Artemisia Gentileschi: A Survivor
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 11:10AM 
Artemisia Gentileschi - Susanna and the Elders - 1610 - Oil on canvas, 170 x 121 cm - Schloss Weissenstein, Pommersfelden - This is Artemisia’s first signed and extant work. (click photo for larger image)
Artemisia Gentileschi - Judith Beheading Holofernes - 1611-12 - Oil on canvas, 159 x 126 cm - Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples (click photo for larger image)
Caravaggio - Judith Beheading Holofernes - c. 1598 - Oil on canvas, 145 x 195 cm - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome. This is the painting that inspired Artemisia’s interpretation of the same subject matter (click photo for larger image)Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652) was one of the greatest of the Caravaggesque painters and a formidable personality. In 1610 she painted her first extant signed and dated work, Susanna and the Elders.
In February or early March 1612, Agostino Tassi, employed as Artemisia's perspective teacher, was accused of raping her and subsequently was tried and imprisoned. Perhaps to mitigate her plight, Artemisia married the Florentine Pierantonio Stiattesi, left Rome, and moved to the Tuscan capital.
The dating of some of her most celebrated early paintings remains controversial. These include Judith Beheading Holofernes, a response to Caravaggio's canonical interpretation of the subject. Artemisia signed herself Lomi, her father's real surname, on Florentine works.
Highly regarded, she joined the Accademia del Disegno in 1616 as its first female member. Baldinucci's brief biography describes her prolific activity as a portraitist, though few examples have survived. In
1620 she wrote to Cosimo II de' Medici informing him of a proposed trip to Rome. It is documented that she was there in 1621 and again between 1622 and 1626. By 1627 she was in Venice but later moved to Naples where she signed her earliest securely datable Neapolitan work, the Annunciation (1630, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples). It seems she lived there until her death, except for a sojourn to England in 1638, to assist her elderly father.
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