Artemisia Gentileschi: Heroine of Art

The artistic legacy of Artemisia Gentileschi is at a fascinating yet critical juncture.

On one side is a feminist reading of Gentileschi which, beginning in the seventies, brought her out of obscurity and has been instrumental in reestablishing her as a central figure within the canon of Baroque art. It is a version of her that has been headily coloured through literary and cinematic fiction, one that, for better and for worse, uses as its crux her rape at the age of seventeen and her ordeal during the subsequent trial the following year in 1612. Seen through this lens, Gentileschi’s painted variations of Judith Beheading Holofernes and Susanna and the Elders have become a visual shorthand for the Me Too movement, bringing renewed interest to this aspect of her biography.

On the other side is a more holistic understanding of who Gentileschi was. This version is formed and supported by art historians and curators who want to foreground her skill and tenacity in forging an unprecedented career as a woman painter in seventeenth-century Italy rather than perpetuating the reduction of her story to that of her rape and trial. Now, when devising exhibitions, curators are keenly alert to the recent surge in popularity Gentileschi has received and to the resonance of the first reading, which has become significant in its own right. And so, they carefully walk along the tightrope between the two camps.

From the outside, as the exhibition title suggests, the concise and ambitious Artemisia: Heroine of Art—currently on view at the Musée Jacquemart-André, the palatial Parisian house museum—sits firmly within the former framework. Inside, however, the fight is on.

It’s a valiant effort across eight thematic rooms, loosely following a chronological order. It opens with an enticing marriage between the two camps that sets the tone for the rest of the exhibition, starting with Susanna and the Elders (ca. 1610), painted when Gentileschi was just seventeen. Even if the painting was aided by her father Orazio Gentileschi, a celebrated painter in Rome, as it has been argued, it still immediately showcases Gentileschi’s innate drive to give a voice to her female protagonists. Unlike countless versions painted by men, where Susanna is merely an object of desire for the lecherous elders (and viewers) or coyly encourages their behaviour, here she unabashedly recoils at their advances and gazes.

Offering a powerful foil to this, and showing the indelible influence Caravaggio had throughout her career, is Judith and Her Maidservant (ca. 1615) alongside a version painted by Orazio in around 1608. In Orazio’s painting, Judith and her maidservant appear one-dimensional because he directs our attention to their murderous act; the focal point is Holofernes’s decapitated head seen in profile, illuminated in raking light. Through a small adjustment, Gentileschi redirects our attention to the interior drama unfolding between Judith and her maidservant as they look out beyond the edge of the composition. She places Judith’s free hand on her maidservant’s shoulder, pulling her in protectively. As a result of this new focal point, our eye moves to Judith’s face where we sense a mix of fear and aggression and then to her maidservant, who is stunned by the reality of what Judith has just done, but who we sense is seen in the split-second that she decides to place total and trusting faith in Judith. This awards the commonly painted story a unique and commanding dynamic, demonstrating how Gentileschi’s most successful works operate.

Gentileschi first rose to prominence in Florence, beyond the shadow of her father, becoming the first woman admitted into the prestigious Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in 1616. Later, she moved to Naples where she ran a busy and successful workshop. The inclusion of—and fact that it exists—Simon Vouet’s Portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi (ca. 1622–25), showing Gentileschi posing confidently, a paint palette in one hand and a brush in the other, encourages us to see Gentileschi as a championed painter rather than a victim intent on symbolic revenge through her paintings.

As surviving letters attest, Gentileschi was acutely aware that her position as a woman offered both an edge and a severe disadvantage. “A woman’s name raises doubts until her work is seen,” she wrote to the collector Antonio Ruffo in 1649. As the exhibition reaches its conclusion with variants of Gentileschi’s most celebrated paintings, including Cleopatra (c.1620–25), Jael and Sisera (1620), and Penitent Magdalene (c.1625–30), it is clear that her edge was to give the female protagonists that dominate her work a true-to-life sensibility that her male peers could not or would not.

This authority is at its strongest and most enduring not at the end, but in the middle, where the small-scale Danaë (ca. 1612) is seen adjacent to Caravaggio's Crowning with Thorns (ca. 1605) and Orazio’s Christ Crowned with Thorns (ca. 1613–15). In starkest relief, these two demanding, large-scale works, powerfully conveying the mortal suffering of the Son of God, feel wooden and pale in comparison to Artemisia’s mortal woman.

Gentileschi’s erotic treatment of Danaë, awarding her agency over her sexual pleasure, is an immensely powerful visual treatise. The artist renders Danaë’s lifelike alabaster skin, glowing seductively against the black background and scarlet sheet she lies on, with exquisite skill. She captures the physicality of female sexual pleasure in a manner that few male painters from the time ever came close to: in how her breast falls as she extends her body in a state of ecstasy, and the way she crosses her legs below the knee, her thighs clamped tightly together. It’s a feat of painterly genius that makes it easy to see why her reputation was akin to that of Van Dyck or Peter Paul Rubens during her lifetime. “With me Your Illustrious Lordship will not lose and you will find the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman,” she proclaimed to Ruffo … “I will show Your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do.”

First published by The Brooklyn Rail
https://brooklynrail.org/2025/06/artseen/artemisia-gentileschi-heroine-of-art/