and Aulista, who had already gained serious reputations outside of the workshop as well, but in the workshop ultimately, if the maestro wanted to be fair, then he had to divide the task up between the two of them, and contrary to their expectations, since he always made capricious and erratic decisions, this time he really was just, giving one part of the underdrawing to Aulista and the other to Giovanni, and so it happened that Aulista began, the maestro entrusted the drawing to his hand, and everyone who was in the workshop immediately gathered there, and watched in great wonder over Aulista’s shoulder, because the drawing, as always, now too was wonderful, they were dazzled, especially the newly arrived apprentices — foremost among them Domenico — all would have liked to know immediately how the maestro prepared the drawing, so that as Aulista began, the maestro said to the apprentices, who were gathered in a circle, that in a good painting the drawing is of extraordinary importance, which always begins first by having to render the paper transparent, this can be acheived by using linseed oil diluted with turpentine, that is you must rub it onto the paper until it becomes translucent, transparent, and then after that you have to dry it, and then bring it out when it is time for the underdrawing, as is the case now, he motioned toward Aulista, the underdrawing, he repeated, which means that from among the previously prepared drawings you need to choose precisely the right one, just as I did at home one half-hour ago, and you place the transparent paper onto this drawing, and with a sharpened piece of charcoal, you trace it nicely, carefully, your drawing is now on the transparent paper, and then you lay some kind of carpet or a thicker piece of felt underneath it; then following the contours nicely you pierce through the paper, puncturing, densely with pinpricks, the maestro motioned to the assistants, along all of the contours of the drawing, and now all you have to do is smooth down your punctured drawing, because otherwise nothing will permeate through the tiny pinpricks; then you place it on the painting surface, and you put charcoal dust ground very fine into a fine rag so that the dust can pass through, you form the rag into a little ball, and tie it up with something, then with this tool, with the charcoal dust you transfer, through all of the tiny little pinpricks onto the panel — or onto the canvas, it depends on what you are painting — the original drawing, well then, so you understand, don’t you; the master looked around at the assistants, then he watched for a while to make sure that everything was all right with the silently working Aulista, then stating that from this point on they should watch him, and then tomorrow they themselves could give it a try to see if they could do it; he left the workshop; the precise, faint underdrawing had been ready on the tavola for a long time, but the maestro had not come in to begin painting, they didn’t dare to take the tavola down from the trestles, but they couldn’t just leave it there, they had to keep walking around it, because well, they still needed to use the trestles, and when it had became obvious that for now the work had proceeded thus far and the maestro had lost interest in it again, instead of putting it back on the painting easel, Aulista traced the lines with a fine brush, and the panel was taken down, thus freeing up the trestles; then cautiously, the entire thing was sprayed with a mixture of milk and honey so that the drawing would not be damaged, and finally they put it back against the wall facing inward, so that life could go on in the bottega in Florence, and for a good long while even the maestro himself never mentioned the Tezi altarpiece, and didn’t even ask Aulista, and chiefly did not look to see if the underdrawing was ready, or if it was, what the result was like; even then, and, when one day a half-year later — not in the morning but in the middle of the afternoon — he arrived, and there was still light in the workshop, he did not speak to anyone, but just put the long untouched panel back onto the easel, and instructed one of the Francescos to immediately take out one of the painting pots with some ultramarine prepared earlier for something else, and to break it up with the pumice stone; Francesco, of course, was greatly amazed when the master took up his cloak, wondering what the maestro could want with the ultramarine so late in the day, but he began to break up the exorbitantly expensive pigment without a word, all the while measuring out so cautiously, almost drop by drop, the egg yolk, already separated and mixed with linseed oil, and to prevent spoiling, disinfected with the juice of fresh fig buds, so that he even held his breath, and as in the case of ultramarine, the color is always best if the crystals of the pigment are left coarse, he, too, broke them up coarsely, and was ready with it relatively quickly, he poured it into a seashell, and was already giving it to the maestro, who took it without a word and began to paint with it the wondrous material of the lower garments of the Virgin Mary, their ethereal lightness, in that color at which Aulista had marveled already so many times when on occasion — if he was alone in the workshop — he turned the picture away from the wall so he could make sure that it had not been damaged by mold or something else; only Bastiano, Domenico, one of the Francescos, and he, Aulista, were in the workshop, the maestro painted, everyone went