In the spring of 1917, Picasso goes to Rome to join the Ballets Russes as a designed for the set of Parade. His studio is just a stone’s throw away from both the Villa Medicis and another house that also shelters painters. Among those painters is one John William Godward, an English neo-classicist who believes in the Greek ideal of beauty alone. Godward stubbornly and almost exclusively paints a single subject: a pensive young woman with either marble or the sea in the background. Horrified by a modernity that he sees as both inhuman and destructive, Godward winds up killing himself before a blank canvas.

With World War and the Russian revolution as a backdrop, this novel is set at a very precise moment in the history of the world and of art – and it aims to be true to them both. It is still a work of fiction, however, presented as the diary of John William Godward. Learning of Picasso’s presence in Rome, Godward spies on him, dreaming of stilling his enemy’s sacrilegious hand and, who knows, perhaps even converting Picasso to his own belief in the ideal of eternal beauty. The idea of their meeting both fascinates and terrifies him. But is such an encounter possible?

Rome, 1917. The tale of a duel: tradition, portrayed by the English painter John William Godward, vs. modernity, incarnated by Picasso.