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Artemisia Gentileschi (July 8, 1593 - 1653) is
today considered one of the most accomplished
Early Baroque painters in the generation
influenced by Michelangelo Merisi|Caravaggio (the
"Caravaggisti"). Remarkably, in an era when women
painters were not easily accepted, she became the
first female painter to become a member of the
Accademia dell' Arte del Disegno in Florence. She
was also one of the first female artist to paint
history and religious paintings, at a time when
such heroic themes were considered beyond a mere
woman's reach. 

==Biography==
===The Roman Beginning===
Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome, on July 8
1593, the first child of the painter Orazio
Gentileschi, one of the greatest representatives
of the school of Caravaggio. Artemisia was
introduced to painting in her father's workshop,
showing much more talent than her brothers, who
worked along side her. She learned drawing, how to
mix color and how to paint. Since her father's
style took heavily inspiration from Caravaggio
during that period, her style was just as heavily
influenced in turn.


The first work of the young 17-years old Artemisia
(even if many suspect that she was helped by her
father) was the Susanna e i Vecchioni ("Susanna
and the Elders") (1610), located in the Schönborn
collection in Pommersfelden. The picture shows
how, under parental guidance, Artemisia
assimilated the realism of Caravaggio without
being indifferent to the language of the Bologna
school (which had Annibale Carracci among its
major artists).

In 1612, despite her early talent, Artemisia was
denied access to the all-male professional
academies for art. At the time, her father was
working with Agostino Tassi to decoration of the
"volte" of Casino della Rose inside the 
Pallavicini Rospigliosi Palace in Rome, so Orazio
hired the Tuscan painter to tutor his daughter
privately. The unfortunate effect was that
Artemisia was raped by Tassi. Even though Tassi
initially promised to marry Artemisia in order to
restore her reputation, he later reneged on his
promise and Orazio reported Tassi to the
authorities.

In the ensuing seven-month trial, it was
discovered that Tassi had allegedly planned to
murder his wife, had committed incest with his
sister-in-law and planned to steal some of
Orazio’s paintings. During the trial Artemisia
was given a gynecological examination and was
tortured using a device made of thongs wrapped
around the fingers and tighted by degrees —
a particularly cruel torture to a painter. Both
procedures were used to corroborate the truth of
her allegation, the torture device in the belief
that if a person can tell the same story under
torture as without it, the story must be true. At
the end of the trial Tassi was imprisoned for just
one year. The trial has subsequently influenced
the feminism|feminist view of Atermisia
Gentileschi during the 20th century

The painting representing Giuditta che decapita
Oloferne ("Giuditta decapitating Oloferne")
(1612-13), stored in the Capodimonte Museum of
Naples, is impressive for the violence portrayed,
and was interpreted as a wish of psychological
revenge for the violence Artemisia had suffered.

One month after the trial, in order to restore her
honor, Orazio arranged for his daughter to marry
Pierantonio Stiattesi, a modest artist from
Florence. Shortly afterwards the couple moved to
Florence, where Artemisia received a commission
for a painting at Casa Buonarroti and became a
successful court painter, enjoying the patronage
of the Medici and Charles I of England|Charles I.
During this period, Artemisia also painted the
Madonna col Bambino ("The Virgin Mary with Baby"),
currently in the Spada Gallery, Rome.

Whilst in Florence, Artemisia and Pierantonio had
four sons and one daughter. But only the daughter,
Prudenzia, survived to adulthood — following
her mother's return to Rome in 1621 and later move
to Naples. After her mother's death in 1651,
Prudenzia slipped into obscurity and little is
known of her subsequent life.

===The Florentine Period (1614-1620)===

In Florence, Artemisia enjoyed huge success. She
was accepted in the Accademia del Disegno
("Academy of Drawing") (she was the first woman to
have such privilege); She demonstrated to being
able to mantain good relations with the most
respected artists of her time, like Cristofano
Allori, and to be able to conquer the favours and
the protection of influential people, starting
from Granduke Cosimo II  de' Medici and expecially
of the Granduchess Cristina. She was in good
relationship with Galileo Galilei with whom she
reimained in epistolar contact for a long time.
Among her estimators there was Buonarroti the
young (nephew of the great Michelangelo): busy
with construction of a maison to celebrate the
notable ancestor, he asked Artemisia to realize a
painting to decorate the ceiling of the gallery of
paintings.

