Summary

The novel is broken up into five parts. The first part is told entirely in verse and consists of 14 small chapters, some of them only a few lines long. 17-year-old Artemisia Gentileschi narrates the verse. When she is painting, she focuses in on the art of creation and ignores the complaints and critiques of her father, Orazio Gentileschi, who forces her to paint for him so that he can sell her work and sign his name to it. Her younger brothers are talentless, so they are of no use to the family.

While Artemisia attempts to figure out a way to enliven the image of baby Jesus to make him stand out from the rest of the figures in her painting, her father knocks her paints off the easel and yells at her. She goes to the market and buys bread, then convinces the...