Dionigi Cristian Lentini - The Man Who Seduced The Mona Lisa

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This is the story of the man who conquered and seduced the one who, immortalized indecipherably by Leonardo, with her gaze then seduced the world. It is the story of Tristan, a young pontifical diplomat with a mysterious and dark past who, among strategies and deceptions, between adventures and plots, between intrigues and the wars of Renaissance Italy, brilliantly carried out his missions, one after the other, using the art he knew best, the most powerful weapon: that of seduction. However, the moment came when fate commissioned him the most important undertaking … A precariat researcher from the CNR of Pisa, an expert in cryptography and blockchain, accidentally finds a strange encrypted file in an archive of a Tuscan abbey that contains an incredible, extraordinary, unpublished story … from which he can no longer detach himself. In a cold night in which History gave the general rehearsals of the Renaissance, while the lords of Italy annihilated each other for the ephemeral control of the fragile borders of their States, a young pontifical diplomat with a mysterious past preferred to try his hand at the art of seduction more than that of war. Who was he? He was no prince, leader, prelate, he had no official title … yet talking to him was equivalent to conferring directly with the Holy Father, he moved casually on the complex political chessboard of that period but never left a trace, he wrote History every day but never appeared in any of its pages … he was everywhere and yet it was as if he did not exist. From a lordship to another, from a kingdom to a republic, between strategies and deceptions, between adventures and plots, Tristan successfully completed his missions … until fate commissioned him the most important undertaking: to discover who he really was. To do this he had to decipher a letter from his real mother, kept hidden for 42 years by the most powerful caste of the time. To do so, he had to go through that incredible temporal interstice with an extraordinary and unprecedented concentration of characters (statesmen, leaders, artists, writers, engineers, scientists, navigators, courtiers, etc.) and who significantly, drastically and irreversibly have changed the course of history. To do this he had to seduce the one who Leonardo had immortalized indecipherably, and with her gaze had seduced the world. PUBLISHER: TEKTIME

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“You seem alert, boy. You are certainly wondering about this coercive transition to Rome…”

After a brief pause he continued:

“The time has not yet come for you to know. Not yet… Just know that if you are here it is for your own good, for your protection and for your future. And again for your wellbeing and that of Santa Romana Ecclesia is that you don't know. In these dark times, mindless and diabolical forces are plotting together against good and truth. Your mother knew it. That rosary around your neck is hers, never take it off, it is her protection, her blessing.

If there is something precious in you, you owe it only to her who gave birth to you with this flesh of a temporal life and with heart to eternal life. She, in her infinite maternal love, before reuniting with our Lord, entrusted you to Our Lord and since then we have kept a dark secret that when the time comes, and only then, will it be revealed to you. Veritas filia temporis .”

“Sir, please,” said Tristano in a tremulous voice, “like every good Christian I need to know the truth…” and, holding his beating heart with the strength of courage, added: “The life of the saints and above all that of Saint Augustine teach us to seek the truth, the same truth that you now hide from me.”

The prelate turned abruptly and, addressing him looking both stern but almost pleased at the adolescent's reaction, replied:

“I reply to you as Ambrogio da Milan did to the one who unworthily loves to quote: ‘No Augustine, it is not man who finds the truth, he must let the truth find him.’ And like the then young Ippona, your path towards the truth has just begun.”

Even before anyone dared to say another word, he looked at the one who had accompanied him and peremptorily concluded:

“Now you can leave.”

Tristano, dumb and dazed, was made to leave and, after a few days, refreshed and dressed according to the canons of that century-old family, by Mons Ursinorum he was transferred to the Curia following the cardinal's nephew.

Giovan Battista, despite the young man's persistent protests, never gave him any valid explanations for those mysterious misgivings (perhaps he did not know or perhaps was forced to keep silent)… but he constrained himself to fulfilling the task entrusted to him by his uncle, he started immediately by sending the orphan for the best diplomatic training, …having already had the chance to ascertain that the boy was in no way inclined to the mystical and religious life.

