The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy

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160 Portrait of Leo X (1475–1521), Cardinal Luigi de’ Rossi, and Giulio de Medici (1478–1534), 1518 (oil on panel), by Raphael (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy / The Bridgeman Art Library)

162 The Veiled Woman, or La Donna Velata, c. 1516 (oil on canvas), by Raphael (Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy / Alinari / The Bridgeman Art Library)

180 The Catechism with a Young Girl Reading and the Initiate Making an Offering, North Wall, Oecus 5, c. 60–50 b.c. (fresco), by Roman (first century b.c.) (Villa dei Misteri, Pompeii, Italy / The Bridgeman Art Library)

At night I would often be woken by noise from the road, and afterward would lie awake for hours, unable to sleep. The noise, which was of a strange drunken revelry, would usually begin long after the pubs had closed, though in the deeps of the night I never knew exactly what time it was. I was merely summoned by the sound of unearthly groans and shrieks outside my window that seemed to belong neither to the world nor to my dreams but somewhere in between. They might have been men’s voices or women’s, it was hard to tell. The noise they made came from a region that outlay human identity. Their long, inchoate monologues, vocalized yet senseless, seemed to name something that afterward could not be specified, to describe what by daylight appeared indescribable.

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