For the last year, I’d been working only on my preparatory drawings for that altarpiece, but after that exchange with my new duke, I decided it was finally time to start painting. (On which side of the great disegno e colore debate do you fall? I fall squarely on the side of disegno: a painting is not a painting without deep thought, detailed drawings, flawless preparation, so don’t ridicule me for taking a year to prepare. A year is nothing.) I’d used as the foundation for my design an obscure engraving of an Entombment scene by Mantegna—a group of figures carrying a crucified Jesus to his tomb, Mary fainting, three crosses on a hill in the background. The Venetian master had died earlier that year, so using one of his paintings as inspiration seemed an appropriate tribute. I also used my knowledge of Perugino to balance my composition, my studies of Leonardo to push my darks darker and my lights lighter, and my love of Botticelli to make my figures rise and fall in a rhythm more like a dance than a funeral march. And yes, I borrowed from Michelangelo, too: the female figure to the right, twisting to hold up a fainting Mary, was indeed influenced by the Madonna in his Doni Tondo. It’s not as if I tried to disguise it. So yes, I openly built on previous works by other masters, but that doesn’t mean that painting isn’t my own.

The day of the unveiling was tragically overcast—what’s worse than revealing a painting when there’s no light? But as I pulled off the tarp to reveal it, I was pleased to see that my colors—scarlet, emerald, lapis, lemon—shone like stained glass on a sunny day. When the widow Baglioni saw Christ, she reached shaking fingers up to caress his face because—you see—I’d used the widow Baglioni’s face for the Madonna, and for Christ, her son’s.

That’s when she looked up at me, her eyes shining with gratitude. “Grazie, for making my son beautiful again,” she said, squeezing my fingers. “When I get home, I’m writing to the pope to tell him that he’s missing out on the greatest painter on the peninsula.”

I replied with proper courtly manners: “That’s unnecessary, my lady, I only—”

“It’s most certainly necessary. He’s a fool to not hire you, and my pope is no fool.”

A few weeks later, papal summons finally in hand, I snuck back into Urbino at night—careful not to alert the duke—to pick up a few supplies from my father’s studio. Evangelista looked determinedly out the window, not anywhere near me, as he spoke another hard truth: “You can’t go to Rome. You’re too nice for Rome.”

I smiled and said, “Ma dai. Rome can’t be as bad as they say. Can it?”