The painting represents an allegory of Allegoria
dell'Inclinazione ("Allegory of the Inclination")
(natural talent), presented under the form of a
young nude woman who holds a compass. It is
believed that the attractive woman resembles
Artemisia itself, who - as the mundan informations
of the period say - was extremely beautiful. 
Actually it happens often, in her paintings, that
the appearance of the curvy and energetic heroines
is similar to her portraits and selfportraits:
often those who ordered her paintings wished to
have an image of the author, whose fame was
rising. The success and the fashion radiating from
her figure fueled many voices about her private
life.

From this period we remember the La Conversione
della Maddalena ("The Conversion of Maddalene")
and the Giuditta con la sua ancella ("Judith with
her Handmaid") of Pitti Palace and a second one, a
larger version of the Giuditta che decapita
Oloferne ("Judith who decapitates Oloferne") in
the Uffizi Gallery of Florence.

Despite the success, due to an excess of expenses
by her and her husband, the Florentine period was
full of problems with creditors and with her
husband. These problems lead to her return to Rome
in 1621.

===Again in Rome and after in Venezia
(1621-1630)===

Artemisia arrived in Rome the same year her father
Orazio departed for Genoa. It is commonly believed
that Artemisia followed her father (and that would
explain the persistance of a resemblance of style
which, even today, makes difficult to understand
exactly who of the two made some paintings), but
there is not enough proof to prove that.

Artemisia remained in Rome, trying to find an home
and raising her daughters. In addition to
Prudenzia (born from the marriage with Pierantonio
Stiattesi) she had another natural daughter,
probably born in 1627. Artemisia tried, with
almost no success, to teach them the art of
painting. 

Rome in that period was highly influenced by the
style of Caravaggio (many similarities in fact do
exist between her style and the style of Simon
Vouet), but during the papacy of Pope Urbano VIII
both the classicism of the Bolognese school and
the barocco style of Pietro da Cortona were highly
succesful as well. Artemisia demonstrated to have
enough expertise to pick the artistic novelties of
the period and enough determination to live as a
protagonist during this wonderful artistic period
of Rome, full of artists from all Europe.

Artemisia joined the Accademy of Desiosi. She was
celebrated with a portrait carrying the incision
"Pincturare miraculum invidendum facilius quam
imitandum". In the same period she became friend
with Cassiano dal Pozzo, a humanist, collector and
lover of arts.  However, despite her artistic
reputation, her strong personality and her
numerous good relationships, staying in Rome was
not as lucrative as she hoped. The appreciation of
her art was narrowed down to portraits and to her
ability with biblical heroines: she no longer got
the rich commissions of fresco paintings and
altars.  It is very difficult, due to the absence
of enough documentation, to follow the movements
of Artemisia in this period.  It is certain that
between 1627 and 1630 she moved to Venice, perhaps
in search of richer commissions, as she received
numerous letters of appreciation from
intellectuals during her stay in Venice.

Although it is pretty difficult to date her
paintings, it is possible to assign to this period
the Ritratto di gonfaloniere (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|Ritratto di gonfaloniere ("Portrait
of Gonfaloniere"), today in Bologna (only known
example of her capacity as portrait painter); the
Giuditta con la sua ancella (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|Giuditta con la sua ancella, ("Judith
with her maidservant") today at the Detroit
Institute of Arts (notable for her mastery of the
"chiaroscuro" effects of the candle lights, for
which Gerrit van Honthorst, Trophime Bigot, and
many others were also famous in Rome); the "Venere
Dormiente" ("The Sleeping Venus"), today at
Princeton University#Princeton University Art
Museum|Princeton; the Ester e Assuero (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|"Ester ed Assuero" ("Ester and
Assuero") located at Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York City|New York (testimony of her
assimilation of the venetian luministic lessons)

