Disobedient by Elizabeth Freemantle (Michael Joseph)
I've just been lucky enough to spend a long weekend in Venice, surrounded by wonderful architecture and art so when I was looking for a book to read on my journey home Disobedient seemed the obvious choice from my Kindle.
This is a retelling of Artemesia Gentileschi's early years as she learns her craft and is caught up in the politics, intrigues and scandals of Rome in the early 1600s. Her life was quite shocking and she was subject to some terrible abuses but overcame them all to become a wonderful, if often overlooked, artist.
Rome 1611.
A jewel-bright place of change, with sumptuous new palaces and lavish wealth on display. A city where women are seen but not heard.
Artemisia Gentileschi dreams of becoming a great artist. Motherless, she grows up among a family of painters - men and boys. She knows she is more talented than her brothers, but she cannot choose her own future. She wants to experience the world, but she belongs to her father and will belong to a husband.
As Artemisia patiently goes from lesson to lesson, perfecting her craft, she also paints in private, recreating the women who inspire her, away from her father's eyes.
Until a mysterious tutor enters her life. Tassi is a dashing figure, handsome and worldly, and for a moment he represents everything that a life of freedom might offer. But then the unthinkable happens.
In the eyes of her family, Artemisia should accept her fate. In the eyes of the law, she is the villain.
But Artemisia is a survivor. And this is her story to tell.
The book definitely evoked Rome of the time, and I could clearly 'see' the action (and smell it too, such was the power of the writing) but at times I felt that the writing was too Twenty-first century and I did step out of the period setting.
I'd have loved this book to have been longer and contained more about the art and methods used - maybe not quite as detailed as Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy but heading this way! Once I read the author's notes at the end I understood the authorial choices more and came to admire the book in an extra way.
