Artemisia Gentileschi’s Work:
Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1638–39
Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1614–1620, 199×162 cm
Susanna and the Elders, 1610
Final project:
Artemisia Gentileschi: One of the Earliest Feminists
Artemisa Gentileschi is the most celebrated female artist of the 17th century and one of the earliest feminists in history. During this time, the only way for a woman to pursue an artistic career is when her father is also a professional artist. In Gentileschi’s case, her father was a professional artist, Orazio Gentileschi, and Gentileschi was producing professional works by the age of fifteen. Initially, she was working in the style of Caravaggio, who was one of the most influential artists of the time and a close friend of Gentileschi’s father. Her earliest signed and dated painting, ‘Susanna and the Elders’, is from 1610.
A year later, Gentileschi was raped by painter Agostino Tassi who was training her in painting and an acquaintance of her father. The resulting trial lasted seven months and shocked Rome. Tassi was banished from Rome but his punishment was never enforced, so he walked away free because he was protected by the Pope and because his art was rated at the time. “Tassi is the only one of these artists who has never disappointed me,” said Pope Innocent X. Although this was an awful and traumatizing experience for Gentileschi, it inspired many of her most famous pieces and with her words and images, she fought back against the male violence that dominated the world she lived in.
Arguably her most famous painting, ‘Judith Slaying Holofernes,’ shows two women pinning down a man, one of the women drives a dagger into the neck of the man, to sever his head from the rest of his body. The dying man is Holofernes, an enemy of the Israelites in the Old Testament, and the young woman beheading him is Judith, his divinely appointed assassin. However, art historians interpret this piece as being a self-portrait. The dying man is also Tassi and the woman with the sword is Gentileschi getting her revenge.
The other notable piece of hers mentioned in the introduction, ‘Susanna and the Elders’ can also be interpreted as a self-portrait. In the painting, she uses a biblical story to dramatize what it was to be a woman in the 17th century. Two old men are spying on a young woman bathing, but Gentileschi makes the scene all the more creepy by having the men come up close and openly stare at Susanna, while other artists tend to show them hiding at a distance. This biblical story is strangely reminiscent of her own persecution. In her trial against Tassi, it emerged that Tassi and his accomplice would constantly hang around, annoy her, and watch her, just like the voyeurs troubling Susannah.
The trauma of Gentileschi’s rape and the trial that gave her no justice is haunting in her art. Yet her suffering did not stop her from pursuing her passion and the visceral power of her paintings made her one of the most famous artists in Europe. In 1638, Charles I personally invited her to London to work for him. There, Gentileschi painted ‘Portrait of the Artist,’ in which she depicts herself as a muscular, dynamic, forceful character. From 1630, she settled in Naples, where she ran a successful studio until her death, however, the precise date of her death is not known.
Works Cited
“Artemisia Gentileschi.” The National Gallery, 2016. www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/artemisia-gentileschi. Accessed February 19, 2021.
“More savage than Caravaggio: the woman who took revenge in oil.” The Guardian, 2016.https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/oct/05/artemisia-gentileshi-painter-beyond-caravaggio. Accessed February 19, 2021.
“Artemisia Gentileschi.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Artemisia-Gentileschi. Accessed February 19, 2021.