The way Michelangelo shook his head told me that he had not intended on ruining that painting. It really had taken him three months to notice that mold. But how? That paint screeched so loudly that my ears hurt. Perhaps he thought it was supposed to screech like that; perhaps it reminded him of his talking marble. That vein over Michelangelo’s left eye thumped teal. “I’ve told you that I’m not a Matthew-Mark-Luke-and-John painter!” (He did not say the Gospels there.)

“It’s horrendous, Your Holiness,” sputtered Bramante. “And not only has his paint molded, but he threw out my designs without permission. He’s disrespectful. He should be . . .”

The pope sniffed. “We gave him permission to throw out those designs.”

My ears perked. Michelangelo had been allowed to throw out Bramante’s designs?

“The original designs were terrible.” Michelangelo bit his knuckle like a curse. “A tedious pattern of geometric shapes and figures. There was no story, no feeling, no glory. This will be better. It will be . . .”

“Your Holiness,” interrupted Bramante. “This fresco is awful, proof that you must return this wretched Florentine to Florence. Right now. Without my marble.”

As His Holiness looked up at the ceiling, Michelangelo kicked papers off the scaffolding. “Michelangelo, we . . .” The pope sounded tired. “Bramante is right, we can’t have this on our ceiling. This is . . . We fear we have no choice but to dismiss . . .”

For years, I used to stay awake at night repainting that moment in my head, not composing it as it was, but as it should’ve been. What might my life have been if only I’d quoted Plutarch or Bonaventure and dashed off a drawing of Adam’s Creation? “Magnifico, Raffaello, eccolo!” the pope would’ve said. “The ceiling is all yours.”