Rafael’s Good-By
When the Paintings Return
From the essay
I wish I could say I was there. Not there as a doctor, not as a priest, not as a biographer waiting for a last word. I want to imagine Rafael’s good-by: the painter who had lived through his paintings with a force perhaps greater than the force with which ordinary people live through their days. I entered the room as an imagined witness, knowing that I had no right to call the scene a memory. Rafael leaves, the Madonna remains, and the paintings, having said their good-by, turn back toward a world that will never know them as he knew them.