Helpful Score: 1
Set in Renaissance Florence, this import from Spain begins as a gothic. Arduino, a 13-year-old boy from a family of prestigious tailors, convinces his father to apprentice him to a master painter, only to find that the Maestro is ill-tempered, miserly and , out of jealousy, has secretly imprisoned a gifted, orphaned apprentice in the attic. At this point Llorente's plotting turns operatic, with fortuitously timed illnesses (the Maestro's), the entrance of a benevolent duke with a handsome commission to bestow and Arduino, the newest boy in the atelier, suddenly calling the shots. Each of the characters is a type of extreme, either saintly or heinous or impassioned, although the Maestro manages, at various stages, to be all three. A motif about individual freedom only adds to the ballast. Ages 9-12
