The Seventeenth Century Painter who Keeps me Awake at Night

Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Artemesia Gentileschi

Those eyes – I’ve had the intensity of those brown eyes and the wisdom in that gaze ingrained in my mind since my first semester of undergrad. I don’t think the feelings they gave me that day during class will ever leave me. Before I knew the story of Artemesia Gentileschi, I knew there was a story to be told with the person who could create such a masterpiece.

I was so right.

Artemesia Gentileschi was born in Rome, Italy in 1593. The daughter of Orazio, an accomplished painter whose connections would help Artemesia on her journey as a painter.

Artemesia’s early life was filled with great tragedy between the death of her mother and the rape she experienced at the hands of a painter who worked with her father, Agostino Tassi. Gentileschi’s father did take legal action against Agostino Tassi and, in 1612, he was officially exiled from Rome although, unsurprisingly for the time, this wasn’t upheld. He suffered little compared to the enduring pain that Gentileschi would be forced to deal with for the rest of her life.

Gentileschi was the most successful of the female Baroque painters. In Florence, she was under the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici.

I do not think that the rape of Artemesia should define her but it does make one look at painting of hers like Lucretia differently.

Lucretia by Artemesia Gentileschi

Artemisia was understandably drawn to portraying female heroines – who she often illustrated with her own likeness.

Another one of her paintings I often think about and even have hanging on my wall is Judith Slaying Holofernes.

Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemesia Gentileschi

This is a reference to the biblical story where Judith, a young widow, managed to…