The Woman in the Painting. Kerry Postle

blown suddenly ajar by the wind. I stood still. Inside I could hear Cardinal Bibbiena, the man who, with flattery, had persuaded me to paint over my late master’s most precious work. He was talking to somebody. I waited. Listened.

      ‘The woman in the painting, who is she?’ The voice was accusing, the accent northern European.

      ‘Some whore he paid for.’ I winced at the Cardinal’s answer. ‘Look here. He’s even added a ribbon with his name on as proof of purchase.’ He laughed. His guest did not.

      ‘His reputation as the most …’ The stranger paused, looking for the right word. ‘… amorous artist in all of Rome was no idle boast then.’ The flames of his northern disapproval licked around the door.

      ‘No, indeed it was not. His nature was ever thus.’ The Cardinal adjusted his tone.

      I hovered, afraid to enter, reluctant to retreat. The Cardinal’s fleshy ringed hand slipped round the side of the door, pulling it to, shutting me out. I put my ear up close to listen some more.

      ‘That must have been trying,’ the cold, faceless voice said. ‘For you. And your niece.’

      ‘No. All this—’ I imagined the Cardinal gesturing towards the painting, as I’d seen him do so many times before ‘—was nothing but lust, not love. Love. That was something Raphael shared with my dear Maria.’ The Cardinal sniffed loudly as if fighting back the tears. ‘He never recovered after she left this world. However, I have made plans to bury him in the Pantheon, in the same tomb as my beloved niece. They will be together at last.’

      I reeled at the news and put a hand against the stone doorway to steady myself.

      ‘Fitting,’ came the reply.

      ‘Yes, they were perf—’ But before the Cardinal could finish the lie his guest cut him off. He had not come here to listen to how Raphael and the Cardinal’s niece were perfect for each other, or some other made-up story.

      ‘The world grieves to lose such a rare talent.’ The northerner’s voice now softened. I imagined him moved by the beauty of my deceased maestro’s work on the easel before him, admiration warming his eyes. I’d recently added the finishing touches to it, painting over the tell-tale foliage and ruby ring. ‘Even this rendition of a whore shows the scope of the artist,’ he said. My chest dared to swell a little with pride, my ear suddenly forgiving of his harsh northern consonants, strangely deaf to his slur on the model. But he hadn’t finished. ‘Though it is not as flawless as many of his other works. The background is …’ He paused to find the right word. ‘Clumsy.’

      My hand shot up to my mouth in time to silence the splutter of surprise provoked by this foreigner’s damning summation of the changes I myself had made to the painting. The Cardinal had told me he found them sublime. I held on to that. What did this man with the guttural accent know of beauty?

      ‘And this hand,’ he went on, ‘it’s …’ He paused again. This time I wasn’t hopeful. ‘This hand, well, it’s so … unnatural.’ Though expecting the slight, I still flinched at the injury. Unnatural? The Cardinal had assured me the now ringless hand was so well executed as to be indistinguishable from any done by Raphael himself. But it made no difference; the stranger’s words cut too deep for me to be able to heal the wound they had inflicted on me. My chest hurt as if punctured, and my mind conjured up a vision of claw-like hands stab, stab, stabbing at the parts of the painting I had worked on with such devotion. That northern European accent was beginning to grate.

      But not as much as the Cardinal’s deep, throaty laugh that followed. And not as much as the words that came after that.

      ‘Yes,’ he answered when he’d composed himself, ‘sadly those elements do detract from the rest of the work. It’s almost as if he’d allowed his least talented apprentice loose on it. That aside, Raphael was peerless – a prince among painters, brought down by this lowborn wench. That must surely be the reason for the angel tears falling from heaven down in the streets outside.’

      It was still raining heavily – and ordinarily I would have wondered at the Cardinal’s quickness of wit in using the elements to convey his own sorrow. But the revelation that he thought me the least talented of Raphael’s apprentices came as a shock. My whole body shook and shivered, with cold, loss, then shame. Yes, an overwhelming sense of shame ran through me. I was drenched with it. It flushed out my vanity and ambition and presented them to me for what they were – ugly sins that had turned my head and seduced me into betraying one of the kindest people I had ever known.

      ‘So the woman in the painting,’ the grating voice started up again, ‘she is the one who killed Raphael? She is the baker’s daughter of whom everyone is talking?’

      ‘Yes. Base. Immoral,’ the Cardinal replied, the deep laugh now a lascivious sneer. ‘This is the woman who brought down one of the finest artists the world has ever known with her wantonness. This is La Fornarina.’

      I lifted my ear away from the door. I’d heard enough. My mind searched wildly for a borrowed dignity with which to disguise the tatters of my own. I scraped together some well-woven deceits with which to cloak myself made up of my righteous indignation at the Cardinal’s undeniable duplicity. But it was no use. Thunder clapped outside once more. Yes, I had done the wrong thing and I did not need the elements to tell me so.

       Chapter 1

      Twelve years earlier

       Rome, January 1508

      The year was 1508, the month January, and it was a Friday. I remember it all too clearly. I was still innocent then. ‘Pietro! Get that weak arse of yours up now!’ My father’s rough hands dragged me from my sleep. He threw open the shutters, exposing me to the bright glare of the early morning sun. ‘If the Venetian throws you out too, I’ll …’

      My body tensed as he bellowed at me. ‘S-s-s-s-sorry,’ I stuttered, waiting for the blow.

      It didn’t come. Instead, my father looked out of the window, distracted by a commotion that had broken out down in the street below. ‘The lads have pulled something out of the Tiber!’ a voice called up to him. More voices joined in, urgent, excited.

      My father looked back at me for a second, his eyes distressed at my attire. His knuckles twitched but they stayed at his sides; the sounds of men running towards the river was too great a lure even for him. He left the room, though his disgust remained.

      I looked down at myself, at the white shirt and the yellow hose I still had on from the day before and that I loved so well. My legs hurt, my eyes felt swollen, my head ached. Yesterday.

      Yesterday my father was proud of me; I was an apprentice in the workshop of the great artist Michelangelo. This morning I was not.

      Artists. They weren’t popes or cardinals, kings or princes; in Rome they were better than that. At least in the eyes of people like my father – the common man. And that was because they walked among us, drank with us, sang with us, painted us. They even took us on as apprentices making our fathers proud.

      Gifted, feted, popular, they enjoyed all the dishes at the rich man’s table without having to torture or kill for them. Though Michelangelo had seemed no less ruthless to me.

      It’s true that most artists sang their happy song like a bird within its gilded cage, wings clipped, without the freedom to sing as they chose, fly where they might or most importantly paint what they liked. But one or two, whenever their patrons left the cage door wide open, soared high above and up into the heavens. And there they dazzled us.

      Michelangelo was one such painter, though his temper was as brutish as his work was divine. And yesterday, talk in his workshop had turned to another: Raphael Sanzio. Though I’d not yet seen a single one of his paintings (he’d been working in Florence), I knew that as an artist he shone so brightly that nothing could subdue his brilliance, nor eclipse his perfection. Perfetto,