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There were days, too, when the Florentine mounted his scaffolding at dawn and remained there, brush in hand, forsaking food and drink, until sunset.

Gabriel, after his return to Venice, adhered to a similar schedule, though unlike the Florentine, who allowed spectators to watch him at work, he remained hidden from view behind his tarpaulin shroud.

It was not a brush he wielded but hand-fashioned swabs dipped in foul-smelling solvent.

Chiara, during an inspection visit to the basilica, pleaded with him yet again to wear a protective mask while he worked.

Smiling, he dropped a soiled wad of cotton wool onto his platform and suggested she take her complaints to the doge.

“But I shouldn’t expect a favorable ruling, Dottoressa Zolli. You see, His Serenity the Doge agrees with me that masks are uncomfortable and will delay the completion of my commission.”

His smartphone, a contraption even the Florentine never fathomed, was distraction enough, for it shivered each time the name Giorgio Montefiore appeared in print anywhere on the Internet, be it in a reputable publication or in the truthless precincts of social media.

In death, the Leonardist was eulogized in Olympian terms. “A monumental intellect,” declared the president of the Louvre.

“Irreplaceable,” seconded the director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, a noted scholar of Leonardo himself.

Still, there was uncomfortable speculation, some of it whispered, as to the motive behind Montefiore’s execution-style murder.

The authorities in Florence suggested it was robbery, though they declined to say whether anything in Montefiore’s villa was missing.

In truth, there were numerous connections, including the identity of the man who had discovered both bodies.

He mounted his scaffolding at the Salute each morning at dawn and remained there, forsaking food and drink, shunning a protective mask, until the sun had set.

Consequently he completed the first phase of the restoration—the removal of the surface grime and previous overpainting—several weeks earlier than anticipated.

He photographed the altarpiece in its cleaned and damaged state and then commenced the final stage of the project, the retouching of those portions of the painting that had flaked away or faded with age.

His palette was Titian’s palette, as were his brushstrokes, though occasionally, when the mood struck him, he employed the left-handed technique of the procrastinatory Florentine.

The one who had painted a lost portrait of a girl from Milan.

She had no name, he thought. But she had the face of an angel.

***

Over dinner one evening at Al Covo, a quiet little restaurant in the sestiere of Castello, Chiara suggested that Gabriel paint an approximate copy of the missing Leonardo. He reminded her that he was rather busy at the moment.

“The Titian?” She waved her hand dismissively. “You’re miles ahead of schedule.”

“Apparently the director of the Courtauld Gallery would like his Florigerio back. ”

“It’s nearly finished.”

Which was true. “I’ll need a panel,” said Gabriel. “Preferably walnut.”

“Why can’t you simply paint it on canvas?”

He gave Chiara a despairing look.

“There’s a lovely man called Marco on the mainland who does custom woodworking. I’m sure he can make you a walnut panel.”

Gabriel leaned toward his daughter and asked confidingly, “Do you suppose they’re having an affair?”

“Torrid,” replied the child, and laughed hysterically.

It took the lovely Marco a week to find an appropriate plank of walnut and another week to fashion it into a panel worthy of the eminent Maestro Allon.

Gabriel, for his part, required only three nocturnal sessions at his easel to produce his first version of the portrait. His wife was not impressed.

“You overdid the sfumato . She looks out of focus.”

He buried her beneath a layer of obliterating paint and made a second version of the portrait, which was more to Chiara’s liking. “Do you know how much that would be worth on the open market?” she asked.

“Two or three hundred euros. But if it were an autograph Leonardo, well, that’s another story.”

“What shall we do with this one?”

Gabriel carried the panel into the apartment’s main sitting room and placed it atop a pile of kindling on the grate. Chiara watched sadly as the funeral pyre consumed the girl from Milan.

“Dottoressa Saviano rang today.”

“What has your daughter done now?”

“Nothing, thank goodness. The dottoressa was merely wondering when you would like to begin your new career.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“That you had to finish the Titian first.”

“I finished it two days ago.”

“Freak,” whispered Chiara, and warmed her hands against the flames.

***

The dottoressa thought Wednesdays were best—Wednesdays at half past three, in a light-filled activity room on the school’s upper floor.

Twelve students, equally divided by gender and ranging in age from seven to ten, had been selected for the program.

Gabriel gave them each a Strathmore sketchpad and a packet of Faber-Castell pencils, and informed them that their artistic training, while enjoyable, would be rigorous in nature.

Indeed, on that first Wednesday they spent the entire hour doing nothing more than learning how to draw a proper tapered line.

The following week they drew circles and squares, and the week after that they turned their circles and squares into spheres and cubes, with appropriate shading to create the illusion of three-dimensionality.

The culmination of their first month of art school was a simple still life with a vase and pear.

Gabriel was impressed by the quality of the work, as was Dottoressa Saviano.

She asked whether he might be willing to take on an additional student or two.

He confessed that he was surprised that his son, whose artistic gifts were glaringly obvious, had not been on the original list.

“He was, Signore Allon.”

“And?”

“He declined to take part.”

Gabriel made no effort to conceal his disappointment. “Perhaps I can convince him to change his mind.”

The dottoressa smiled tenderly. “It can’t be easy having someone like you as a father. My advice is that you remain patient.”

The following week Gabriel took his students, now fourteen in number, to the Campo San Polo, where he explained perspective and the concept of a vanishing point.

They put the lesson into practice a week later by sketching the exterior of the enormous Frari Church.

Chiara and Irene observed the proceedings from their table at Bar Dogale, but Raphael was scratching away at something in one of his notebooks.

Gabriel assumed it was a complex mathematics equation, but a surreptitious search of the boy’s book bag, conducted later that evening, revealed that not to be the case.

He showed the sketch to Chiara and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Patience,” was all she said.

But by then Gabriel was beginning to lose faith, not in his son but in his prediction that the Leonardo would soon resurface.

The case, such as it was, had gone cold.

The Carabinieri in Florence had officially categorized the murder of Giorgio Montefiore as unsolved, and their brethren in Venice were still not certain how Penelope Radcliff had ended up in the waters of the laguna .

Both deaths had slipped from the pages of the Italian papers by the time His Holiness Luigi Donati departed for America.

He dazzled at the United Nations and ruffled a few conservative feathers in Washington, but otherwise his first visit to the New World as pope was undiminished by any hint of Vatican scandal.

It was, thought Gabriel, the only bright spot in the entire sordid affair.

If there was another, it was the overwhelmingly positive reaction to his restoration of the Titian.

Tourists flocked to Santa Maria della Salute to see the altarpiece, as did curators, connoisseurs, and dealers from the four corners of the art world.

Among those who made the pilgrimage to Venice was Julian Isherwood, owner of a respected gallery in London that specialized in Italian and Dutch Old Master paintings.

He arrived the following Wednesday and was wondering whether Gabriel was free for a drink at, say, three o’clock.

Gabriel informed his old friend that he had a prior commitment.

“Break it,” demanded Julian.

“Can’t,” replied Gabriel. “But I might be free at five.”

“Harry’s Bar?”

“See you then, Julian.”