A teenage girl sits in a 17th-century Roman courtroom, her fingers crushed by a torture device, not as the accused but as the victim, tortured to verify her testimony. Those same hands would go on to make her one of the most successful and highly paid painters in Europe.

This episode traces how Artemisia Gentileschi, legally barred from guilds and apprenticeships, mastered the gritty realism of Caravaggio, survived a notorious assault trial, and built a scaled commercial workshop that operated like a modern creative agency.

• Learning to paint by observation in her father’s studio
• The seven-month trial of Agostino Tassi and its brutal logic
• Becoming the first woman admitted to Florence’s Academy of Drawing Arts
• Correspondence with Galileo and payment triple the male rate
• The modern debate over trauma versus market-driven business strategy