures around)

I was right
Just the fucking void
I was so fucking terrified of the void
But y’all are, don’t think I don’t know
Everyone was back then too
Scared shitless
They prayed and prayed and prayed, bless them
Me, I was going to wring every last drop outta life while I could
And that—
People hate you for that
Because you’re just having a bit too much fun
You’re squeezing just a bit too much out of life
and they’re worried they’ve got it all wrong

(Takes a swig of wine)

The thing is…

I squeezed every last drop out
And now look at me
I’m a fucking dry sponge

(Holds up bottle of wine)

Well… not totally dry

II
A choral sequence begins.

From the darkness appears The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, as a stage image created by the
ensemble. In the place of Venus, SANDRO BOTTICELLI stands at the centre of the image on a clam
shell. Suspended in the air above him are CLARICE ORSINI and LORENZO DI MEDICI, while
SAVONAROLA stands to Botticelli’s left, holding forth an ornate shroud. DA VINCI and MADRE MARIA
stand on either side of the image in pools of light. The ensemble are in Renaissance dress.

The choral sequence continues under the following text:

CLARICE
The thing you gotta know about Botticelli is he had a huge… talent
Definitely the biggest I’d ever seen
And he knew how to use it
Other men— they always know when a guy’s got a huge talent
Just the way he carried himself
It made them mad with envy
Botticelli had that swagger

5
He’d be walking down the street and you’d think to yourself
‘goddamn what a great fucking painter he must be’

LORENZO
If Botticelli wasn’t at a party, no one would stay—

SAVONAROLA
You couldn’t open the paper without reading about him

LORENZO
—and somehow he managed to be at four or five in one night

CLARICE
He had such a big talent, men and women fainted as he walked past

SAVONAROLA
A man of a thousand lovers they said

DA VINCI
The thing you gotta know about Botticelli is—

CLARICE
He had such a big talent, dogs barked at it and then ran away whimpering

DA VINCI
He was a bit of a mamma’s boy

The image of the painting begins to transform in some way (perhaps the Medici’s are lowered from the
air). BOTTICELLI remains standing on the shell.

CHORUS
(sung, underneath text)
Botticelli, Botticelli, Botticelli, Botticelli…

MADRE MARIA
When Botticelli was a little baby
I would catch him fondling himself in his crib
I didn’t know what to do
I asked my husband and he just laughed and shrugged
I asked my mother and she told me to say fifty Hail Mary’s

CHORUS
(sung)
Hail Mary full of grace!

MADRE MARIA
When I asked my Priest
‘Father, what do I do with baby Botticelli
he won’t stop touching himself’
He said: ‘bring him back in seven years

6
and I’ll take care of it myself’

Canned laughter

MADRE MARIA
I joke
The Priest said:

SAVONAROLA
Tie his hands to the bars of the crib

MADRE MARIA
So that’s what I did
I tied his hands to the bars

Three men (the actors playing Da Vinci, Savonarola, and Lorenzo) grab BOTTICELLI and drag him
upstage to a lamppost. The streetlight flickers on as they begin tying him to it, with his hands bound behind
the post. They stick arrows into him — four in his chest, one in his thigh — and the resultant image, as they
walk away, is one resembling Botticelli’s painting ‘St.Sebastian’.

MADRE MARIA
One evening as I got off the bus
on my way home from work
I turned down our street and I saw my little Botticelli tied to a lamppost
covered in dirt and scrapes
“What are you doing tied to a lamppost?” I asked
“It’s just a game I’m playing with some friends”, he said

Canned laughter.

MADRE MARIA
But he was a shy boy
I knew he had no friends
The other boys— even back then they knew he had a huge… talent
And they were very jealous

MADRE MARIA plucks the arrows out of him, unties him from the streetlight, and begins to slowly dress
him.

MADRE MARIA
We walked home in silence
and I washed him in the tub
He didn’t cry when I put alcohol on his cuts

CHORUS
(sung, repeating underneath text)
Botticelli didn’t cry, Botticelli didn’t cry

MADRE MARIA
And after he was good and clean again

7
We went into the kitchen to make him a peanut-butter sandwich
I remember I stepped out for a moment to take a phone call
and when I returned— I saw Botticelli take the knife out of the peanut butter
and lick it like this

MADRE MARIA and BOTTICELLI demonstrate licking a knife

MADRE MARIA
Down one side
and then down the other
so slowly
savouring the taste
eyes closed
lost in it
letting nothing go to waste
He didn’t know I saw him
But I did, from the doorway of the kitchen
It was only an instant
But in that moment I saw
how bottomless his pleasure was
and it terrified me

CLARICE
I first met Botticelli at a gala my husband was throwing for him
My husband was giving him a big award of some sort
There was a balloon drop, a chocolate fondue fountain
And I noticed Botticelli sitting by himself after the ceremony
swigging from a bottle of champagne
He looked up at me and I smiled
“My husband tells me you’re the biggest painter of your generation”
I sat down on his lap and immediately knew it was true
“Has he told you about the commission yet?” I asked
Botticelli shook his head
“Well… it just so happens the award comes with a big commission
To paint me.”

Blackout.

The sounds of intense orgasms fill the space

III
Lights up on CLARICE in bed, with the sheets pulled up around her breasts. The huddled form of
BOTTICELLI is below the sheets, performing oral sex on her. She writhes and moans in ecstasy. After a
moment BOTTICELLI pops his head up from under the sheets to catch his breath.

BOTTICELLI
Maybe we should—

8
CLARICE
I swear to god if you stop I’ll throw you in prison

BOTTICELLI dives back under the bedsheets and CLARICE moans with renewed vigour.

DA VINCI enters the room with an arm-full of supplies, notices what’s transpiring, and exits unseen by the
amorous pair.

CLARICE climaxes thunderously.

BOTTICELLI pops his head back out of the sheets.

BOTTICELLI
For the record when I suggested we eat out, I meant breakfast

CLARICE
What time is it?

BOTTICELLI
(looking for his watch)
Where’s my—?
Ugh… it’s too far

CLARICE
Your little butt boy will be here any minute

BOTTICELLI
I wish you’d stop calling him that
Especially to his face

CLARICE rises and crosses towards the bathroom.

CLARICE
I should wash up

BOTTICELLI
Also if you keep coming over early like this
you-know-who’s going to get suspicious

CLARICE
We barely sleep in the same palace anymore

BOTTICELLI
Lorenzo’s not an idiot

CLARICE
Trust me, it’s fine

CLARICE now offstage.

CLARICE

9
(calling)
In case you haven’t noticed
there are other things on his mind

BOTTICELLI flops back in bed and begins jerking off.

DA VINCI enters.

DA VINCI
Goood morning

BOTTICELLI immediately desists masturbating and acts nonchalant.

BOTTICELLI
You’re early

DA VINCI
The new horse-hair fine-tips arrived in the mail

BOTTICELLI
Fabulous

DA VINCI
(looking through mail)
Would you like to make a donation to help repatriate the relics of St. Peter back to—

BOTTICELLI
No

DA VINCI
The rest are bills

BOTTICELLI
Put them on the table, I’ll deal with it

DA VINCI
Are you visiting your mother today?

BOTTICELLI
Oh fuck is it already Sunday?

DAVINCI
Seems like your hands are a little full

BOTTICELLI
That’s two weeks in a row, that’s so bad

DA VINCI
Mind if I open a window?

10
BOTTICELLI
No, the protests disturb Clarice

DA VINCI
It’s just a little musty in here

BOTTICELLI
If I knew you were coming early I would’ve—

DA VINCI
No, no that’s fine
I’ll just start mixing the tempera

BOTTICELLI
I was just—

DA VINCI
I know

BOTTICELLI
She’ll throw me in prison if I don’t

DA VINCI
How romantic

BOTTICELLI
Are you being a little grumpy bitch this morning?

DA VINCI
I guess sex doesn’t really—
I mean it’s just kind of like brushing your teeth, isn’t it?

BOTTICELLI
Not with you

DA VINCI
Her cum is still on your face

BOTTICELLI
I’m serious

DA VINCI
Oh really

BOTTICELLI
With you it’s different

DA VINCI
Because you can just lay back and let me do all the work?

BOTTICELLI

11
Hey
I am not—
Are you calling / me a lazy lover?

DA VINCI
I don’t want to have this conversation right now

The sound of the shower turning on.

BOTTICELLI
Is it warm out there?

DA VINCI
So you eat her out?

BOTTICELLI
For fuck sake

DA VINCI waits for an answer.

BOTTICELLI
A man does what he must in this modern world

DA VINCI
Do you love her?

BOTTICELLI
Sweetie

BOTTICELLI rises and crosses to DA VINCI. He turns DA VINCI around, holds his head in his hands for
a moment, and kisses him.

BOTTICELLI
Your lips are perfection

They kiss again.

DA VINCI
I can smell her on you

BOTTICELLI
Would you stop?

DA VINCI
Me?

BOTTICELLI
Just—

12
DA VINCI
Sometimes I just—

BOTTICELLI
She’s a means to an end

DA VINCI
Is everyone?
I mean
I just— (shakes his head)

BOTTICELLI
What’s gotten into you?

DA VINCI
Is it warm you ask, you want to know how it is out there?
There were two bodies at the end of the street this morning, covered in bedsheets
No one will touch them or go near them

BOTTICELLI
Leo—

DA VINCI
The plague is here, it’s on our fucking doorstep
and it’s / like you’re pretending not to notice

BOTTICELLI
What do you think I’m doing here?
With her? With this painting?
I’m saving our lives

DA VINCI
There is a crowd in the park shouting ‘burn the sodomites’

BOTICELLI
When the plague comes we are going / to need friends in high places
With influence

DA VINCI
The plague is already here

BOTTICELLI
The best doctors, the best medicine
How do you think we’re going to get that?

DA VINCI
Leave the city
What about that?

BOTTICELLI
Run back to your mother’s farm?

13
Eat potatoes until our teeth fall out?
You don’t think it’ll find us there too?

DA VINCI
You think The Medici’s going to / help us when shit hits the fan—?

