Luna looked at the screen behind which her shift and day skirt hung. At least she didn’t often have to dress so grandly. Today it was necessary for the painting; the gown was a mark of her father’s status and wealth. The thick slew of her dark hair had been styled into a tight knot and covered with a finely webbed net sprinkled with small pearls. A single curl dropped lightly from either side of her central parting and drew the eye towards the heavy gold and garnet cross hanging at her neck. The hairpins pinched her scalp. Luna breathed through the discomfort and the twist of hair that rested against her cheekbone wobbled. Every element of her portrait must reflect the Fusilis’ position in Florence society. Her father moved in influential circles now amongst those learned men steeped in Greek and Latin, who kept company with his patron, the banker Lorenzo de’ Medici. These were the humanist scholars who spanned Florentine intellectual life.

So the morning inched forward. Noises drifted in on the breeze off the Arno: the flap of sails and the distant sound of boatmen’s voices. Luna recognised them as Pisan natives by the hard bite at the end of their shouted words. She wanted to turn to the window and watch their progress. They’d be pushing their barges to reach the docks swiftly and offload their sacks of English wool before nightfall, when the city gates closed. It was only a few hundred yards through the marshland to the eastern wall and the bend of river where the last of the season’s trading barges made their way towards the docks, yet she was as good as a world away.

Candles marked the four corners of the monk’s cell, a luxury approved by the prior so the painter could use the golden hues to best effect in Luna’s image. The candlelight traced the line of her long and aquiline nose and the downward angle of her face accentuated her smooth, high forehead. The tall wicks flickered and twisted. She lifted her nose to the familiar smell of mire on the air and knew it as a sign of warmer weather and receding waters. Her father’s factory manager would be anxiously watching the tidal flow and pushing the workers hard, for washing, fulling and dyeing cloth all needed a plentiful water supply and each week’s dropping tides brought the threat of drought and lost earnings.