===Naples and the english period (1630-1653)===

In 1630 Artemisia moved to Napoles, a city rich
with workshops and art lovers, in search of new
and more lucrative job opportunities.  Many other
artists, including Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci,
Simon Vouet had stayed in Naples for some time in
their lifes, and at that time, Jusepe de Ribera,
Massimo Stanzione were working there and later,
Domenichino, Giovanni Lanfranco and many others.
The Neapolitan debut of Artemisa is represented by
the Annunciation in the Capodimonte Museum. Later
she permanently relocated to Naples and stayed
there - except for only a brief trip to London and
some other journeys - for the rest of her life.
Naples was for Artemisia some kind of second
homeland where she took care of her family (both
her daughters got married in Naples).  She
received letters of appreciation, was in good
relations with the Vicere' Duca d'AlcalĂ  and
started relations with many renowned artists,
among them Massimo Stanzone, with whom she started
an artistic collaboration based on a real
friendship and artistic similarities.

In Naples for the first time Artemisia started
working on paintings in a cathedral, dedicated to
San Gennaro nell'anfiteatro di Pozzuoli ("Saint
Gennaro in the amphitheater of Pozzuoli") in
Pozzuoli. During her first Neapolitan period she
painted Nascita di San Giovanni Battista
(Artemisia Gentileschi)|Nascita di San Giovanni
Battista ("Birth of Saint Giovanni Battista")
located in the Del Prado Museum in Madrid, and
Corisca e il satiro ("Corisca and the satire"), in
a private collection. In these paintings Artemisia
again demonstrates her ability to renew herself
with the novelties of the period and handle
different subjects insted of the usual Judith,
Susanna, Betsabee, and Maddelene penitenti, for
which she was still known anyway.

In 1638 Artemisia joined her father in London at
the court of Charles I of England, where Orazio
became court painter and received the important
job of decorating a ceiling (allegory of Trionfo
della pace e delle Arti ("Triumph of the peace and
the Arts") in the Casa delle Delizie of queen
Enrichetta Maria in Greenwick. 

After so much time, father and daughter were again
working together, but probably helping her father
was not her only reason. But it is sure that
Charles I convoked her in his court, and it was
not possible to refuse. Orazio suddenly died in
1639. Charles I was a fanatical collector, willing
to ruin public finances to follow his artistic
wishes. The fame of Artemisia probably intrigued
him, and it is not a coincidence that his
collection included a painting of great
suggestion, the Autoritratto in veste di Pittura.
In london, Artemisia had an autonomous activity
which she continued to follow for a while even
after the her father's death (although there are
no known works assignable with certainty to this
period). We know that in 1642, when the civil war
was just starting, Artemisia had already left
England. Nothing much is know about her subsquent
movements. Historians know that in 1649 she was in
Naples again, corresponding with Don Anontio Ruffo
of Sicily who became her mentor and good
commitment during this second neapolitan period.
The last known letter to her mentor is dated 1650
and makes clear that she was still fully active.
Artemisia died in 1653.

Some works in this period are Susanna e i
vecchioni ("Susanna and the elders" today in Brno
and Madonna e Bambino con rosario ("Virgin Mary
and Baby with Rosary") today in El Escorial.

==Artistic profile==
A research paper of Roberto Longhi, an important
italian critic, dated 1916, named Gentileschi
padre e figlia (Gentileschi father and daughter)
pointed out the artistic merits of Artemisia
Gentileschi in the sphere of the caravaggeschi in
the first half of the XVII century. Longhi said
about Artemisia, using an unintentionally
misogynist tone "the only woman in Italy who ever
knew about painting, coloring, doughing and other
fundamentals...". Longhi wrote about the most
famous painting of Artemisia, the Giuditta che
decapita Oloferne of Uffizi Gallery of Florence:
"Who could think in fact that over a sheet so
candid, a so brutal and terrible massacre could
happen ... but - it's natural to say - this is a
terrible woman! A woman painted all this?" and
added "...there's nothing sadic here, instead what
strikes the most is the impassibility of the
painter, who was even able to notice how the
blood, spurting with violence, can decorate with
two drops the central spurt! Incredible I tell
you! And also please give Mrs. Schiattesi - the
conjugal name of Artemisia - the chance to choose
the hilt of the sword! At last don't you think
that the only aim of Giuditta is to move away to
avoid the blood which could stain her dress? We
think anyway that that is a dress of Casa
Gentileschi, the finest wardrobe in the Europe
during 600, after Van Dyck".  

