The Triumph of Judith

The Triumph of Judith

Artemisia Genteleschi

by Susan Nurse

 (The following includes material from Susan Nurses’s recent talk to the docents. While MAG does not own a painting by Genteleschi, our appreciation of MAG’s The Triumph of Judith by Francesco Solimena is enriched by her research of this great Baroque artist.)
Artemisia is a tantalizing figure from the past.  Since she is a woman artist and we have letters that she wrote, we know about many of her works. We also have the rape trial transcript which provided more facts about her life. However, when and where she lived is sometimes problematic, and this factor makes it hard to date her works. In addition, many of her works are not dated and some are not signed. Since each area of Italy had a distinctive local style, this fact would have had an influence on the works her patrons commissioned. Her surviving letters speak of landscapes and portraits, but almost none of the works known to be hers fit into these categories.
Artemisia went on to become a painter, famous in her own day, with patrons as renowned as Philip IV of Spain and Cosimo de Medici II.  Her correspondence with Galileo indicates a mutual friendship. She was the first woman admitted to the Accademia in Florence and supported herself and her child (children) with her art.

Born in 1593, Artemisia‘s talent was apparent early, with her large “Susana and the Elders” a fully developed painting, completed when she was only 17.   Her father Orazio, who was also a painter, not only recognized the talent of his only daughter, but he trained her. To that end, he hired fellow artist and friend Agostino Tassi to teach her perspective.  Tassi raped her and her father brought charges against him.

During the trial, Tassi tried to have Artemisia declared promiscuous and only under torture could she prove her innocence.  She also had to submit to a vaginal examination in the courtroom by midwives.  After the trial, she broke her relationship with her father for many years, while her father resumed his working relationship with Tassi.  Tassi was sentenced to one year banishment from Rome, but this was not enforced.  Artemisia was quickly married off to a minor artist and left immediately for Florence.

One of her first commissions in Florence was an “Allegory of Inclination,” from a family friend Michelangelo, great nephew of Il Diviano, who was decorating the ceiling of the Galleria in the Casa Buonarroti. She was paid three times the price given to other artists on the project.

Most of her existing works are of heroic women:  Judith, Lucretia, Susanna, Mary Magdalene, Esther, and Cleopatra.
But this does not necessarily reflect the appeal of these women’s stories to Artemisia.  Since patrons, not artists, most often chose subject matter, it is probable that her patrons – all male- found the commissioning of a woman artist to create a

                                                         
                                                                                                                     
                                                           
work depicting heroic women held great appeal.  Her female nudes are sumptuous and indicate an artistic understanding of the human form. Illustrious patrons often wished to commission copies of works that she had done for
others.  She was in the fortuitous position of living and working in an environment where wealthy individuals were encouraged to support the arts, not only in the church but in their own homes.

Artemisia, unlike many other female painters both before and after, did not limit herself to portraiture, still-lifes or small scale paintings.  Her paintings of Judith, for example, are larger than life and represent dramatic action.  While familiar with the story of the Jewish heroine who saved her people by infiltrating the enemy camp and decapitating their general, Holofernes, Artemisia altered the depiction of the two women.  Judith and her female servant are depicted by Artemisia as close in age, helping each other overcome the strength of the general.  Male artists, particularly Caravaggio, used an old woman as Judith’s servant--not a woman who could lend physical support.  With the two women depicted in this way, Caravaggio’s Judith has a subliminal message that makes the servant into a procuress and undermines the viewer’s understanding of the heroic nature of Judith’s act.  Artemisia’s Judith paintings are in the collections of the Pitti Palace, Uffizi, and the Detroit Institute of Art (originally commissioned by Prince Brancaccio of Rome).

In the 1630s, Orazio arrived in England in the hopes of finishing his days as a court painter for Charles I.  Although he did not secure a yearly stipend from the crown, he was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Queen’s House in Greenwich England with an Allegory of Peace and the Arts. He eventually sent for Artemisia to help him finish the project. They must have worked closely, since no part is specifically either’s hand.  Orazio died soon after the dedication in 1638.  The frescoes exist in a much restored way in Marlborough House.

Robert Longhi’s studies in 1916 brought the Genteleschi family out of obscurity because they were followers of Caravaggio.  Caravaggio not only advocated the use of black backgrounds and strong contrasts of light and dark, but also the use of shadows--light coming from a single direction.  This striking newness of Caravaggio’s art was how he actually depicted his model’s physical characteristics. This was a radical departure, and for Orazio to change styles and attach himself to a new, radical artist when he was in his 40s with a family to support, indicates the esteem that he and his daughter had for Caravaggio.  

Artemisia’s rediscovery in the 1970s by feminist art historians brought her art into art history text books and into feminist art at the time.  Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party” of 1974-79, now installed at Brooklyn Museum of Modern Art, includes place settings for both Judith and Artemisia.

Mary Girard’s monograph of 1989 was the first extensive study of Artemisia.  A 2002 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art comprehensively compared Orazio and Artemisia’s work side by side for the first time.  No study of the early Baroque period can exclude her work any longer.