“Passaporto,” he said without looking up. When I asked in my best Italian if I could leave my suitcase and come back later, he held up a finger as if I were disturbing his call, obviously personal unless he called all the hotel guests “il mio amore.” I didn’t wait for his answer, left my suitcase, and headed out.

Google Maps said San Lorenzo was five minutes away, which seemed easy enough, though I walked the wrong way before realizing I was reading the map upside down. I backtracked, rounded the domed chapel in Piazza di Madonna one more time, and followed the route, which led me alongside a series of stacked, ochre structures, then past a long expanse of ragged stone wall with stairs leading to blind arches, which ended at the corner. Piazza San Lorenzo was open and mostly empty, except for a few tourists and a couple of monks in long, brown smocks.

I tried to take it in, realizing what I had passed and where I stood were all part of one vast complex.

Directly ahead, the sand-colored basilica was rough and unfinished-looking, its three arched entrances with heavy wooden doors, all of them shut. To the left of the church was a smaller arch and a dark alleyway, which led me into the famous cloister of San Lorenzo, a place I had only seen in pictures.

A few steps in and it was as if I were entering a dream, the square garden with its hexagonal-shaped hedges and two-story loggia, classic and harmonious, all of it designed by my favorite Renaissance architect, Brunelleschi. For a moment, I tried to imagine I was an artist of the High Renaissance and not some struggling New York painter who taught art history to pay the bills.

I sighed, my breath a fog in the late-morning chill, everything in the courtyard covered in a silvery frost. Three monks in long, woolen smocks were wrapping plants with burlap while I shivered in my thin leather jacket. I hadn’t thought it would be so cold in Florence. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about much after receiving the email.

Dear Mr. Perrone,

One of Professor Antonio Guggliermo’s last requests was that I get in touch with you regarding what may have been your great-grandfather’s journal. The professor had planned some sort of publication about the journal, which he claimed would be a “revelation.” Sadly, his sudden death prevented him from ever writing it.

The journal, along with the professor’s books and papers, has been donated to the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy. I was the one to catalog his works and placed the journal in a box labeled “High Renaissance Masters.”

To see Professor Guggliermo’s documents, you will need to obtain a cultural permesso, which should not be difficult.

If you request the papers, I suggest you do not mention anything about the journal and would prefer that you kept my name out of the request.

Sincerely,

Luigi Quattrocchi

[email protected]

I had contacted Quattrocchi right away, and he’d emailed back sounding serious and sane, assuring me of the journal’s existence though he couldn’t guarantee its authenticity.