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78 pages

English

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Five hundred years can confuse identity. An old chalk drawing of a girl, Maria, the daughter of a Chianti vintner leaves a Swiss art collector, Claude Beauvin entangled in a Renaissance love story from the past. The drawing is currently owned by a reclusive young widow, Andrea Garibaldi-Chase, who puts the drawing up for auction. With smoldering rumors that Leonardo da Vinci is the artist of the portrait, history is set on fire by a New York art dealer, an art history professor, and an intellectual property crimes investigator from INTERPOL who are all caught up in the drawings history. It's not until after the auction that Beauvin learns who the girl really was, what influence she had over da Vinci and the centuries since, and how his growing feelings for Andrea transcends time and identity.

Sujets

Historical

Fiction

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Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	20 avril 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780991642007
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0350€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Bella Gioconda

Richard Heket
Bella Gioconda is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, objects and events are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, organizations, and locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

Except for use in a review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or any other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without written permission from the publisher.

Copyright © 2014 by Richard Heket

Published in eBook format by:
Lavender and Chamomile Press, LLC
Florida

ISBN-13: 978-0-9916-4200-7

Cover Art Design by: Jason Gurley

This book is dedicated to my brother
Joseph
1941 – 2008
The only polymath I have ever known

Also dedicated to my bride of 40 years
Jan
An inspiration of more than words:
Envy of tall grass,
Dance to me,
With me
Dance, dance, dance on…

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Bella Gioconda

Prologue
New York, 2009
Late at night, the two, as if dreaming, sat in a corner under the palm, its graceful shape matched by the arched window of the Bar at Fives. They denied the signature Pen-Cosmo cocktail in favor of Chianti, while the Italian woman told her long, tender story. That story, alone, did not explain why these former strangers happened to be together now in New York. The telling of their story, a coincidental mirror-writing, a shaft-of-light reflection of the other, would tell itself in her revealing how centuries of perspective had been sketched together.
Both had been separately attracted to a five hundred year-old drawing on a small sheet of paper smaller than the front page of the New York Times. But five hundred years can confuse identity. Tomorrow, the Times would print an incomplete story of negotiating a curious auction. No one but the man and the woman beneath the arc of the palm knew how and why the bidding grew by geometric proportion in his effort to possess her obscure drawing without provenance or identity; a chalk portrait of a girl.
A plane was waiting on the tarmac to take them, and their story, far away.

Chapter One
Florence, 1491
Leonardo was already awake, dressed and walking quietly along a narrow road beside a vineyard south of Florence. The cottages along the lane were the separate family residences of the hired help serving Messer Gherardini. The vintner’s villa was up on the hill from the lane. Leonardo was not personally acquainted with Messer Gherardini, but he knew that the Gherardini’s had once been a proud and influential family.
Just then, Gherardini’s eldest child, who was just twelve, leaped out of the newly flowering vineyard bordering the lane.
“Hello,” she smiled easily.
“Good morning,” Leonardo said. “What a lovely frock.”
“Thank you; it was my birthday present from Papa.”
“And he would be…?”
She straightened immediately.
“Antonmaria di Noldo Gherardini,” she said proudly in a proper decorum.
Leonardo smiled, amused by the girl’s sudden formality when her previous actions dictated a casual attitude. He extended out his hand to formally introduce himself.
“ My name is da Vinci,” he said.
The young girl gasped, immediately recognizing his name.
“Messer Leonardo da Vinci?”
Leonardo tried to conceal his amusement.
“Sir, I implore you. Would you consider taking on a student?”
“Your father wishes to learn the arts?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your father…”
“Yes, I heard you, sir. No, not my father. Me.”
Now, Leonardo could not help the erupting laugh, driven by his sudden, but unexpected understanding. He was shocked by the impertinence of the girl. She maintained her appearance: hopeful, pleading, and smiling. It was already apparent in the young face that this would be a lovely face, but, already and forever, her eyes were beyond her years. He shook his head.
She took that for a response.
“Oh, sir, I implore you. Do not discourage me.”
“Let me think on it,” he finally replied.
“Oh, but you are likely to never pass this way again.”
“I know of your father. I will find him.”
“Why not find me directly?”
Ignoring the girls last question, Leonardo bowed his head in respect, stepped to the side and walked away, whistling a languid tune he had once heard in a tavern.
She took it as a positive reply and prayed that Messer da Vinci would remember her request.