The interest toward the artistic figure of
Artemisia, which was pretty weak despite the work
of Longhi, increased thanks to feminist studies,
which clearly underlined, starting from her raping
and the subsequent biography, the expressive
strenght her pictorial language showed when the
painted subjects were the famous biblical
heroines, who seems always willing to manifest
their rebellion against the condition of the
women. In a research paper from the catalogue of
the exhibition "Orazio e Artemisia Gentileschi"
which took place in Rome in 2001 (and after in New
York), Judith W. Mann gives a rather feministic
opinion. "An opinion like that presupposes that
the full creative potential of Artemisia is only
about strong capable women, at the point that
seems impossible to imagine her busy doing
conventional religious images, like a Virgin Mary
with a Baby or a virgin submissively waiting for
the Annunciation; and besided it is said that the
artist refused to modify her personal
interpretation of those subjects to conform to the
preferences of a client base presumably composed
by males. The stereotype caused a double
restrictive effect: it both induced the critics to
doubt about the attribution of the paintings not
corresponding to described model, and to give an
inferior value to the ones not found on the
cliche"

The most recent critic, starting from the
difficult reconstruction of the entire catalogue
of the Gentileschi, tried to give a less reductive
reading of the career of Artemisia, placing it
more accurately on the context of the different
artistic enviroments which the painter actively
partecipated in. A reading like this gives us back
the figure of an artist who fought with
determination, using the weapon of personality and
of the artistic qualities, against the prejudices
who were expressed against the women painters;
being able to introduce herself productively in
the circle of the most respected painters of her
time, embracing a series of pictoric genres which
were probably more ample and varieated than her
paintings tell us.

==Works==
* Susanna e i vecchioni (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|Susanna e i vecchioni, Collezione
Graf von Schönborn, Pommersfelden , 1610.
* Madonna col Bambino (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|Madonna col Bambino, Galleria Spada
di Roma|Galleria Spada, Rome|Roma, 1610-1611|11.
* Giuditta che decapita Oloferne (Artemisia
Gentileschi), Napoli|Giuditta che decapita
Oloferne,  Museo Capodimonte di Napoli|Museo
Capodimonte, Napoli, 1612-1613|13.
* Autoritratto come martire (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|Autoritratto come martire, Collezione
privata, ca. 1615.
* Allegoria dell'Inclinazione (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|Allegoria dell'Inclinazione, Casa
Buonarroti a Firenze|Casa Buonarroti, Firenze,
1615-1616|16.
* La Conversione della Maddalena (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|La Conversione della Maddalena,
Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti di
Firenze|Palazzo Pitti, Firenze, 1615-1616|16.
* Giuditta con la sua ancella, Galleria Palatina,
Palazzo Pitti di Firenze|Palazzo Pitti, Firenze,
1618-1619|19.
* Giaele e Sisara (Artemisia Gentileschi)|Giaele e
Sisara, Museo di Belle Arti di
Budapest|SzĂ©pművĂ©szeti MĂşzeum, Budapest,
1620.
* Cleopatra (Artemisia Gentileschi)|Cleopatra, 
Collezione della Fondazione Cavallini-Sgarbi,
Ferrara, ca. 1620.
* Giuditta che decapita Oloferne (Artemisia
Gentileschi), Firenze|Giuditta che decapita
Oloferne, Galleria degli Uffizi di
Firenze|Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze, ca. 1620.
* Santa Cecilia (Artemisia Gentileschi)|Santa
Cecilia, Galleria Spada di Roma|Galleria Spada,
Rome|Roma, ca. 1620.
* Ritratto di gonfaloniere (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|Ritratto di gonfaloniere, Collezioni
Comunali d'arte, Palazzo d'Accursio di
Bologna|Palazzo d'Accursio, Bologna, 1622.
* Giuditta con la sua ancella (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|Giuditta con la sua ancella,
Institute of Arts di Detroit|The Detroit Institute
of Arts, ca.1625-1627|27.
* Ester e Assuero (Artemisia Gentileschi)|Ester e
Assuero, Metropolitan Museum of Art di New
York|Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, ca.
1628-1635|35.
* Annunciazione, Museo Capodimonte di Napoli|Museo
Capodimonte,  Napoli, 1630.
* Corisca e il satiro, Collezione privata,
1630-1635|35
* Nascita di San Giovanni Battista (Artemisia
Gentileschi)|Nascita di San Giovanni Battista ,
Museo del Prado di Madrid|Museo del Prado, Madrid,
ca. 1633-1635|35.
* San Gennaro nell'anfiteatro di Pozzuoli
(Artemisia Gentileschi)|San Gennaro
nell'anfiteatro di Pozzuoli, Museo Capodimonte di
Napoli|Museo Capodimonte, Napoli, 1636-1637|37.
* Autoritratto come allegoria della Pittura
(Artemisia Gentileschi)|Autoritratto come
allegoria della Pittura, Sua MaestĂ  Regina
Elisabetta II, 1638-1639|39.
* Susanna e i vecchioni (Artemisia Gentileschi),
Brno|Susanna e i vecchioni, Moravska Galerie di
Brno|Moravska Galerie, Brno, 1649.
* Madonna e Bambino con rosario, Palazzo El
Escorial, Casita del Principe, 1651.

