Artemisia Gentileschi

Her life

- Birth (where and when)

- Early life (childhood, family, schooling, hobbies)
- Study/ early career/ personal relationships
- Death

Her work

- Areas of interest/study
- Important achievements
- Important ideas/concepts - talk about the paintings

Her influence on Italian culture and society

- Particular focus on the role of women

The Following are all excerpt from the article

Source Type Key ideas

Bedtime story Book - At 17, Artemisia painted a masterpiece and at

for rebel girls the time, most women weren’t even allowed to
(Italian) go near the artist workshops.
- She met Agostino Tassi and became his pupil
to sharpen her skills. As she gets better at
(paraphrased) painting, Tassi wanted her to become his
mistress, in which she refused.
- Orazio (Artemisia’s father) took Tassi to court
and accuse him but Tassi denied all
accusations and resulted in Artemisia suffering
from terrible stress.
- Tassi was later found guilty.
- Today, Artemisia is considered one of the
greatest painters of all time.

https:// News article - As one of the first women to forge a successful

www.newyork career as a painter, Artemisia was celebrated
er.com/ internationally in her lifetime, but her reputation
magazine/ languished after her death.
2020/10/05/a- - The reëvaluation of Artemisia’s work has included a
fuller-picture- newfound appreciation of her technical skill,
of-artemisia- especially her command of chiaroscuro—a
gentileschi
heightened juxtaposition of light and shadow.
- In 1611, the year after she painted “Susanna and
 the Elders,” Artemisia was raped by a friend of
Orazio’s: the artist Agostino Tassi. The assault has
inevitably, and often reductively, been the lens
through which her artistic accomplishments have
been viewed.
- The fascination with her work on these terms is
understandable, given the continued prevalence of
sexual violence against women, and the dismissal of
women’s accounts of it.
- Artemisia’s art is increasingly being appreciated for
the knowingness with which she made use of
elements of her life—not just sexual violation but
also motherhood, erotic passion, and professional
ambition.
- Artemisia had a sheltered childhood, in the most
literal sense of the term: as a girl, she spent most of
her time within the walls of her family home, as
Rome’s streets were not considered a safe or
appropriate space for her to journey through alone.
She was the eldest child in her family, with three
younger brothers; at the age of twelve, she became
their principal caregiver when her mother,
Prudentia di Montone, died, in childbirth. Artemisia
received no academic education and was
functionally illiterate until her twenties, when she
finally had the opportunity to learn to read and
write—the latter never without error. But as a child
she was allowed to draw, and her gifts were noted
early on.
- The fact that Artemisia’s female characters often
are, like her, russet-haired, with full cheeks, has led
many of her paintings to be described as self-
portraiture. Even Artemisia’s male figures have
sometimes been linked with the female visage
characteristic of her work.
- Although the young Artemisia remained largely
cloistered in her father’s studio, she was
nonetheless vulnerable to attack there by Tassi, a
successful artist; some scholars suggest that Orazio
had engaged him to tutor Artemisia on perspective.
- The decision to publicly accuse Tassi of rape was
made not by Artemisia but by her father, who
sought to force Tassi to marry her.
- Orazio’s goal of coercing Tassi into making good on
his word to marry Artemisia would be unthinkable
in a rape trial today.
- Tassi was found guilty but he was sentenced only to
a brief period of exile, which he ignored. He did not
have to marry Artemisia—it emerged in the
courtroom that he had already married someone
 else.
- During the trial, her father arranged for her to
marry Pierantonio Stiattesi, a minor artist in
Florence.
- Arriving in Florence in the winter of 1612-13,
Artemisia initially set up her studio in the house of
her father-in-law, a tailor. Over time, she seems to
have established a studio apart from the family
home, where, among other things, she could more
easily work on large-scale canvases.
- In July, 1616, Artemisia became the first woman to
be admitted to the prestigious Accademia delle Arti
del Disegno.
- Artemisia bore five children, between the years of
1613 and 1618, making her execution of large-scale
paintings during that period all the more impressive.
It was not just a matter of physical endurance: three
of her children died in infancy, and a fourth,
Cristofano, born in 1615, died before the age of five.
Only her daughter, Prudenzia, born in 1617 and
named for Artemisia’s mother, lived into adulthood.
- After half a dozen years in Florence, Artemisia
returned to Rome. The city’s census report of 1624
suggests that she and her husband had by then
parted, and that she was self-supporting.
- In the late sixteen-twenties, Artemisia went to
Venice, seeking fresh patronage. In 1630, she
settled in Naples.
- Throughout her career, she demonstrated a
sophisticated comprehension of the way her
unusual status as a woman added to the value of
her paintings.
- Francesco Maria Maringhi, a Florentine nobleman.
It turned out that she had had a torrid affair with
Maringhi when she was in her mid-twenties, and
five years into her marriage.

