“Perhaps I can read Your Holiness’s correspondence out loud?” I cajoled. “Save your eyes and Maestro Pinturicchio’s artistic sensibilities—” I sank onto a velvet stool at Rodrigo’s side and began reading the latest missive from Florence, as Pinturicchio sketched in quick motions—Drop the eyes, Your Holiness, and keep the hands pressed together. A buzz of conversation rose about the sala, and Maestro Botticelli wandered into the Sala dei Santi to examine Lucrezia’s painted figure as Santa Caterina. I’d expected him to show the impatience of genius, look irked that he was being forced to wait on the Pope’s pleasure, but now I rather thought he was hoping the whole idea of painting me would just go away if Rodrigo was sufficiently distracted by official business.

“Goodness, is Fra Savonarola quite serious?” I wrinkled my nose as I finished reading the friar’s ranting letter out loud. “Does he really think dice and lip rouge and wine are signs that the world is ending?” I could think of a dozen other omens that couldn’t be called favorable—putting Juan Borgia at the head of an army certainly seemed like a recipe for all sorts of cosmic disaster, and last winter there had been reports of a strange dead creature with a woman’s face and an elephant’s trunk washing up on the banks of the Tiber, and hadn’t that had everyone wondering if the end was nigh. But lip rouge?

“Apparently Savonarola is going to scourge Florence of all frivolity and make it into a Holy City to point the way for the rest of the world.” Rodrigo’s voice was very dry. “Cards are to be forbidden within the city’s walls, not to mention dicing and drinking and gambling of all sorts. Women are to give up their fine clothes, for fear of bringing heavenly wrath down upon their godly menfolk. And paintings depicting the naked female form are not to be allowed either.”

“Such paintings are only forbidden in homes where there are unmarried girls.” Maestro Botticelli spoke up unexpectedly in his rough Florentine voice, wandering back into the Sala dei Misteri in time to hear our words. “Fra Savonarola would not have the virgin minds of Florence’s womenfolk corrupted.”

“But when you count servant girls too, almost every home in Florence has unmarried girls,” I pointed out.

“Unmarried, but perhaps not virgin,” Rodrigo chuckled. “How does Fra Savonarola plan to tell the difference? Lift their skirts?”

“He is a holy prophet.” Maestro Botticelli’s lined face was set. “He gives us visions sent direct from God.”

“So do you, with your paintings,” I said, conciliatory. “I would be sad to see no more Venuses come from that brush, Maestro Botticelli.”

“Only clothed Venuses. By Fra Savonarola’s decree, to keep us all from eternal damnation.”