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commissions.”
    “It is that which separates us, Raphael. To me it is love of the work that moves me. To you, it is love of all that the commission brings you.”
    “That is not all that separates us,” Raphael said angrily. “I, for example, would never have left Rome only because of a change in patronage. That certainly is being moved by something other than the work!”
    Michelangelo lowered his gaze. “Well, Raffaello, I will say this: You and I are really nothing at all alike. That is absolutely certain.”
    Looking at the aging artist before him, slightly stooped, his long hands, through which so much talent flowed, now veined and gnarled, Raphael felt an unexpected stab of sympathy. Such utter brilliance in one man. A talent bestowed by God, like his own. There were so few on this earth who spoke their language, who understood the passion and the frustration of living so closely to one’s art. How then had they ever become such bitter rivals?
    “Will you remain in Rome?” Raphael found himself asking.
    “I came to the city only to personally beseech the Holy Father for news on the progress of funding for Pope Julius’s tomb.”
    “You are still going to do that?” Raphael was surprised. In spite of the friendship between Michelangelo and the previous pontiff, it seemed unwise to badger an unsympathetic successor about a monument to immortalize his predecessor.
    “It shall remain my life’s primary goal,” said Michelangelo with unshakable commitment, “to build a lasting monument to a Holy Father like no other.”
    In the quiet depth of the massive hall, with only the stone-faced guards around them, Raphael shrugged. He did not entirely believe it. There had been rumblings for days that with the pontiff’s impatience had come a quiet search for new artists to continue the grand commissions—help for Pope Leo to realize his own legacy.
    “I wish you good fortune with it then,” said Raphael, nodding deeply.
    “And I you, Raffaello
mio.
If you can get out of the way of yourself, I expect you shall find your true place in history. But you have always been your own worst enemy, you know.”
    “And
your
greatest nemesis.”
    “It is true that if I am able to defeat you in the eyes of the Holy Father, winning back the lion’s share of papal commissions, I shall do it in a heartbeat, so beware.”
    What Michelangelo meant was that he would try to do it with the help of his unscrupulous protg, Sebastiano Luciani. Now
that
was a name that caused the hair on the back of Raphael’s neck to stand on end. Sebastiano was a young painter who envied Raphael almost as much as his master did. Sebastiano certainly had talent on his side. But his unchecked ambition was against him.
    They had been pitted against one another once before at the grand villa of the wealthy banker, the pope’s great friend and benefactor, Agostino Chigi. When Raphael received a commission for a large, decorative panel depicting the sea nymph, Galatea, for an expansive salon that faced the Tiber, it was Sebastiano Luciani who received a companion commission to paint a large panel of his own directly beside it. Once the two panels were complete, Chigi released Sebastiano from further commissions, and hired Raphael exclusively to work in the villa and to ornament his family’s two private chapels. It was the beginning of open warfare.
    “I shall consider myself warned,” said Raphael.
    The rivals nodded to one another as though their dialogue had been the most civil of exchanges, and with that Michelangelo swept past him. But not before he left Raphael with a sense of foreboding. His critics were correct, he feared, as he was motioned into the pope’s chamber. As Michelangelo predicted, he might well find only himself to blame for his own undoing.
             
    “H OLY FATHER,” Raphael knelt and kissed the ring on the bulging finger of the Medici pope, enthroned on a crimson-draped dais and garbed in stiff and elegant white