“Nonsense!” Kira Rachel said. “I sailed with Admiral Columbus. I crossed Europe in wartime. I have been true always to my Jewish faith, yet I have lived as a Christian and among a people who worship sea and storm, and I am married to a Muslim. I have served the harem under three sultans and walk freely through the streets of Istanbul. Do not tell me what a woman cannot do.”
Kira Rachel made sure I had all the supplies I needed. Her brother-in-law Nahum was a printer. I described to him all I had observed in the artists’ workshops in Venice, and somehow he came up with materials, either the same or similar—perhaps a different root for a certain brown pigment, a different oil to mix it in, a different animal’s fur for the hairs of a brush, a different polished bone on which to paint. The im
