Gentileschi, Artemisia

(1593-1652)

   Artemisia was the daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, who trained her. Unlike other female artists of her era, she did not settle for lower genres but rather insisted on rendering mainstream scenes. Her favored subject was the female heroine, such as Judith and Lucretia. One of her earliest works is the Woman Playing a Lute (c. 1610-1612; Rome, Palazzo Spada), which she painted in Rome while in her teens. It shows her full command of the Caravaggesque vocabulary with a naturalistic figure emerging from the shadows to occupy most of the pictorial space. Her Judith Slaying Holofernes (1612-1613; Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte) presents a tighter composition than Caravaggio's version (c. 1598; Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica), the subject one Artemisia would tackle on several occasions. In 1612, she was brutally raped by Agostino Tassi, one of Orazio's pupils. After a seven-month trial, Tassi served a short jail sentence and was ultimately acquitted. Some have viewed the Judith paintings as Artemisia's imagined revenge against her assailant. After the trial, Artemisia was married off to the Florentine artist Pietro Antonio di Vincenzo Strattesi, the relative of a key witness who testified on her behalf. The marriage did not last and soon Artemisia is documented living alone with her daughter Prudentia.

   In Florence, she worked for Grand Duke Cosimo II de' Medici and, by 1620, she was back in Rome receiving commissions from both local and foreign patrons. She created her Lucretia (c. 1621; Genoa, Palazzo Cataneo-Adorno) for Pietro Gentile, a Genoese nobleman and collector. Like Artemisia, Lucretia was a victim of rape and chose to commit suicide rather than bring shame to her family. While most depictions of her story presented her plunging the knife into her chest, Artemisia preferred to capture her psychological struggle as she chooses between life and death. Artemisia's Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (1630; Windsor, Royal Collection) is just as innovative. Rendered in Naples where she moved sometime before 1630, the work shows the artist caught in the frenzy of creation, leaning over to see her reflection in a mirror outside the painting.

   While in Naples, Artemisia came into contact with the works of Domenichino and Giovanni Lanfranco who had introduced the classical vocabulary of Bologna to the region. This resulted in a change in her style. Her Lot and His Daughters (1640s; Toledo, Museum of Art) and Corsica and the Satyr (1640s; private collection) belong to this phase in her career. In these works, the figures, now slimmer and more graceful, are pushed back to reveal a fully developed background. Artemisia never left Naples, save for a three-year stay in the court of Charles I of England where her father was working. In a letter to one of her patrons she wrote, "And I will show Your Lordship what a woman can do!" This reflects her ambition in wanting to achieve the same fame as some of her male predecessors. Artemisia certainly attained her goal. While living, she became an international celebrity, a status she quickly lost after her death when she fell into a long period of obscurity that lasted until 1989 when interest in her oeuvre was resurrected.