== The woman and the painter ==

For a woman, at the beginning of the XVII century,
being a painter like Artemisia represented an
uncommon and difficult choice, but also not an
exceptional one.  Before Artemisia, between the
end of the 1500 and the beginning of 1600 other
woman painters started with success their
activity. We can mention Sofonisba Anguissola
(Born in Cremona around 1530 - Palermo around
1625), who was called in Spain by Philip II of
Spain; Lavinia Fontana (Bologna, 1552 - Rome 1614)
who departed for Rome by invitation of Pope
Clemente VIII, Fede Galizia (Milano or Trento,
1578 - Milano 1630) who painted, among all her
works, great still lifes and a beautiful Giuditta
con la testa di Oloferne ("Giuditta with the head
of  Oloferne). Other women painters, more or less
famous, began their career while Artemisia was
alive. If we judge their artistic merits, the
statement of Roberto Longhi, "Artemisia was the
only woman in Italy who ever knew about
painting..." sounds rather unfair.

==Artemisia in Popular Culture==

Despite the fact that there were other female
painters in the Renaissance, there is something,
both in the art and the biography of Artemisia
Gentileschi, something that makes her expecially
fascinating and that explains the interest of some
writers (males and females) towards her.   

The first writer who wrote a novel around the
figure of Artemisia was Anna Banti, wife of
Roberto Longhi. Her first draft of the
manuscripts, dated 1944, got lost during the war.
The decision to starts again with the book, called
Artemisia, writing in a much different form,
happened three years later. Anna Banti maintains a
dialogue with Artemisia in her book, in a "open
diary" form where she tries to understand why she
finds Artemisia so fascinating.

More than fifty years later, in 1999, the French
writer Alexandra Lapierre became fascinated about
Artemisia and wrote a novel about her, derived
from scrupulous study of the painter and the
historical context of her work.  The psychological
research between the lines of the novel, to
understand the relation between Artemisia the
woman and Artemisia the painter, ends with
describing as "leit motiv" the relation between
her and her father, composed by both love not
sufficiently expressed and a latent professional
rivalry.

Another novel, recently published in Italy, by
Susan Vreeland (The Passion of Artemisa),
positions itself in the wave of the popularity of
the feministic figure of Artemisia Gentileschi,
seemingly exploiting the the recent success of
historical novels based on famous artwork.

The 1997 film Artemisia, directed by Agnès Merlet
and starring Valentina Cervi, was based on this
painter's life.

==External Links==
*http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/index.shtml
The Life and Art of Artemisia Gentileschi
*http://www.webwinds.com/artemisia/trial.htm
Artemisia, The Rape and the Trial