Reading Guides  The Passion of Artemisia Susan Vreeland add to
cart Read an excerpt    What would it take for a woman to be a
famous painter in Baroque Italy? Talent. Passion. Determination.
Good fortune. Artemisia Gentileschi had all but one.  In my
previous novel, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Magdalena, the fictional
daughter of Johannes Vermeer, longed to paint. With the eye of
an artist she imagined a painting of the moment of her father's
death, "but the task was too fearsome. She lacked the skill, and
the one to teach her had never offered."  But what if someone
had offered? When I learned that a well known Italian Baroque
painter, Orazio Gentileschi, did teach his daughter, Artemisia,
I was fascinated. That she produced works of startling invention
which took the Baroque spirit of exuberance to its height, that
she expressed a feminist sensibility in painting strong heroines
caught in moments of danger or tension, thinking and acting
against the grain, that she was the first woman to be admitted
into the Acc