A spark of interest lit Botticelli’s sunken eyes. “In my experience, beautiful women enjoy being immortalized in paint.”

His gallantry was rusty, but genuine. “Well, I don’t,” I confessed, tugging my little pet goat away before he could start nibbling the painter’s sleeve. “It’s the dullest thing imaginable. And you are entirely to blame, Maestro Botticelli!”

“Me?”

“Your Birth of Venus, rather.” I tucked his hand through my elbow, guiding him after my Pope, who had broken ahead of his meandering entourage and was making for his private apartments with brisk strides. “I was only twelve when you completed the painting, but everyone was talking of it. Venus on her seashell, and who was she smiling at, and was it true the model was Marco Vespucci’s wife Simonetta. After that there wasn’t a girl alive who didn’t dream of being immortalized for the ages in paint.”

Immortalized by some famous painter who would capture your face for the ages as Venus or the Virgin, and of course be in love with you as well, and the romance of it all was just entrancing, especially if you were twelve. The reality of sitting for a portrait was quite different: hours of shivering in a cold studio, getting a crick in your neck from holding your head at some exquisitely uncomfortable angle, and being chided by the painter, who was generally far too busy trying to match your skin tone in paint to even think about falling in love with you. I told Maestro Botticelli so, and he laughed.

“Madonna Simonetta complained of my cold studio too,” he agreed, a faint spark of laughter in his eye, and I liked him. I wondered if he regretted the decision not to paint anything more sinful than an Annunciation—maybe it had been the right decision for his conscience, but certainly not his prosperity. His hose and cloak were far too threadbare for this winter cold, and he looked haggard as though he hadn’t had enough meals.

Well, whether he painted me or not, I’d see he went back to Florence with a full purse. And a new set of clothes!

Poor Pinturicchio looked about to faint as he saw the stooped figure that followed the Holy Father into the Sala dei Misteri. “Maestro—” he stammered, and there was a great deal of bowing and complimenting and demurring over the finished frescoes, and Pinturicchio turned quite white when it became clear he was to work in front of his idol. “Surely His Holiness would rather sit for the Resurrection another day . . .”