It’s difficult for me now to separate my current feelings about the papal apartments from those early moments, but here’s what I remember about that day: warm golden light flooding in through large windows overlooking the south end of the Belvedere Courtyard, still under construction at the time; walls and ceilings sanded down, prepped for paint; wooden scaffolding—the standard sort, nothing inventive like in the Sistine—standing on the floor of each room, rising up toward groin-vaulted ceilings. Up on those scaffoldings, painters frescoed those ceilings, while on the floors assistants ground pigments, mixed intonaco, organized brushes and tools . . . “So, the rumors are true,” came a voice that rowed the oars of my memory. I looked up. Peering over the scaffolding were familiar eyebrows coming together in a sharp V over tiny eyes: my old teacher, Pietro Perugino. I recognized the others, too, poking over scaffolding and around doors: Luca Signorelli (Tuscan master of perspective), Lorenzo Lotto (Venetian captain of color), Guillaume de Marcillat (French stained-glass expert), Bartolomeo Suardi (known as Bramantino because he was an ardent follower of Bramante), and maestro Pinturicchio (the oldest and most revered of them all). I bowed low, but not so low anyone could take it as mocking, and said, “It’s a privilege to work with you again, maestro Perugino. It’s a privilege to work with all of you again.”

“Raphael,” Bramante called, waving me into a second room. “You’ll help paint this ceiling, in the pope’s library, alongside Giovanni Bazzi.”

That’s when one of the strangest men I’ve ever seen descended that scaffolding. He wore purple-and-green platform shoes; violet tights woven with silver thread; and a cape patterned in orange and a tone of teal that was so sweet it hurt my teeth, all topped off with a hat of ostrich feathers. Not even Jester Dominic would be caught in his casket wearing such fripperies. The strange man had a wild tangle of black hair thick as an uncut mulberry tree and eyes oval as eggs. He leapt off the last few feet of scaffolding, slipped clumsily on the tarped floor, and swept into an ostentatious bow. At first, I thought the black raven perched on his shoulder was stuffed, but then it blinked a yellow eye at me. It was a live bird. (He walked around with that bird on his shoulder all the time. And he doesn’t only keep birds, chickens, and cats in his house like other painters, but donkeys, badgers, and a creature he calls a monkey—it’s the strangest animal you’ve ever seen, long tail, big ears. He used to smuggle that thing into the apartments until it left paw prints in the fresco, so I made him leave it at home.) That first day in the papal apartments, he smiled and chirped, “Buongiorno! Mi chiamo Sodoma.”