Arte Spaletti

## Arte

may contain spoilers

**Arte Spaletti** (アルテ・スパレッティ, *Arute Suparetti*?) is an aspiring painter and the protagonist of the eponymous manga series *Arte* and its anime adaptation. She is currently working under Leo.

## Official site's description

*The only daughter of a poor aristocrat in Florence. Though she rushes a lot and has a strong sense of defeat, she has a hard-working personality. When she was a child, she was given various lessons from her parents, but became absorbed in drawing, which was one of them, and loved drawing more than anything else. she volunteers to become a disciple of Leo in order to overcome her mother's opposition and fulfil her dream of becoming a painter.*

## Appearance

Arte is an average height girl with a slender yet feminine figure. She is pale, her eyes are large and round, her irises are sky blue, her lashes are thin which are on both upper and lower eye. Her hair ( before she cut it ) was very long, since she's cut her hair it is chin-length with a small piece of hair longer than the rest in the back. Her bangs just rest above her eyes, some pieces of hair stick out to the side.

Her usual day dress is a white petticoat and a green dress over the petticoat, the dress is ground length and there is sliver embroidery on the hem of the dress. She wears a deep brown belt with gold buckles and a white cloth around her waist.

In ch 74 she has grown her back to knee length and wears it in a braid.

## Personality

Arte has a very upbeat bubbly personality. She has a wiry strength. (Able to lift clay bags that two boys have difficulty carrying.) She's very determined and will do anything to make her dreams comes true. She is naive because of her noble upbringing and can be brutally honest, even in situations where it causes social uneasiness. She respects hard work, from any class of people. She does not like techniques used to manipulate people but is willing to be a hard negotiator for what she feels will be a good bargain for all.

## Story

Arte is the only daughter of a small aristocrat family, she received the basic education all noble girls get, but she was particularly interested in painting drawing. While her mother was not pleased, as she thinks women should only marry, while her father encouraged her by buying her art supplies. When her father died, her family discovered that they didn't have a lot of money left and that if Arte didn't marry a man soon, it would be done, hence why her mother burns her drawings, causing Arte to flee her house and find a place where she could be an apprentice.

Seeing as nobody wanted her because she was a female, she cuts her hair and threatened to cut off her breast and get rid of all of her femininity. That's when Leo comes in and stops her. She ends up in his workshop and gives her a challenge, which she passes, to become an apprentice.

After working for a while in Leo, she meets a lot of friends, like Angelo, Darcia, but most importantly, Veronica, who will become her confidant and help her find out her crush on Leo.

1 year after working with Leo, the corporation starts to doubt that Arte was worthy of being a painter, and challenges her and Leo by forcing them to help with a fresco, she succeeds and is noticed by a man, Yuri, a noble from Venise.

He proposes to hire her to be a painter of his sister-in-law and as a tutor for his niece. She refuses. Later, she meets Lusanna, a pregnant widow, turning out to be Leo's childhood friend. She returned to Florence to take back her dowry, but her in-laws refused. To help her, Arte decides to accept Yuri's proposal under two conditions: she will travel to Venice for 6 months, and Yuri will use her influence as a nobleman to force Lusanna's former in-laws to give back her dowry.

Once in Venice, she meets the Faliers, Yuri's family, especially with Sofia, Marco's wife (and Yuri's step-wife) and Katarina, Sofia's daughter. While painting Sofia is easy, trying to teach Katarina goods manners is hell. She seems like a true pest (hence the name of chapters 22 and 23). But after insisting, she learns through Yuri what happened with Katarina for her to be like that and helps her get over it. After her job with Katarina is done, Arte ends up working really hard, too hard, that she makes Katarina and Daphne worried, until she faints. After being scolded by Yuri, she reduces her work. After finishing Sofia's painting, she comes back to Florence, much to Leo's surprise. It's been way more than 6 months, and he didn't know when she would come back.

After her time with the Faliers, she started gaining a reputation and having more and more jobs. That's when she, and other people too, started wondering about Arte's future and if she wanted to stay at Leo's workshop or aim higher. She decides to take her time and stays.