BOTTICELLI
Sweetie: listen to me
We are modern people
This is the fucking Renaissance
The earth is round
The earth goes around the sun
We’re not going to die of the plague

DA VINCI
You’re fucking the Medici’s wife
What if he finds out, what then?

BOTTICELLI
Frankly… sometimes I wonder if he already knows

DA VINCI
What?

BOTTICELLI
Like maybe they have some kind of arrangement

DA VINCI
Wait you think he knows that you’re / fucking his wife

BOTTICELLI
Well I don’t know he knows but I’m beginning to suspect
like maybe he does and gets off on it

DA VINCI
You’re insane

BOTTICELLI
Here

BOTTICELLI takes out his iPhone

BOTTICELLI
Look at this text he sent me last weekend

DA VINCI
(reads text)
Huh

14
BOTTICELLI
“How’s the painting cumming along?”
Coming spelt with a ‘u’

DA VINCI
Could be an autocorrect

BOTTICELLI
Right

DA VINCI
Or a typo
I mean the u and the o are very close on the keypad

BOTTICELLI
Listen I’ve been around long enough to know:
the elites are all perverts
They have their little games
and if you can play by their rules they’ll take care of you
And when the shit goes down, we’re going to need their—

CLARICE walks out of the bathroom, holding a large white towel behind her.

CLARICE
Honey you gotta wash these towels more / often they smell like—

BOTTICELLI turns to look at her and exclaims.

BOTTICELLI
Oh my god stop

CLARICE
What?

BOTTICELLI
Stop right there

CLARICE
Please, it’s nothing the boy hasn’t already seen

BOTTICELLI
No, no— hold it out like that again

CLARICE
Like what?

BOTTICELLI
Here—

BOTTICELLI crosses to CLARICE

15
BOTTICELLI
No wait, Leo come here a moment

BOTTICELLI takes the towel and hands it to DA VINCI. He positions DA VINCI to hold the towel in the
exact same manner as the horae, the goddess who holds Venus’s heavenly raiment in the righthand side of
The Birth of Venus canvas.

BOTTICELLI
Yes
There
Now just toss it up

DA VINCI
Up?

BOTTICELLI
As if carried by the wind
That’s it
Now into position sweetie

CLARICE
I’m still wet

BOTTICELLI
Quick, quick

BOTTICELLI positions CLARICE into her Birth of Venus pose — except unlike in the real painting,
CLARICE is more seductively posed with her left arm cradling the back of her head (but her right arm
still draped over her right breast). He runs back behind his easel and begins to sketch.

CLARICE
So what, he’s in the painting now?

BOTTICELLI
Venus’s horae

CLARICE
Her whore?

BOTTICELLI
Horae, her divine handmaiden

DA VINCI
Maiden?

CLARICE
Holding a towel?

DA VINCI
Do I have to / stand here?

16
BOTTICELLI
It’s a heavenly raiment
to wrap Venus in as she alights upon the shore

DA VINCI
I was in the middle of / cleaning the brushes—

CLARICE
Sandro I’m freezing let me dry off

CLARICE lets her arms drop.

BOTTICELLI
Ah ah— arms up darling

CLARICE
Do you think it’s a bit much?

BOTTICELLI
Much?

CLARICE
The pose
I suddenly had this doubt in the shower that it’s a little—

BOTTICELLI
Much

CLARICE
Debauched

BOTTICELLI
Clarice I’m Botticelli, debauched is what I do
If your husband wanted you in a nun’s habit
he should have commissioned Fra Fillipo

CLARICE
But is it in good taste?
I mean it’s just so… it’s such a departure

BOTTICELLI
From good taste?

CLARICE
From everything else, you know, out there

BOTTICELLI
Precisely, why should I just add another canvas to the heap
of ‘everything else out there’?

17
CLARICE
He doesn’t know it’s a nude

BOTTICELLI
He must

CLARICE
I don’t think so

BOTTICELLI
Just tell him a painter can’t ignore inspiration

CLARICE
I think he was hoping to put this in the dining room though

BOTTICELLI
Clarice enough, you’re stressing me out
(To DA VINCI) Put on my Chill Out playlist will you?

DA VINCI drops the towel and exits. CLARICE grabs the towel and dries off.

CLARICE
I prefer our sessions when we’re alone

BOTTICELLI
Yes, but those are terribly unproductive

CLARICE
And I like the old ragazzo better
This new one hates me

BOTTICELLI
Don’t be ridiculous

CLARICE
Was he another hustler you pulled off the street?

BOTTICELLI
No he sought me out
The bastard son of a farm girl from Vinci

CLARICE
I don’t trust him

BOTTICELLI
Leonardo?
He’s been here three months

CLARICE
There’s just something about him
Still, fabulous bone structure, don’t you think?

18
You could cut an apple with his jaw

BOTTICELLI
He’ll be greater than me one day
It took him three hours to learn how to mix tempera with egg yolk
It took me three months
A couple mornings ago I came in here
and he’d resolved this problem-part of the canvas
where your head nestles the crook of your arm
I couldn’t even tell how he did it but it was perfection
I sketched an angel and he corrected my proportions
The length of her arm, the distance between her collarbone and waist
He doesn’t even realize how brilliant he is

CLARICE
You have a little crush

BOTTICELLI
Please

CLARICE
You do, look at you
I haven’t seen you like this before
All earnest

BOTTICELLI
No, no, he’s just a little catamite puppy dog
quite happy to be lead around on a leash
Woof woof you know

CLARICE
I’m profoundly jealous of him
I can’t even hide it

BOTTICELLI
(chuckles) Jealous?

CLARICE
The way you look at him

BOTTICELLI
You have my heart
You know that

They kiss

CLARICE
I know
I’m just—

19
They kiss again, he buries his face in her breasts.

CLARICE begins to chuckle.

BOTTICELLI
What?

CLARICE
Last night—
Never mind

BOTTICELLI
Tell me

CLARICE
I fell asleep while Lorenzo and I were fucking

BOTTICELLI
(Laughs)
No!

CLARICE
Isn’t that awful?
The thing is—
Can I tell you a secret?

BOTTICELLI
I’m the paragon of discretion

CLARICE
He has a micropenis

BOTTICELLI
What?

CLARICE
It’s less than an inch

BOTTICELLI
Oh. My. God.

CLARICE
Has he never told you?

BOTTICELLI
It’s never come up

CLARICE
So you’ve never seen it
Like in a sauna together or something?

20
BOTTICELLI
Absolutely not

CLARICE
He wears a prosthetic
All day, every day

BOTTICELLI
Oh honey

CLARICE
He has different versions
He has a studded one he likes
He knows it hurts me

BOTTICELLI
You let him?

CLARICE
What do you mean do I let him?
He has spiked ones too
Little spikes

BOTTICELLI
No

CLARICE
He hasn’t— but— he threatens

A song beings to play

CLARICE
Anyway last night he went au-natural
The first time in years
And I just closed my eyes and…

CLARICE laughs as DA VINCI returns. BOTTICELLI is unsure what to say.

CLARICE
Which reminds me
this morning he was saying how much he misses your squash games

BOTTICELLI
Did he?
How sweet

CLARICE
I was supposed to tell you:
He wants to see you on the court tomorrow at ten a.m.

BOTTICELLI

21
What?

CLARICE
Just bring your runners, he has rackets

BOTTICELLI
I have brunch plans

CLARICE
Well you’ll just have to cancel them
He’ll send along a driver at quarter-to

BOTTICELLI
You’ve been here for two hours and / you tell me now

CLARICE
I didn’t want to spoil the mood

BOTTICELLI
Are you fucking with me?

CLARICE
Excuse me?

BOTTICELLI
Yes you are look at you fucking with me

CLARICE
No I am / not fucking with you

BOTTICELLI
Do the two of you—?
Does he know?

CLARICE
What?
No
Why are you even—?
Have you said / something?

BOTTICELLI
Of course I haven't

CLARICE
Cause I’d have your tongue cut out

BOTTICELLI
Then—?

CLARICE
Do you have any idea how much he talks about you?

22
You quiet his mind Sandro

BOTTICELLI
We have— a special connection

CLARICE
And he’s anxious to see the canvas

BOTTICELLI
Anxious?

CLARICE
Yes but I told him / he’d just have to wait

BOTTICELLI
I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page

CLARICE
There’s only one page to be on

BOTTICELLI
Of course, it’s just—
I have a lot more to lose in this than you do

CLARICE
I don’t see how that’s true

BOTTICELLI
So this is why you’re having doubts all of the sudden
Why it’s debauched all of a sudden

CLARICE
It was just a weak moment but it’s passed

BOTTICELLI
If you’re worried—

CLARICE
I said it’s passed
He’s filled our house with naked Greeks
he can damn well deal with a painting of me
It would do us some good, frankly

BOTTICELLI
Would it?

CLARICE
Yes
It would

23
BOTTICELLI
Well, thank you for the invitation
You can tell him—

CLARICE
You can just tell him: you were inspired

BOTTICELLI
Arms up, darling

Light shift

BOTTICELLI on the microphone

BOTTICELLI
I know what you’re thinking: shit girl
Watch yourself
Yes
Oh yes
These were dangerous times
And if you wanted to survive, not just survive
but maybe even thrive a little, if you could be so lucky
you had to play a lot of sides, alright
you had to play so many sides
you didn’t even know what game you were playing any more

IV
In the upstage shadows, cloaked figures played by the actors playing Savonarola and Lorenzo carry
bodies, one by one, and pile them under the streetlight, as if in a mass grave.