about their business silently, but so carefully as to not make a single sound, and as a matter of fact, the maestro was quickly finished with this blue, then he painted in, with a black that happened to be at hand, but originally prepared for something else, the folds and the waves, to the point of perceptibility, then he called for Aulista to come over, and for a while they looked at how the blue glimmered, then the maestro gestured for Aulista to come completely close to the picture, and pointing at the lowermost edge of the blue garment on the left side of the picture, he allowed him to paint there, onto that surface, a little more dark color, and to write there, with the finest brush — but you know, he grabbed Aulista’s shoulder, just in such a way that it almost can’t be seen, and with gold — MCCCCC, then he turned away from the easel, he took off his cloak, he handed his brushes to Bastiano so that he could wash them out with soap, and then he wasn’t even there, he left the workshop and from that point on all that happened was that the next day, or the day after that, when he came over again from the Borgo Pinti, he took the picture down from the easel, placed it again next to the wall with the colors facing inward, and no longer bothered with it, as if he had forgotten that it was there, so that in Perugia a completely new story began, not the continuation of the old one, as the whole thing started with the arrival of the four assistants, who had somehow collected themselves after the fatal exhaustion on the Via dei Priori, then in a complete state of despair they directed the coachman to the door of the leased workshop on the Piazza del Sopramura, and there to their greatest alarm the maestro himself awaited them, like some kind of ghost, but it was not a ghost, it was he himself, as for some reason, he was not willing to say more than that, essentially he himself had started off toward home on horseback on the same morning as they, with some kind of paid accompaniment, when he had sent them off on their journey in the cart, only that he went by a different route, and of course reached Perugia much more quickly than their cart, in brief, the whole thing began with him seeing the state that the assistants were in, he let them have a proper rest, and when they were rested they should come to his house in the Via Deliziosa, and report that they were ready for work, and that is how it happened, the maestro left them and they immediately collapsed onto the floor of the new bottega, and already the four of them were asleep, the locals, Girolamo, Raffaello, Sinibaldo, and Bartolomeo, together with the coachman, brought in the contents of the cart — the coachman was not in such a bad state as the others, he was cut from somewhat harder wood, as he kept saying to the local assistants — so that after the cart-load had been brought in, they led the horses to the nearby postal station and handed them over to a stable boy, then they went back into the workshop, and the coachman got something to eat and drink, and finally they let him sleep as well, and they left silently so as to come back the next day, when the coachman was already awake, but the others were still snoring like horses, so getting some work out of them, because they lay strewn across the workshop, was not really possible, they left the coachman with his wages as sent by the maestro, and they waited, they waited for these four to finally wake up, but well they just weren’t waking up, only on the following day; altogether they slept through an entire night, and an entire day, and an entire night again, however when they did wake up, all those who knew some of the others already were glad, for example, Bartolomeo knew nearly everyone from the workshop in Florence, but Aulista also knew Sinibaldo from somewhere, it was only Raffaello whom no one really knew, he was a fairly new assistant even for the Perugians, they had just heard of him of course from the maestro in Florence, he was wholly exempted from priming and the preparatory work in Perugia, because the maestro was teaching this Raffeallo exclusively how to paint, that is how to make the paints, how to take care of the brushes, and how to paint this or that — an arm, a head, a mouth, a Madonna, a Jerome, or a landscape — but frankly speaking, said the maestro, I really don’t know what to teach this Raffaello, because he already knows how to draw very well, and he learns everything that he sees me do so quickly, that he could even already be entrusted with a picture, even though he is only, I don’t know, how many years old, maybe sixteen, or seventeen, I have no idea, said the maestro and, well, that’s all that they knew about him, and here in the workshop they did not find out much more, only that he came from Urbino, and that was all, and that he was good at drawing and painting, that was it, and so they didn’t really take much notice of him, he somehow always worked apart, and the maestro always treated him differently, in a special way, not the way he treated them, which could have been a cause for anger, but it wasn’t, because this assistant from Urbino charmed everyone with his amiability, maybe he was even too gentle for such a workshop as this, one thing was certain, he had no wish to push himself forward just because he was granted such exceptional treatment on the part of the maestro, he did not want to, nor did he stand in the forefront, in that forefront stood Bartolomeo, he was the center, the workshop was entrusted to him, so that everything