Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome in 1593, the daughter of the Baroque painter Orazio Gentileschi. She learned to paint in her father's studio — the only training available to a girl of her era — and showed exceptional gifts early. At seventeen she was raped by Agostino Tassi, a painter hired as her tutor. Her father brought a criminal case. During the trial, Artemisia was tortured with thumbscrews to verify her testimony. She was telling the truth. Tassi was convicted and served none of his sentence. The year the trial ended, she married and moved to Florence. She became the first woman admitted to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno. She painted for the Medici, for Charles I of England, for Philip IV of Spain. She corresponded with Galileo. Her work is distinguished by its psychological directness. Where other painters of her era depicted women as passive, decorative, or allegorical, Gentileschi's women act. Her two versions of Judith Slaying Holofernes — painted in 1614 and again around 1620 — show the biblical heroine with complete competence and focus, her maidservant helping hold Holofernes down while Judith does what needs to be done. The paintings are unlike anyone else's treatment of the same subject. They are unlike anything that came before them. She worked in Naples from around 1630 until her death, date uncertain, sometime after 1651. She was largely forgotten for two centuries. Feminist art historians began recovering her reputation in the 1970s. She is now recognized as one of the great painters of the Baroque period, full stop, without qualification.

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