A light appears on MADRE MARIA

MADRE MARIA
When Botticelli was a boy he had nightmares
nightmares all the time!
He would be screaming and I would run into his room
“Sweetie, what’s wrong?”
Tears streaming down his face
In his dreams he told me he saw his skin peeling off his body
“Shhhh"
I held him, I rocked him
Of course he had seen the images on TV
the plague, the piles of bodies in the streets
“Sweetie, you don’t have to worry
You’re not going to get the plague”
“Why?” he asked me
“Because”, I told him, “only sinners get the plague

24
And you— your soul is like a cloud
White and incorruptible
Beyond the reach of the hands of men”

An instrumental piece begins to play

A spotlight appears on DA VINCI

DA VINCI
I was walking home one evening from the studio
Down a very normal street
Full of normal people going about their normal business
I walked past a butcher closing his shop for the day
I walked past a young man holding a door open for an old woman
Past a father teaching his daughter how to ride a bike
Past a dog going about his business
doing whatever it is that dogs do
I walked past people getting on with their lives
And I thought to myself: this city

CHORUS
This city

DA VINCI
This city is invincible
This city can weather anything
And then I noticed a man in a brown robe standing on the corner up ahead

SAVONAROLA appears upstage below the streetlight. He is speaking into a microphone and portable
amp.

DA VINCI
A street-preacher disturbing the peace
with an apocalyptic sermon
People were doing their best to ignore him

SAVONAROLA
Fleas
Let me tell you about fleas
Fleas feast on the blood of others
Fleas feast on the blood, sweat, and tears of others
sucking money from the Church and the people
to fill their homes with gold and jewels and blasphemous art
as the people starve
These fleas we call the Medici
and the artists and opportunists who get fat off the Medici
Let me tell you about fleas
Fleas spread the plague

DA VINCI
I pitied him really

25
What did he think, this was some small town in the south?

SAVONAROLA
The city is sick with the pestilence of sin
And like Sodom and Gomorrah, it’s day of reckoning is near

DA VINCI
People are educated here
They talk to god, if at all, quietly and privately

SAVONAROLA
Brothers and sisters we are distracted

DA VINCI
This was one of the most progressive cities in the world

SAVONAROLA
In this age of darkness we have been distracted
from the one thing that truly matters
and that is our soul

DA VINCI
It was a very normal street
Full of normal people going about their normal business

SAVONAROLA
That is the one thing the plague cannot touch

DA VINCI
I don’t know what came over me

SAVONAROLA
And to the fleas that suck our blood
We will pinch them off one by one
We will burn them with matches

DA VINCI
I don’t know what came over me but as I walked past

CHORUS
(repeating beneath the following text)
…as I walked past, as I walked past, as I walked past, as I walked passed…

SAVONAROLA
We will be the hailstorm that breaks the heads
of those who do not take shelter

DA VINCI
I spat in his face

26
I don’t know what came over me
But as I walked past
I spat in his face

In slow motion DA VINCI spits in SAVONAROLA’s face

DA VINCI
It’s incredible how much can change in a couple months

Light appears on the set of a television news talk-show: the HOST (played by the same actor who plays
Lorenzo) sits in an armchair across from SAVONAROLA. Two cameras film the interview and project a
massive live-feed image behind them. The shot cuts, in real time, between the HOST and SAVONROLA.

HOST
Do you see yourself as something of a folk hero?

SAVONAROLA
I’m just a normal, down to earth guy
trying to represent the interests of the people

HOST
You’re the year’s big overnight success story

SAVONAROLA
I keep hearing this and I’m— listen I’m in my fifties
I’ve been working at this a long time
This doesn’t just happen overnight

HOST
But you have to admit it’s been a hell of a few months

SAVONAROLA
Well—

HOST
You’re getting huge turnouts to your sermons
You have a best-selling book
What’s going on?

SAVONAROLA
The people are fed-up
And I’m just the guy who’s willing to speak up about it

HOST
In your book you have some rather harsh words
for some artists and scientists being funded by the Medici

SAVONAROLA
Let me just say I have no problem with the arts and sciences
What I am taking aim at / in the book—

27
HOST
Well you have some problems with them

SAVONAROLA
Listen there are people who are literally starving in the streets of our city
What the book takes aim at is the sheer opulence of the Medici regime
which has become / nothing short of obscene

HOST
But it’s not just—
right but it’s not just their wealth / that you have problems with

SAVONAROLA
And there is documented evidence they are funnelling money from the Church
to fund opulent estates, lavish banquets, self-glorifying works of art
Follow the money!
All you have to do is follow the money

HOST
You have your critics
People who say your position is— extreme
Calling for children to spy on their parents
For prostitutes to be chastised, for the streets to be policed
for public drunkenness and indecent dress
A hotline for neighbours to report on their neighbours

SAVONAROLA
This is about citizens banding together to combat immorality
The Medici thinks he can win the people over with carnivals
but the people do not want bread and circuses
They want change
And this is more than just a popular movement
This is a war for people’s souls
For the soul of every man, woman, and child in this city

Screen cuts to static

V
A squash court at the Medici Palace. BOTTICELLI and LORENZO DI MEDICI are in runners, t-shirts,
shorts, and wearing sweatbands around their foreheads. CLARICE sits in a plastic lawn chair to the side
with a pitcher of lemonade.

LORENZO
It’s Clarice’s fault

BOTTICELLI
Oh?

28
CLARICE
I swear to god if you say / that one more time

LORENZO
She begged me to bring him to Florence
She said he’s a true prophet

CLARICE
Can’t we just enjoy a pleasant morning / without arguing about this?

LORENZO
I said fine, I’ll indulge her
It was either that or a dachshund
and I’ve never really been one for small dogs
So we bring him to Florence
Right away he starts acting up
Ranting on the street corners
Blaming Clarice and I for all sorts of horrors, the ungrateful bastard
At first I think nothing of it
This city’s full of crazies, what’s / another?

CLARICE
He is not / just some crazy

LORENZO
First it’s a crowd of eighty or a hundred
A few weeks later it’s up to a thousand
His last sermon— if you can call it that
seven thousand people

BOTTICELLI
Are you nervous?

LORENZO
Damn right I’m nervous
He’s busting my fucking balls

CLARICE
Well in case you haven’t noticed
there’s a lot of sick and dying people and they want answers
and they’re not happy with the answers Lorenzo has for them

LORENZO
Exactly, they want fantasies
They want miracles from the sky
And I don’t have any miracles for them
But here’s a man who says he does
A man who my wife thinks / is a true prophet

CLARICE
He was a great comfort to me when my mother died

29
He foretold everything
The day and the hour of her passing
To the hour
And he spoke to her, in heaven
He spoke to her for me
She told me I would have a baby girl and I did
She told me to name her after her and I did
She told me— (she falters)
that in time I will forget her face
and that I must forgive myself for this
and I have I have forgiven myself
and it was her, I know it was
it was her words he spoke, she spoke through him
I even held his hands and they were my mother’s hands I—
(silence)
I don’t need you to stand there Sandro, judging me

BOTTICELLI
I’m / not—

CLARICE
I share too much, it’s my nature
I can’t help my nature

BOTTICELLI
And all this about being the fleas sucking the people’s blood—

CLARICE
That’s just rhetoric for the masses

BOTTICELLI
Burn the sodomites

LORENZO
The first time I met him I— (Laughs)
I was giving him a tour of the San Marco convent
and this nun in a wheelchair coasted past us
and I said to him: “Hey father, look: Virgin Mobile”
(Bursts out laughing)
He didn’t get it
He has no sense of humour

CLARICE
Well ignore him at your peril
That’s what I say

LORENZO
Oh is that what you say?
Thanks for the support Clarice
I’m not fucking ignoring him

30
CLARICE
You’re dismissing him
He’s speaking to people’s souls
He’s giving them hope and / you’re dismissing him—

LORENZO
Fine but he’s mostly speaking to the souls of the illiterate and ignorant
I mean let’s be honest / that’s where most of his base seems to be

CLARICE throws down her magazine and stands

CLARICE
I’m tired of you patronizing me

LORENZO
No one is—

CLARICE
(To BOTTICELLI)
Lorenzo can’t imagine why anyone would challenge him
He doesn’t believe in God but believes he has a / god-given right to power

LORENZO
This is about a man espousing a doctrine of hatred

CLARICE
The friar is / speaking for the people
He is giving them hope

LORENZO
Hatred of reason
Hatred of liberty
Hated of sex
Hatred of women
Hatred of pleasure and desire
Hatred of the self, of himself, I bet he does
I bet he hates himself
I sure the hell do

CLARICE
He believes in people’s souls

LORENZO
He believes in dominance and submission

CLARICE
Please, you love dominance and submission

LORENZO
In the bedroom

31
CLARICE
The only thing you believe in is yourself

LORENZO
I believe people have the right to do everything in their power
to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them
assuming— (CLARICE makes to interrupt) assuming
they don’t infringe on the right of others to do the same
Simple as that

CLARICE
Oh is it?
Why don’t you tell Mariana that?

LORENZO
Who?

CLARICE
Mariana

LORENZO
Who the fuck / is Mariana?

CLARICE
Our head maid for twelve years
Her son just died of the plague
We gave her flowers this morning

LORENZO
I would
I would tell it to her face

CLARICE
Some people need an afterlife Lorenzo
because you’ve made this one unbearable for them

CLARICE begins to storm out

LORENZO
Honey the price tag’s still attached to that blouse

LORENZO crosses the court, takes out a large knife from his racket bag, and cuts the tag off. He kisses
her on the cheek.

CLARICE
Thanks

She exits.

LORENZO
She loves to treat herself

32
Little treats every day

BOTTICELLI nods.

LORENZO
It’s nothing new, really
My father dealt with the same thing
There’s always a plague
There’s always a fire
And there’s always a friar who wants to throw things in it

They towel off a bit of sweat from their brows.

LORENZO
You following the play-offs?

BOTTICELLI
Not really

Awkward silence

LORENZO
The markets?

BOTTICELLI
You mean like— stocks?

