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"No, it’s your name," Hedy said, smiling. "It sounds lovely, and it reminds me of an old friend." She cleared her throat and signaled to a servant who was coming to greet her, asking them to help carry the items so the boy could rest for a moment. "There’s a bathroom here. After you wash up, you can treat your wounds."
She had to get used to this—after all, it was possible that every person she casually asked for their name on the street could be someone famous in art history or European history.
Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, along with various politicians and bishops—these people were practically all crowded together in Italy...
"By the way," she suddenly remembered something, looking back at him. "Botticelli and Leonardo are both in need of a reliable apprentice. I’m sure their old friend Domenico won’t mind you studying with them."
The boy’s face lit up with a mix of excitement and nervousness, as he tried to hold back his questions.
He took a few steps with the servant, then couldn’t help but glance back at her. "Really—Botticelli has returned from the Sistine Chapel?"
"He returned a long time ago," Hedy replied with a smile. "He’s just been holed up in his studio painting."
Laughing, she added, "Given that they both handed me a little boy, it’s only fair I return the favor with a little apprentice."
Back in her past life, when Hedy visited art galleries and museums, she never really paid attention to the dates or years of the paintings.
She never imagined that Raphael and Michelangelo would be so... so young.
Raphael, with his head tilted as he bit into an apple, was so cute that it made you want to hug him and ruffle his hair. Michelangelo, at around eleven or twelve years old, had a stubborn and proud demeanor, but there was still the bright, clear energy of youth about him.
— Completely different from the wrinkled old men depicted in museum guides.
Hedy gestured for the servant to lead her to the backyard, intending to have a proper conversation with those two old friends while the boy took his bath.
As they passed through the courtyard, the servant couldn’t help but ask, “Lady, the boy who came with you earlier—was that young Buonarroti?”
Hedy wasn’t entirely sure if the surname was correct, but she nodded anyway. “Yes, why?”
“The poor kid…” the servant mumbled, unable to resist saying, “You’d better keep your distance, or he might pass his bad luck on to you.”
“What?” Hedy had a vague feeling that she had missed something. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing really. Actually, Buonarroti—well, you can tell by the name, he comes from a good family.”
His father was the highest administrative official of Caprese and Chiusi, but his mother passed away from illness a few years ago.
The boy had a great interest and talent for painting and sculpture, but his luck was terribly bad.
“Specifically,” the servant waved his fingers, “Out of the ten commissions he took, seven of them probably ended in failure.”
If it was sculpture, maybe they’d have finally hauled the stone down from the mountain, only for the client to suddenly change their mind and refuse it.
If it was a painting, they might have been almost finished with the final touches, only for the noble who ordered it to suddenly die of illness, or a wealthy merchant to mysteriously vanish.
Hedy listened to the servant’s lengthy recounting, utterly surprised, as though he were speaking nonsense.
Could it really be that bad?
"Most unbelievable of all," the servant clapped his hands, "was when there were three separate orders for bronze statues and sculptures in the workshop, all arranged by him. Then, they all fell through. Either the work was half-done and then rejected, or the orders were just canceled without explanation."
This—this was the complete opposite of Leonardo!
Over the years, Hedy had watched as the demand for commissions from Leonardo grew increasingly, to the point where, if they had a ticketing system, people would probably still be waiting for their turn when they turned eighty.
He spent his time leisurely researching bicycles and mechanical wings, and recently, he had been more focused on refining his mildew-fighting solution, hardly giving any thought to his art.
She heard that some young women waited so long for their portraits that they fainted from exhaustion, insisting that the great master finish their paintings before they could get married.
