A young female painter struggles to gain recognition for her work within the male-dominated art world of Renaissance Italy. Meanwhile, in the contemporary United States, a young career woman encounters her own version of the same challenges as she fights for recognition in the workplace. chiaroscuro or Slaying Holofernes blends and blurs the worlds of past/present, fact/fiction, and personal/political as it explores two women’s parallel quests for justice in an imperfect world.