LORENZO
(checking his phone)
They took a nosedive this morning
Everyone’s— jumpy

BOTTICELLI nods

LORENZO
I trust you won’t share that little episode
with your fag friends at some art party now

BOTTICELLI
No, no (chuckles awkwardly)

LORENZO
You can be a terrible gossip sometimes

BOTTICELLI mimes zipping his lips, throwing away the key — a little too eager to please

They resume the game

LORENZO
Clarice makes me so— I’m not fucking ignoring—
There are a thousand doctors and nurses working round the clock right now

33
Why do you think we passed that emergency budget?

BOTTICELLI
If the unrest gets worse—

LORENZO
Oh it’s going to get worse, trust me
But we’ll weather it
We always do

BOTTICELLI
At the villa?

LORENZO stops, looks at BOTTICELLI, and then bursts out laughing.

LORENZO
You’re such a little cunt

BOTTICELLI laughs too, uncertain if this is the correct response.

LORENZO
We must have you back up there soon
I miss our walks together up there

BOTTICELLI
Me too

LORENZO
We should go to the villa
I’ve just been so fucking busy
But we should, we should go to the villa
and go for one of our walks together
Nice bottle of wine, laugh around the fire

BOTTICELLI
I would like that

LORENZO
And you can even bring you latest flavour of the month, what’s his name?

BOTTICELLI
Leonardo

LORENZO
I can’t keep track, you’re so damn voracious

LORENZO laughs and slaps BOTTICELLI on the back.

They play squash for a few more moments

34
LORENZO
You’re my only friend you know that?

BOTTICELLI
What?

LORENZO
You must know that

BOTTICELLI
Well I—

LORNEZO
You’re the only person who doesn’t want anything from me Sandro
Everyone in the world they just—
they just see what I can do for them
But you— I can be real with you

BOTTICELLI
I feel the same

LORENZO laughs

BOTTICELLI
What?

LORENZO continues to laugh

BOTTICELLI
What?

LORENZO
It’s just uh— I had the funniest dream the other night

BOTTICELLI
Oh?

LORENZO
I probably shouldn’t—
I mean one’s dreams are always more interesting to you than anyone else

BOTTICELLI
If you can’t tell me who can you tell?

LORENZO
Well…
I dreamt that you invited me over to see the painting
and when I arrived, you were fucking my wife in the ass on a Persian rug

Beat

35
LORENZO
Isn’t that hilarious?

BOTTICELLI bursts out laughing

BOTTICELLI
I’d say
Wow
Amazing how the mind can just / come up with—

LORENZO
—come up with the wildest things

BOTTICELLI
Well that is a doozie

LORENZO
Thought you’d find that funny

BOTTICELLI
It’s a— it’s a good laugh, yeah

LORENZO
I guess it was just on my mind

BOTTICELLI
Well it would be!

LORENZO
I mean twenty sittings!
You know
What kind of painting requires twenty sittings?

BOTTICELLI
A masterpiece

LORENZO
And is it?

BOTTICELLI
There has never been a painting like it

LORENZO
You’ve outdone yourself

BOTTICELLI
I… didn’t hold back
Like you said

LORENZO
I did, didn’t I, I said—

36
BOTTICELLI
—don’t hold back, so—

LORENZO
Well then I must come by your studio and take a peek

BOTTICELLI
A peek?

LORENZO
My curiosity is inflamed

BOTTICELLI
It’s uh it’s still very much in process

LORENZO
Oh of course, I know
I’d just love to see how it’s coming along
It’s been a rather sizeable investment, after all

BOTTICELLI
Right

LORENZO
Not least of which being my wife’s time

BOTTICELLI
She’s been very— patient with me

LORENZO
I’ll just pop by tomorrow morning

BOTTICELLI
Tomorrow?

LORENZO
—morning yes, say around eleven?

BOTTICELLI
Wow, well / um—

LORENZO
I trust that’s alight

BOTICELLI
I’m afraid I have brunch plans—

LORENZO
Cancel them
We’ll toast the masterpiece

37
BOTTICELLI
I’m just a little— shy about where it’s / at, it’s—

LORENZO
Sandro, come
You know I won’t judge
But it better be fucking great

LORENZO points a finger at BOTTICELLI and then chuckles. BOTTICELLI smiles awkwardly and nods,
not quite sure what to say.

LORENZO
Have I ever told you the joke about the wolf backed into a corner?

CLARICE re-appears

CLARICE
I can’t find my car keys

LORENZO
Where’re you going?
We haven’t even had breakfast

CLARICE
I’m upset
I need to go for a drive

LORENZO
What the hell are you / so upset about?

CLARICE
Where are my keys?

LORENZO
Besides you can’t drive without a security detail / you know that

CLARICE
Where are my fucking keys?

LORENZO
How the hell should I know?
Probably in that damn clam shell on the bookshelf

CLARICE exits

LORENZO
Mimosa?

BOTTICELLI
No, I should be getting back

38
I have a lot of work to do

LORENZO
I love you like a brother, you know that?

BOTTICELLI
You had your brother killed

LORENZO
I love you like the brother I never had and never killed

LORENZO smiles, squeezes BOTTICELLI’s shoulder.

Lights shift.

BOTTICELLI
I ran all the way home
I could’ve had their driver take me
But no
I needed to run
I could’ve hailed a cab but I was already running
It was raining
I thought: good, I’m glad it’s raining
Rain is appropriate
I ran through streets choked with protesters
and I thought: good, I’m glad they’re screaming
Someone should be screaming

VI
BOTTICELLI bursts into the studio. DA VINCI is doing minor touch-ups on the ‘Birth of Venus’ canvas.

BOTTICELLI
She needs longer hair

DA VINCI
What?

BOTTICELLI
Her hair’s gotta cover her vagina

DA VINCI
I spent a week on that vagina

BOTTICELLI
And you did a very commendable job sweetie
for a man who’s never seen one before
but the Medici’s paying us a visit

39
DA VINCI
And?

BOTTICELLI
I may have miscalculated

DA VINCI
You—

BOTTICELLI
I can’t tell if he—
I think he’s fucking with me
like it it gets him off or something
Or—
Oh my god

DA VINCI
What?

BOTTICELLI
It’s a test
That’s it, isn’t it, it was all a test to see if I would—
The commission
If Clarice and I would—

DA VINCI
What the hell are you saying?

BOTTICELLI
And I failed, we failed

DA VINCI
He suspects

BOTTICELLI
Yes but—

DA VINCI
But you already suspected he—

BOTTICELLI
It was a fucking test

DA VINCI
The commission?

BOTTICELLI
I’m his only friend

40
DA VINCI
I told you

BOTTICELLI
What did you tell me?
You didn’t tell me shit

They consider the canvas

DA VINCI
Maybe he won’t mind

BOTTICELLI
It’s smut

DA VINCI
Yeah he’ll probably mind

BOTTICELLI
Absolutely fucking brilliant smut

DA VINCI
Does he want to see it before the summer?

BOTTICELLI
No sweetie, he’s coming tomorrow morning

DA VINCI
What?

BOTTICELLI
It’s a nightmare, yes

DA VINCI
We could paint a dress over her

BOTTICELLI
Don’t be insane, that would completely destroy it

DA VINCI
Sandro

BOTTICELLI
This is my masterpiece

DA VINCI
And you’re prepared to go to jail for it?

BOTTICELLI
If it comes to that

41
DA VINCI
You cry when you get paper cuts

BOTTICELLI
This— this is my fucking soul

DA VINCI
You’re an atheist, you don’t believe in souls

BOTTICELLI
Exactly so what else is there?
God is dead and the city’s fucked

DA VINCI
Please

BOTTICELLI
I’ll tell you what: beauty
It’s the only sacred thing

DA VINCI
The only thing sacred to you is your cock

BOTTICELLI
No
You’re wrong

DA VINCI
And your genius, maybe

BOTTICELLI
My genius—
We think someone can be genius but you cannot be genius
The Greeks knew genius was visited upon a few lucky mortals
maybe only once in their whole lives
Beauty can only work through you
and holy shit she is working through me now, Leo
Venus alighting on the shore
the winds caressing her with a heavenly raiment of roses
It is the birth of love itself
It is working through me, Leo
like a direct line tapped right into the fucking cosmos
where no, there is no vengeful old god
where there is only beauty
Sublime beauty and pleasure
And that is my duty
To defy ugliness and suffering
If I cannot live for at least that
then there is no reason to live

42
(pointing to the painting)

This is bigger than me

And it’s bigger than the Medici

DA VINCI
Is it bigger than your fucking libido?

BOTTICELLI
We’re not running away
And we’re not destroying this canvas

DA VINCI
Well it’s your neck on the line

BOTTICELLI
Besides there’s nothing about this painting
that explicitly suggests I’m fucking his wife
(beat) That said we should probably cover her vagina

DA VINCI
If we want to do it right it’ll take days

BOTTICELLI
We’re doing it right

DA VINCI
Then it’s not just the hair, we have to move her left arm too
There’s not enough time / it’s impossible

BOTTICELLI
Leo listen to me — open the cabernet sauvignon — the good one
Mix me some ochre, cinnabar, red lake, and the purest virginal white
I’m going to put on Much Dance 97’

A nineties techno song begins to play as the men set to work. As they do, VENUS appears on the clam shell.
She is singing the song (perhaps with the CHORUS as backup singers). Lights slowly fade on everything
but VENUS’s face. The song dies away.

VENUS
When I was a little girl everyone would say
Venus you are the most sublime creature to ever walk the earth
And I said: cool thanks
They said Venus your beauty outshines that of the sun
mortal men write poems and paint paintings in praise of your divine perfection
And I said: yeah I know
They said Venus we will make you the goddess of love and beauty
and your name will be hallowed for all of eternity
And I said: sure, whatever
The truth is I got bored of being beautiful, of beautiful things
of beautiful men singing beautiful songs to me

43
As I grew up I wanted nasty-ass fuckers
I wanted men with crooked teeth and bent cocks
into dirty talk and piss play in cheap motels
I wanted to make love to subhumans, to neanderthal men
dragging their knuckles through dark back alleys
who could bite beer caps off bottles with their bare teeth
and tell you the year and make of a car by the sound of it’s engine
But the worst is being beautiful and young forever
Never getting fat, never getting wrinkled
never getting to feel the exquisite transcendence of death
Honestly? I would trade beauty for death in a heartbeat

VII
BOTTICELLI’s studio. The lights are dim. Sex sounds.

