Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi (born July 8, 1593, Rome, Papal States [Italy]—died 1654 or later, Naples, Kingdom of Naples) was an Italian painter, one of the first women who established herself as a successful artist in the West. She made a career of painting women heroes and imbued her scenes with tension and drama. Although Gentileschi was well known during her lifetime, working for a number of European rulers and running an extensive workshop, the artist was largely overlooked in art history texts after her death. Interest in her art grew rapidly during the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st, although her rape in 1611 often shaped interpretations of her biography and art. As more evidence has come to light about her life, scholars have been reassessing her legacy.

Early life and work

Artemisia Gentileschi was the eldest child and the only daughter of Prudentia Montone and the respected painter Orazio Gentileschi. Her mother died in 1605 when Artemisia Gentileschi was 12 years old. Gentileschi consequently looked after her three younger brothers while also studying painting under her father and his friend the landscape painter Agostino Tassi. At first Gentileschi painted in a style similar to her father’s somewhat lyrical interpretation of Caravaggio’s example, such that her earliest pieces were often mistaken for her father’s.

Gentileschi’s first known canvas, painted when she was 17, is Susanna and the Elders (1610), an accomplished piece long attributed to her father. In this work Gentileschi already recognized the unique perspective she had on popular themes in 16th- and 17th-century art as a woman. Other artists tended to portray the biblical story of two elder men attempting to rape the young Susanna, who had been bathing in her garden, with Susanna as a temptress or willing participant. Gentileschi, on the other hand, leaves the viewer with no doubt that it is the men who prey upon Susanna and that she rejects their advances. The men lean conspiratorially over a wall, one seemingly whispering their threat that if she resists, they’ll ruin her reputation by claiming they caught her with a lover. Susanna recoils, turning away her distraught face and nude body and throwing her arms up as if to shield herself.

Discover the fascinating events that shaped the world, straight from our editors.

SIGN UP

By clicking “Sign Up”, you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Britannica Quiz

Can You Match These Lesser-Known Paintings to Their Artists?

Rape, trial, and marriage

In 1611 Gentileschi was raped by Tassi, and, when he did not fulfill his promise to marry her, in 1612 Orazio Gentileschi brought him to trial. During that event Artemisia Gentileschi was forced, under torture, to give evidence of her rape. Tassi was found guilty and was exiled from Rome, but the sentence was never enforced. Shortly after the trial Gentileschi married Pierantonio di Vincenzo Stiattesi, a Florentine nobleman and artist, and settled in his hometown the following year. In Florence she was associated with the Medici court and painted an Allegory of Inclination (c. 1616) for the series of frescoes honoring the life of Michelangelo in the Casa Buonarotti. In 1616 Gentileschi joined Florence’s prestigious Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (Academy of the Arts of Drawing), the first woman to do so. Meanwhile, she gave birth to five children between 1613 and 1618, but only her daughter Prudentia (born in 1617 and named after Gentileschi’s mother) lived into adulthood.

Depictions of Judith

While in Florence Gentileschi began to develop her own distinct style. Whereas many other women artists of the 17th century were limited to still life and portraiture, Gentileschi specialized in history painting, then considered the most important type of art, which depicted scenes from the Bible, history, and mythology. A few of her most famous paintings depict the biblical story of Judith, a young Jewish widow who saves her besieged city of Bethulia from an Assyrian army by beheading its general, Holofernes. Gentileschi made at least five paintings of the story, three showing Judith and her maidservant, traditionally called Abra, with the decapitated head (1618–19, c. 1623–25, and 1639/40). These stagings, which her father had also done, in 1610–12, only suggest the violence the women have undertaken. Two other variations, Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1612–13) and Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1620), however, depict the actual decapitation, a scene Orazio Gentileschi never attempted. The two paintings are similar in composition and have often been compared to Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1599), in which Judith is cutting Holofernes’ head at arm’s length, with an expression of calm concentration, while Abra watches eagerly nearby. Gentileschi, on the other hand, portrayed the women in more-aggressive poses, with their sleeves rolled up for the terrible task. Abra is holding down the drunken Holofernes while Judith is gripping the hair on his head with her left hand and confidently cutting through his neck with his own sword. As in Caravaggio’s painting, blood surges from Holofernes’ laceration, but, unlike her predecessor, Gentileschi, in the later version of the scene, shows the blood splattering onto Judith’s fine dress and soaking the bedsheets. For centuries the work was thought crude, perhaps because of the perceived theatricality of the blood but more probably because of the decidedly unladylike, though realistic, depiction of two women committing murder.

Later life

In the late 1610s Artemisia Gentileschi also had an extramarital affair with Francesco Maria Maringhi, a Florentine nobleman. She returned to Rome in the early 1620s, and by mid-decade she and her husband had separated. Gentileschi briefly lived in Venice, and about 1630 she moved to Naples. In 1638 she arrived in London, where she visited her father, who had become a court painter for King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. The two artists may have collaborated on the ceiling paintings of the Great Hall in the Queen’s House in Greenwich. After Orazio Gentileschi’s death in 1639 Artemisia Gentileschi stayed on in London for several more years. According to the 17th-century art historian and biographer Filippo Baldinucci (who appended her life to that of her father), she painted many portraits and quickly surpassed her father’s fame. Later, probably in 1640 or 1641, she moved back to Naples, where she painted several versions of the Old Testament story of David and Bathsheba. Although little is known of the final years of Gentileschi’s life, thanks to a document discovered in the 21st century and dated to 1654, scholars now believe that she died several years later than had been recorded. Some speculate that she may have died in 1656, when the plague decimated half the population of Naples.