In one vertiginous eleven-page sentence a lucid voice addresses Palma Vecchio, that curious Venetian painter who brings to his studio a succession of models and who transforms them in his canvases into exaggerated yet inexplicably desirous women. Why does he do it? How does he do it? And why are they so afraid of him even though he, unlike most of his contemporaries, never touches them? The text sets the question, to which the paintings are the answer.