Publisher's Synopsis
One day in 1624, a father takes his daughter to the beach of Santa Severa to see the remains of a stranded whale. The father, Giovanni Briccio, treasures in his desk a tooth from that whale, which later his daughter, Plautilla, will keep all her life, along with the indelible memory of the animal that she saw as a child on that beach. We are in the Rome of baroque splendor, the Rome of the popes, the Rome of intrigues, fanaticism, violence, and plague. Giovanni is a painter and musician. Plautilla is his second daughter destined to be an important woman. Her father will educate her in the art of painting, and she will end up becoming an architect, the first female architect in modern history.
