Joseph Orbi  ·  Milan, 1498

Artist — and the most exasperating man in Milan. Leonardo has been hired by Ludovico Sforza to paint the Last Supper on the refectory wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Three years in, two faces remain blank. He cannot find his Christ. He cannot find his Judas. Meanwhile the French are coming, his patron is scheming, his cook is insufferable, and his apprentices are running riot. Leonardo meets all of it with equal measures of genius and magnificent distraction.

Fourteen years old, blond, blue-eyed, and constitutionally incapable of staying out of trouble. Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno — called Salai, "Little Devil" — is Leonardo's favorite, his errand boy, his ward, and his most reliable source of domestic chaos. He chases chickens, insults visitors, steals candy, and has scratched at least one memorable graffito into the walls of a Dominican monastery. Leonardo scolds him without ceasing and forgives him without fail.

Very old, very opinionated, and possessed of a face that Leonardo's contemporaries might charitably describe as a squeezed lemon. Sofia presides over the kitchen with cheerful pessimism, cooking vegetarian meals of mysterious deliciousness while cataloguing her own limitations with impressive thoroughness. She is unshakeable. She is irreplaceable. She is almost certainly the most sensible person in the house.

Twenty-nine years old, with a smooth oval face holding on to the last vestiges of youth — and a mind already ancient in its cynicism. Machiavelli arrives in Milan as the Republic of Florence's legate, officially neutral, privately fascinated. He is the only man Leonardo cannot outwit. He is also the only man who finds all of this — the unfinished fresco, the scheming court, the imminent French invasion — genuinely, darkly amusing. He is always two steps ahead of everyone else. He is always right. He finds this more melancholy than satisfying.

Il Moro — the Moor. Duke of Milan, patron of Leonardo, husband of Beatrice, and a man whose grip on power is tighter than his grip on reality. Ludovico commissioned the Last Supper, commissioned the great bronze horse, and now finds himself outmaneuvered on every front: by the French king, by his own counselor, by his wife, and by history. He is not a villain so much as a man to whom things happen — which, in the end, amounts to the same thing.

Young, passionate, jealous, and fatally fond of sweets. Beatrice is Ludovico's wife — a woman of fierce temper and genuine feeling in a court that rewards neither. She wages a relentless war against her husband's mistress, Cecilia Gallerani, and wins — only to find that her victory comes at a price she never anticipated. She has a weakness for Tomassino's candy. Bernardino knows this.

Ludovico's most trusted advisor — which is to say, the most dangerous man in Milan. Bernardino moves with the unhurried deliberateness of a man who has already decided how everything will end. His face is common but stern. His nose is slightly pointed. His eyes are very black. Salai thinks he looks like a tall and aging crow. He is forging letters, feeding intelligence to Rome, raising the gates of the fortress, transferring the army, and poisoning the princess — all with the composure of a man signing routine correspondence.

A tall, handsome friar who arrives with Machiavelli and agrees, with humble reluctance, to sit as a model for Leonardo. He is devout, thoughtful, and apparently exactly what Leonardo has been looking for. The face he provides for the Cristo is perfect. The novel's most extraordinary revelation concerns who Fra Valentino actually is — a secret the reader should discover for themselves.

Rodrigo Borgia, dressed in white and seated beneath an embroidered canopy of gold and silver, broiling in the Milan sun with the patience of a man who already knows he has won. Alexander VI is the spider at the center of the web — using Machiavelli as his legate, Çesare as his military arm, and Bernardino as his man inside the Sforza court. He arrives in Milan to view the fresco. The viewing does not go as anyone expected.

Proud, handsome, and accustomed to getting what he wants. Çesare Borgia — Duke of Valentinois, military commander of the papal forces, son of Alexander VI — rides into Milan at the head of an army, arrests Ludovico Sforza, and attends the unveiling of the Last Supper. The moment of unveiling produces a reaction no one anticipated. It also, inadvertently, connects Çesare to Leonardo da Vinci in a way that will outlast them both.

The prior who ordered his friars to clear the refectory so Leonardo could paint the wall — a decision he has regretted every single day since. Fra Bandello has worn out two habits and lost considerable hair waiting for the maestro to finish. He materializes at regular intervals to complain, to despair, to predict that Leonardo will never finish, and to be ignored. He is almost always right. He is always ignored.

Seventeen, the oldest of the four apprentices, and the only one permitted to work directly alongside the maestro. His father paid handsomely for the privilege and expects a return. Lorenzo has long black hair, captivating dark eyes, and the delicate complexion that secured his place in Leonardo's household. He takes his seniority very seriously. The other boys take his seniority considerably less seriously.

Sixteen, ruggedly pretty, Mediterranean-complexioned, with green eyes and a deep raspy voice. Antonio wanted to be a poet. His father — a Greek cobbler with a determined disposition — had other ideas. He mixes water with plaster. He would rather be writing verse. He has a gift for understatement, a fondness for going barefoot, and a habit of appearing at exactly the wrong moment.

A year older than Salai, stout and strong, with curly auburn hair and brows so fair they frame wide eyes that always look vaguely alarmed — as though Marco is perpetually uncertain what is happening around him. He is distantly related to Leonardo's celebrated teacher, which is proof, as the novel notes, that talent is not hereditary. He mixes pigment and egg yolk. He does it with great dedication and zero flair.

A grey, wobbling wraith who navigates his tavern with the help of a crooked cudgel. No man so thin has ever carried such a fat head, or such a prodigious and porcine nose. The Turk's small owl-black eyes miss nothing — half-shut most of the time, hidden in deep caves above his cheekbones. He dresses entirely in grey. He wobbles. He knows everyone in Milan's underworld, and everyone owes him something. He laughs a great deal. It is not a reassuring laugh.

The most loathsome creature Leonardo has ever encountered — foul-smelling, filthy, revolting, and utterly unbothered by all of the above. Stiletto makes people disappear, he explains, like a magician. He is expensive. He is, he insists, the best. He does not do royalty — too many bodyguards — but everything else is negotiable. Leonardo, searching desperately for the face of Judas, takes one look at Stiletto and understands that the search is over.