¶ … Violence, Violent Artistry
In 1944, with the terrible storm clouds of World War II scorching the earth, scholar Anna Banti turned her mind to a very different subject, reaching back over the centuries to pen a biography of the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Banti lost that manuscript during the chaos of the war, but in 1947 she began another book on the same subject. This second book, titled simply Artemisia, was written not as a standard biography or even novel but rather as a dialogue between herself and the artist. Banti's book -- one of many on the artist -- was an attempt to understand for herself why she was so fascinated by the artist.[footnoteRef:1] It's a question that has remained current for many students over the intervening decades, for the artist does fascinate on a number of levels. Her life story is extraordinary, and is made doubly so in the context of her historical era. But while her biography might well have drawn some admirers to learn more about her, she would not have acquired the following that she if she had not produced a number of wondrous paintings. This paper examines the life and work of this extraordinary artist. [1: Anna Banti, Artemisia, trans. Shirley D'Ardia Caracciolo (New York: Bison, 2003).]
Artemisia is one of those people who (at least in certain circles) can be referred to by only her first name. This degree of fame (not at the level of Madonna, of course, but certainly not insignificant for many artists, students, and feminists) was established in the late 1970s and 1980s as feminist students and scholars began an attempt to rescue female artists from the obscurity to which they had been assigned by the patriarchal forces of artworlds over centuries and in different places.[footnoteRef:2] While it was true that most artists at least within the major European traditions were men, scholars acknowledged, surely there must have been some women who succeeded against the almost unimaginable odds that they faced. The job that these feminist scholars set themselves was to recover these artists and grant to them in death the recognition that they had been denied in life. [2: Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, The Power of Feminist Art (New York: Harry Abrams, 1996), 130-31.]
Artemisia was one of the great successes of this generation of feminist scholarly reclamation. For her life exemplified in nearly every detail the challenges faced by women who wished to succeed in an artistic sphere dominated by men who were often actively hostile to a woman's entering their realm, a point that Garrard notes was not sufficiently rigorously examined in the first works on the painter.[footnoteRef:3] Artemisia might not have been able to overcome these challenges -- despite her considerable talent -- had she not had one important advantage over many other young women: She came from a family of artists and her father was willing to teach her the basic skills of their shared profession. The first known work of the artist, when she was only 17, was a depiction of Susanna and the Elders (1610, titled Susanna e I Vecchioni in Italian). The work is important for several different reasons. First, it showed the important and enduring influence of the great painter Caravaggio on Artemisia. That she should be so influenced by him is hardly surprising: Her father, Orazio, ran his painting studio (in which Artemisia's brothers also trained; they were never as talented as she was) according to the lines set down by Caravaggio, who was arguably the most influential Italian painter at the time. Even if her father had not been so deeply influenced by Caravaggio, it is entirely possible that Artemisia herself would have been.[footnoteRef:4] [3: Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, (Princeton: Princeton University: 1991), 4-5 and passant.] [4: Ibid., p. 3.]
Artemisia was also influenced by the Bologna School of painting (which was somewhat softer and more lyrical than that of Caravaggio, which was more realistic. Artemisia's painting of Susanna reflected a common theme of paintings during the Renaissance and Baroque periods but took an uncommon view of it.[footnoteRef:5] In her painting, Susanna (covered only in a scrap of cloth between her legs) twists away from the Elders, who hover over her with all the concern of birds of prey circling in on their victim. While the Elders are at the top of the painting, the perspective of the scene is clearly that of Susanna, who pulls away from the men, trying to hide against a wall that proves to be a trap rather than...
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" In other words, that art springs from within, rather than must be supported from without. The author places the blame for female artists to be culturally central squarely upon culture itself, specifically Western culture's failure to create systems of educational nurturing for females. "The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education -- education understood
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