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. Much later her paint Allegory of the Inclination in Halicarnassus, one of the Seven signature was found in the painting in the shadow cast the Casa Buonarotti, Michelangelo’s Wonders of the Ancient World, in by Susanna’s legs, leaving no question that the work was home in which he never lived. honour of her husband. hers. The painting, which depicts a young woman being Completed in 1615, this painting is Queen Artemis, a strong woman sexually harassed by the elders of her community who located on the ceiling in the second full of intrigue, was ahead of her falsely accused her of adultery, was painted before her floor gallery. This was part of a series time, in a man’s world, as was traumatic rape experience, two years later. of fifteen personifications dedicated Artemisia Gentileschi. The latter to the life of his great uncle, was among the first women artists to Trial and torture Michelangelo, and she was paid achieve success in the seventeenth Because she was a girl, she could not attend an art three times more than any other century, and brought to her work academy, so her father hired Agostino Tasso, a co-worker, artist who participated in painting an electric sense of narrative drama as her private tutor. At the age of nineteen, he raped her this series. The subject of the and a unique perspective that both and promised to marry her, although he was married. allegory said to resemble Artemisia, celebrated, and humanized, strong Her father later brought suit against Tassi and a seven- is of a young woman holding a women characters. month criminal trial ensued, during which Artemisia was compass. Artemisia’s energetic Today, she is regarded as one of forced to publicly recount the rape and undergo torture – and dramatic heroines often bear the most progressive painters of her metal rings, thumbscrews, which were tightened around a resemblance to their creator. The generation, particularly since her her fingers to assure she was telling the truth. figure was originally nude, but later interpretations of powerful and brave Tassi was found guilty and was sentenced to one year her lap was partly painted with a women in history (such as Cleopatra, in prison, which he did not serve. Shortly after the trial, drapery by another artist. Diana, Bathsheba and Mary Artemisia Gentileschi‘s father arranged for her to marry Magdalene) was unprecedented. a minor Florentine painter, Pierantonio Stiattesi, and Medici patronage Her father, Orazio Lomi they moved to Florence in 1613. While in Florence, Artemisia became Gentileschi (1563-1639) was an Italian The trauma of the rape and the trial had a definite good friends with the astronomer, Baroque painter who came under impact on her paintings – her graphic depictions were Galileo Galilei, presumably because Photograph: © Uffizi Gallery Photograph: the influence of Caravaggio, famous symbolic attempts to deal with her pain. The heroines of his connection to the Medici Reproduced from Timeless • Issue 1 3 Travels ITALY What makes us particularly happy about this project is that a painting relegated to the deposits of the Pitti Palace court. Their friendship lasted represent her daughter-in-law, Anne until his death through written is now, after our restoration, of Austria. The painting, which is correspondence after she left the property of the Polo Museale Florence. deemed fit for public exhibition Fiorentino, hangs in Florence's In 1616, she became the first Procura Generale della Repubblica woman to be inducted as a member (not open to the public) located on of Florence’s Accademia dell’arte chair. In Florence, she signed her works, ‘Lomi’, rather the via Cavour. dei Disegno, Europe’s first academy than Gentileschi, because of her strained relationship for drawing, where Galileo was also with her father caused by the rape trial. After Florence a member. Although drawings by The Uffizi Gallery’s Sala del Carravaggio holds Though Artemisia and her work her are rare, a charcoal drawing of Gentileschi’s most well known work, Judith Beheading were quite popular in Florence, St. John the Baptist's Decapitation Holfernes (1620), a terrifying scene of female financial and marital problems can be found in the archives of retribution, filled with power and intense violence. forced her family in 1621 to return the Uffizi's Gabinetto di Disegni e Artemisia is said to have painted it as revenge for her to Rome. In 1622, her husband was Stampe in Florence. rape (it is worth noting that the blood spurting in a wild not listed as a household member She achieved widespread creative arc from Holofernes’ neck illustrates her friend Galileo’s and he is lost to the annals of success under the patronage of Grand discovery of ‘the parabolic path of projectiles’). The history. In Rome, for eight years, Duke Cosimo II de' Medici and the Uffizi version is larger than the earlier one (1612-1613) her painting style matured and Grand Duchess, Cristina di Lorena, she painted, hanging in the Museum of Capodimonte in the sophistication in her imagery wife of Ferdinando I de' Medici. Naples. In the eighteenth century, the Florence version of the female figure brought her While women artists at that time became the property of the Grand Duchess Maria Luisa considerable artistic success which were generally limited to portraiture de’Medici, but she found it so horrible to look at that lasted her lifetime. and still-life painting, Artemisia she hid the work, which was not seen again until an She moved to Naples from 1630- became famous for grand-scale exhibition in 2000 at the Uffizi Gallery. 1638, and from 1638 to 1640 she works, depicting biblical and Also, in the same room at the Uffizi Gallery, is her joined her ailing father in London, mythological heroines (no frail where they painted together for the female ever graced her canvases). first time in fifteen years. After her Judith and her Maidservant (1614), father’s death in 1639, she moved housed in Palazzo Pitti's Palatine back to Naples, where she lived Gallery, in the Sala dell’Iliade, is a until her death. She is reputed to be stunning example of Artemisia's buried in Naples in the church of St. realism. It is one of six variations she Giovanni dei Fiorentini, which was painted on that subject (one version destroyed in WWII. is in Michigan’s Detroit Museum She left thirty four paintings and of Art). Her style was strongly 28 letters, and though she enjoyed influenced by Caravaggio’s use of a successful career, after her death chiaroscuro, which shows a painterly she was forgotten. This was until two contrast between light and dark. decades ago when a renewed interest in her by feminist art historians, saw Work in Florence Artemisia recognized as one of the Photograph: Schönborn Collection, Pommersfelden Collection, Schönborn Photograph: Other works by Artemisia greatest female artists. Gentileschi in the Sala della Mary Garrard’s, Artemisia Allegorie in the Palazzo Pitti’s Gentileschi - the Image of the Palatine Gallery, include Madonna Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art, and Child (1615) and The Conversion published in 1989, was the first book of the Magdalene (1620), also known Suzanna and the Elders, 1610 devoted to her, and in 1991 her first as The Penitent Magdalene, which exhibition was held in Florence at showcases the richness of the deep Saint Catherine of Alexandria (1619), commissioned by the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, gold (called ‘Artemisia gold’) and the Medici family. This work was damaged in the 1993 more than 300 years after her death. the dark green of Magdalene's dress, Mafia bombing, which exploded in one of the streets Gentileschi fought for the right newly developed colours she had behind the Uffizi Gallery. The debris from the bomb cut to be a successful woman artist not used in her earlier works. The a vertical slit along the saint’s right hand and damaged centuries before the women’s equal work is thought to be the portrait Saint Catherine’s face and eye and was restored in 1994.

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