I pulled out my father’s old paintbrush and began to twirl, but on that night, it gave me no comfort, and when my fingers missed a beat, I dropped it. I remember hearing it clatter against the floor, but I didn’t bother to pick it up. I just let it roll away.

My hands started shaking first, then my chin, then my entire body. I’d always been certain that my designs were better than Michelangelo’s. My lines. My colors. My brushwork. All were better. I’d worked at painting all day, every day, since I was a child, and yet . . . I’d always told myself that he only won because he raged more, cursed more, demanded more, but now . . . Now . . . Michelangelo hadn’t won because he was louder. He didn’t win because of Florentine politics or because he had supporters close to the pope or because the ceiling was bigger, taller, grander, did he? No. Michelangelo won because he was better.

I hadn’t kept my promise to my father, and I never would.

That’s when I looked—really looked—up at that Madonna. Before seeing his Pietà, I’d always imagined that it would be Jesus’s dead body that would dislodge me. I’d always feared facing his white skin, limp limbs, lolling head. I’d feared that upon facing that image of marble death, I would feel so much pain that I would throw myself off some cliff into the eternal blackness. I’d feared it for so long, that’s why I hadn’t been able to face it before.

But even though I expected that level of grief—welcomed it even, hoping that it would fuel my anger at Michelangelo, anger at the world, anger at myself—when I looked up into that Madonna’s face that night, grief was only a distant echo, and what overcame me was the Holy Mother’s sweetness, her steadiness, her serenity. Jesus was no more, so he could no longer carry the load. It was up to her.

Michelangelo’s statue had sprung out of a long tradition of Pietàs in painting and sculpture, but he hadn’t copied anyone else. He hadn’t fallen into tropes or traps. He’d found a moment pure and real, and in that moment, he’d found life, even in the face of death.

It had long been my habit to pull out my sketchbook at times like this and copy, to capture a thing on a page, push it further, make it better, but . . . I don’t know. I’d been chasing everyone else for so long—my father, Masaccio, Perugino, Leonardo, Michelangelo . . . I’d been so focused on catching them all, besting them all, making them all better than they’d made themselves, that I’d . . . I’d . . .