Back then, I thought that since everything was perfect, it would stay that way: Margherita and I were together; I was the toast of the Vatican; the pope was happily off fighting his war; the Church was whole. Now, I know that when everything seems perfect—perhaps especially when everything seems perfect—you must appreciate it because somewhere around some corner, far in the future or just up ahead, things won’t always be so good.

Chapter XXXVII

Chapter XXXVII

Spring 1511

I believed my painting had bent the world, if not all the way to perfect, then close.

Priests, pilgrims, and aristocrats who’d reveled in wickedness and wine all winter now filed reverentially through the papal apartments to stand before my fresco of Philosophy. Cardinals offered me commissions to paint and nieces to wed. Chigi returned from war. He spoke briefly of his ears still whistling from exploding cannons and his eyes unable to stop seeing the piles and piles of dead. He also told me about the expansive encampments of French soldiers—“hill after hill of campfires, milling men, French flags. There were two, three, sometimes ten thousand Frenchmen, how many in total, I can’t guess”—but then he brushed off those stories with a flick of his fingers: “I’d rather disappear into your perfect paintings, Rafa.” After his return, Imperia and Margherita spent more and more time at his villa. Therefore, so did I, and my ideas for his frescoes came fast as fire. I started with a celebration of the mythological Galatea, daughter of a sea god. Galatea’s love for a Sicilian shepherd eventually ended in that shepherd’s death at the hands of a jealous Cyclops, but for a time, Galatea and her dear shepherd were young and in love, not a care in the world. That’s how Chigi and I both felt in those days: our loves might be forbidden, they might be dangerous, they might have us on a road to ruin, but for now we thought only of our seas of passion. For that great fresco, I drew cherubs and dolphins, tritons and sea nymphs, sea gods and seashells frolicking in the ocean under fluffy clouds, an orgy of Roman decadence.

Even Michelangelo seemed to bend a little. When he returned to Rome, he was buoyant with triumphant stories of his brother overcoming illness, his ride up to Bologna to demand a meeting with the pope, and the pope, in turn, demanding that the papal treasurer pay him. “And when he sees this painting,” he said with a shockingly friendly demeanor as he stared up at my Philosophy wall, “the pope won’t be able to argue with putting you in the Sistine, and letting me go back to work on the tomb. Me marble, you paint.”