Details and visuals abound in the book readers who loved the painterly descriptions of Girl will be spellbound in particular by the scenes in which Artemisia is shown at work.

Studio and home become the battlefields of Artemisia's life, and Vreeland chronicles 20 years of the painter's struggles while raising her daughter alone. But rifts soon develop as Artemisia begins to have some success: she wins the patronage of the Medicis and is the first woman to be elected to the Accademia dell'Arte before her husband. Her marriage, while not a love match, proves at first to be affectionate, and the arrival of a daughter, Palmira, strengthens the bond with her husband. Publicly humiliated and scorned in Rome after her participation as defendant in a rape trial in which the accused is her painting teacher (and father's friend) Agostino Tassi, Artemisia accepts a hastily arranged marriage at the age of 18 to Pietro Stiatessi, an artist in Florence. Narrated in the wise, candid first-person voice of Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), the novel tells the story of Gentileschi's life and career in Renaissance Italy. Vreeland follows up the success of Girl in Hyacinth Blue with another novel delving into the themes of art, history and the lives of women. Vreeland seems to think she can make all this ''meaningful'' by imbuing it with a dated 1970's-style feminism. But in depicting Artemisia's life, Vreeland announces in a prefatory note that she has been true to the record ''only so long as fact furnishes believable drama,'' and that she seeks to portray her subject ''in a way meaningful to us.'' Alas, Vreeland fails on both counts. Susan Vreeland's novel is about Artemisia Gentileschi, who-along with her father is the subject of a current show at the Metropolitan Museum.

The passion of artemisia summary