Trigger warning for mentions of rape and sexual assault.
In the National Gallery, there hangs a portrait of a woman. Stylised as the martyred Catherine of Alexandria, she looks out defiantly from her frame, leaning on the iron-spiked broken wheel to which she was bound and tortured at the hands of the emperor Maxentius. The woman is Artemisia Gentileschi; it is a self-portrait of the artist behind the painting, one of the Italian Renaissance’s only female painters remembered today- and arguably one of the period’s finest artists.
The daughter of renowned Renaissance painter Orazio Gentileschi, Artemisia trained in the arts from a young age. Despite the many restrictions and challenges that came with being a woman operating in an industry dominated by men, in 1616 she became the first woman to be admitted to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, permitting her entry into the artistic and intellectual circles of Renaissance Italy. Today, her most recognisable work, ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes’ hangs in the Uffizi Gallery, placing her firmly amongst the great artists of 17th century Florence. It is this particular work, however, that leads us to the story behind much of Artemisia’s work, an event that had great influence on her life and on her artistic career.
In 1611, at the age of 18, Artemisia was raped by her father’s friend, the artist Agostino Tassi. This is extensively recorded in 300-page court transcripts which are now housed in the Archivio di Stato in Rome - although it was not Artemisia that called this trial, but her father. He wanted Tassi to be forced to marry his daughter, having taken her virginity and, by the standards of the time, her honour. It is in these court records where the true force of Artemisia’s character is revealed. It is recorded in these transcripts that Artemisia threatened Tassi with a knife, which she claimed she would have used to kill him had he not shielded himself. Furthermore, at this time, alleged victims of rape were required to undergo another torture in court to prove their truth: to have their fingers wrapped in cords, like thumbscrews, which were progressively tightened, supposedly to force the truth from the accuser. The court records state that during this ordeal, Artemisia addressed Tassi directly, telling him “this is the ring that you give me, and these are your promises”, a sardonic reference to her tied fingers, and the marriage proposal he was to make. During the trial, however, it emerged that Tassi was already married to someone else, and he was instead temporarily exiled (an order which he ignored). However it is Artemisia’s fierce resilience in the face of abuse which shines through in these accounts, and is what is characterised in the paintings she created in the years after.
Unusually for her time, many of Artemisia’s paintings are self-portraits. For a woman to paint herself in a time where women had little freedom of expression shows a strong sense of identity and conviction, and Artemisia’s renderings take this a step further. Let’s return to ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes’. This painting represents a story from the Old Testament in which a young Jewish woman, Judith, ended the siege on her home by the Nebuchadnezzar army by seducing the Assyrian general Holofernes, gaining entry to his tent and, whilst he lay in a drunken stupor, bloodily beheading him. This is a story which has been painted time and time again, not least by Caravaggio, whose depiction of Judith as a feeble-looking young girl gingerly slicing the neck of Holofernes is a great contrast to Artemisia’s ferocious depiction, in which Judith has Artemisia’s own face. The anger towards masculine assailants - of territory or personal freedom - is certainly a prominent theme in this painting, and many of Artemisia’s others, and it feels apt that it hangs in the city to which Artemisia moved after her rape, and where she made a name for herself as a female artist in a field which underestimated her. The painting circulated online during the online outrage over Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court in 2018, and has become a symbol of what we might in the current online feminist climate call ‘female rage’.
Caravaggio (left) Artemisia (right)
This is not to say that vengeful women are the only thing that Artemisia was interested in - it would be reductive of her artistic talent to suggest her artistic career is defined entirely by the abuse she faced. One of my personal favourite paintings by Artemisia is her ‘Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting’, which hangs today in the Cumberland Art Gallery at Hampton Court Palace. In this painting, we see Artemisia in a green dress and brown apron, palette and paintbrush in hand, engaged in her craft- she is identifying herself as the female allegory of painting. The female allegory of painting has been painted by men well over, traditionally a beautiful dark-haired woman as we see Artemisia here, but by situating herself as her craft, a craft restricted to only the most privileged of women, she infiltrates the masculinised tradition in the boldest way possible. She becomes the source of their power. It is a defiant, yet peaceful, assertion of her talent as a painter and her place in the Italian artistic canon, and the painting persists as an insightful glimpse into the artist’s workshop.
For centuries Artemisia has been overshadowed by her male peers, not least her father, who is the reason she is referred to by art historians as ‘Artemisia’, rather than by her surname, which is designated to her father. But we are beginning to see a Renaissance in the success of 17th Century Florence’s ‘it girl’. In recent years, with the increased emphasis on uncovering the hidden women in the male-centric art history canon, several fictional books about her life have been published, along with art historical accounts, and exhibits of her work are (deservingly) ever more popular. It is a tragic shame that many of her paintings have been lost over the centuries, but those that remain plant her firmly in the Italian artistic tradition. She will firmly go down in history as one of the great women artists, and one of very few whose works hang in the world’s biggest galleries today. As she stares out from her frames, from the National Gallery to the Uffizi, her legacy persists.
- Megan Smith
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