https:// News article - The dying man is Holofernes, an enemy of the

www.theguar Israelites in the Old Testament, and the young
dian.com/ woman beheading him is Judith, his divinely
artanddesign/ appointed assassin. Yet at the same time he is also
2016/oct/05/ an Italian painter called Agostino Tassi, while the
artemisia- woman with the sword is Artemisia Gentileschi,
gentileshi- who painted this. It is, effectively, a self-portrait.
painter-
- Gentileschi was the greatest female artist of the
beyond-
baroque age and one of the most brilliant followers
caravaggio
of the incendiary artist Caravaggio, whose terrifying
painting of Judith and Holofernes influenced hers.
- Being the daughter of an artist was the only way a
young woman could hope to learn the complex skills
 it took to paint professionally in the baroque age. It
seems that Orazio had ambition for his daughter –
after all, he gave her a striking, classical name. And
as her skill developed, he hired an upcoming artist,
Agostino Tassi, to give her lessons. Then, in 1612,
Orazio accused Tassi of raping his daughter, as well
as tricking her out of a painting from his studio.
- In most paintings, including Caravaggio’s
hallucinatory rendering, Judith has a servant who
waits to collect the severed head. But Gentileschi
makes the servant a strong young woman who
actively participates in the killing. This does two
things. It adds a savage realism that even
Caravaggio never thought of – it would take two
women to kill this brute. But it also gives the scene
a revolutionary implication. “What,” wonders
Gentileschi, “if women got together? Could we fight
back against a world ruled by men?”
- It is a disturbing effect, strangely reminiscent of her
own persecution. In the, trial, it emerged that Tassi
had an accomplice who also lusted after her. They
both kept hanging around, bugging her, watching
her, just like the voyeurs troubling Susannah. The
trauma of Gentileschi’s rape and the trial that gave
her no justice haunt her art.

https:// Informational - In her paintings, Gentilschi often depicted stories

www.sotheby article heroic women of biblical, mythological and
s.com/en/ historical narratives. Gentileschi herself was the first
artists/ woman to become a member of the Accademia di
artemisia- Arte del Disegno in Florence, and the first known
gentileschi woman artist to develop patronage of international
clientele.
- Gentileschi is often referred to as a Caravagista,
though her particular talents were unmatched in
dramatic yet elegant handling of tapestries, lighting,
in addition to her unique ability to depict both the
physical bodies as well as psychological states of her
women subjects.
- Her works are included in the permanent collections
of the Prado Museum, El Escorial, The Metropolitan
Museum, the Uffizi, and many other major
institutions.

https:// Informational - Born in Rome in 1593 Artemisia Gentileschi was the

artincontext.or article finest female painter of the Baroque period and
g/artemisia- among the most outstanding disciples of the fiery
gentileschi- painter Caravaggio, whose frightening image of
paintings/ Judith and Holofernes impacted her work.
Susanna and the Elders (1610)

Susanna’s reaction is at the core of the picture, displaying

Gentileschi’s groundbreaking emotional authenticity,
especially in her portrayal of women. Artemisia’s version of
Susanna offers us a picture unusual in art, of a fleshed-out
female heroine who is courageous.
Gentileschi created this work before she was raped by
Tassi, and the theme might represent the harassment she
experienced at the hands of Tassi and other painters once
she started training at his workshop.