The latter, in the intimacy of the nights, occasionally thought of the words of that first meeting with Cardinal Latino, powerless before the many because they besieged his mind: why could he not or should he not know? Why and by whom was he to be protected? Why would his humble mother have known and confided an arcane secret to an illustrious prelate concerning him? Why was that secret so dangerous to himself and even to the entire Church?

At other times he thought of the places and people of his childhood but, now definitively entrusted to that new illustrious protector by his only relative in life, he could not miss the chance to try his hand at what he had emphatically heard of from the stories of the Dominican fathers; he therefore concentrated on his studies and soon adapted to Roman ecclesiastical circles, to the sumptuous rooms at the Curia, to the huge monuments, to the majestic palaces, to the lavish banquets…

tempora tempore, it was as if that type of life had always been familiar to him. Not a day passed when he did not have new experiences; not a day passed when he did not appropriate new knowledge for his cultural baggage; not a day passed when he did not get to know new people: princes and valets, artists and courtiers, engineers and musicians, heroes and missionaries, parasites and pusillanimous, prelates and prostitutes. A gymnasium of continuous and inexhaustible life…

Getting to know as many people as possible, from all walks of life, from all backgrounds, from every culture, from every creed, from every lineage, he entered their world, found useful information, analyzed every detail, scrutinized every human soul, … it was also the foundation of his profession. And it apparently led him to be friends with everyone. In reality, of the priceless multitude of men and women he met in his life, the diplomat could count on only a very few and true friends, three he met during those years and each of them guarded an intimate secret:

Jacopo, a Benedictine monk, fine alchemist, studied botany, concoctions, potions, and perfumes but was also the creator of excellent liqueurs and digestives. With Tristano he shared a passion for the patristic classics and the philosophical search for truth. At a very young age he had killed his teacher with an alembic, an old helpless pedophile who had repeatedly abused his pupils. The corpse, dissolved in acid, was never found.

Veronica, raised by her mother in a Venetian brothel had, at a very early age, learned the art of seduction that she had practiced in Rome for some years; her house for trysts was frequented daily by painters, men of letters, soldiers, wealthy merchants, bankers, counts, marquises and, above all, high-ranking prelates. She no longer had any family in the world, except for a twin sister who she had never known, whose mysterious existence only Tristano knew about.

Ludovico, son and assistant to the personal tailor of the Orsini family, extremely refined, creative, extravagant, extroverted, expert in the use of many different fabrics, textiles and accessories, always informed on the news and trends from the Italian and European states. His secret? … he was sexually attracted to men more than women and, although he had never dared to show it, he had an admiration and a particular affection for Tristano, which sometimes transcended the level of friendship.

As soon as he could, freed of the burdens of the Curia, between one mission and the next, the beardless diplomat happily met with his friends… After each mission, as soon as he returned to Rome, he visited them, to tell them about the adventurous dynamics lived and to bring them a souvenir.

In the summer of 1477 Cardinal Orsini became seriously ill; he immediately called his protégé who was then at the abbey of Santa Maria di Farfa. Tristano went at lightning speed but when he arrived in Rome the palace was already in mourning. On the main floor, the hall up to the bed was crowded with mourning princes and whispering notables: the high cardinal was inauspiciously dead and with him the possibility of knowing from his voice the arcane mystery that enveloped the young bureaucrat’s past.

Unfortunately, the cardinal had left nothing that concerned him. Nor did the prelate's will mention the secret he had spoken of three years earlier.

In the days following his death, Tristano fiercely and meticulously investigated the holy life of Latino, rummaging through the palace library… but nothing, he could not find anything, no relevant clue… except a single page that had been torn from an old travel diary. The document concerned an important mission of Cardinal Orsini to Barletta in AD MCDLIX. The cardinal's manuscripts were almost all written and preserved with such a maniacal perfection that the lack of a sheet, however badly cut, would have been filled and arranged promptly, if not by Latino himself, by his attentive librarians, and for a moment this attracted Tristano's suspicions; unfortunately there was nothing else that could open a trail nor a hypothesis worthy of study. He therefore decided to halt all research and return to the Curia, where he could continue his diplomatic work under the auspices of Giovanni Battista Orsini, who in the meantime had received the highly coveted appointment as apostolic protonotary.

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