“Thief!” Michelangelo said, summiting the scaffolding. He’s . . . what? Eight years older than I am, but substantially more of a presence, isn’t he? That day, he was wearing a dirty gray tunic (it might’ve been blue at one time, but it looked gray) and clunky brown work boots appropriate for street cleaners who wade through when the sewage is calf-high. He had a mass of ratty black hair and coarse beard—had he offended the local barber?— but aside from his stench, the most striking thing about him was his powerful wave of . . . what is it, exactly? Passion, anger, fear? Father Ficino had a name for it, didn’t he? (Of course, you’ve heard of him. Humanist scholar from the Medici gardens? Yes, that Ficino.) The old priest used to call it, what? Terribilità? Whatever it is, it’s always there, and it’s always unbridled. I’d heard rumors of Michelangelo’s temper, but I hadn’t expected him to be quite so terrifying up close. Is it the way that vein throbs in his forehead or how his deformed nose (broken during a scuffle with a jealous studio apprentice, I’ve heard) turns red with rage or is it the way his muscles twitch or maybe it’s his glare . . . ? What is so terrifying about him? That day, it was probably that heavy marble hammer cocked over his head, one strike of which could take off my nose.

“Um, Santi?” Soderini called from the floor. “Now might be the time to run.”

The first blow of that marble hammer knocked my sketchbook out of my hands. Sheets went flying. I grabbed a few falling pages as another swipe breezed by my ear. I ducked another swing and scampered down the scaffolding. I took one fleeting look back toward that drawing, but Michelangelo was already down, too. Hammer raised, he charged again. I barely escaped with my head, but my heart was another matter entirely.

Whenever I copy a Leonardo, I have a sense of where the master began and where he’s going. After copying his portrait of the silk merchant’s wife, for example, I developed a feel for his delicacy of line, subtlety of shadows, and the way his strokes bring breath to his subject. I never would’ve said it back then—lest someone think I’d been turned by the moon—but the Master from Vinci was within my reach. Michelangelo’s drawing, however, was unlike anything I’d ever seen. His figures were sculptural, exploding backward, sideways, and forward with such force that it felt as if they were bursting through the picture plane. Leonardo always aimed toward beauty—something that I instinctively under-stand—but Michelangelo was aiming at . . . I don’t know what. Something quite different.

And I had no idea how to best it.

Chapter VI

Chapter VI