Artist

Artemisia Gentileschi

Year
Rome 1593 - 1653 Naples

Style
Baroque

Active region
Britain – Italy: Florence – Italy: Naples – Italy: Rome – Italy: Venice

Price range
3,000,000 USD +

Artemisia Gentileschi is the most celebrated woman artist of the Italian Baroque.

While predecessors such as Sofonisba Anguissola in Cremona and Lavinia Fontana in Bologna excelled in portraiture and devotional painting, and Fede Galizia in Milan was renowned for her still lifes, Artemisia’s reputation as an accomplished painter of large, multi-figure compositions with mythological or Biblical subjects was without precedent for a female artist.

Born in Rome in 1593, Artemisia was the oldest of five children and the only daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, one of Caravaggio’s earliest followers. Artemisia served as an apprentice to her father, and in Orazio’s workshop she apprehended the skills essential to becoming a professional painter. Artemisia’s earliest signed and dated painting, Susanna and the Elders (Schloss Weißenstein, Pommersfelden), is from 1610. The subject of that picture, in which a young woman recoils from the unwanted sexual attention of two male harassers, was prescient, for in the following year, Artemisia was raped by the painter Agostino Tassi, a collaborator of her father who had been hired as her teacher. Surviving documents meticulously record the lengthy and infamous trial that ensued, during which Artemisia was tortured with the aim of verifying her testimony using thumbscrews.

Although Tassi was ultimately found guilty and banished from Rome, his punishment was never enforced. Artemisia’s reputation suffered grievously, and shortly after the trial, Orazio arranged her marriage to a painter of modest abilities, Pierantonio Stiattesi. The couple moved to Florence, where they remained for six years. During this period, Artemisia’s career flourished. She secured the patronage of Grand Duke Cosimo II and established her reputation at the Medici court, associating with the literary and artistic circle around the poet Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger and even making the acquaintance of the famous scientist Galileo. She became the first female member of the Accademia del Disegno in 1616. In 1612–13, Artemisia painted the first of several versions of what is perhaps her most famous composition—Judith Beheading Holofernes (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples). Interpreted by early feminist writers as a sort of visual revenge for her rape, more recently the painting has been placed within a larger context of Gentileschi’s lifelong achievement in portraying strong women. Indeed, many of Artemisia’s paintings feature violent themes with female protagonists, and these are often read in biographical terms.

Artemisia and her husband separated in 1620, and she became the head of her own household, enjoying a freedom and independence known by few women of her age. She and her two daughters moved frequently for career opportunities and to accommodate patrons, taking her back to Rome from 1620 until 1626, to Venice between 1626 and 1630, and finally to Naples in 1630, where she remained for the rest of her life, running a large and successful workshop. In 1639 she briefly visited London, perhaps to assist her ailing father with the ceiling painting for the Queen’s House in Greenwich. The precise date of her death remains unknown, but a document records her still living in Naples in August 1654.

Though well-known in her lifetime, a great deal of Artemisia’s work fell into obscurity following her death, often attributed to her father or other followers of Caravaggio. A fictional biography published by Anna Banti in 1947 jumpstarted her reevaluation as a significant figure in the history of European art, and today, thanks to fulsome scholarship, Artemisia is rightfully recognized as a remarkable figure who challenged conventions and defied expectations to become a successful artist and one of the most audacious narrative painters of her time. Current events, too, have rendered her paintings timely, given their emphasis on women striking back against men in power. The last several years have witnessed a concomitant surge in market interest for Gentileschi, with her works achieving record prices, and, in 2020, the National Gallery, London, staged a major exhibition of the painter’s work, celebrating their 2018 acquisition of her Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria (ca. 1615–17).