The Woman in the Painting. Kerry Postle

– a copy, no doubt, that he had made himself. It was of a young man, handsome, and clothed. Giulio passed it round the squirming apprentices as if it had soothing powers.

      ‘Look. This is a portrait of Raphael of Urbino, the artist. He’s recently arrived here in Rome.’

      At the mention of Raphael’s name, I felt the pain in my leg where Michelangelo had kicked me, imagined my father’s knuckles as they twitched at his sides. I kept well away. Taddeo’s beady eyes were everywhere and I could not afford to get into any further trouble. Giulio on the other hand seemed to laugh in the face of fate. And fortune seemed to favour him.

      ‘Giulio! You need to be quicker.’ Taddeo’s voice was all authority. Giulio’s face was all scorn. You couldn’t rush Giulio Romano and to do so made him slow down intentionally. He put down the quills he’d been working on, stretched out his arms high above his head then gave a yawn. Taddeo scuttled back to his place.

      Meanwhile, the miniature portrait had made its way around nearly every workbench, dazzling the eye and mind of each apprentice and elevating them above Sebastiano’s net of barbs. Raphael. Quite the hero, and to see his likeness confirmed it. The apprentices at the workbench nearest to Taddeo had put down their tools in anticipation. Unable to resist, they huddled round the boy currently looking at it.

      ‘Is that him? Is that Raphael?’

      It did not matter that the words were whispered, barely audible to the human ear. Sebastiano had heard them. Like a hunting dog, and Michelangelo before him, he sniffed the air.

      ‘That’s Raphael?’ ‘Is that Raphael?’ ‘Raph—?’ Excitement had rendered the apprentices oblivious.

      Sebastiano threw his paintbrush to the floor and roared.

      ‘I never, NEVER, want to hear that name in here again. Understand?’ The voices of the young apprentices died instantly; the miniature was hastily pushed under a pile of sketches.

      ‘What’s the time?’ Sebastiano asked.

      ‘Half past ten.’

      ‘I know it is, Taddeo. I know what the time is, you halfwit!’ Sebastiano said. ‘But where is she? That’s what I want to know, you oaf. Where is she?’

      The maestro stormed off, wearing his bad mood like an aura around his head. He stood before his portrait of the baker’s daughter, as if willing her to step out of the picture.

      The apprentices pulled out the miniature again, the urge to see this now forbidden young artist more irresistible than ever. ‘Nature made him then broke the mould,’ one of them said with appreciation, taking care not to mention the artist by name. I was sure I’d heard that phrase somewhere before, but, while I struggled to place it, Taddeo, with eyes cruel and greedy as a tyrant’s, marched over to see what was going on.

      That tyranny begets tyranny was never borne out so clearly. Within seconds he had prised the portrait from their hands and was holding it up. He shot a look of victory in Giulio’s direction. His mouth was open, about to chastise the apprentices for wasting time. Then he heard the cry.

      ‘Taddeo!’

      Sebastiano’s faithful assistant glanced up at the portrait in his hand. He lowered his eyes. They met the maestro’s, recognised what was coming next. Taddeo’s eyelids flapped wildly, as if by blinking alone he could become airborne and escape. Beads of sweat broke out across his forehead.

      ‘It wasn’t me … It was them … They had it … I …’ He mumbled his excuses. A spurt of pleasure shot through me as I watched his suffering. At once unfair and so deserved.

      Sebastiano thundered over and snatched the offensive image out of the faithful Taddeo’s hands.

      He looked at it.

      If the mention of the young artist’s name had irked him already, the sight of Raphael’s image up close put him in the foulest of tempers. Dark clouds marred Sebastiano’s features like flies on rotting flesh. I glanced over at Giulio. He had a knowing look upon his face. It gave me a secret thrill to see it.

      Sebastiano, miniature in hand, went over to the far side of the workshop to where his easel was set up. He smashed the perfect image down on a nearby table. ‘Damn that wastrel from Urbino!’

      He returned to pacing. This time we all hid behind our work.

      ‘Have we no letter from the Vatican yet?’ he shouted, pushing the miniature away. We’d heard a workshop was being set up for Raphael. He had wealthy patrons, said to be friends of the Pope. ‘Look at him!’ Sebastiano said to himself, glowering at the likeness as if it were alive, ‘as beardless as a young girl!’ Several of the apprentices came out of hiding. They dragged strange sounds from their mouths and nodded, thinking they’d been called on to agree. They had not.

      ‘Who asked you?’ Sebastiano growled at their forced laughter and nodding heads. ‘Go back to your work. Now!’

      I looked towards the entrance, attracted by a sudden movement. And there, framed in the doorway with her eyebrows raised in mockery at the commotion, stood the girl. The girl the maestro had been waiting for. Here. In the studio. At last. Knowing I’d seen her, she glided in.

      Sebastiano, his face blanching at the sight of her, ran to pull the heavy red velvet drape down, an action he had been waiting to perform for such a long time. She made her way to the table, intrigued no doubt to see the face of the man who had provoked the scene she’d just caught the tail of. She picked up the small portrait and gave an approving smile. Her face opened up like a flower in the sunshine at the sight of it.

      Sebastiano noticed. His already cloud-eaten face turned blacker still. He tugged on the curtain repeatedly. It resisted his pull.

      ‘Damn! Damn!’

      The atmosphere in the studio cranked up to thunderous; in an instant the velvet curtain had crashed to the floor.

      ‘Take it to the side, for heaven’s sake!’ At the flick of his wrist he conjured up two apprentices. They scuttled over and made the curtain disappear.

      The girl was still waiting. Still amused. Still unperturbed.

      ‘It’s too warm to be wearing this,’ she said, as she picked up the fur-lined cape hanging over the back of her chair. She draped it over her left shoulder nevertheless, while stooping over to pick up a laurel wreath from her basket. She wore it on her head like a green crown. I watched her, grateful for the patches of light and pockets of calm she had brought in with her. The maestro’s bad temper, like a poison-tipped arrow, breached the walls of almost every other person in the studio, while she remained inviolate.

      We had never observed Sebastiano paint this model before, though we’d occasionally heard them behind the velvet. We liked to imagine the scene, full of lust and desire. But today, with no curtain to shield our eyes, nor fuel our imaginations, we would get the opportunity to see Sebastiano and his model in the flesh. There was a sufficient whiff of excitement at the prospect to cut through the dark clouds of the morning.

      We buried our heads in cleaning, grinding, planning, sketching. Every apprentice made the workshop seem busy. The noises of wooden brushes dropping on floors, paper tearing, knives cutting, chair legs scraping, had the space filled with life so that Sebastiano and his model would soon believe that no one was interested in what they were doing or saying.

      But we were.

      Whenever we looked something up in the Cennini, or asked a fellow apprentice for some help, we watched out of the corners of our eyes. Our maestro performed his role much as we’d envisaged, with the wandering hands of an attentive paramour. Yet his model seemed to have forgotten the yielding lines our heads had written for her, replacing them with some feisty ones of her own. She sat, her back straight, on a chair on a raised platform, bathed in the light that flooded in through the window.

      Sebastiano went to hang a pearl drop from her ear.

      ‘Please don’t. I can do this myself,’ she told him, with a shrug.