Chapter Two
Neuchâtel, 2009
“Good night, my love. I’m leaving now.” Claude Beauvin bid farewell to his wife, Ghiselle, in his native tongue of French, although he was actually a Swiss.
“Good luck, Claude,” Ghiselle answered while planting a soft kiss on her husband’s lips. Her accent was a little more clipped than his.
Claude grabbed his luggage and walked down the path from his chalet on the hill to the Audi waiting in the driveway. He would rather, for the comfort, drive all the way to New York, but instead a coach seat was waiting for him at the airport in Bern.
Claude and Ghiselle were not wealthy, but they both knew it was the world in which they wanted to belong.
Now, if he was clever enough, secret enough, bold enough, the lifestyle that they had dreamed of would be theirs. Claude slowly guided the Audi up the highway along the lakeshore, and then north to Bern.
The purpose of his trip was to see the portrait of a young girl that was owned by a woman in New York. The girl in the portrait was drawn in profile, set against a plain, caramel background and dressed in a silk brocade houppelande. She wore her auburn hair in a single braid cascading down her back, wrapped in a ribbon that began as a woven net at the back of her head; typical of feminine couture at the close of the fifteenth century. Rumors were circulating that the current owner of the drawing was considering selling it at auction.
With the drawing’s age estimated at five hundred years, and its condition flawless, Claude knew there was a possibility the bidding could rise toward six figures. Such a price was entirely out of his reach. Claude thought he was the only one who knew that the drawing was more than what it appeared. If any others knew of his potential discovery, the price of the drawing would rise beyond his hopes and all would be lost.
Two years ago Claude had once traveled the short distance to Paris to see the drawing. He had a keen interest to purchase the portrait, even though he did not have the tantalizing suspicions he had now. However, his efforts had failed; Claude was never closer than across the room in which the drawing was placed on an easel in the salon of an art dealer who represented the seller. The sale was quick, and the drawing was spirited away by a woman whose manner was reclusive.
A glimmer of Claude’s secret of the portrait’s true nature had come to him shortly after the sale. It had appeared that Claude’s suspicion was gaining credibility. Since then he had made quiet inquiries and had been in contact with another art dealer in New York City. Claude did not know the dealer well; in fact, they had never met. After two years of intense investigation, Claude was not certain he had masked the realization of what he was going to see. Scruples were a dangerous article. Often, in the business of valuable art, one’s poor scruples were another’s daily trade. Claude did not even offer his true identity.
Instead, Claude invented an identity which was passed off as part of an obscure, old family in Switzerland of a vague Russian heritage.
The dealer, Everest Cooper, was sufficiently impressed and not too curious. Claude’s ability to feign the Russian accent, filtered by his natural French into English, was convincing enough to the American. Relnikov was the name Claude had given to the dealer; Ivan Relnikov. Relnikov contacted Cooper first by telephone, from Switzerland, from a rented room in the Beau Rivage Hotel in Lausanne. An art dealer was often the subject of fraud and was sometimes left holding a worthless piece. Relnikov decided Cooper would be careful enough to trace the call of a new, potential client. Relnikov’s only concession, which would be unknown to Cooper, was that he had taken a single room, not a suite on the upper floor, since the enterprise had its purpose in this single telephone call that did not last more than fifteen minutes. He revealed none of his suspicion to Cooper on the telephone. Claude was so careful with his secret about the drawing, he had not fully apprised Ghiselle of all of his suspicions.
“Mr. Cooper,” Relnikov said, with a heavy accent into the phone that was wired to its base by an uncoiled cord. This was his second contact with the art dealer. Their earlier conversation was easily a year old. “I’m so pleased to have reached you again,” he said when Cooper’s voice first came on the line. “My name is Ivan Relnikov. I am a private collector of the Italian Quattrocento period. We have spoken once before, some time ago. I have a proposal for a piece which has recently come to my attention.”
“Mr. Relnikov, I’d be pleased to help you within reason, of course.”
“Please, just call me Ivan. I am of an old fashioned Russian family, but we are not as formal as you might expect. Private, but not… what is your American sense of it, a snob?”
Cooper laughed on cue. It was exactly what Cooper was and Relnikov easily guessed it. The laugh was not genuine. Worse, it was poorly feigned.

“I understand, Ivan,” the name was emphasized, further expressing Cooper’s airs, “your inquiry will be treated with proper discretion. What is the piece in question?”
“It is a portrait of a young girl