Artemisia Gentileschi: An Eye for Drama
Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders (1610–11). Courtesy of the Schloss Weißenstein collection, Pommersfelden, Germany
‘I will show Your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do.’
Artemisia Gentileschi in a letter to Don Antonio Ruffo
I recently visited a splendid exhibition dedicated to the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi (The National Gallery, London, until 24 January 2021).
Artemisia was born in Rome in 1593, the eldest child of the artist Orazio Gentileschi. Having lost her mother when she was 12, she studied painting in her father's workshop and developed a style influenced by Caravaggio, the master of light.
‘Susannnah and the Elders,’ Artemisia’s first recorded work, was painted when she was just 17. While Susannah is bathing in the garden, she is surprised by two elders. The lecherous men, intent on seduction, threaten to accuse her of adultery if she refuses them. Susannah resists.
In Artemisia’s painting the elders lean in from above, leering, menacing. In hushed voices they conspire against the naked Susannah. She turns away in disgust, recoiling from their foul breath. It is an extraordinarily vivid scene.
A year after she painted ‘Susannnah and the Elders,’ Artemisia was raped by Agostino Tassi, an artist who had been working with her father. To clear her name she had to endure a public trial and judicial torture. As the brutal rope instrument tightened around her fingers, she stood by her testimony:
‘It is true, it is true, it is true.’
The court found in Artemisia’s favour and, a month after the trial, Orazio married her off to another artist. The couple settled in Florence.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1620
It is easy to see Artemisia channelling her anger into her most famous work, ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes.’ The city of Bethulia is under siege by an Assyrian army. Judith has put on a fine dress, entered the enemy camp and dined with the general Holofernes in his tent. He has fallen asleep drunk.
In the darkness Judith and her maidservant Abra set about their grisly business with grim determination. Abra pins Holofernes to the bed. Judith rolls up the sleeves of her gold brocade gown to reveal strong forearms suited to the task. With one hand she grasps Holofernes’ hair and holds his head steady. In her other hand she clutches the sword with which she slices through the general’s neck. The suddenly awoken Holofernes reaches up in terror. Blood spatters over the bed sheets below and onto the arms of the two women. It is like a scene from a horror movie.
Artemisia returns to the theme of Judith and Holofernes a number of times. In other works she paints Judith and Abra immediately after the execution. Abra crouches over Holofernes’ head, bundling it into a sack. Judith stands at the entrance to the tent, illuminated by a solitary candle. Staring out into the black night, she plots their escape. She grips her sword tightly, blood still dripping from its blade. She may have to use it again.
Artemisia clearly has an eye for drama. She carefully chooses ‘the decisive moment’ in a story, presents the characters in compelling relation to one another, considers every nuance of their emotions and lights the scene to accentuate the tension. It is as if time stands still.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Maidservant with Head of Holofernes c. 1623–1625
Artemisia does this repeatedly, often celebrating the fortitude of female characters in history and myth. Nymph Corisca escapes the embrace of a lustful Satyr. Persian Queen Esther, pleading for the fate of the Jews, faints into the arms of her two ladies-in-waiting. Jael kneels over Canaanite general Sisera while he is sleeping, and serenely drives a tent peg through his head.
There is a lesson for us all here. If we want to create drama, we should select a precise point in time; stage it; frame it; light it so as to heighten the tension. Set nerves jangling, pulses racing. Make viewers feel the urgency of the occasion.
After the travails of her youth, Artemisia became a successful court painter in Florence, enjoying the patronage of the Medici, and she was the first woman accepted into the artists’ academy. She learned to read and write, socialised with the great and the good, including the polymath Galileo, and embarked on an intense relationship with a local nobleman. She had five children, four of whom died, leaving her to raise her surviving daughter as an artist. In all she had a 40-year career, working in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples and London. She died around 1654 in her early 60s. She had lived a full life.
'As long as I live I will have control over my being.'
From the court papers of Artemisia’s trial and a bundle of her letters found in 2011, we gain a sense of a strong, defiant, proud and passionate woman. Her vitality and lust for life also leap out from her paintings, not least because in many of them she uses herself as a model.
In ‘Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting’ Artemisia depicts herself as the embodiment of the painterly art. She wears a green silk gown and a gold pendant hangs from her neck. Her hair is organised neatly in a bun, a few strands falling over her cheeks and forehead. In her left hand she grasps the palette, and with the brush in her right hand she reaches for the canvas in front of her. Ignoring us, the viewers, she is a picture of quiet confidence and intense concentration.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1638–39, Royal Collection
'Oh, I am a lonely painter.
I live in a box of paints.
I'm frightened by the devil,
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid.
I remember that time you told me, you said,
"Love is touching souls."
Surely you touched mine, 'cause
Part of you pours out of me,
In these lines from time to time.’
Joni Mitchell, ‘A Case of You'
No. 304