Art Chowder July | August 2018, Issue 16 | Page 36

H
ere may be the place to say (and some other
readers of academic literature may agree with me) that
extreme occupation with questions about tiny details
and speculations can be mind-numbing and life-killing
— whether some figure’s pose in some painting “might”
derive from some Roman sarcophagus or an engraving
after Michelangelo that the artist “likely” or “possibly”
had access to, and so on. Then there are the endless
footnotes or endnotes that scholarly discipline requires.
The tedium and tiresome repetition of it all…except
when there comes a startling revelation!
Simon Vouet (1590-1649)
The Changing Light papers contain antidotes to some
serious anecdotal misconceptions about Artemisia’s life
that have colored our perceptions of her in her world. I
would like to take a look at two of them.
In 1968 a paper trail of debts incurred by Artemisia
during her years in Florence (1613-1620) emerged.
This morphed into the received opinion that she was
thereafter dogged by financial woes. Her husband had
run through her dowry behind her back. She contributed
to the fiscal mess by a propensity for luxurious living. As
a result the couple fled from Florence to Rome to escape
the harassment from her creditors.
Recently recovered documents and diligent research
into the economic and societal culture of her time reveal
a very different picture. Her husband, Pierantonio
Stattiesi, didn’t run through Artemisia’s dowry. The
marriage contract between them carefully stipulates
that her husband could borrow from the dowry in order
to buy property and furnishings for setting up a shop.
He could only “borrow these funds with Artemisia’s
express and voluntary consent.” 5 This was set up, in
effect, to facilitate a business partnership. Existing
documents, including Pierantonio’s letters, show that
his involvements in his wife’s finances were in support
of her painting business. Further, the fact that he was a
Florentine citizen (we should also remember that there
was no unified Italian state at this time and Artemisia
was Roman) would prove invaluable toward establishing
Artemisia’s foothold in the city and doing necessary
legwork on her behalf. 6
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ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
Simon Vouet (1590-1649)
Portrait of Artemisia Lomi Gentileschi
ca. 1623-1626
oil on canvas
35 1/2 x28”
private collection
“No image better evokes the present moment in Artemisia
Gentileschi studies than the portrait of the artist painted in the
mid-1620s by Simon Vouet, her French colleague in Rome. As por-
trayed by Vouet, Artemisia is neither a female martyr nor a bosomy
lute player, as certain wishful-thinking portrait identifications would
have her appear. Instead, she appears bold and self-confident,
ironic and playful, a professional artist in full possession of herself
and her technical tools. Proficient in painting – and drawing too, to
judge from the pencil she holds – the sitter projects an effortless
ease, a sprezzatura, while her multiple brushes and the nuanced
range of color patches on the palette attest to her subtlety as a
colorist, for which she was later acclaimed.”
- Mary Garrard in “Identifying Artemisia: The Archive and the Eye”