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Sireana Ison

Proffessor Koeninger

ART 2236

6 December 2019

The Life and Work of Artemisia Gentileschi

A women artist who Is worthy of much praise, Artemisia Gentileschi, was a notable artist

during her lifetime and would also become, “the best-known female artist in Western art history

before the modern era” (Garrard 1). However, after her death in 1653, it would take nearly three-

hundred years for her work to begin circulating and being talked about again. When confiding to

a close friend, Galileo, in a letter, Artemisia hypothesized, “I have seen myself honored by all the

kings and rulers of Europe.” And the paintings she had painted herself would eventually serve to

“provide the evidence of [her] fame” (Rabb 191). Now, nearly four hundred years later, the

historical and prosperous, difficult and challenging life of Gentileschi has been studied, and we

have learned much about how her career has paved the road for many other women artists as

well as how her life has shaped art history itself. From her inspirations, to her own studies, to her

challenges of being a women artist in a period where it wasn’t widely accepted, studying the life,

work, and beauty that was Artemisia Gentileschi opens a new chapter offering a definition of

what a great women artist truly looked like.

Artemisia Gentileschi was born on July 8th 1593 in Rome to painter Orazio Gentileschi

and his wife Prudentia Montone (Garrard 1) She would be the first of four children as well as the

only girl. She would also be the only one out of her four sibling’s that would follow their fathers

artistic career path, and Orazio would take it upon himself to formally train his daughter as there
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was no formal training elsewhere that allowed any women to take part. Had it not been for

Gentileschi’s father, she would have been unable to work for commissions within Rome or

elsewhere (Rabb 179). As she grew, her younger years would be filled with much inspiration,

and pose as an important time in which she would develop her artistic skills. At age twelve,

Gentileschi’s mother passed away (Rabb 179) and from this point on, her life would be mainly

filled with extensive male influence due to her father, her father’s friends and pupils that would

come and go, and her three male siblings. Beyond her father, there was another artist who played

a huge role in the young artists developing art style, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. While

it is likely that Gentileschi personally knew Caravaggio due to the friendship between Orazio and

the aforementioned artist, Caravaggio had decided to permanently leave Rome in 1606, and it

would be the artwork produced by him that, “[entered] Roman churches and private collections

during Artemisia’s childhood years, and his startling artistic innovations..” (Garrard 14) that lead

Gentileschi to take interest and follow his style closely within her own works. Gentileschi

successfully completed her first full painting in the year 1610 at the age of seventeen, titled

Susanna and the Elders (Garrard 15). However, during the same year Gentileschi would

experience an extreme hardship that would bring her face to face with the trials and tribulations

of being a woman in the 17th century.

Gentileschi’s father recognized her talent very early in her life, and thus appointed his

colleague Agostino Tassi who “specialized in illusionistic architectural paintings, to instruct

Artemisia in the subtle details of perspective” (Quinn) The Gentileschi household also had a

tenant, Tuzia, who rented the upstairs apartment within their home and who had grown to

become friends with Gentileschi herself. Tuzia attempted to persuade Gentileschi that Agostino

was, “a well-mannered young man, courteous to women, and that [they] would get on well”
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(Rabb 180). From Gentileschi’s account of the events whilst under oath in 1611 (Garrard 20),

after multiple circumstances of what could be described as stalking and forced entry carried out

by Agostino as well as Tuzia allowing Agostino entry, he finds Gentileschi painting within the

confines of her own bedroom one afternoon, and he becomes enraged and throws her palette and

brushes on the ground and exclaims for Tuzia to leave the house as well as exclaiming, “Not so

much painting, not so much painting” (Rabb 181). She had pleaded for Tuzia not to leave,

though her cries went unheard and Gentileschi was pushed through a bedroom door by Agostino,

where he promptly locked the door. During this Gentileschi shrewdly cried out for Tuzia, and

eventually managed to draw a knife and throw it at the perpetrator, not harming him but for a

little scratch, just enough to draw blood. Agostino then promised to marry Gentileschi, so that

she may not have her reputation tarnished, but when that promise never came, Orazio became

outraged. These events lead to a seven-month trial pursued by Gentileschi’s father that would

scrutinize Gentileschi herself for no reason other than her gender. Rumors of an untrue

promiscuous past were spread about Gentileschi in an attempt to tarnish her reputation, and she

was subjected to torture by sibille which was, “metal rings tightened by strings around her

fingers, to prove she was telling the truth” (Garrard 21). This torture posed especially dangerous

to Gentileschi as any injuries that harmed her hands could have dually harmed her career as a

painter. She was also subjected to an exam by two obstetricians to confirm the loss of her

virginity, in which one, “gratuitously added that the defloration was not recent…which could be

interpreted to imply sexual promiscuity potentially damaging to Gentileschi’s side of the case”

(Garrard 21). At the end of the gruesome trial, the court had concluded that Gentileschi had been

truthful, and that her version of the events was the correct version only after a close friend of

Agostino’s, the man that would soon after the trial marry Gentileschi, broke ranks and confirmed
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the accusations. It had also been discovered that Agostino’s promise to marry Gentileschi was

concocted on a bed of lies, and the truth was revealed that not only had he been married and

commissioned for his wife to be executed (Quinn) but he had also been imprisoned previously

for incest with his sister-in-law in which they produced children together (Rabb 182). Agostino

was sentenced to eight months in jail, eventually being released (Rabb 182). Gentileschi herself

would become known as a, “defiant survivor” (Mann 1).

