This beautiful book presents the work of these two painters, exploring the artistic development of each, comparing their achievements and showing how both were influenced by their times and the milieus in which they worked.
An early icon of feminist art history, the work of Artemisia Gentileschi has been largely obscured by the sensational details of her life. In this volume the contributors attempt to give a more balanced view & to approach a genuine appreciation of Artemisia's considerable artistic talents.
In 17th century Rome, where women are expected to be chaste and yet are viewed as prey by powerful men, the extraordinary painter Artemisia Gentileschi fends off constant sexual advances as she works to become one of the greatest painters of her generation. Frustrated by the hypocritical social mores of her day, Gentileschi releases her anguish through her paintings and, against all odds, becomes a groundbreaking artist. Meticulously rendered in ballpoint pen, this gripping graphic biography serves as an art history lesson and a coming-of-age story. Resonant in the #MeToo era, I Know What I Amhighlights a fierce artist who stood up to a shameful social status quo.
An important reassessment of the later career and life of a beloved baroque artist Hailed as one of the most influential and expressive painters of the seventeenth century, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–ca. 1656) has figured prominently in the art historical discourse of the past two decades. This attention to Artemisia, after many years of scholarly neglect, is partially due to interest in the dramatic details of her early life, including the widely publicized rape trial of her painting tutor, Agostino Tassi, and her admission to Florence’s esteemed Accademia del Disegno. While the artist’s early paintings have been extensively discussed, her later work has been largely dismissed. This beautifully illustrated and elegantly written book provides a revolutionary look at Artemisia’s later career, refuting longstanding assumptions about the artist. The fact that she was semi-illiterate has erroneously led scholars to assume a lack of literary and cultural education on her part. Stressing the importance of orality in Baroque culture and in Artemisia’s paintings, Locker argues for her important place in the cultural dialogue of the seventeenth century.
An accessible introduction to the life of the seventeenth-century's most celebrated women artists, now in paperback. Artemisia Gentileschi is by far the most famous woman artist of the premodern era. Her art addressed issues that resonate today, such as sexual violence and women’s problematic relationship to political power. Her powerful paintings with vigorous female protagonists chime with modern audiences, and she is celebrated by feminist critics and scholars. This book breaks new ground by placing Gentileschi in the context of women’s political history. Mary D. Garrard, noted Gentileschi scholar, shows that the artist most likely knew or knew about contemporary writers such as the Venetian feminists Lucrezia Marinella and Arcangela Tarabotti. She discusses recently discovered paintings, offers fresh perspectives on known works, and examines the artist anew in the context of feminist history. This beautifully illustrated book gives for the first time a full portrait of a strong woman artist who fought back through her art.
A compendium of writings, letters, and records illuminating the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, the most influential female painter of the Italian Baroque. Lives of Artemisia Gentileschi presents a fascinating look at the famous Baroque artist. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653) was an Italian painter known for the naturalism with which she depicted the female body and her use of rich colors and chiaroscuro. Born in Rome, she was trained by her father, the painter Orazio Gentileschi, and was working professionally by the time she was a teenager. In a period when women artists very rarely achieved success in their field, she was commissioned by royalty across Europe and was the first woman to become a member of Florence’s prestigious Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, later becoming an educator in the arts. Lending further insight into the extraordinary life of this trailblazing artist, this volume presents an absorbing collection of letters, biographies, and court testimonies supplemented with essays written by contemporaries, several of which are published here in English for the first time. The vivid illustrations include three works that have only recently been attributed to Gentileschi. An introduction by Sheila Barker, founding director of the Jane Fortune Research Program on Women Artists, contextualizes these texts and discusses Gentileschi’s legacy.
Judith W. Mann, Introduction; R. Ward Bissell, Re-thinking Early Artemisia; Patrizia Cavazzini, The Other Women in Agostino Tassi's Life; Judith W. Mann, The Myth of Artemisia as Chameleon: A new Look at the London Allegory of Painting; Riccardo Lattuada and Eduardo Nappi, New Documents and Some Remarks on Artemisia's Production in Naples and elsewhere; Mary D. Garrard, Artemisia's Hand; Elizabeth Cohen, 'What's in a Name'...'; Ann Sutherland Harris, Artemisia and Orazio: Drawing Conclusions; Richard Spear, Money Matters; Alexandra Lapierre, Artemisia: Art, Facts and Fictions. Judith W.Mann is curator of early European art, Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM), St. Louis, Missouri.
Raised to the status of an international luminary by her contemporaries and now revered as one of the defining talents of the seventeenth century, Artemisia Gentileschi poses urgent questions for today's scholars. The recent outpouring of new attributions and archival discoveries has profoundly enriched our knowledge of the artist, but it has also complicated, and sometimes contradicted, the former storyline. If she was illiterate and unschooled, how did she befriend Galileo and court playwright Jacopo Cicognini? If she could not pay her bills, why did she continue to spend lavishly? How can we define her authorship if we admit workshop productions to her oeuvre? In these essays, an international cast of scholars and experts grapples with these problems, opening new paths of inquiry and laying bare their methodologies in fields as diverse as laboratory analysis, archival research, cultural history, literary analysis, and feminist art history. Among these approaches, connoisseurship takes center stage. By reconstructing the chronology and rationale of Artemisia's artistic iter, connoisseurship reveals the richness of her visual dialogues, including those with prominent contemporaries such as Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, Vouet, Cristofano Allori, and Stanzione; with past artistic giants like Donatello and Michelangelo; and with the various hands who passed through her workshop as collaborators and assistants. These essays infuse our understanding of Artemisia with complexity and nuance, yet they also trace her characteristic mix of intelligence and verve in her art, her correspondence, and her deft social maneuvering, running like a thread through all stages of her life.
