I AM YOU

The story of two Dutch Renaissance artists, one who struggles to achieve fame despite her gender, the other her servant, who must struggle against both her gender and her class to succeed.

Inspired by the actual artist Maria van Oosterwijck, Redel has written a novel that combines a 17th-century atmosphere with a 21st-century sensibility. While Redel’s Maria is drawn with intriguing complexity, this story belongs to her maid, Gerta, who narrates. When Gerta was 7 years old, her impoverished family disguised her as a boy named Pieter and sent her to work for Maria’s family as a servant. Already a still-life painter at 14, Maria enjoys secretly sketching the servant boy as a model, even though women are not allowed to draw the human body. The child idolizes Maria. When Maria recognizes that the servant boy has grown into an adolescent girl, she takes Gerta as her maid to Utrecht. Both talented and ambitious, Maria must feign piety to avoid the encumbrance of marriage. Gerta becomes not only her domestic servant but also her closest companion. Maria teaches Gerta to paint, and Gerta becomes her apprentice, whose paintings are signed by Maria. Gerta is also adept at purchasing and mixing pigments, a difficult, important aspect of painting at the time. Gerta’s still-fluid gender identity proves useful; she reverts to Pieter when she needs to visit the docks to bargain for supplies among male merchants. At the height of her career, Maria grows physically incapacitated and increasingly unable to paint. Gerta serves as Maria’s instrument, eventually painting all of Maria’s commissions under Maria’s name. Maria and Gerta are also lovers. While continuing their public roles as master and servant, they intertwine on multiple levels of secrecy and closeted identity, a situation that becomes increasingly difficult.

Redel’s commentary on art and sexual politics is predictable; her characters’ nuanced, complex relationship is terrific.