DA VINCI
What is it?

BOTTICELLI
Do you smell something?

DA VINCI
No

BOTTICELLI
It’s almost like—

DA VINCI
(checking his watch)
Fuck we’ve been at it three hours
I told you we couldn’t pull off a quickie

BOTTICELLI
It’s the only thing that calms my nerves
You seriously don’t you smell that?

DA VINCI
Shut up I cleaned out

BOTTICELLI
No it smells like smoke

DA VINCI
Did you leave the stove on again?

BOTTICELLI
Open the window

44
DA VINCI
Did you?

BOTTICELLI
No, just open the window

DA VINCI gets up and opens the window

DA VINCI
Whoa yeah I can sm—
Sandro

In the darkness we hear a woman’s falsetto and a man’s baritone singing:

WOMAN MAN
And, lo, the smoke And, lo, the smoke of the country
the smoke
And, lo, the smoke of the country / went up
as the smoke of a furnace
And, lo, the smoke And, lo, the smoke
And the Lord rained And the Lord rained upon Sodom
And, lo, the smoke / and upon Gomorrah
the smoke of the country went up/ brimstone and fire out of heaven
lo, the smoke/ and he overthrew those cities
And all the plain And all the plain
And, lo, the smoke And all the inhabitants of the cities
and that which grew
upon the ground upon the ground
And, lo, the smoke / of the country went up
as the smoke of a furnace

BOTTICELLI goes over to the window. Picks up microphone.

BOTTICELLI
(into microphone, addressing audience)
In the distance, smoke was rising from San Marco square
It was the dead of night
but the flames lit the black plume from below
From where we stood we could not see the pyre
or the gathered mob
but we knew
It had started

45
DA VINCI
Are they—?

BOTTICELLI
Yes

DA VINCI
That smell—

BOTTICELLI
It’s flesh it’s the smell of

DA VINCI
Burning—

BOTTICELLI
Faggots

DA VINCI wretches

DA VINCI
It’s in my throat

BOTTICELLI
Just stay calm

DA VINCI
You said the earth was round

BOTTICELLI
We’ll get through this

DA VINCI
You said this was the fucking Renaissance

BOTTICELLI
Leo listen to me

DA VINCI
We’re fucked

BOTTICELLI
No

DA VINCI
You’re the most flagrant sodomite in Florence
they’re probably building your pyre as we speak

BOTTICELLI
That is not constructive thinking

46
DA VINCI
We’re so fucked

BOTTICELLI
We are not / fucked, we just—

DA VINCI
We bet on the wrong horse

BOTTICELLI
The Medici have an army
They have allies

DA VINCI
Let’s just get out of here

BOTTICELLI
And go where?
Live in a barn?

DA VINCI
Why not?

BOTTICELLI
And wallow with the pigs?

DA VINCI
Just be together

BOTTICELLI
If we run away we have nothing—

DA VINCI
Sandro

BOTTICELLI
—we’re less than nothing

DA VINCI
This is fucking madness

BOTTICELLI
Yes and we are bigger than it
Beauty and liberty they are bigger than madness
We will not be afraid—

DA VINCI
But I am / I am afraid

BOTTICELLI
—and we will live however the fuck we want

47
DA VINCI
You think you can live without limits but there are
People have limits I have fucking limits
You think they won’t throw your ass on the fire
because you can paint a few beautiful paintings?

BOTTICELLI
What we need is a strategy

DA VINCI
I think you actually thrive on this, don’t you?
You think you can stay on this treadmill forever
but it keeps getting faster and faster and faster and faster
and I wish I wish you would just fucking hold me for a second

BOTTICELLI comes up behind DA VINCI and embraces him.

Lights shift.

The image transitions into something evocative of the Vetruvian Man — BOTTICELLI’s arms extended
behind DA VINCI’s.

Spotlight up on the face MADRE MARIA.

MADRE MARIA
(spoken softly and swiftly, underscoring)
the length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of a man
from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of the height of a man
from below the chin to the top of the head is one-eighth of the height of a man
from above the chest to the top of the head is one-sixth of the height of a man
from above the chest to the hairline is one-seventh of the height of a man
the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of the height of a man
from the breasts to the top of the head is a quarter of the height of a man
the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is a quarter of the height of a man
the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of the height of a man
the length of the hand is one-tenth of the height of a man
the root of the penis is at half the height of a man
the foot is one-seventh of the height of a man
from below the foot to below the knee is a quarter of the height of a man
from below the knee to the root of the penis is a quarter of the height of a man
the distances from below the chin to the nose and the eyebrows and the hairline are equal to the ears and
to one-third of the face (continues underneath following lines)

During MADRE MARIA’s text, the lights fade on DA VINCI and BOTTICELLI, until she is speaking
alone in the light.

VIII

48
Lights up faintly on BOTTICELLI passed out on the floor, three empty bottles of wine around him. He is
wearing a shirt but no pants.

DA VINCI attempts to rouse BOTTICELLI by shaking him. When this fails he walks over to the workbench,
removes the brushes from a jar, and pours the paint-infused water in the jar over BOTTICELLI’s head.
BOTTICELLI wakes with a start, cursing. He is still drunk.

BOTTICELLI
—fucking hell—

DA VINCI
Get up

BOTTICELLI
What time is it?

DA VINCI
Almost dawn

BOTTICELLI
Is she done?

DA VINCI
Wouldn’t that be nice

BOTTICELLI belches

DA VINCI
You pissed yourself

BOTTICELLI
What?
Really?

DA VINCI
C’mon

BOTTICELLI
No

DA VINCI
Sandro

BOTTICELLI
It’s done

DA VINCI
I just said—

BOTTICELLI

49
A fucking bullshitter bullshitting his way along

DA VINCI
Get up

BOTTICELLI
Ask the bodies on the street corner under wraps

DA VINCI
C’mon

BOTTICELLI
Father and daughter
Bike riders

DA VINCI
Let’s get you into some pants

BOTTICELLI
Did the good life save them?

DA VINCI
We have to finish her arm

BOTTICELLI
No

DA VINCI
We have a plan, alright we have a fucking plan—

BOTTICELLI
We have to renounce them

DA VINCI
What?

BOTTICELLI
That’s how we avoid the fires
We renounce the Medici
and tell the people we’ve / seen the light

DA VINCI
No, no, no, no

BOTTICELLI
We make a clean break

DA VINCI
And say the tides turn again
and we’re on the wrong side of the Medici

50
BOTTICELLI
I don’t wanna burn

DA VINCI
So what, join Savonarola’s ranks
And then what?
Castrate yourself?
Never paint again?

BOTTICELLI
Would that be such a loss?

DA VINCI
You know what, you’re are, you’re / so full of bullshit

BOTTICELLI
Open my mouth and it just spews out, doesn’t it
I’m just full of it

DA VINCI
You’re full of cheap dessert wine
Now let’s get dressed and finish this fucking painting
It’s the one thing we have any control—

BOTTICELLI suddenly pukes on himself

DA VINCI walks over to the workbench and grabs a paint-stained rag. He begins wiping the puke off
BOTTICELLI.

BOTTICELLI
You’re so good to me

DA VINCI
It boggles the mind doesn’t it

A knocking on the door.

BOTTICELLI
You gotta be fucking joking

DA VINCI goes to the window and looks out.

DA VINCI
Here we go

BOTTICELLI
What?

DA VINCI
Black limo

51
BOTTICELLI
Fuck

BOTTICELLI throws a cloth over the painting. They both flash about for a minute doing a frantic clean-
up.

More knocking.

DA VINCI
Just get the door

BOTTICELLI
Alright, alright just pick up the brushes

DA VINCI
Pants!

BOTTICELLI pulls his pants on

More knocking

BOTTICELLI
Actually why don’t I pick up the brushes and you open the door

DA VINCI
…for fucks sake…

DA VINCI exits to open the door

CLARICE and LORENZO enter.

LORENZO
Sandro
Why are you cowering from me like a kicked dog?

BOTTICELLI
Sorry I— I’m not myself I haven’t slept

BOTTICELLI crosses to embrace LORENZO. He makes to embrace CLARICE but ends up awkwardly
shaking her hand. LORENZO bursts out laughing.

LORENZO
(chuckling)
Look at you two
Like you’re meeting for the first time

BOTTICELLI
Would you like some coffee?

LORENZO
I don’t drink coffee

52
BOTTICELLI
Of course
I knew that
Like I said—

LORENZO
No sleep, no sleep for anyone
Did you know them?
The three men they burned?

BOTTICELLI
Three

LORENZO
I wondered if they might be pals of yours from art school

BOTTICELLI
What were their names?

LORENZO
I don’t know, but we drove past on the way here
Those fuckers smashed the back window of our limo
Did I already mention that?

BOTTICELLI
No

LORENZO
We’re still a little shaken up

CLARICE
Can we make this quick?
I have a headache

LORENZO
Can you give me fifteen minutes?
In my whole goddamn day?
This is my life these days Sandro
Five minutes for breakfast
Fifteen minutes for a friend
And then putting out fires till bedtime
Where’s the fun? There’s no time
So I assume it’s that one over there?

LORENZO crosses to the canvas.

LORENZO
May I?

53
BOTTICELLI
Before you do I just—

LORENZO pulls off the cloth that covers it.

The canvas is revealed in it’s full glory, perhaps truly for the first time in the play. The canvas is
luminous.

Silence

CLARICE
Well?
What do you think?

Pause

CLARICE
Do you like it?

Pause

LORENZO
Wow

CLARICE
I told you it’s a little bit daring

LORENZO
I uh…
Wow

CLARICE
(To Botticelli)
I see you’ve taken a little creative liberty with the hair

LORENZO
I can see why it has taken a lot of sittings
It’s… a masterpiece

BOTTICELLI
A—?
You mean you—?
(Laughing)
Jesus, I can’t tell you how nervous I was for you to see it
I, I literally didn’t sleep / a wink last night

LORENZO
I mean I can practically smell her she’s so alive

BOTTICELLI
Really

54
LORENZO
Do you know the smell I mean?
The earthy one
Like moss after a warm rain
With traces of talcum powder
Just looking at this painting I can smell it

CLARICE
I told you
It’s a masterpiece

LORENZO
(To Botticelli)
Do you know the smell I mean?

