Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi, born in Rome in 1593, was one of the most progressive and expressive Italian Baroque painter, when women had few opportunities to work as professional artists. Her father Orazio Gentileschi was a painter, friend of Caravaggio.

When Artemisia was 12 her mother died and at this time she becomes painting in the workshop of the father. At 18 she was already known for her great talent when something terrible happened.

She was raped by Agostino Tassi, a painter that worked with her father and he refused to marry him ( he was already married, tried to kill his wife and had a relationship with his sister-in-law). There was a  trial and ,found guilty, he was exiled from Rome, but the sentence never took place. Artemisia was tortured to verify her testimony.

Orazio found an husband for the “reputation”of his daughter in Florence, where she became a successful court painter with the patronage of the Medici and was the first woman accepted  into “Accademia delle Arti del Disegno” (Academy of the Arts of Drawing). She painted women from myths, allegories and from episodes of the Bible.

One of her best known subject is “Judith beheading Holofernes”and there are six variations on this subject. It wasn’t a repressed vengeance, but an affirmation as a strong and assertive woman with her freedom and creative power against the stereotype of female submissiveness.

Napoli, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte

We can see her style also in these two paintings :

“Self-Portrait as a lute player “ and “Saint Cecilia”patroness of musicians.

In Florence she was acquainted with Galileo Galilei and Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger that, to celebrate his great uncle in “Casa Buonarroti”,asked Artemisia to contribute with a painting for the ceiling.

In 1620 she returned to Rome, lived an independent life without her husband and met a variety of styles from Flemish and Dutch painters and also from the Bolognese School with the style introduced by Guercino and his “chiaroscuro”,in a different way from Caravaggio.

After three years in Venice, in 1630 Artemisia moved to Naples in search of new job opportunities and worked for many churches and for the Spanish court.

In 1638 Artemisia joined her father in London at the court of Charles I to help him decorating a ceiling allegory of “Triumph of Peace and the Arts” in the Queen’s House, Greenwich build for Queen Henrietta Maria.

Charles I was intrigued  by the fame of Artemisia and his collection included her  “Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting”.

She probably died in the devastating plague that swept Naples in 1656.