One day, she gets a job from a certain Cardinal Silvio Passerini. He wants her to be the painter of a woman that goes by the name of Irene. But he doesn't want her to only do that, but also to use her qualities as a woman to make "Irene" talk about her journey and everything that she does. Arte understood that perfectly but she also know that the Cardinal actually don't care about the quality of her painting, she takes that as a challenge to show him the beauty of her art. Arte gets a little nostalgic when noticing that the house Irene stays in was, in fact, her childhood home.

## Relationships

*(This section is not entirely complete yet)*

### Main relationships

#### **Leo**

Leo is Arte's master, she admires, respect and is in love with him. But for now, they are nothing more than colleagues.

#### **Veronica**

Veronica is Arte's friend and confident and often gives her advice. She helped Arte find out about her crush on Leo.

#### **Angelo**

Angelo is Arte's friend. He is also an apprentice and he admires her determination. Arte helped him change his view on women and what they could do.

#### **Darcia**

Darcia is Arte's friend and student, as she paying Arte to give her reading and writing lessons, and later maths lessons.

#### **Yuri**

Yuri is Arte's "boss" for the time she is in Venice.

#### **Katarina**

Katarina is Arte's student and friend. She is here to teach the girl good-manners. Seeing as she already knows them but doesn't use them, she decides to learn about her past through Yuri. After that, she helps Katarina get over her troubled childhood and gets her to perform good manners. She later makes Katarina worried by overworking to the point of fainting.

#### **Lady "Irene"**

Irene is a noblewoman from Spain who's visiting Florence. She discovers by Arte herself that she is currently staying in Arte's childhood house and promises to take care of it.

Arte is one of the only person who knows about Irene's true identity. She discovered it because of Azucena. She and Irene shared their childhood stories and Irene wants to convince Arte to confess to Leo.

### Other relationships

#### **Daphne**

Daphne is a servant working for the Faliers. She helps Arte for both of her jobs and they become friends. Daphne admires her determination and just like Katarina, she wonders if her life could've been different if she stood up for herself earlier. She is also worried when Arte overworks herself.

#### **Ubertino**

Ubertino is Leo's boss, she finds him quite scary and sometimes compare him to Leo.

#### **Gilda**

Gilda, Arte's mother, strongly opposed to her becoming an apprentice, as she believed women had no place elsewhere than married to a man. In the manga, she is seen in a *Storia Paralela* in which she seems to have accepted what Arte wanted to do. In the anime, she sees Arte's fresco and realises that she is just fine where she is.

#### **Arte's father**

Arte was really close to her father. He would buy her art supplies and supported her until he died.

#### **Lusanna**

Lusanna is Leo's childhood friend and a widow. Arte meets her when she was pregnant and came back to Florence to get her dowry. Arte was intrigued by her at first, just like for Veronica. She later helped her get her dowry back by accepting Yuri's deal.

#### **Sofia**

Sofia is Katarina's mother and Arte's client. She discovers how neglectful she's been to Katarina thanks to Arte and is trying to build a better relationship with her daughter.

#### **Marco**

Marco is Sofia's husband and Katarina's father. He is rather strict and neglectful of Katarina, not really caring for her daughter, or at least not showing it, even after Arte's intervention. He almost got her fired after she tried to help Katarina.

#### **Mattei**

Mattei is an apprentice in a workshop in Venice. He accidentally makes Arte doubt her place when telling her she's quite a unique person in this job by being a noble and a female.

#### **Azucena**

Azucena is rather suspicious of Arte to the point of spying her and tries her best to avoid her from finding Irene's true identity.

She ends up doing the opposite. Why spying on Arte, she stumbles upon her and Darcia having a conversation about Katarina. Due to Katarina and Katarina (Irene) having the same name (they are the same in their respective languages) she thinks Arte is speaking of Irene and she traps Arte in a small street and puts a knife to her neck while asking for her to explain herself about Catherine. Back at the residence, upon realising the misunderstanding, Irene is forced to reveal who she is.

## Trivia

* Arte is loosely inspired by a real person named Artemisia Gentileschi, who was a Papal States Roman female painter.
* Silvio Passerini, the Cardinal that Arte meets, is based off a real person.
* Lady Irene and her mother are also based off real people.