A noble-born girl in Renaissance Florence seeks a painter's apprenticeship in a trade that does not welcome women into its workshops.
Arte wants a working life built on drawing rather than the marriage expected of her. Leo's workshop offers a demanding route into that ambition, with skill inseparable from physical labour, patronage and the need to earn another person's confidence.
Wanting to paint is only the beginning of Arte's problem. A workshop also demands preparation, practical labour and someone willing to accept responsibility for an apprentice. Her privileged upbringing gives her neither the standing of a recognised craft worker nor an easy way around the assumptions excluding her. The town-and-workshop ensemble in the lead places the ambition in a social world; the separate eager face preserves the desire that makes the work worth attempting. Follow the twelve television episodes as a Renaissance-set character drama, while keeping the later manga outside its animated endpoint.