Judith Slaying Holofernes (1613)

 Gentileschi created a depiction of a female’s courage in
this artwork, while at the same time emphasizing her own
strength as an artist with the ability to choose her own
themes and make her own decisions on how they should
be approached.

https:// Italian article - Artemisia Gentileschi, pittrice seicentesca, è un

psiche.santag esempio di come l’arte possa aiutare ad
ostino.it/ affrontare e superare anche traumi molto gravi,
2019/02/13/ quali l’abuso sessuale, l’umiliazione pubblica, la
artemisia- tortura, le violenze perpetrate in ambito
gentileschi- familiare.
vendetta/ - l’intelligenza, l’abilità pittorica e la tela. Diventa
così una donna libera a livello sociale ed
economico: riceve infatti numerose
committenze e comincia a dipingere temi che
narrano storie di donne violate e vendicative
che uccidono crudelmente nemici e amanti.
Due opere sono gli emblemi della vicenda del
processo: Susanna e i vecchioni (1610), in cui
una giovane viene molestata da due uomini
( non a caso tema ricorrente nella scelta
creativa della pittrice) e soprattutto Giuditta
che decapita Oloferne (1620 circa), in cui il volto
 della protagonista è quello della pittrice stessa.
- Nella storia di questa pittrice non si può solo
parlare di resilienza e di potenza dei
meccanismi difensivi, ma anche di un vero e
proprio riscatto emotivo e morale che anche
oggi a molte donne è negato. La pittrice, dopo
aver capito di non poter contare né sulla
giustizia né sulla famiglia, ma solo su se stessa,
reagisce sfruttando le proprie capacità
intellettuali e artistiche.
- nel 1638, per dipingere assieme al padre Orazio
un complesso di nove tele. Quest’opera, il
Trionfo della pace e delle arti, segna il suo
perdono e una nuova collaborazione, non più
come aiutante del padre ma come
professionista a pieno diritto. Un anno dopo il
padre ormai anziano muore e Artemisia rientra
a Napoli come pittrice di fama internazionale.

https:// Italian article - Tra le più importanti pittrici italiane. A soli

www.emerge sei anni Artemisia già conosceva le tecniche
ncy.it/ del colore, sapeva mescolare e impastare
smemoapp/ pigmenti e, in breve tempo, passò dal
artemisia- dipingere per diletto a diventare una
gentileschi-
collaboratrice del padre, in un’epoca in cui
bellezza-e-
arte-per-
le donne non potevano frequentare alcuna
rivendicare- scuola d’arte.
liberta/

https:// Italian article - Artemisia nasce qui nel 1593 da Orazio,

www.studenti. celebre artista di origine pisana, e
it/artemisia- Prudenzia Montone o Montoni, che muore
gentileschi- quando la ragazzina ha appena 12 anni,
biografia-e- lasciandola orfana ad occuparsi dei fratelli
opere.html
più piccoli. La casa di Orazio è
frequentata dai maggiori artisti del
periodo, tra cui Caravaggio, almeno fino
alla sua precipitosa fuga da Roma nel 1606.
- Anche se la sua famiglia non ha grandi
mezzi e non può pagarle un vero e proprio
apprendistato (essendo donna, quest’idea è
praticabile solo perché il padre stesso è un
artista), Artemisia è dotata di talento
precoce e il padre ne cura
personalmente la formazione
artistica nei primi anni, poi da adolescente
le procura insegnanti fra i suoi colleghi, tra
gli altri come maestro di prospettiva
pittorica la fa seguire da Agostino
 Tassi.
Presentation layout: Script

Her life
- When and where she was born, from who
- Her siblings
- Her talent in art, didn’t go to school
- Tassi’s rape trial
- Married someone but seperated and had an master
- Children
- Death is unknown, suggested from the devastating plague in Naples in 1656

Her work
- Travelled a lot after gaining recognition by her painting and the rape trial
- A lot of commisions
- Describe two of her most famous works.

Her influence
- Her bravery
- Her talent and independence
- She is one of the renowned painters in history