Artemisia Gentileschi: the Woman, the Artist

In 1916 Italian art historian Roberto Longhi published an article in the periodical L’Arte about two 17th-century painters who were at the time almost completely forgotten: Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter, Artemisia.

Longhi praised Artemisia’s talent, drawing a suggestive comparison with a famous woman painter of the 19th century, the American Mary Cassatt, well-known for her independence and free spirit.

In 1947 Longhi’s wife, the writer Anna Banti, published the novel Artemisia, an evocative reconstruction of the artist’s early life centered on the most notorious episode in her biography—her rape by one of her father’s collaborators in 1611, when she was 18 years old, and the subsequent criminal trial. The trial papers had been discovered at the end of the 19th century but had not attracted much attention until the publication of Banti’s book. If Longhi’s essay marked the beginning of the modern reconstruction of Artemisia’s artistic trajectory, Banti’s novel contributed to popularize her figure among a larger audience. Ever since, Artemisia has increasingly captured the attention of scholars, writers, filmmakers, and the general public.

In the mid 1970s—at the height of the women’s rights movement—Artemisia became one of the heroes of the landmark exhibition Women Artists: 1550–1950, which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976. Five years before, one of the curators of that exhibition, Linda Nochlin, had written, “Why Have There Been No Great Woman Artists?,” an essay originally published in ArtNews wherein she explored the significant social and cultural barriers that prevented women from pursuing art in the early modern period. Artemisia figured in the essay as one of the exceptions in a panorama that was mostly dominated by men.

After the first-ever exhibition entirely devoted to her, held in Florence in 1991 at the Casa Buonarroti, it seems that almost every year paintings by Artemisia appear in exhibitions on the European followers of Caravaggio or on women painters. London’s National Gallery presented a major retrospective on her last fall, following the acquisition of an important painting, and new works have emerged from private collections and are fetching rising market prices. In March, for instance, the Getty Museum acquired Lucretia, a major Gentileschi painting recently rediscovered after being held in private collections for centuries.

Although all of this has led to a recognition of Artemisia’s stature as the most eminent woman painter of the 17th century, the dramatic episode of her rape has long dominated the account of her life and shaped the interpretation of her art. This focus has in part obscured the rest of her extraordinary biography and highly individual contribution to 17th-century painting, both of which I’d like to illuminate here.

Portrait of the artist as a young woman

Born in Rome in 1593, Artemisia Gentileschi was the eldest child and only daughter of Prudenzia di Montone (1575–1605) and the Tuscan painter Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639). After losing her mother when she was 12 years old, she began looking after her three younger siblings while also training as an artist in her father’s workshop. Her father was well aware of her exceptional talent and showed pride in her accomplishments. In a letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Maria Maddalena of Austria, dated 1612, he boasts, “Having studied the profession of painting, after three years she had practiced so much that I can now say that she has no peers, having created such works of art that perhaps even the most important masters of this profession cannot achieve.”

Artemisia’s early production was significantly shaped by the art of Caravaggio, but mediated by her father’s highly individual response to the Lombard painter’s revolutionary pictorial language. Although fascinated by Caravaggio’s raw and direct approach to reality, Orazio was able to blend naturalism with formal sophistication, always retaining a secure sense of draftsmanship and a refined palette that derived from his Tuscan training. This style is perfectly exemplified by his Lot and His Daughters at the Getty Museum. Since her debut, Artemisia instead demonstrated a firm grasp of dramatic narrative and a powerful emotional intensity that is absent from her father’s more restrained mode. Her first dated painting, Susanna and the Elders, signed and dated in 1610 when she was 17 years old, is extraordinarily accomplished and addresses two themes she favored throughout her career: women heroes and the female nude.

After the rape and the trial, Artemisia married a modest painter, Pierantonio Stiattesi, and moved with him to Florence. It is there that she truly became “la Pittora” (“the Paintress”), with her own reputation, clients, and a highly individual style. She also started to build her artistic persona more consciously: she learned to read and write (such knowledge was typically limited to women of higher social standing), developed an appreciation for music and singing, frequented cultivated social circles, and made important friendships, even enjoying the favor of the Medici court. In 1616 she became the first woman to join the celebrated Accademia del Disegno (the Florentine Academy of Art).

Around this time, she began a passionate love affair with Francesco Maria Maringhi, a wealthy Florentine nobleman. The relationship was documented in several letters discovered in 2011 and represented a remarkable addition to our knowledge of Artemisia’s personality and career. Thanks to these and other recently discovered documents, we can today better understand her entrepreneurial strategies and struggles with money, reconstruct her network of patrons, and describe her collaborative arrangements with other artists. We also have a deeper glimpse into her personal feelings, for example when in 1620 she wrote to Maringhi that she “was dying for pain” at the loss of her four-year-old son, Cristofano.