BOTTICELLI
Can’t say I do

LORENZO
It’s the funniest thing
Seeing you like this

CLARICE
Naked?

LORENZO
So… content

CLARICE
I’m always content

LORENZO
Those eyes
I haven’t seen those eyes in years

CLARICE
Don’t be ridiculous
You see me everyday

BOTTICELLI
It’s funny, I was worried she looked bored in the painting
(Forced laughter)
I mean after sitting for so long

LORENZO
(To CLARICE)
Can I ask you a favour?

CLARICE
Of course you / can ask—

55
LORENZO
Lie down on your back

CLARICE
(Chuckling)
What?

LORENZO
You heard me

CLARICE
Why do you / want me to—?

LORENZO
I’m not going to ask you again

CLARICE looks at BOTTICELLI and then lies down on her back. When she lies down she places her
hand on her chest just as Venus rests her right hand in ‘Birth of Venus’.

LORENZO
Hmm

CLARICE
What the hell is this about?

LORENZO
Funny, that’s exactly what I remembered
Even though it’s been years

CLARICE
Lorenzo

LORENZO
The way you rest your hand like that over your breast
with your fingers gently splayed above the other breast
That’s how you used to rest your hand when you’re lying on your back, see
That’s always how you rested your hand
always your right hand, just like that
after we fucked
Looking into each others eyes
Isn’t that funny?
That I should see that hand here again
The first time in…oh, what… four years
Did she tell you this is how we lay together, Sandro
After we fucked
Her fingertips resting above just her left breast
How sweet of her to remember
how incredibly sexy and sentimental of her to relay this little gesture
Perhaps to rekindle the old fires, was that it sweetie?
Or perhaps, Sandro, you happened to find yourself sketching my wife naked and on her back

56
Somehow, and I can’t imagine how
splayed like this in perfect simulation of post-coital bliss

BOTTICELLI
If I may—

LORENZO punches BOTTICELLI in the face, knocking him to the ground. CLARICE screams and sits
bolt upright. BOTTICELLI’s nose gushes blood.

LORENZO
(Pointing at DA VINCI)
You— butt boy
Be a mensch and fetch some ice from the corner-store, will you?

DA VINCI runs out of the studio

LORENZO
You know what I’d love, as your patron?
A peek at the great artist in action
Why don’t you two pretend like I’m not here
(beat)
Well— what are you waiting for?

CLARICE
Lorenzo—

LORENZO
Go on: fuck each other
Just pretend I’m not here

BOTTICELLI and CLARICE do nothing.

LORENZO
I said—

LORENZO begins aggressively trying to pull CLARICE’s dress off; she fights him back

BOTTICELLI charges at LORENZO and pulls him off of CLARICE

LORENZO
Did you think this was a game of squash?
Did you think my wife was a little ball you could slam around the court?
A game you could beat me at and we’d pat each other on the back
and go for a cold beer afterwards?

Our hunting trips, everything I confided

When you twisted your ankle in Umbria
I carried you two hours two hours on my back
What was that?
I fucking loved I fucking trusted you I wanted to but I didn’t and that’s—
That’s— (pointing at his chest)

57
Do you know what I have in mind for you?
There is a windowless cell in the basement of my palace
with three feet of fetid water with pieces of shit bobbing in it
because this is where the latrines of the palace empty into, you see
and I’m thinking: how delightful it will be to hear your moans and screams every time I take a shit
to open the toilet seat and shout down at you in the pitch dark
and even long after you’re dead and your corpse is devoured by the rats
and just your white bones are left bobbing in the water
I’ll shout down “Good day friend, how’s the weather down there?!”

CLARICE
Lorenzo—

LORENZO
Shut up

BOTTICELLI
If I /might—

LORENZO
Did I say you could speak?
Put your mouth around my shoe
Go on, bite my shoe

BOTTICELLI does this

LORENZO
Snakes can’t help their nature, can they?
They eat whatever hot blooded thing they can get their mouths around
And yet sticking you down my toilet feels somehow… anticlimactic doesn’t it?
For a man of so many climaxes like yourself
It almost seems more fitting— an almost Biblical judgement
To cut off the evil at the root of the problem
Get up

He gives his foot a kick causing BOTTICELLI to exclaim in pain. BOTTICELLI stands, his mouth
bleeding.

LORENZO
Pull down your pants

CLARICE
Lorenzo stop it

LORENZO
I said pull down your pants!

BOTTICELLI pulls down his pants, revealing his large phallus. LORENZO removes the large hunting
knife from his robe.

58
LORENZO
Do you have… an erection?

BOTTICELLI
I’m sorry, I—

LORENZO
Even now, you have a fucking erection?

BOTTICELLI
One final salute I suppose

LORENZO
I am doing you a favour I hope you realize

BOTTICELLI
I’m sure I’ll see it that way one day

LORENZO
Take it out

CLARICE
Stop

LORENZO
Clarice for / fuck sake—

CLARICE
I swear to god I’ll smash every window
in every car and house you own

LORENZO
He… you… have hurt me

CLARICE
So you want to hurt him?

LORENZO
I want—

CLARICE
To punish him?

LORENZO
Yes

CLARICE
Then take away the thing he loves

LORENZO
What do you think I’m doing?

59
CLARICE
Kill the boy

LORENZO
What?

CLARICE
He loves the boy
So…take something from him
Better yet
Buy some favour with the masses
Turn the boy over to the Friar as the sodomite he is
Look! they’ll say
The Medici cleans house!
Out with the vice!

LORENZO
(To BOTTICELLI)
You see how my wife bargains with me?
She does this with everything
I want a black leather couch, she wants the white one
She’ll say— (to CLARICE) do you remember?
“If we get the white couch
you can have the granite countertop in the en-suite”
What do you say to that?

BOTTICELLI doesn’t answer

LORENZO
Is the boy your peace offering?

BOTTICELLI doesn’t answer. LORENZO presses the knife up to BOTTICELLI’s groin.

LORENZO BOTTICELLI
Speak up (Whispers/gasps)
Yes

LORENZO
Pardon?

BOTTICELLI
Yes

LORENZO
(To CLARICE)
You get your white couch

LORENZO takes out a cell phone and dials a number. CLARICE cries.

60
LORENZO
Yes, waylay the young boy on his return
Leonardo
Yes
Put him in the toilet

LORENZO puts away his phone.

LORENZO
Well I must be going
Sorry for the short visit
Oh and— (referring to the canvas) no rush on finishing that up
I’m not sure we have room for it anyway

LORENZO makes to leave

BOTTICELLI
Can I see him?
Once more

LORENZO
Well of course you can
They burn them in public

LORENZO and CLARICE exit.

For a long moment BOTTICELLI does nothing

Then, he throws a fit

He smashes a chair, he tears off his clothes

The CHORUS begin singing the ‘Botticelli Overture’.

Naked, he begins throwing paint at ‘The Birth of Venus’ until it resembles a Jackson Pollock abstract. He
then collapses on the ground, sobbing. Blackout.

IX
Darkness

The ‘Botticelli Overture’ transitions into the ‘Da Vinci Overture’

CHORUS
(singing)
Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da
Vinci Vinci Vinci Vinci Vinci Vinci Vinci Vinci (etc.)

61
A faint spotlight appears on DA VINCI’s face. He is naked, shivering and his hands are handcuffed
together. He is seated on the ground, as if in a prison cell.

DA VINCI
Dear God if I’m a sodomite, what are you?
If you made me in your image
and I’m an abomination, what are you?
If I’m a sodomite, what you God?
And where is my town
if you destroyed Sodom in a rain of fire
A stealth bomber over the desert
breaking the sound barrier
What are you if not a gravedigger?
If not a psychopath in the desert
If I am a sodomite, what the fuck are you?
What are you?
If I am, then what are you
If I am God
then what is
If I am
What is
If I am
I am
If I am
I am
I am
I am

The faintest of spotlights appears on MADRE MARIA’s face.

MADRE MARIA
(spoken softly and swiftly, underscoring)
the length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of a man
from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of the height of a man
from below the chin to the top of the head is one-eighth of the height of a man
from above the chest to the top of the head is one-sixth of the height of a man
from above the chest to the hairline is one-seventh of the height of a man
the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of the height of a man
from the breasts to the top of the head is a quarter of the height of a man
the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is a quarter of the height of a man
the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of the height of a man
the length of the hand is one-tenth of the height of a man
the root of the penis is at half the height of a man
the foot is one-seventh of the height of a man
from below the foot to below the knee is a quarter of the height of a man
from below the knee to the root of the penis is a quarter of the height of a man
the distances from below the chin to the nose and the eyebrows and the hairline are equal to the ears and
to one-third of the face (continues underneath following lines)

62
In the darkness, SAVONAROLA paces the edges of DA VINCI’s cell

DA VINCI
Is somebody there?
I know you’re there
I can hear you breathing

God?
Is that you?
(Canned laughter)
No
What am I saying?
God is dead

Is that you, Satan?

(Canned laughter)
No
I don’t believe in the devil

Is that you, Hitler?

(Canned laughter)
No
I hear he’s dead too

SAVONAROLA emerges from the darkness.

DA VINCI
You were my next guess

SAVONAROLA
What is the measure of a man?

DA VINCI
You here to gloat?

SAVONAROLA
In the darkness hour of the night

DA VINCI
Get your pound of flesh

SAVONAROLA
If there is no God watching over him?
What is the measure of a man?

