Artemisia One Such Artist, the Remarkable Artemisia Gentileschi
Issue 1 IMELESS ravelswww.timeless-travels.co.uk FOR LOVERS OF TRAVEL, ARCHAEOLOGY AND ART Judtith beheading Holofernes beheading Judtith Photograph: © Uffizi Gallery ITALY Art, Intrigue & Gentileschi’s Florentine years: 1613-1620 Jane Fortune, author of Invisible Women, Forgotten Artists of Florence, tells the story ofArtemisia one such artist, the remarkable Artemisia Gentileschi he words, “passion”, for interpreting his revolutionary painting style. From in her paintings, especially Judith, “drama”, “torture” and when she was a young child, her father trained Artemisia, the Jewish heroine who beheaded “art”, describe the life of the oldest of his four children, in his workshop/studio in Holofernes, an invading Assyrian Artemisia Gentileschi Rome. Her school book training, though, was limited and general, are powerful women (1593-1652/3), one of the she did not learn to read or write until she was an adult. exacting revenge on a male. Tworld's greatest Baroque artists; Even with these obstacles, she became famous for grand a life that has all the chiaroscuro scale works depicting biblical or mythical heroines, as in Life in Florence trappings of a romance novel. her first work, Susanna and the Elders (1610, Schonborn Upon her arrival in Florence, Even her exotic name, “Artemisia”, Collection, Pommersfelden, Germany) painted when she Michelangelo Buonarroti the captures one’s attention. She was was seventeen. younger, a great nephew of named after a Greek queen from Many attributed this work to her father, whose Michelangelo Buonarroti the Great, the IV Century, Queen of Caria, works are more idealized and hers more naturalistic, commissioned Artemisia, then in Artemis, who was responsible for because the critics felt no one that young could paint an advanced state of pregnancy, to the building of the Mausoleum of such a dramatic and sensitive painting.
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