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Esther before
Ahasuerus (detail), ca. 1628–35. Artemisia Gentileschi
(Italian [Roman], 1593–1651/53). Gift of Elinor Dorrance Ingersoll,
1969 (69.281).
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More about Artemisia
"I will say no more, except what I have on my mind, that
I think Your Most Illustrious Lordship will not suffer any loss
with me, and that you will find the spirit of Caesar in this soul
of a woman."
These words, penned by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1652) to the
Sicilian nobleman Don Antonio Ruffo, cannot help but alert us to the
indomitable spirit of the most accomplished woman painter of the seventeenth
century. Exceptional in her day—a refutation of the assumed intellectual
inferiority of women—she has captivated modern audiences. Raped
by her father's colleague when she was seventeen, subjected to the
mental duress of a trial, married to a mediocrity, she has seemed
to many the quintessential victim as well as the model survivor: an
illiterate girl who became the first female member of the Florentine
Accademia del Disegno and the friend of Galileo and that most cultivated
and learned of Roman patrons, Cassiano del Pozzo; a woman who successfully
competed in a society controlled by males. Small wonder that she has
been the subject of three fictional biographies and a film. Yet, however
fascinating Artemisia's biography, it is as an artist that she staked
her claim to posterity.
Artemisia owed the occupation by which she fashioned herself and
redefined the creative potentialities of her gender to her father
Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639). Orazio, though less widely
known today, was at least as famous as Artemisia in his own time.
One of the earliest followers of Caravaggio, he was over forty when
he transformed himself from an undistinguished painter into an artist
of astonishing originality and genius. Artemisia became her father's
outstanding pupil. Motherless at the age of twelve, she was mostly
confined to their house, which also served as her father's
studio. Presumably, she observed him painting, and from 1609 must
have received special instruction from him. In 1612, we find Orazio
recommending her work to the grand duchess of Tuscany: "In three
years she has become so skilled that I can venture to say that she
has no peer; indeed, she has produced works which demonstrate a
level of understanding that perhaps even the principal masters of
the profession have not attained, as I will show Your Very Serene
Highness at the proper time and place." Artemisia married a Florentine
painter, Pierantonio Stiattesi, in 1612. It was a marriage of convenience
and lasted ten years (Pierantonio abandoned her in 1622/23). They
had four children (only one, Prudenza, lived to adulthood; like
her mother, she painted). The marriage provided Artemisia the social
acceptability on which to construct her professional career. Artemisia's
talent carried her from Rome to Florence (where she painted for
Cosimo II de'Medici as well as for his wife Maria Maddalena), to
Rome, Venice, Naples, and London. She died in Naples in 1652, having
achieved a European reputation.
Read the story of Esther.
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