Difficult Women: Artemisia Gentileschi
My heart, my hips, my body, my love / Trying to find a part of me that you didn’t touch
Artemisia Lomi Gentileschi was born in Rome in 1593, the eldest daughter of was born in Rome on 8 July 1593. Her mother was Prudenzia di Ottaviano Montoni and Orazio Gentileschi. Orazio was a well-regarded painter, specializing in scenes depicting mythical and historical figures resembling the real-life models he hired, rather than showing them in the idealized manner of other painters.
Prudenzia died when Artemisia was twelve, leaving her to be raised by Orazio. He introduced her and her brothers to painting, and Artemisia took to it with more enthusiasm and talent than they did. Artemisia’s medium was oil painting, and her work is remembered now for its frank portrayal of female rage and strength, rendered in breathtaking chiaroscuro1.
When she was sixteen, Orazio hired a painter named Agostino Tassi both to tutor Artemisia as well as to help him to decorate the vaults of Casino delle Muse inside the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome. One day when Artemisia was alone at home, other than a woman named Tuzia who rented an upstairs apartment, Tassi came by with his friend Cosimo Quorli, and they raped Artemisia. Though she cried out for help, Tuzia did not come to her aid.
As was the custom in Italy at the time, this man was not charged with assault, provided he agreed to marry her. As weeks turned to months and no marriage ensued, Gentileschi and her father chose to pursue legal restitution for her reputation and her father’s artwork. The painting in question was one painted by Artemisia’s father that depicted a scene from the life of the Biblical heroine Judith.
Orazio then pressed charges against Tassi for the violation of the Gentileschi family’s honour, not for the violation of Artemisia.
The trial was held over seven months, during which time Artemisia was tortured as a proto-lie detector to verify her testimony. The method of torture was to have cords wrapped around her fingers and pulled so tight to cause excruciating pain. As this was done in front of the courtroom, she turned to Tassi and said: "This is the ring that you give me and these are your promises."
Tassi was found guilty and sentenced to exile from Rome (which was never enforced).
Artemisia used these experiences to make even more passionate pieces of art, particularly her paintings of the Biblical heroine Judith, the same subject of the painting Tassi had stolen from Orazio.
Judith’s story is included in some but not all versions of the Old Testament. The story goes something like this: seeing her town about to be destroyed by an invading army, young widow Judith devises a scheme to save both herself and the townsfolk. Bringing a maidservant along with her, she put on her finest clothes and jewels and crossed enemy lines, presenting herself as a willing sexual offering for the invading general, Holofernes. Once inside his tent, she plied him with alcohol. Finding him sufficiently inebriated, she used his sword to behead him and thereby end his military campaign. For centuries, artists found inspiration in this story of sex and murder, with most works focusing either on the act of Holofernes’s beheading or on Judith leaving the tent with his head in a basket.
Artemisia’s version of Judith beheading Holofernes was unveiled shortly after the trial. The inspiration behind her work was unmistakable, and its sense of righteous fury intermingled with inarguable talent and beauty to create something wholly itself.
Artemisia painted two versions of Judith Beheading Holofernes, each purchased by a separate patron. The differences between the two versions are primarily surface-level: the colour of Judith’s dress and the type of head covering worn by her maidservant. Comparing the face and dimensions of this Judith to those of Gentileschi in a self-portrait leaves little room to argue she did not use herself as a model for the murderer; it follows, then, that her Holofernes is generally accepted to have been styled after Tassi. Moreso than the self-insertion, though, is the startling and visceral emotion of the piece, especially compared to other works portraying the same situation. Unlike the seeming distaste with which Caravaggio’s Judith enacts the murder, Gentileschi’s version leans in with firm resolve, sleeves pushed up, all business.
Judith’s maidservant, unlike the traitorous Tuzia, helps with the attack. Both Judith and the maidservant are muscular, powerful women. Their arms outstretched like arrows, coaxing the viewer’s eyes to the piece's focal point: Holofernes’s face, twisted in agony. The viciousness of the attack is depicted in such a way no question is in the right in this situation. The first version of the work finds blood spatter surrounding Holofernes’s head; the second adds a visceral spray emerging from his neck, splattering on his bare shoulder. His hands, though large, are powerless against two women enacting what the Bible states to be divine vengeance. The brutality of the image, the way it forces viewers to confront its gruesomeness, is such that at least one owner of this painting chose to keep it hidden behind curtains not to upset his guests.
Gentileschi specialized in making beautiful feminized fury, crafting her images so the viewer is forced to see themselves in her Biblical heroines. Unlike the stoic, dispassionate virgins found in other works illustrating the same stories, Gentileschi’s women appear as protagonists in their own stories — filled with rage, terror, or divine righteousness. They are women taking control of their narratives with glorious, shameless, orgiastic glee.
As anyone who heads to court expecting justice may come to learn, being found guilty or not guilty is not the end of anyone’s story, victim or perpetrator. Gentileschi’s attacker was found guilty but never experienced his punishment. When the law doesn’t provide the justice you want — perhaps, even when it does — we all have to find ways to keep moving ahead. For Gentileschi, it was to continue producing beautiful, gruesome paintings. Her experience had changed her life with her abuser, but she would not allow that to keep her from pursuing her passion or carving her path.
As long as women have had their voices and words taken from them, we find women who find ways to communicate everything they need to know through song, art, craft, and the myriad of other seemingly invisible ways women have always filled in the blanks in our culture with their beautiful rage. And yet her work, Lucretia, tells a different story.
Lucretia is not a Biblical character, but like the wronged biblical heroines Gentileschi preferred to portray, she is a woman who has suffered at the hands of men. According to Roman myth, Lucretia was the wife of a Roman general who was blackmailed and raped by a soldier. She chose death by suicide, and the moment of this choice was a popular subject among artists of the era. Gentileschi finds as much empathy in this work as she did rage in the images of Judith and Holofernes. Women’s pain is not a single narrative, and she explores the experiences of women pursuing vengeance, offering forgiveness, and succumbing to their internal misery. No one narrative supersedes the others; she found each equally worth exploring and elevating.
Artemisia continued painting throughout her life, creating works under the patronage of notable figures such as the House of Medici and Charles I of England. She had a daughter named Prudentia, after Artemisia’s late mother, who she also trained to be a painter. It’s not known precisely how or when Artemisia Gentileschi died, but it was likely around 1656 when the plague swept through and many people — including other notable artists — died. Her final burial place isn’t known, but her art is still showing in galleries throughout Europe, the United States, and Mexico (here’s a list of which paintings are where). To look at more of her work, the Art History Project has a gorgeous online gallery of all her known paintings.
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Ann Foster is a a writer and podcaster. She’s currently writing a nonfiction biography of Caroline of Brunswick. Don’t know who that is? You will soon! She’s represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk at Trellis Literary Management.
References:
Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting by Jesse M. Locker
Violence and Virtue: Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes” by Eve Straussman-Pflanzer
The use of light and dark to create drama and contrast in artwork.
Ooooohhhhhh, just saw her work yesterday at the Uffizi! Thanks so much for this.
One of my favorite painters! I got to teach a lesson on narrative once at an art school and I juxtaposed Gentileschi's Judith against Klimt's. The latter I've seen in-person, but sadly not yet G's rendering.