The meal of Roman and Neapolitan artisans in Artemisia's time revolves around bread, the foundation of every table. Everything else is *companatico*, "what accompanies the bread": a bit of *minestra* (a vegetable or legume soup-stew), sometimes a bite of salty *companatico*, and wine mixed with water. On feast days, a roast and an elaborate sauce break the routine. There is no starter-main-dessert: one eats what the season and the purse offer, around the shared loaf.

The great affair of Italian Baroque cuisine: marrying sugar (honey, raisins, *sapa*) with acid (*agresto*/verjuice, vinegar) in the same dish. Just as Artemisia's chiaroscuro contrasts light with shadow, the *agrodolce* contrasts sweet with sour — a tense, balanced, theatrical contrast. It is the red thread of the court sauces described by Bartolomeo Scappi.