Married off by her father to an artist from Florence, Artemisia struggled to make a good married life in her new town. ‘Judith beheading Holofernes’ was completed in her late teens: Artemisia depicts herself as Judith and her rapist, the painter Agostino Tassi, as Holofernes. I felt alive again.”Īrtmisia’s magnificent rendition of the well-known medieval and Baroque subject gives you an idea of her emotion. Steeling myself against the pull of my skin when I held a brush, My heart quaked. I couldn’t keep my thumb in the hole of my palette The smears of colour made me breathe faster. I could hardly bend my fingers to grasp the egg-shaped muller to pulverise the pigments on my marble slab. She had suffered during this male oriented trial, tortured with the Sibille, a type of medieval thumbscrews and has her lack of virginity publicly examined by two midwives in front to the entire courtroom. Raped at seventeen, Artemisia was indignant when her father, Tuscan painter Orazio Gentilesch, was paid off by her rapist to drop the charges. Passionate about her art, she fought for acceptance in the artistic community and was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence. Susan Vreeland fairly faithfully follows and recounts the real events in the life of 17th century Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi Lomi.
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