He shook his head. “I’ve told the pope over and over again that painting isn’t my art, but . . .,” and he marched off. I had to jog to keep up again. “I also said casting bronze wasn’t my art, but then I cast his equestrian up in Bologna, so he doesn’t want to hear that again.” I’d seen his bronze equestrian, when passing through Bologna: Pope Julius II, looking more like a military leader than a spiritual one, sitting proudly atop a great stallion, cast in warm bronze with undertones of pink and yellow. The horse was surprisingly realistic—Michelangelo isn’t exactly known as a great animal lover, is he?—but it was Pope Julius II’s fierce glare that astounded me: furrowed brow, flared nose, intense eyes . . . Holy Mary, the things Michelangelo can accomplish, even when he says something is not his art. “And now Bramante, your countryman”—Michelangelo made a fist and pushed his thumb out between his index and middle finger in a lewd gesture, “flipping the fig” at Bramante—“has convinced His Holiness that unless I paint that ceiling, I don’t get my marble. My marble that I quarried with my own hands out of the hills of Carrara; my marble that sings to me daily; my marble, every piece already named. Paint a masterpiece, and I can return to my ‘little stones.’ But anything short of a miracle, and Bramante walks away with my marble. All of it.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “I’ll help you. I don’t know how, but, at least we both agree that you can’t paint that ceiling . . .”

“But you can?” His anger had turned hot again, fast as a flame catching boiling oil. His eyes flashed, and his tone was mocking when he said, “‘That ceiling is far too long, far too high, far too curved, far too awkward for you, Michel, so leave it to the great Raphael!’”

The great Raphael? I didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended. I said, “You can’t paint something you hate. You’ll ruin it.”

“You think I don’t know that I’m being set up to fail. That I’m more likely to die falling off that scaffolding than I am to paint a masterpiece, but I’ll do anything to return to my marble. Anything.”

“You only have to convince the pope to change his mind. Bolster his ego. He who hath less power must have honey in the mouth.” Off his confounded look, I added, “Mother Mary, you have to learn to play the game, Michelangelo.”