Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi, "Susannah and the Elders," 1610

A new exhibition of works by one of my favorite painters just opened in London. The painter, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656), lived and worked in her native Italy during the first half of the 17th century. She was trained by her father Orazio, successful painter in Rome. Orazio Gentileschi doubtless knew the work of Caravaggio, as revealed in his own paintings, a style he passed to his daughter. He boasted of her ability while she was still very young, and that shows in her earliest known work, "Susannah and the Elders," wherein a young woman is spied upon by two dirty old men. The subject is a Bible story that has been used many times, but Ms. Gentileschi was startlingly only seventeen when she painted her version. Despite her youth, the expression she gives Susannah is masterly. I would love to attend just to see this work.

 She went on to a very successful career as a painter, but for some, it is her story that makes her art compelling, a different but analogous way to reactions to van Gogh or perhaps Frida Kahlo. The year after she painted Susannah, Artemisia was raped by two men, one of whom was working with her father. Orazio Gentileschi demanded that he marry her, but the man refused and was charged and convicted of her violation. However, it was only after Artemisia had been subjected to physical torture to ascertain her truthfulness. (We know all of this from court records.)

"Judith Beheading Holofernes," 1614-18

In any event, following the trial she married and moved to Florence, where she produced some of her more . She stayed in Florence for more than a decade, and produced some of her most dramatic works. Included in this exhibition are two versions she did of the story of Judith and Holofernes, another Bible tale wherein Judith is able to behead a drunken Assyrian general. Many artists have depicted the beheading scene, from Caravaggio to Rembrandt. The story would naturally attract a woman who had suffered as Ms. Gentileschi had, and she makes the most of the chance (above). In her version, Judith has seized a sword to behead the general, her jaw set and her brow determined. A maidservant helps. Viewing the image through the prism of her life, it seems to me you see her rage and need for revenge. 

"Cleopatra," ca 1634

Although she was very successful in Florence (she was first woman inducted into the prestigious Accademia di Arte del Disegno) she and her husband returned to Rome in 1620. She worked hard there but eventually moved to Naples a decade later, where she lived for most of the remainder of her life, with side excursions to Venice and London. In Venice her work became more colorful as she absorbed the works of masters like Titian. In London she worked with her father, who was court painter to the English king. She may have fulfilled some of his commissions there but had returned to Naples before the start of the English civil war in 1642.

She specialized in strong female subjects from myth and the Bible, portraits, and figures. A good example of her late work is "Cleopatra," dating from her Naples years. In her figurative works of that time, the tenebrism of caravaggism is less apparent, but her use of color is masterful. 

Her known output is so small--fewer than sixty paintings in all--and because this exhibition is the first of her work in years, how I wish I could see it.