Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting

by Jesse M. Locker, Artemisia Gentileschi

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.

Genres: Art, History, Historical, Renaissance, Art History

248 pages, Hardcover

First published February 24, 2015

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent resource for fans of Gentileschi, but not a book I would recommend for people who are new to her work.
This book also suffers from a kind of pretentious assumption that the reader can read Italian, and is also familiar with the world of the Italian artistic and literary scene for a very specific period of the 1600s.
This is fine, except I'm not familiar with it and don't speak Italian, so I sometimes wasn't getting the full picture of the text.

Overall, the main thrust of the book was the author's insistence on several points, like the fact that Artemisia could read and write (a fact that is disputed by some scholars based on a statement that she made during the rape trial), her popularity during her lifetime (specifically in Naples) and what her self portraits revealed about her. Points that, while perfectly saliant to a book about Artemisia, gave me the feeling that I was reading the 'further reading' of a book I hadn't read yet.

The author also reached some conclusions that I found to be particularly galling--not the least of which was that Artemisia needed to have been connected to other early feminists in order to credibly be considered a feminist herself.
We're talking about a woman who was raped by a friend of her father's and then dragged through an incredibly public trial about it. You don't think she might've reached the conclusion that men ain't shit all on her own?
While I do agree that it's certainly easier for a woman who comes into contact with feminist ideas to put her own notions about the subject into better order, it's highly offensive to suggest that a woman who is raised in a bubble away from other women (which Artemisia was not) would remain docile forever.
The author salvages this narrative somewhat by suggesting in the end that they were approaching their analysis based on the Italian approach of looking for sources and comparisons to other works that the artist might have come into contact with vs. the English approach of viewing the works as an expression of sentiment or vehicle for catharsis. But that note doesn't come until the postscript and by then I was already pretty done.

Still, there was some really interesting stuff in here and the printings of the paintings are absolutely beautiful. This refined my image of the artist, herself, and didn't harp too much on the big elephant in the room that we all already know about her.

[Elise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book didn’t get to 4 stars for me because it was a little too academic for my taste, and perhaps for a book of this nature unnecessarily so. I felt that it could be much more engaging and able to get its points across had it have been better edited.

There was also a surprising lack of an index of artworks cited. I got to the end planning to use it to so I could map out what I was going to make sure I see against the cities I’m going to be visiting soon, and it wasn’t there - only a page on illustration credits. Boo.

All that aside, it was fascinating to learn more about Artemisia and what was undoubtedly her very full life, despite the relative lack of detail we have about her. The author references Artemisia’s artwork, poetry written about her during her lifetime and afterward, and various biographical essays written about her to endeavour to create a bit more of a full picture, which I think he’s done quite well given the limitations of what’s available. It was particularly interesting reading about the ins and outs of her engagement with the Accademia de’ Desiosi and the Accademia degli Incogniti. The Incogniti seems to have had the bigger effect on her of the accademias she was involved with, and it was curious reading on its founder Gian Francesco Loredan, who (I understand) has a lot of landmarks that have taken his name in and around Padua.

I have vague recollections of seeing Artemisia’s Judith Beheading Holofernes at the Uffizi years ago, though I didn’t know her as an artist, and being horrified at the time, quickly moving past it. Now that I’ve seen it again in this book with a bit more study and context (and with the context of a lot more life seen than I had then!), I’m looking forward to going back and studying it more in person.

All in all, a good read on a fascinating artist.

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

"if everyone around her was discussing, penning, painting and staging powerful women, to what degree can her pictures be seen as a matter of personal expression?" (Locker: 69)

This book studies previously overlooked poems written by contemporaries of Artemisia and how they can be useful to better understand the meaning of her work and the paintings she made. The book also pretends to change the idea that Artemisia became unpopular after her death and that only came to prominence again with modern feminism.

The book is a celebration of Artemisia and her language, as it highlights many influences she and her work caused on painters, poets or even the opera. However, not all of her artistic life is being discussed here and the Venetian and Neapolitan periods are given preference.

It is also a book that moves away from the typical discussions about Artemisia that for so long have dominated the literature. In the past most scholars have focused on her rape, or on whether or not a particular painting was made by Artemisia, or on who commissioned a painting. Although these issues are discussed occasionally, the book is original and it pays a clear homage to Artemisia that any fan of hers should not miss.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic collection of art work by Artemisia Gentileschi, an amazing artist.

[Mills College Library]

759.5 G3384L 2015