Looking back at the bonfire that night, I decided that’s what I would do, too. I wouldn’t paint scenes of angst or wretchedness or violence; the world had enough of those. No. I would paint picture after picture of beauty, so much beauty that no fire could ever consume it all. And maybe, just maybe, if I painted enough, then the world would bend toward my pictures and become as perfect as it should be. And if I could paint so well that I bent the world—even if only a little—toward beauty, then I would keep my promise to my father, for I, Raphael Santi, would indeed be the greatest painter in all of history.

Chapter II

Chapter II

Summer 1504

Città di Castello

Raphael?”

I heard her, yes, but pretended as if I didn’t. I tugged both sleeves away from my hands, rolled my right wrist four times—uno, due, tre, quattro—dipped my brush into the paint, wiped the bristles twice on each side against the rim of the clay pot, and leaned in to add another touch of raw umber to my panel of the Three Graces.

“Raphael.”

I waved my hand as if shooing away a fly. My painting of the three nude female Graces from Greek mythology dancing in a circle was my most graceful painting yet: soft lines, glowing skin, curving bodies, but . . .

When I was six years old or so, while my mother and sister were up at the house readying the noontime meal, I was down in the studio, like always, with my father when he told me, “We’re part of a competition, Rafa. A competition to reach perfection.” I was sitting on his paint-splattered stool as he leaned in talking in an excited whisper. I leaned in, too, as he delivered the secrets of his trade. My trade. “All painters—maestro to apprentice—know that it’s possible to create a perfect painting. But guess what.” His voice sounded so urgent that it made my heart tap the speed of vermillion. “No one has done it yet. And do you know what that means? It means, we might be the ones to get there first. Now let’s see if we’ve done it.” He took me off the stool and led me toward his latest picture of the Holy Family: Joseph looking down on Mary cradling baby Jesus. It was beautiful, all of my father’s paintings were beautiful, but . . .

“Not perfect,” my father sighed. “Not yet.”

Fifteen years later, there I was, sitting in front of yet another painting—this time my painting—silently repeating, Not perfect. Not yet.

“Rafa.”