Agostino Chigi—dressed in a gold-trimmed purple velvet cape and hat—held open the door as servants wheeled in a platform supporting something covered in a tarp. It was tall and rectangular. What was going on? Michelangelo glared at me as though I’d planned it, but I shrugged—I didn’t have anything to do with this—as Chigi said, “Young Raphael, here, told me of his grand plan.” He shook his head as if the truffle sauce had spoilt. “But as admirable as the lad’s intentions are, what would a competition be without a little . . . competition, eh?”

I shot Chigi a look—what are you doing? He grinned and bounced on his toes.

The pope raised his eyebrow at the mysterious, tarped platform. “Did you bring another stack of dishes to toss into the Tiber, Agostino?”

“Not today, Holiness, but like that Carnevale night, I’m very much looking forward to seeing which of these two artists you— once again—judge to be the best.”

As Chigi raised his hands over his head, I dropped my eyes. Yes, one night long ago, then-Cardinal de’ Medici had judged that I’d made the better drawing, but that was over a private commission for a private man when the cardinal was only a cardinal, and the Sistine ceiling had yet to be painted, but now he was pope with a responsibility to raise his country—Florence—up with him and . . .

Chigi clapped with his usual flair, but the servants didn’t yank down the tarp over the mystery platform as I’d expected. No. Instead, the door opened and in walked Margherita Luti, carrying my tondo of her on that old wine barrel. When the pope exhaled, “Beautiful,” Margherita claims he was referring to the painting, while I contend he was referring to her.

But Chigi wasn’t finished. He clapped again and the doors opened again and in walked Leonardo—Leonardo da Vinci!—carrying my portrait of Cardinal Alidosi. Another clap, and in came Sodoma with drawings for my Philosophy, and Cardinal Riario fanning out a stack of drawings for my Heliodorus fresco. Chigi said, “How many figures does Michelangelo have on his ceiling in the Sistine, Holiness? Two dozen? Three? A hundred? More?” As Michelangelo shoved his hands into his pockets, the people and pictures kept coming: Felice wheeled in the official portrait of her father, and Guillaume brought my Madonna of the Veil. Lorenzo Lotto carried in one of my favorite large tondos, a Madonna of Humility, painted in my private rooms during quiet moments, and the Roman banker Bindo Altoviti entered with my new portrait of him. Then, even Sarto—whom I hadn’t seen since Florence—came in with my Three Graces panel, and Andrea della Robbia with St. Catherine of Alexandria, and Ghirlandaio with my Madonna with the Goldfinch. When Evangelista walked in carrying a self-portrait I’d drawn when I wasn’t yet twenty, I laughed out loud.