After the trial, the relationship between Gentileschi and her father was tarnished, and she

felt the need to leave Rome as it, “had become too immediate a reminder of disgrace” (Rabb-

182). In an attempt to restore her “respectability”, just a month after the trial Gentileschi would

be married to Piertro Stiattesi, the close friend of Agostino at the request of her father, and would

move to Florence, Italy where she would also eventually give birth to two daughters who would

follow in their mothers footsteps in which they too would become artists, however, little is

known about their lives. After the trials, Gentileschi’s artwork began to stir feelings of an

“implied revenge” (Quinn) especially so with her interest in the female character Judith with

whom she painted five times within ten years (Rabb 185). Out of all the Judith paintings

Gentileschi produced, Judith Slaying Holofernes became one, if not the, most notable painting

produced by Gentileschi in her lifetime. This painting displayed much of the influence

Caravaggio’s artwork had on her. She began to be noted as an artist that was able to create,

“marvelous depictions of horror” (Gage) however, this caused Gentileschi’s artwork to become

quite controversial as many would come to disagree with a woman displaying unfeminine

techniques within their work, especially such violence. Gentileschi’s art was placed under heavy

scrutiny and, “[exemplified] the subtle but persistent expectation that Artemisia’s art should

present paragons of female beauty” (Garrard 14). There was a strong desire to, “assign Artemisia
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a stable feminine identity…[which] was –at least for the seventeenth century—consistent with

the gendered norms of identity construction in the Renaissance” (Gerrard 14). However, against

all odds, difficulties, and gendered hurdles, she was able to regain her notoriety as an artist

against the attempts to devalue her work and tarnish her name. Whilst living in Florence, she had

become, “an official member of the Accademia del Disegno, and she would also be the first

woman to ever receive that honor” (Rabb 185). However, this wasn’t the full stop of her career.

After the death of her husband in 1620, she ultimately decided to return to Rome as she had

found her footing in the world and had solidified her career. She was able to reconcile her

relationship with her father as well as join a group of artists who occupied her childhood

neighborhood. Her stay in Rome was not permanent however, and she moved twice more to

Naples and then to England for the remaining twenty-two years of her life until her death in 1653

(Rabb). She joined several large projects whilst living in London, and her paintings began to

express “themes of vulnerable womanhood” (Rabb 190), after which her work became very

highly sought after. To own a piece of Gentileschi’s work was to possess a, “cultural trophy”

(Garrard 8). Gentileschi had also begun to think about herself as a bonafide businesswomen, as

was evident in the way she began to sign her letters and her paintings (Mann 74).

Throughout her life, Gentileschi was able to create an extensive collection of self-

portraits and religious reference work. The beauty and realism she was able to give her subjects

within her paintings garnered her much of the popularity she received within the seventeenth

century, as well as the kind homage her art style paid to that of Caravaggio’s, in which she was a

disciple. Even though she eventually grew to develop her own distinct art style as she aged, her

work only became more popular and she was able to lead a successful life as an artist regardless

of the trying time in which her reputation became tarnished, when Agostino took it upon himself
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to assault the young girl. The art that has been left behind for us to study today has revealed

much of what Gentileschi’s talent truly looked like, from strong main female subjects to true

beauty, realism, and the stark contrast of the subjects to the background expressed different

periods throughout her life as well as showed examples of those who had an influential impact

on her art style. Gentileschi’s life and work should be held as an excellent example of ways in

which a female artist was able to break out of societal expectations and continue a passionate

career regardless of the forces against her. While there is still much yet to be discovered about

Gentileschi, as it is speculated that some of her work has been lost or has yet to be properly

attributed to her, her life should be an example of the ability for one to triumph through life’s

difficulties, regardless of how damaging they may be. Gentileschi’s life was a living example of

what a genuine, great women artist was and is, and continues to be one of the most notable

women artists’ spoken about and studied today.

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Works Cited

Gage, Frances. “Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol.

69, no. 1, Spring 2016, pp. 242–244. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1086/686349.

Garrard, Mary D. Artemisia Gentileschi Around 1622: The Shaping and Reshaping of an Artistic

Identity. University of California Press, Ltd. 2001.

Garrard, Mary D. Artemisia Gentileschi. Princeton University Press, 1989.

Mann, Judith W. "Identity signs: meanings and methods in Artemisia Gentileschi's signatures*."

Renaissance Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 2009, pp. 71-107. OhioLINK Electronic Journal

Center, doi:10.1111/J.1477-4658.2008.00542.X.

Quinn, Bridget. Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order).

Chronicle Books, 2017.

Rabb, Theodore K. Renaissance Lives: Portraits of an Age. Pantheon Books, 1993.