Luka is a sort of step-brother to Agnolo, the male whore who has stolen Donatello’s heart, but he hates Agnolo for all the trouble he causes. He has a wife, a former prostitute, and four children, two of whom are “carried off” by the Black Pest, a terrible disease that seems always to be lurking in the background in fifteenth century Italy.

He is himself an artisan, but he also keeps the account books for the enterprise and handles other details that Donatello is too busy to handle himself. The Medici Boy is told in the first-person voice of one Luka Matteo, a worker in Donatello’s workshop ( bottega). (The penalty for each conviction is more severe than the one before.) Sodomy is, of course, a terrible sin and a crime in Florence, referred to as the “Florentine vice.” Men who engage in the forbidden practice are subject to severe punishment, including imprisonment, fines, or even death. He exerts a kind of spell over Donatello, a physical attraction that develops (for Donatello) into an all-consuming passion. (Donatello is, of course, a real person, while Agnolo is a fictional construct.) For all his physical appeal (some people don’t see it at all), Agnolo is a trouble-maker. He prowls the streets at night, looking for men who will pay him to perform sex acts. In The Medici Boy, John L’Heureux has written a purely fictional account of Donatello’s creation of his bronze statue of David and his obsessive and destructive love for the model, one Agnolo Mattei. He looks like anything other than a slayer of giants.

He is an almost androgynous figure with long, curling hair and a slight frame. We see David’s foot resting on Goliath’s head, a sword in his right hand, his left hand on his left hip and his left knee canted out. He shows David as a beautiful, delicately nude youth, a shepherd boy who has just slain the giant Goliath.

His bronze statue of David is among his greatest works and one of the most famous works of the Italian Renaissance. He lived from 1386 to 1466 in the politically volatile city state of Florence. The Medici Boy ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Koppĭonato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (better known as Donatello) was one of the most gifted sculptors and artisans of Renaissance Italy.

The Medici Boy by John L'Heureux