“I hope this isn’t your way of telling me you’re leaving, too, maestro. It feels as if Florence has been taken away piece by piece, and you’re the last scrap of the cartoon. If you leave, there’ll be nothing left to copy.”

“This isn’t about me. This is about getting your irresistible charms down to Rome.”

I began picking a bit of pink paint out from under one of my fingernails. “Beh, I hear awful things about Rome. Dangerous, dirty, competitive, cardinals as likely to poison as bless you. I-I don’t want to go.”

“Ah . . .” Leonardo’s voice lilted as if he’d discovered some new kind of beetle. “So, that’s why you’re still here, eh? His Holiness hasn’t invited you.”

I rubbed hard at the pink paint, but it wouldn’t come loose. “Not yet.”

“Artistic preeminence will be won in Rome under this pontiff,” said Leonardo. “It’s up to you to make the pope bring you to Rome.”

“But, maestro, he’s pope. How can I make him do anything?”

“Oh, my Young Sparrow, I can’t tell you that. After all, no bird can learn to fly for another.”

Chapter VIII

Chapter VIII

Spring 1508

Urbino

Anytime I think about the death of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino since before I was born, I feel guilty. He was a good man—patron to my father who taught me how to bow before a merchant, duke, or king—but did I mourn him properly? No. When I heard the news of his death, I smiled. You see, it was common knowledge that the duke’s successor was a young man by the name of Francesco Maria della Rovere. That’s right, I said della Rovere. My new duke was nephew to Giuliano della Rovere, Pope Julius II, head of the Church for nearly five years by then. If anyone could secure me an invitation to work in the Vatican, it was the pope’s own nephew. By that point, Michelangelo had been working for the pope for about three years, while I, at age twenty-five, had been trying to create something good enough to attract papal attention: portraits, cabinet doors, devotionals, altarpieces, but although patrons claimed they adored me, my star had yet to shoot south across Rome. It was time to stop relying on paint and use my political connections to learn to fly.

The first thing I saw upon dismounting in Urbino was a servant carrying one of my father’s paintings out of the palace as mindlessly as a bucket of bathwater. The staff hadn’t even waited for the old duke’s funeral before starting to clear his things out of the palace. Rugs, silver, chairs, all marched out in a line. I know those servants recognized me, so how could none of them offer my father’s paintings to me? “Where are you going with that?” I asked.