Description :
Mélanie thought she?d hit rock bottom. Alcohol had taken everything from her: her job, her home and, above all, custody of her little Alice, whom she hopes one day to hold in her arms once more. To keep herself going, she decides to write a novel for her daughter, who has become fascinated by a strange child who lived four centuries earlier and is depicted in a painting kept at the Château de Blois. Antonietta Gonsalvus was born during the Renaissance. Suffering from an extremely rare condition characterised by abnormal hair growth covering her face and body, she grew up under the fascinated gaze of Europe?s most important courts. Though regarded as a curiosity, she nevertheless found recognition of her humanity through the brush of Lavinia Fontana, a female painter with an exceptional destiny. For the first time, someone saw not a freak of nature, but a little girl.
Whilst writing this story for Alice, Mélanie discovers that the passage of centuries can sometimes bridge distances, and that wounds, whatever they may be, cannot prevent beauty, dignity or love from enduring. Having brought exceptional artists and women to life in her previous books,
Christiana Moreau takes us on a journey in the footsteps of a little-known heroine of the Renaissance. Part emotional tale, part historical epic, *The Little Girl in the Painting* ? a novel within a novel ? celebrates the strength of the bonds that unite mothers and their children, and the power of art to restore their identity to those whom history had condemned to being nothing more than a curiosity.