DA VINCI
A man measures the length of his own arms outstretched

SAVONAROLA
It is, in fact, his soul

63
And God still believes even in yours

DA VINCI
Even in mine

SAVONAROLA
Yes

DA VINCI
Wow

SAVONAROLA
If you denounce your ways and join me in the streets
If you return to his flock he will spare you from the void

DA VINCI
The void

SAVONAROLA
He is infinitely forgiving

DA VINCI
You think I’m afraid of the void?
Bring on the void
Bring on the fucking void
I stick my cock in the void and I fuck it
I fuck the void
I love the void
And I am not afraid
I’ve never been less afraid in my whole life

X
Lights rise on BOTTICELLI sitting at a kitchen table with MADRE MARIA. He eats a giant plate of
spaghetti.

MADRE MARIA
You look terrible

BOTTICELLI
Thanks

MADRE MARIA
Are you getting enough to eat?

BOTTICELLI
Mamma (indicate giant plate of spaghetti)

MADRE MARIA

64
When I’m not around

BOTTICELLI
Yeah I try
People take me out for dinner a lot

MADRE MARIA
Are you sleeping?

BOTTICELLI
No, I’m not, the shit has hit the fan

MADRE MARIA
I know baby

BOTTICELLI
Leonardo—

MADRE MARIA
I know

BOTTICELLI
What do you mean you know?

MADRE MARIA
I heard from the neighbours

BOTTICELLI
Already?

MADRE MARIA
Well if you never visit or call me
I have to find out what’s happening in your life somehow

BOTTICELLI
I’m such a fuck-up

MADRE MARIA
You have a choice to make Sandro
Love is a choice

BOTTICELLI
What choice, there’s no choice

MADRE MARIA
Between love and your god

BOTTICELLI
C’mon, you know I don’t believe in god

65
MADRE MARIA
The thing you worship

BOTTICELLI
What are you / talking about?

MADRE MARIA
You know exactly what I’m talking about

BOTTICELLI
It’s too late

MADRE MARIA
If you think like

BOTTICELLI
I lost him

MADRE MARIA
Love is a choice

BOTTICELLI
Stop saying that

MADRE MARIA
I chose you

BOTTICELLI
Mamma—

MADRE MARIA
When you were a teenager
you started bringing boys and girls home to bed
sometimes three or four at a time, remember?
And oh the noise you would all make!
I would chase them out of the house with my frying pan
I would scream: “You are causing me shame, Sandro!”, you remember?

BOTTICELLI
Yeah yeah

MADRE MARIA
“How do you expect me to hold my head up in Church when you have this reputation?
The neighbours would glare at me from behind their curtains
I cried to my priest: “Father, what should I do?”
He said: “You must show him the path; you must change his heart.”
But I said “Oh, you don’t know my Sandro, there’s no changing him”
He came out of the womb sucking his own cock
Well I didn’t tell the priest that, but it’s true

66
BOTTICELLI
I know

MADRE MARIA
The priest told me I had a choice to make
“You can either continue to love this hopeless blasphemer
or you can pour your love into God”
And that’s when I realized I loved God
But I loved my baby more
I loved God— but I loved you more
I chose you
And I never went back

And now have to choose

between love and your god

XI
Lights up faintly on BOTTICELLI’s studio

SAVONAROLA stands, regarding the destroyed ‘Birth of Venus’ canvas. BOTTICELLI stands a few
paces behind him.

BOTTICELLI
Would you like something to drink?
Camomile tea perhaps?

SAVONAROLA
No

BOTTICELLI
Cafe au lait?

SAVONAROLA
(points to the canvas)
What the hell happened to this one?

BOTTICELLI
It’s a new style I’m toying with

SAVONAROLA
So is it true what they say?
That you’ve had a thousand lovers

BOTTICELLI
Mmm… I think you might have an old source

SAVONAROLA

67
And does this give your life meaning?
This wonton pursuit of flesh?

BOTTICELLI
Wonton soup of flesh?

SAVONAROLA
Seems rather bereft

BOTTICELLI
And how about burning people?
That really gets you out of bed in the morning, huh?

SAVONAROLA
I’m as upset by the burnings as you are

BOTTICELLI
Oh really?
Well lucky for you, last time I checked
they were burning faggots, not friars

SAVONAROLA
And how long before the wind changes direction
and we’re all consumed by the fires?
You have me all wrong if you think I want to see anyone burned

BOTTICELLI
But you are fanning the flames

SAVONAROLA
This is the people’s revolution

BOTTICELLI
Which you started

SAVONAROLA
The Medici brought this upon themselves
And I’m sorry if you happen to be collateral / in this but—

BOTTICELLI
They are burning faggots in the square because of your sermons

SAVONAROLA
I never told anyone / to burn anyone

BOTTICELLI
The city is sick with the / pestilence of sin

SAVONAROLA
Yes, but I never—

68
BOTTICELLI
And like Sodom and Gomorrah, it’s day of reckoning is near!

SAVONAROLA
Do you berate all your guests like this?
You invited me over, I am a very busy man—

BOTTICELLI
I know, I—

SAVONAROLA
Do I want you to burn on the pyre, of course not
Do I want to save the souls of this city, yes
And I believe they can be, every last one of them
None of us are beyond redemption
Not even you

BOTTICELLI
Spare Leonardo

SAVONAROLA
I’m sorry?

BOTTICELLI
Don’t let them burn Leonardo
I’m begging you

SAVONAROLA
Remind me, which / one is he—?

BOTTICELLI
The boy being held in the Medici’s toilet

SAVONAROLA
Right

BOTTICELLI
Please

SAVONAROLA
The people want a burning

BOTTICELLI
If you could just reason with them

SAVONAROLA
You can’t reason with a mob

BOTTICELLI
You have influence
They listen to you

69
SAVONAROLA
Botticelli—

BOTTICELLI
Tell me what you want
I can make it worth your while

SAVONAROLA
Are you bargaining with me?

BOTTICELLI
I know how the world works

SAVONAROLA
But do you understand how God works?

BOTTICELLI
If there is a God he will spare Leonardo
(Beat)
Tell me what you want

(Beat)

SAVONAROLA
I want you to publicly renounce the Medici

BOTTICELLI
Done

SAVONAROLA
And burn your paintings

BOTTICELLI
Burn—

SAVONAROLA
Your entire studio
Offer each and every one of your paintings to the bonfire

BOTTICELLI
But—

SAVONAROLA
And then, Botticelli, you will renounce painting altogether
and pledge your allegiance to my cause

BOTTICELLI
When you say ‘renounce’—?

70
SAVONAROLA
You will throw every one of your brushes
every pot of paint and canvas you own into the fire
And you will publicly pledge to never paint again for as long as you live
Renounce your ways
Renounce all earthy pleasures
and declare you have seen the light
This— this is a trade I would consider

BOTTICELLI
You want to erase me

SAVONAROLA
I want to save your soul
If the greatest sinner of all can be saved in front of the masses
then anything is possible
But you have to believe it
You must do it willingly
That is my bargain

BOTTICELLI paces the studio, taking in each one of his canvases as if his children. A long, anxious,
ruminating silence.

He takes up the microphone and turns to the audience.

BOTTICELLI
In that moment I thought to myself:
What is he worth?
And what about a painting?
What is beauty worth?
If that’s my purpose, then what is my life worth?
What is the worth of a man’s life?
Are my paintings worth a man’s life?
My life for another man’s life no not just another man
This man
This man who I— what, who I like fucking?
Who picks up my mail and cleans my brushes
Do I love this man?
Burn my soul for this man…

SAVONAROLA
(pause)
And I will spare the boy

Through tears, Botticelli turns to Savonarola and smiles.

BOTTICELLI
I realize…
As I hear your words…
That my paintings are… nothing
but sinful, earthly distractions

71
SAVONAROLA
Is that so?

BOTTICELLI
That have lead me into a life of vice
I mean look at this
Pure pagan propaganda
A scene from Ovid’s Metamorphosis
Nothing but glamour, sex, and magic
And this one, look
Cupid blowing the conch shell of desire into the sleeping ear of Mars
Totally obscene
And here: an orange grove with a carpet of wildflowers
looks innocent enough but look closer and
whoa that harlot Venus at its centre and the Three Graces
the wood nymph Chlorus ravished by that rapist Zephyr
becoming Flora, the goddess of flowers
It’s almost orgiastic
And here— even divine themes
St.Sebastian pierced through with arrows
experiencing an almost orgasmic release
as he peers into the eyes of the Angel Gabriel
And my god, this one
What kind of pervert would even—?
Are the Virgin Mary’s nipples erect?
My god they are!
To think this might have hung in a church!

SAVONAROLA
And so?

BOTTICELLI
Burn them

SAVONAROLA
Burn them?

BOTTICELLI
Burn all of them

SAVONAROLA
You want to burn / them?

BOTTICELLI
I want to… to… throw them into the fucking fire

SAVONAROLA
I see

72
BOTTICELLI
Just give me a stick and some marshmallows

SAVONAROLA
That’s quite the about-face

BOTTICELLI
And I mean why stop at paintings?
We could burn every occasion of sin

SAVONAROLA
Oh?

BOTTICELLI
Books
For instance

SAVONAROLA
Books?

BOTTICELLI
Musical instruments and and and sheet music

SAVONAROLA
Yes

BOTTICELLI
Porn, cosmetics, jewels, uh uh fancy dresses

SAVONAROLA
The manuscripts of the Greeks and Romans

BOTTICELLI
All the heretical writings

SAVONAROLA
Yes yes

BOTTICELLI
Costumes and masks

SAVONAROLA
Tapestries

BOTTICELLI
People could offer up their own possessions

SAVONAROLA
Self-elected

73
BOTTICELLI
A, a, a great purging!

SAVONAROLA
Fed by the flames of your paintings

BOTTICELLI
Use them as kindling

SAVONAROLA
A great bonfire

BOTTICELLI
Yes

SAVONAROLA
A bonfire of the vanities

BOTTICELLI
In exchange for Leonardo of course

SAVONAROLA
Tomorrow at sunrise you will throw your paintings onto the pyre

BOTTICELLI
Every one

SAVONAROLA
(pointing to the destroyed ‘Birth of Venus’ canvas)
Except that one, that’s a piece of shit

BOTTICELLI
In exchange for the boy

SAVONAROLA
What?
Oh yes… I’ll see what I can do

Light shift

XII
Darkness

A deep rumbling. The rumbling begins to deepen, grows louder, becomes something verging on the
tectonic, like the sound of the earth rupturing.

