I’ll never forget Pope Julius’s gasp when he first laid eyes on my Expulsion of Heliodorus fresco. He took a step forward and then—I’m not exaggerating—His Holiness dropped to his knees. Everyone else followed his lead, including me, and then the pope said, “As God sent those angels to rescue his temple from that thief, He sent a miracle to save my peninsula from the French. You did it, Raphael. As you painted the world, so it became.”

The crowd surged, clapping, praising, hugging, lifting me into the air like that billowing angel from my painting.

A few days later, Felice came in, carrying a baby boy, and as she stood in front of my fresco, she said, “My father says I should thank you for the birth of my son.”

I cocked one brow. “That’s not my doing.”

“He says that as you painted miracles on his walls, so they arrived in the world.” She tipped the baby toward me. His nose looked like the pope’s.

“Your father exaggerates.”

“Blasphemy,” she winked.

For the next several days, all of Rome celebrated the unexpected victory against the French. The pope paraded through the streets on a stallion like a great military leader. Three thousand Romans carried torches, children threw flowers, poets called out verses, choirs sang, cannons blew off the ramparts of the Castel, alms were delivered to the poor, criminals were released from prison.

I didn’t see Michelangelo even once during those days. The rumor was that he’d locked himself up his scaffolding to work, but it felt as if my Heliodorus wall had expelled him from the Vatican, same as it had expelled the French from our land. The only talk of Michelangelo in those days wasn’t about his ceiling or his marble or his great art, but his identity as a Florentine. The Florentines had sided with the French. The Florentines had tried to depose the pope. The Florentines were traitors. Felice started whispering, and people started asking, what was Michelangelo putting up on the Sistine ceiling? Why wouldn’t he let anyone see it? Perhaps the pope should order it torn down and repainted with a “sea of Raphael’s miracles.” That’s not me talking. That’s what they said.

And through it all, the pope kept me—me!—by his side. “I need you to paint my portrait,” he told me during another festa at Chigi’s—giraffe races, peacock parades, ribbon dancers, saffron soup, roasted duck. “I need the people to love me. In short, I need another miracle. And so, I need you.” He offered his ring.

And I kissed it.