When I entered Piazza della Signoria—the same square where that bonfire had once burned—I once again faced a towering foe. I counted my steps as I approached. At least this time the foe was only a statue. Marble carving and painting are different, aren’t they? Whereas statues naturally have weight—they’re physical, in-the-round things—paintings must rely on tricks of the eye to achieve such weight and realism. Painters and sculptors don’t practice the same art. No. Let him be the greatest marble carver in history; I could still be the greatest painter. And thank Madonna because as I walked around that statue, I wondered how could anyone make even a back feel so alive.

When I was young, I used to have to sit for hours at interminable court dinners. The duke would wave out course after course of rich food that made me sleepy, and Jester Dominic would tell a story or there would be dancing—I was too young to join in—and I would have to sit next to my mother and wait for my father to wheel out his paintings and read his poetry. I adored—adore—my father, but his poems were long. My mother would grab my twitching fingers and hold them still with a scolding look. Whatever I felt was to be sealed in a jar and not even used in my paintings.

I had no idea whether that sculptor had ever been taught to cloak his emotions in courtly manners, but I did know that he had put all of his energy, his passion, his . . . his . . . whatever it was, into that stone. And that’s the moment when I decided to settle in Florence, so I, too, could learn to bend the world, not in the sculptor’s direction, but in mine. But as I sat there copying that statue, I couldn’t help but silently repeat: Thank the Blessed Virgin Mary that sculptor is not a painter.

Chapter IV

Chapter IV

Autumn 1504

How dare they commission a lowly stonecutter for such an important painting,” bellowed Davide Ghirlandaio as he barged into the tavern. Ghirlandaio was the most foul-tempered painter in all of Florence. (Don’t blame him. How nice would you be if—after your brother had been dead for ten years—you were still considered the inferior painter of the two?)