That same year, when the affair with Maringhi became too public in Florence, Artemisia and her family moved back to Rome where she further advanced her career and met some of the most celebrated artists of the period, including French painter Simon Vouet. His friendship and esteem for Artemisia is evident in his powerful portrait of her, which speaks eloquently about her artistic and social ambitions. Vouet depicted her holding a palette and brushes, but she was also elegantly dressed and wearing a medal with the reproduction of the Mausoleum of Alicarnassus, built by her namesake, the celebrated ancient Greek Queen Artemisia.

We don’t know why she decided to move to Venice around 1627. At the time she was accompanied only by her daughter Prudenzia, since she and her husband had become estranged sometime after 1623, when he completely disappeared from the records.

A Lucretia in Venice

Until recently, Artemisia’s time in Venice was the least-known chapter of her biography. But we now know that she remained in Venice for almost three years, occupying a central place in the city’s artistic and cultural life. In 1627 a number of poems were dedicated to four of her paintings executed in Venice, including one depicting Lucretia. The author has not been identified with certainty, but he was likely Giovan Francesco Loredan, who was part of a close-knit group of writers, artists, musicians, librettists, and patrons who associated with Artemisia. The poet celebrates her skill in bringing back to life the ancient hero, only to again cause her death through the power of her brush: “Artemisia paints the event and brings it back to life / Rome had already seen you bathe your knife in blood / now more than the knife, it is her brush that kills you.”

The poems do not describe the painting with precision, but it is highly probable it is the Lucretia recently acquired by the Getty Museum. The legendary Roman noblewoman Lucretia, who took her own life after being raped, was a popular subject in 16th- and 17th-century painting, where the hero is usually isolated at the peak of the story’s action. The tragic story may have had particular significance for Artemisia, given her own trauma and penchant for representing classical and biblical women heroes known for their strength and determination. It is interesting to note that the nature and status of women became one of the dominant themes of discussion in Venetian cultural circles after Lucrezia Marinella published The Nobility and Excellence of Women, and The Defects and Vices of Men (Venice, 1600). In these discussions, exemplary women from ancient history were often invoked to fight misogynistic prejudices and to prove that women were naturally inclined toward virtue and wisdom.

As observed by art historian Jesse Locker, Gentileschi’s Lucretia shows a profound engagement with the artistic legacy of 16th-century Venetian painting: her elegant and sophisticated hero, with a string of pearls in her hair and the dynamic and exuberant swirl of fabric, brings to mind several women protagonists in paintings of the previous century by Titian and Veronese. In this painting she seems to set aside the raw and austere expressivity of her previous works in favor of a softer, more lyrical and poetic mood, suggesting a new direction in her artistic itinerary.

“I will show Your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do”

In 1630 Artemisia moved to Naples, fleeing the plague in another hasty departure. In the early 17th century, Naples was the largest city in southern Europe, a major art capital, and a magnet for artists seeking opportunity and success. Spanish viceroys, religious orders, and merchants from port cities all over Europe were active patrons of the arts.

In the year of her arrival, Artemisia painted a large canvas with an Annunciation (Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte), a work evidently executed for an altarpiece in one of the city’s churches, her first public commission. She remained in Naples for the rest of her life, with the exception of an extended trip to London in 1638 to visit her father, who had become court painter to King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. It is possible that she assisted Orazio in the final stages of painting the ceiling canvases of the Queen’s House in Greenwich. Orazio died in London in February 1639, and shortly afterwards Artemisia decided to return to Naples.

Although she continued to enjoy considerable success as a painter, often collaborating with eminent local colleagues such as Massimo Stanzione and Bernardo Cavallino, her last years were also marked by increasing financial struggles, in conjunction with the economic decline of the city after the revolt in 1647 led by Masaniello. Her letters to the Sicilian nobleman and collector Antonio Ruffo, dating between 1649 and 1651, are full of strong statements about her lack of money and her need for support. But they also reveal her indomitable and independent spirit. She writes: “A woman’s name raises doubts until her work is seen”; “I will show Your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do”; “You will find the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman”; and “If I were a man this could not have happened.”

Last recorded in 1654, Artemisia probably died in 1656 from the terrible plague that decimated the population of Naples. Her last signed and dated canvas, from 1610, was rediscovered just a few years ago after the cleaning revealed her signature. It is once again Susanna and the Elders (a biblical story in which two men spy on Susanna bathing, then falsely accuse her of adultery), the same subject of her very first documented painting. Despite the signature, scholars have suggested that she was probably here assisted by her Neapolitan collaborator Onofrio Palumbo.