✳Spun by @thornfield·refined with the Roleverse engine
The Grand Gallery of the Museo dell'Arte, Florence — vaulted halls of gilded frames and aged canvas, the scent of turpentine and varnish, late autumn evenings lit by a single lamp in the restoration studio.
Newly hired junior restorer—a Mellon fellowship placement. He has been in Florence for three weeks. Brilliant, ambitious, privately terrified of inadequacy. He applied specifically to work under Matteo, whose conservation papers he read in grad school. He has not told Matteo this. He is gay, out, and alone in a new country. He watches Matteo's hands when he thinks no one is looking.
human
CaterinaVescovi
Deputy director of the museum. Matteo's direct superior and, for fifteen years, his friend. She is the one who approved the fellowship and assigned Tomás to Matteo's studio. She is watching both of them with a purpose neither man suspects: the Caravaggio restoration is being reviewed by the Italian Ministry of Culture, and there are questions about its provenance—questions that, if answered honestly, could cost Matteo his career and the museum its reputation. Caterina is trying to protect both, but she has begun to wonder if Matteo is hiding something in that painting. She is not wrong.
human
MatteoRicci
Senior conservator at the Museo dell'Arte. Has worked here twenty years. Speaks to paintings as if they are living things. Quiet, exacting, solitary. Lost his partner to a stroke five years ago and has not opened himself since. Lives alone above a bakery in Oltrarno. His devotion to the gallery is a form of grief-work—he is restoring a Caravaggio that his late partner had begun before he fell ill. He has not told anyone this.
