The rain was coming down even harder now, my cheap umbrella not doing much. I ducked inside the nearest building, one with a nondescript stone facade, and shook myself off like a dog. It took a moment to see it was a church, Santa Maria del Carmine. The name rang a bell, but I wasn’t sure why until I saw the sign for the Brancacci Chapel—a place that housed one of the most famous Renaissance painting cycles, one I had taught for years and loved. It had been high on the list of art I wanted to see in Florence, just one more place I had forgotten about.

I paid my ten-euro entrance fee, headed up a short flight of stairs, and emerged in what I would only describe as heaven. The fresco cycle filled the small chapel, dazzling even from a distance. A few steps up and through an open sculpted gate of gray-white marble and the cycle wrapped around me like old-time CinemaScope: two levels of paintings illustrating the life of Saint Peter, fully human figures with faces so expressively painted they appeared to be speaking, color that reflected the hues of Florence, shades of sienna and ochre, pale rose and lush Indian reds against emerald greens and soft blues, everything about the fresco cycle more beautiful and moving than I had imagined.

The artist was Masaccio, a Renaissance rock star dead at twenty-seven, that dangerous age for any great rock star. I knew he had only painted a few of the fresco scenes in the cycle, but the most famous ones, and they stood out from the others.

On the upper level to my left, The Tribute Money depicted Christ and the apostles confronted by a tax collector—the only guy among them without a halo! It got me thinking about taxes and the obvious losses I’d be deducting for my close-to-nonexistent art career. I thought about my great-grandfather’s money troubles too and the fact that after he’d stolen the painting for Valfiero and Chaudron, who undoubtedly sold the forgeries for huge sums of money, they had little use for him. How, I wondered, could a man like Vincent, humble and without contacts, possibly sell such a famous painting? So much had already happened to him—Simone’s death, losing his son, betrayed by Valfiero and Chaudron. And yet I had come to believe in him and believed he could do it.

I glanced up at the right side of Masaccio’s painting. It showed Saint Peter pulling money out of the mouth of a fish, one of Christ’s miracles. What my great-grandfather needed: a miracle. Perhaps what I was looking for too. The quiet was shattered by a German couple, chatting loudly and taking pictures.

I headed back down the few chapel stairs; I wanted a view of the fresco cycle from a distance. The rain must have stopped, because there was light streaking in from a window at the far end of the church. Other than that, the place was dark and cordoned off to visitors, though I saw something move, a man who quickly disappeared into a side room. I headed back up the stairs, waited for the Germans to get bored and leave, and was soon alone again, staring up at Masaccio’s Adam and Eve. Adam nude, his face buried in his hands, Eve hiding her nakedness with her hands and howling with grief and shame, everything about the anguished pair conveying absolute despair. The way I had pictured Vincent, cast out and riddled with guilt at losing his beloved Simone and his son.