“So, why, Uncle, do you sound happy about that?”

The pope replied, “Because it was intentional.”

I exchanged raised eyebrows with Cardinal Riario, and even Michelangelo looked bewildered when he said, “Che?”

The pope turned his eyes back to the ceiling. “After the fall of man with Eve eating the apple and the expulsion from Eden, looking so ghastly there”—he pointed to the single panel combining both the Temptation and the Expulsion—“that’s what happened to humanity, isn’t it? We devolved into messy, awful, ugly chaos. Michelangelo is making a perceptive theological statement about man’s desperate need for God’s grace and salvation.”

Michelangelo’s lips parted, and he—along with everyone else in the chapel—looked back up at the ceiling, and I swear, all— even Michelangelo—exhaled a collective “Huh.”

The pope went on. “But now that we’re moving down the ceiling, backward in time, away from the fall, into the creation”—the pope gestured to the half of the ceiling prepped for paint with white plaster—“we’ll move out of chaos and into some new Michelangelean insight.” The pope grinned—a big, mawkish grin—and bounced on his toes.

My duke said, “I don’t mean to argue, Uncle”—(Then don’t argue, I wanted to scream)—“but Eve was created before the Fall, and look at her, she’s . . . she’s . . . Is that even a woman?”

We all looked up at the panel of the Creation of Eve. We could already see that it would eventually be the center panel of the entire ceiling. (Have you ever wondered why the Creation of Eve is in the center of that ceiling, not the Creation of Adam? I’m not surprised that someone would put Woman at the center of creation, but Michelangelo? He’s not exactly known for his love of women, is he?) In that panel, Eve rose up out of Adam’s side with thick legs and bulging biceps. She was, as the duke had intimated, awkward, ugly . . .

“Why are you complaining?” Michelangelo said. “I gave her long hair.”

Cardinal de’ Medici, standing near me, muttered, “I knew I should’ve insisted that he see at least one naked woman when we were young.”

“The point is, Uncle,” the duke said, “that panel—before the Fall—is as ugly as the rest.”

The pope hardly had to pause before finding his counter. “Yes, that’s because Eve was the cause of the Fall. Woman is the mother of all chaos. She should be ugly.”

Felice della Rovere expelled a strangled yelp but quickly recovered her composure.

The pope went on. “The point is, nephew, Michelangelo will complete this ceiling, while your countryman, Raphael”—the holy eyes didn’t dart to me, but stayed on the duke—“now that he’s finished with my library, will begin work on a second room in my apartments.”

I exhaled. At least, I wasn’t being fired, excommunicated, or hanged. Not yet.