Seventeen-year-old Artemisia Gentileschi lives for the moments when she connects "the brush to the paint to [her] breath to the canvas." Her father, Orazio Gentileschi, is a professional painter of "mediocre" talent. Artemisia labors as his apprentice, touching up his commissions with "strokes/of [her] own choosing," while always striving to better her craft. It's Artemisia's skill that brings in the clients who pay for their bread, but she's virtually invisible, as Orazio Gentileschi, rather than Artemisia, signs the finished art.
In this "world of men"--17th-century Rome--women are merely "beauty/ for consumption." So when Agostino Tassi, who's been engaged to give her art lessons, actually seems interested in Artemisia's skill, she's easily smitten. All too soon, though, "Tino" shows his real interest is in taking Artemisia for his mistress. Devastated, the girl spurns him, and Tassi rapes her: "I've no authority," the fictional Artemisia recounts, "He is teacher, I am student,/ man and girl/ power, nothing..../ The sudden realization/ of what's going to happen next/ descends."
The real Artemisia brought charges against Agostino Tassi, even though she knew it was unlikely she would win. This piece of historical fiction, told in luminous verse and based on transcripts from that trial, tackles issues of gender and power in a way that is relevant today. In the novel, Artemisia's mother, before her death, told her daughter stories of two women, Susanna and Judith, who triumphed over the monumental injustices they faced because of their gender. Susanna and Judith serve as Artemisia's spiritual mentors, and from them she draws strength to paint her own path. --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI