I’ve changed my mind. Please don’t tell Michelangelo—or anyone—my story. He prefers his version, and it’s more important to him than it is to me. But as long as we did spend this time together, I hope that you learned something from the telling, even if only to never use a Florentine plaster mix when frescoing in Rome. I learned a few things, myself. Mainly, that I’m going to stop taking offense when people assume I’m as perfect as my paintings. It means that I made it all look so easy that I bent the world’s image of me. Besides, my father didn’t ask me to be the most popular, most talked about, most feared painter in the world. Did he?

I could keep talking all night, as you now well know, but my wife will be home soon, and she deserves a hero’s welcome, don’t you think? She’d scold me if word of our union were confirmed— she’s very protective of my career—so I hope you’ll keep that part to yourself.

But please don’t let all of my requests for secrecy stop you from telling Michelangelo about my Transfiguration here. It is, after all, the altarpiece he’s trying to best these days. So, go ahead, tell him about Jesus rising off the mountaintop, the apostles falling down in wonder, the gesticulating crowd, the boy cured of demons, the colors, foreshortening, shadows, drama . . . I’ll even give you a few sketches of my own to take to him. I dare him to try and best it. I haven’t seen him since that day in the old Borgia apartments. He left Rome soon after, and I’ve stayed here, managing the papal program and St. Peter’s. (No wonder Bramante was always so irritable; St. Peter’s is a weight.) So, if you do see him, please tell him that I hope he can tear himself away from his marble long enough to come back to Rome for the unveiling of our new altarpieces, side by side, as the pope has requested. I’d dearly hate to miss the opportunity to go head-to-head with him once again in the halls of the Vatican.

Coda

Coda

A few weeks later, before his final altarpiece, The Transfiguration, could be unveiled, Raphael Santi of Urbino died on April 6, 1520, at the age of thirty-seven. Giorgio Vasari, the father of art history, tells us that Raphael fell ill after a particularly exhausting bout of lovemaking. He died on the same day as he was born—Good Friday—and was buried in the Pantheon. Raphael’s death rocked Rome. The outpouring of grief for the young, handsome painter of perfection rivaled the passing of popes.