Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653)
“She lived at the beginning of the 17th century and by the time she
was thirteen years old was producing work as good, and in most cases
much better than anything the men were coming up with … she made
herself into a star, using her skill and her beauty to captivate the rich
and famous. She was also the victim in the first-ever recorded rape
1
trial.” And from a reviewer of the program: “Artemisia Gentileschi’s
art was driven by a sense of furious retribution and revenge for the man
who raped her — and the society that overlooked it.” 2
While the TV program itself is more restrained than its promotional
exaggerations, an unsuspecting reader might be inclined to take all this
hype at face value, unaware of the tremendous amount of scholarship
on Artemisia in recent decades, wherein much new information on her
has come to light. The literature since the invigoration of Gentileschi
studies now is vast, complex, full of fascinating arcane lore, with many
remaining unanswered questions.
To separate fact from myth and understand the artist in terms of the
world she lived and worked in, it is necessary to peel back much that
is attributed to her that comes from the perspective of postindustrial
and postmodern cultural and social sensibilities projected upon an age
very different from ours. That will require looking closely at what the
available primary sources have to say, and don’t say.
To call out some errors of fact in the TV show promotion (which
capitalized on the already popular myth), there are no paintings by
Artemisia from 1606 when she was 13. Her training as a painter is
believed to have begun with her father in 1607-8. As for what men were
putting out, Caravaggio was in Rome in 1606 and it is possible that the
young girl might have met him (or more likely seen him) because her
father Orazio was a member of his circle and there was much coming
and going in the Gentileschi household.
Central to what became the myth of Artemisia was her rape by artist
Agostino Tassi in 1611, and the ensuing trial in 1612 and the view that
this event followed and defined her self-hood and artistic production,
and the image of her as defiant resister of patriarchy. That there had
been a rape and a trial has not been disputed. The trial records remain
in the Roman state archives and English translations of the court
transcripts appear in Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female
Hero in Italian Baroque Art (1989) by Mary Garrard, the first extensive
monograph on the artist. 3
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653)
Judith Slaying Holofernes
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
64 x 39”
Ufizzi Gallery, Florence
It should be noted at the outset that this was nothing
like the modern courtroom dramas with dueling
clever attorneys, such as we’ve watched on Perry
Mason or the O.J. Simpson trial. It was not a public
trial with all those involved in the courtroom at the
same time, and it was carried out in three phases:
private interviews with the witnesses by a judge with
a notary, in Artemisia’s case in the Gentileschi home;
in-person confrontation between the alleged victim
and the accused before the magistrates; and finally a
judicial decision and sentence. 4
It was Orazio, not Artemisia, who brought suit
against Tassi some nine months after the initial rape.
In her testimony Artemisia described in graphic detail
what happened. Tassi, with his cronies, denied it and
sought to discredit her by alleging that she was well
known around town as promiscuous and no virgin.
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