somehow happened around him; Raffaello became friends with Aulista, who was also fairly quiet; the whole thing began with the arrival of the Florentines, who had a good sleep, gorged themselves, and became thoroughly drunk, then they went across to Via Deliziosa 17 to report that they were ready for work, and then the next day the maestro came over from the Ospedale della Misericordia to the newly leased bottega, and to everyone’s great surprise, extorting them to continue with the work underway, took out at the very first the Pala Tezi picture, and put it on the easel, and that now this panel would be at the center of the activities of the workshop, and no one really understood why it was exactly this one, because work on it had begun and then had been left off so many times, maybe because since returning to Perugia the Tezi family was urging him to finish it; of course this was just a guess, no one but he knew anything about it, and the maestro actually never spoke of such things as patrons and commissions and honorariums and family and friends and suchlike, not even to Bartolomeo, or if he did so, then it was always with the order that the matter remain strictly between the two of them, in any event the tavola intended for Sant’Agostino turned up on the painting easel, and from that point on the fate of the panel changed, because no longer did it only happen that the maestro would paint another fold or figure onto the picture and then put it back against the wall, as he had done until now, but that from this point on the picture wasn’t even taken down from the easel, the maestro was occupied with it continually, which of course did not mean that at times Aulista, or Giannicola, or even the young Raffaello would not work on it a bit, but really, the fact was that the maestro basically took the work into his own hands, and kept it there, maybe, really, one of the Francescos noted one evening, the esteemed notary and his family had reminded the maestro that the picture was supposed to have been ready one year ago, in 1500, the entire altar must surely be ready in the family chapel, only this picture was still missing, they reflected, but they didn’t know for certain why this picture had suddenly become so urgent, one thing was certain, it was urgent, and the maestro was working, already this counted as something very new, he was working continuously, coming into the workshop every single day, and picking up where he had left off before, and the approaching event of his appointment as prior visibly did not seem to interest him, he just painted every day for at least two or three hours, and at his age — for surely he must have been at least fifty years old — this was not very common, old people, particularly in the case of the maestros who were renowned all across Italy, usually just visited their workshops once a week, and usually just taught a little, instructed the disciples, they themselves worked only very infrequently, and that was how their maestro had lived as well — in Florence, but not here in Perugia, here somehow, after the great fiasco, his fervor was renewed, or maybe he really needed the money from the Tezis, who knows, in any event he was painting, only this much was obvious: the lower garments of the Madonna were already done, with the upper part of the cloak in the gentle shading of the medium dark malachite green; the bodies were ready, the face of the Madonna, the entire figure of the little baby Jesus, the head and arms of the four saints, just as the landscape in the background was ready, in which everyone joyfully recognized a detail from Perugia with the Palazzo dei Priori, but he finished as well the ciborium and the garments of the saints, with the exception — and this was very striking, especially to Aulista, who had been watching the maestro with special attention since this feverish work had begun — with the exception of: the book in the hands of Santo Nicola da Tolentino of the Lily, the upper garments of broadcloth of the Madonna, the cloak covering the body of Saint Sebastian, and Jerome’s renowned bishop’s mitre on the ground, at the bottom of the picture, next to the saint and in front of the lion; no one knew why these parts were never painted, especially not Aulista, Raffaello was visibly uninterested as to why, or why these parts were to be painted at the end, before the completion of the entire picture, Aulista didn’t know why, he just waited for the day, the hour, the minute for the time to come, and he did not wait in vain, because the day did come when every element of the Pala Tezi picture really was painted, already the yellow shone there, the blue glimmered, the green swelled, the brown appeared gently, and all across the border of the sky was a strong glaze of whitish blue, but it was already obvious that it was the painting of the red that the maestro had left for the very end, and Aulista simply could not wait for that day and that hour and that minute when he would say to him to begin breaking up the pigment, because he truly hoped that he would be the one to whom the maestro entrusted this task, and he was not disappointed — not that the maestro selected him himself, but Aulista positioned himself in such a way so that if there was even the tiniest chance of breaking up the vermiglione, it was he who had something to do right there, accordingly the maestro spoke to him one day, Aulista, please be so kind and break up the vermiglione, I ask you, and Aulista flew, already there he was with a tiny sack of fragments of vermigli