A bonfire blazes.

74
The massive silhouette of SAVONAROLA looms. He opens his mouth but, instead of words, it is the sound
of an air siren

The rest of the ensemble gather around the bonfire. Two are dressed in 16th century Florentine, one
perhaps as a Nazi Youth. The full ensemble sing as CHORUS, Madre Maria in halting falsetto.

CHORUS
But his wife
But
But his wife
She
But his wife looked back
She
looked back
But his wife looked back from behind him
from behind him
But his wife looked back
And she became a pillar of salt
But his wife looked back from behind him
a pillar of salt
and, lo, the smoke
But his wife looked back
and, lo, the smoke of the country went up
She
looked back
the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace
And she became
smoke of a furnace
a pillar of salt

BOTTICELLI appears, holding several of his canvases. His silhouette looms large in the blaze of the fire.

BOTTICELLI steps forward and begins to throw his paintings into the fire

Recorded cheering

BOTTICELLI is silent for a moment, stealing himself

BOTTICELLI
I wanted to say
If I might…

There was once a great fire in me

A profound and unknowable fire
burning with my desire to make manifest
flesh and colour and the folds in fabric
and wind whipping the waves
and the sublime lost worlds of antiquity
where mortals dance lock-step with the gods

75
Now, of course, I see all that for what it is
A bit of shiny metal distracting
the magpie of my soul from God’s divinity

They will say old Botticelli died alone

and penniless and unknown
He used to be a great painter, such a shame
And I will say to them:
‘Old and alone was the preferred scenario
to dying young and in a mob’

The roar of the flames and the crowd climax.

Blackout.

The choral sequence from the top of the show begins, transitioning into the ‘BOTTICELLI OVERTURE’

CHOURS
…Botticelli, Botticelli, Botticelli, Botticelli… etc.

Faces appear, subtly illuminated in the dark.

MADRE MARIA
We walked home in silence

CLARICE
What became of Botticelli?

SAVONAROLA
He had a crisis of faith

MADRE MARIA
And he didn’t cry

CLARICE
He faded into obscurity

LORENZO
Florence was blue-balled for years after (Laughs)

CLARICE
Stopped painting, as far as I know

SAVONAROLA
Consider for a moment, if you will—

MADRE MARIA
I tied his hands to the bars of the crib

SAVONAROLA
—what we were trying to achieve

76
CLARICE
I prefer not to think about it

LORENZO
I mean it’s nothing really new, is it?
There’s always a plague
There’s always a fire

MADRE MARIA
I loved him more than most mothers

CLARICE
I said I prefer not to think about it

XIII
Lights up faintly on BOTTICELLI’S studio. It is completely bare except for the ‘Birth of Venus’ canvas,
propped up against the back wall. The ‘Jackson Pollock-style’ paint splatters have mostly been wiped away,
revealing much of the completed canvas below.

He sits alone for a long moment in silence. He picks up a microphone.

BOTTICELLI
(to audience)
You can’t possibly hate me more than I hate myself
So save your judgement
I don’t need your pity either

I know… you’re watching this and thinking:

I thought he said this wasn’t going to be another tortured fag-artist sob story
Well honey let me tell you, it’s not
It’s a muthafucking survival story

You might be watching this and thinking:

well obviously the Medici were going down
Obviously Florence would fall to the zealots
Nah uh, take it from me—
it’s not as easy to tell when you’re on the precipice as you might think
We convince ourselves things will more or less stay the course
That progress is a forward march

You may have noticed that I’ve taken a few… creative liberties
in the re-telling of this story
Well such is memory
Five hundreds years of telling yourself the same story

But up next is the last scene

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And this scene I promise plays out almost exactly as it really did
Verbatim, you might even say
Except the actor they got, Stephen,
is a little bit more handsome than Leonardo was
Just a little

DA VINCI, gaunt and damp, enters.

BOTTICELLI leaps to his feet but DA VINCI takes a step back. He does not want to be touched. A moment
of silence.

BOTTICELLI
You smell like shit

BOTTICELLI laughs but quickly desists when DA VINCI does not.

BOTTICELLI
You look / good though-

DA VINCI
I don’t want to talk to you
I came for my backpack
Have you seen it around?

BOTTICELLI does a cursory scan of the empty room

BOTTICELLI
No

DA VINCI coughs up some blood

DA VINCI
Fuck
Had my passport in it

BOTTICELLI
Are you hungry?
Do you want me to make / something to eat?

DA VINCI
Are we all just playthings to you?
Huh?
Cum rags to keep you company?
Things to keep around to laugh at your jokes
fawn over your genius
and then fuck every once and a while
and then put back in the cupboard?
Or do you fuck because you can no longer feel love
just cheap sensation
Frankly, I think you’ve forgotten how to love anything but yourself
You find no human quite so alluring as your own genius

78
so we’ll just have to be your disposable substitutes until you do

BOTTICELLI
I’m sorry

DA VINCI
You’re sorry

BOTTICELLI
I burned everything for you

DA VINCI begins a slow clap for him

DA VINCI
Go suck a bag of dicks

DA VINCI turns to go

BOTTICELLI
Wait
Where will you go?

DA VINCI
I’ll find my way

BOTTICELLI
I can protect you

DA VINCI
Great track record you have of that

DA VINCI coughs up more blood

BOTTICELLI
The world is burning

DA VINCI
I killed and ate a rat
with my bare hands

BOTTICELLI
I’m sorry

DA VINCI
You’re sorry
(beat)
When I came to this city I sought you out
I fell madly in love with you
I wanted to be with you
I wanted to be you

79
BOTTICELLI
Let me kiss you

DA VINCI
I have the plague

BOTTICELLI
I don’t care

Looks around the studio and notices the ‘Birth of Venus’ canvas

DA VINCI
How in god’s name is that still here?

BOTTICELLI
I disguised it

DA VINCI
How?

BOTTICELLI
Threw a bunch of paint on it

DA VINCI
Are you going to finish it?

BOTTICELLI
With what?

DA VINCI
Oh don’t give me that

BOTTICELLI
No tell me, really, what / do I have?

DA VINCI
The day the people have had enough
and they throw Savonarola on that fire
you’re going to get right back at it
painting your fucking nymphs and satyrs
So you lost a few years’ work
A few beautiful pictures

BOTTICELLI
A few beautiful pictures
(beat)
The fires out there might rage forever
But the fire inside— that fire is finite
I have a belly full of ash
Just cold, black charcoal

80
DA VINCI
Well
You can still make sketches out of charcoal

BOTTICELLI smiles, in spite of himself

DA VINCI
You have to be perverted to burn a painting

BOTTICELLI
Unless the painting is perverted

DA VINCI
There’s no such thing

BOTTICELLI
What about a rape painting?

DA VINCI
There are a few good rape paintings

BOTTICELLI
Or killing babies
No one paints that

DA VINCI
Rubens did

BOTTICELLI
Or cannibalism maybe
Or someone having their rectum torn out and eaten
Maybe then, if it was truly heinous

DA VINCI
Truly anus

BOTTICELLI laughs

DA VINCI
The palace is empty

BOTTICELLI
The Medici?

DA VINCI
They fled

BOTTICELLI
The servants and everything?

DA VINCI

81
Or perhaps they’re just on vacation
(beat)
You really thought the rich would protect you, didn’t you?
Just another happy-go-lucky queer, history’s full of them!
(coughs up blood)
They’re real delights to have around
They make excellent manservants
Always a good quip, real life of the party
The kings— the men of the house
they will put up with you
You are no threat
The ladies of the house
they will take you in as their confidante
Because of course who would a happy-go-lucky queer tell about your affair?
You might even become something of a prestige item
Like a… a fancy armoire
And if you’re lucky you might gain a bit of agency
Perhaps (coughs) a bit of respectability
You might even make some money
But hold on now… wait a moment
You’re a happy-go-lucky queer, you’re not supposed to have power
No
No you are only acceptable when you are a lapdog
Who does this happy-go-lucky queer think he is?
Has he forgotten that he is scum?
Has he forgotten that he only exists on this earth because we— (coughs blood)

BOTTICELLI
Leo—

DA VINCI
Good-bye

BOTTICELLI
Leo

DA VINCI turns to leave.

BOTTICELLI picks up microphone

BOTTICELLI
Now… in real life
for the historians in the audience
Leonardo looked back (DA VINCI looks back) one last time
and without saying a word he walked out of my life
Forever

But because this is my play

And the historians, I’m sorry, you can fuck yourselves
I stop him before he makes it to the door

82
And I tell him: I love you

I love you
More profoundly, more madly, more completely than is humanly possible
I love you more than you’ll ever know
More than words can express and yet here I’m trying and failing
I could spend every moment of every day with you
and there would still not be enough time
And yes, I can say it now you were right
there are limits to almost all things
Except one

Turns back to audience

And though I didn’t deserve it

And though he never would have
he came and sat down beside me

DA VINCI walks over and sits down beside BOTTICELLI

BOTTICELLI
You need to eat something

DA VINCI
I’m not hungry

BOTTICELLI removes a floorboard and pulls out a jar of peanut butter, a knife, and a loaf of plain white
bread.

BOTTICELLI makes a peanut butter sandwich and cuts it in two. He hands one half of it to DA VINCI.

They eat.

DA VINCI
Was it worth it?

BOTTICELLI
Was what worth it?

DA VINCI
All these hell-fires for a bit of buggery?

They laugh.

BOTTICELLI reaches out and caresses DA VINCI’s face.

They kiss.

DA VINCI
I’m not afraid
I have seen the void

83
And I am not afraid

They pull the knife out of the jar of peanut butter

They each take turns licking it slowly, savouring it

Blackout.

End of play.

84