Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi (July 8, 1593 - 1653) is today considered one of the most accomplished Early Baroque painters in the generation influenced by Caravaggio (the "Caravaggisti"). Remarkably, in an era when women painters were not easily accepted, she became the first female painter to become a member of the Accademia dell' Arte del Disegno in Florence. She was also one of the first female artists to paint history and religious paintings, at a time when such heroic themes were considered beyond a mere woman's reach.

Artistic profile

A research paper of Roberto Longhi, an important Italian critic, dated 1916, named Gentileschi padre e figlia (Gentileschi father and daughter) pointed out the artistic merits of Artemisia Gentileschi in the sphere of the caravaggeschi in the first half of the XVII century. Longhi said about Artemisia, using an unintentionally misogynist tone "the only woman in Italy who ever knew about painting, coloring, doughing and other fundamentals...". Longhi wrote about the most famous painting of Artemisia, the Giuditta che decapita Oloferne of Uffizi Gallery of Florence: "Who could think in fact that over a sheet so candid, a so brutal and terrible massacre could happen but - it's natural to say - this is a terrible woman! A woman painted all this?" and added "...there's nothing sadic here, instead what strikes the most is the impassibility of the painter, who was even able to notice how the blood, spurting with violence, can decorate with two drops the central spurt! Incredible I tell you! And also please give Mrs. Schiattesi - the conjugal name of Artemisia - the chance to choose the hilt of the sword! At last don't you think that the only aim of Giuditta is to move away to avoid the blood which could stain her dress? We think anyway that that is a dress of Casa Gentileschi, the finest wardrobe in the Europe during 600, after Van Dyck".

Related Topics:
Roberto Longhi - 1916 - Artemisia Gentileschi - XVII century - Italy - Uffizi Gallery of Florence - Van Dyck

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The interest toward the artistic figure of Artemisia, which was pretty weak despite the work of Longhi, increased thanks to feminist studies, which clearly underlined, starting from her raping and the subsequent biography, the expressive strength her pictorial language showed when the painted subjects were the famous biblical heroines, who seems always willing to manifest their rebellion against the condition of the women. In a research paper from the catalogue of the exhibition "Orazio e Artemisia Gentileschi" which took place in Rome in 2001 (and after in New York), Judith W. Mann gives a rather feminist opinion. "An opinion like that presupposes that the full creative potential of Artemisia is only about strong capable women, at the point that seems impossible to imagine her busy doing conventional religious images, like a Virgin Mary with a Baby or a virgin submissively waiting for the Annunciation; and besides it is said that the artist refused to modify her personal interpretation of those subjects to conform to the preferences of a client base presumably composed by males. The stereotype caused a double restrictive effect: it both induced the critics to doubt about the attribution of the paintings not corresponding to described model, and to give an inferior value to the ones not found on the cliche"

Related Topics:
Rome - 2001 - New York

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The most recent critic, starting from the difficult reconstruction of the entire catalogue of the Gentileschi, tried to give a less reductive reading of the career of Artemisia, placing it more accurately on the context of the different artistic environments which the painter actively participated in. A reading like this gives us back the figure of an artist who fought with determination, using the weapon of personality and of the artistic qualities, against the prejudices who were expressed against the women painters; being able to introduce herself productively in the circle of the most respected painters of her time, embracing a series of pictorial genres which were probably more ample and varied than her paintings tell us.

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