May 6, 2023 • 25 mins
This 2015 episode covers Artemisia Gentileschi, often called the greatest female painter of the Baroque period. Her work is extraordinary, and reflects the influences of her father Orazio Gentileschi and Caravaggio.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileski is going to come
up in one of our upcoming episodes, so we are
bringing out our episode on her as Today's Saturday Classic.
This episode originally came out on March fourth, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
In this episode, we mentioned that we are going to
put the paintings we are talking about on our pinterests
so people can see them, and we did do that,
but unfortunately a while back, we had to archive several
of our pinterest boards because our website moved to a
new platform and eventually all of those old links no
longer worked, which meant all the pins were broken. That
(00:39):
included the bord where we had pinned all of this artwork.
But fortunately, her artwork is all over the web, and
a search for something like Artemisia Gentileski art should bring
it right up, even if you muddle up the spelling
of her name. I checked, yes, so enjoy.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Wilson. Today's topic is often called the greatest female painter
of the Baroque period. But that's kind of one of
those things that makes me chuckle because there weren't very
many women painters to speak of during that time, though
there were a couple of others in addition to today's topic,
but today's subject was quite extraordinary. We've had a couple
(01:32):
of requests for this one, but the most recent one
came from mother and daughter Shelley and Annie, and also,
interestingly enough, right before we came into the studio today,
I got another one from another listener named Sophie. I
believe I'm going from memory, so apologies if that is wrong.
So we are talking about artmedia. Gentileski and I have
(01:52):
to issue a trigger warning because this episode does talk
about sexual assault and it's not something we can kind
of skip through really quickly because it's part of an
event in the artist's life that was quite significant. So
if that is a topic that you would rather not
hear or share with younger listeners, be advised this may
not be the episode for you. We're also going to
(02:12):
do something a little bit different here, and before we
actually get into Artemisia's story, we're going to talk about
her father, Orazzio Gentileski, because he was a vital part
of his daughter becoming a painter. He is an important
figure in art history and his own right, and because
the pair did collaborate, we just wanted to give you
a little bit of context on him, because he is
(02:33):
referenced a good bit and he's, as we said, pretty important.
So we're going to start with Orazzio's story. Arazzio was
born Orazzio Lomi in fifteen sixty two in Pisa, Italy,
and when he was still a young man, so not
a child anymore, Lomi moved to Rome, and the timing
(02:54):
of this move is uncertain, but most historians will date
it somewhere around the late fifteen seventies or early fifteen eighties.
He would have been roughly twenty at this time. As
a caveat sort of going forward with this episode, almost
any date that we mentioned, without with a few exceptions,
are going to be approximated, and we'll talk about that
(03:15):
some a little bit later. But anytime you look up
the work of Arazzio or Artemisia, when you see their
works painted, they're always circa these years or these years,
So just know we'll use some specific years, but it's
really kind of a it was around this time, so Arazzio,
like we said, would have been about twenty when he
moved to Rome in the fifteen seventies or early fifteen eighties,
(03:38):
and this is also roughly the time when he started painting.
Early on in his time in Rome, Arazzio worked on
church frescoes in collaboration with Agostino Tassi. Tassi was a
really well known landscape painter, and together the pair decorated
the walls of the Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni La Terrano,
and Santa Nicola. I'm not quite sure exactly when Orazzi
(04:01):
Lomi changed his name to Gentilesci, but he did and
in the early seventeenth century he became heavily influenced by Caravaggio.
And of course Caravaggio is known for his use of contrast.
He offset light areas by deepening the shadows around them,
and this is known as tenebrism, and this created incredibly
dramatic paintings. Yeah, there are many other things that Caravaggio
(04:25):
is known for, but that's kind of one of the
things that when you're doing a quick art history course,
they'll mention his use of light and dark in contrast
to create great drama, and right around sixteen hundred, when
Arazzio was thirty seven and his daughter at this time
would have been about seven, Caravaggio completed two paintings that
would create this significant shift in the art world and
(04:45):
give rise eventually to what was called the Baroque style.
The Calling of Saint Matthew and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew,
which are two paintings that he did roughly at the
same time, introduced this signature signature style of light and
show shadow that were juxtaposed for both dynamic tension and
also a high level of realism.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Arazzio Gentileski was mesmerized by Caravaggio, and the two of
them became friends and drinking buddies for a while. Their
camaraderie didn't really last, though both of the men had
reputations for being really hot headed, but Arozzio's work from
this period shows a Caravaggio's sway in his style. Erazzio's
(05:27):
paintings David and Goliath, Saint Cecilia and an Angel, and
his sixteen oh nine piece Madonna and Child really bear
a clear mark of his admiration for Caravaggio.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And of course Arozzio's style did continue to evolve, and
while that Caravaggio influence remained in his work, the paintings
that Gentileski produced going forward started to favor this sort
of lighter color palette, and it also reintegrated the mannerist
style that he had studied when he was younger.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
In sixteen twenty three, he paidinted what's considered to be
his masterpiece. It was called The Annunciation. This painting features
the Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel, and there's still
a level of drama and immediacy about the composition, but
it's less visually heavy than the two that we mentioned
a moment ago.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
And just a few years after he painted The Annunciation,
Arazzio was invited to England by King Charles, the first
to become court painter.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
To finish out his artistic career, Arazzio worked alongside his
daughter Artemisia on a huge project in the Queen's House
in Greenwich. Throughout sixteen thirty eight. The father daughter team
painted the ceiling panels there. Yeah, we'll talk about those
a little bit more later. And that's just like I said.
A quick mini biography of Arazzio, And before we get
(06:49):
into Ardemisia's specific story, do you want to have a
word from a sponsor, Yes, I do so.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Arazzio's daughter, Artemisia Gentileski, was born in Rome, Italy, on
July eighth of fifteen ninety three, to of course, her
father Orozzio and her mother, Prudencia Montoni. When Artemisia was twelve,
which was in sixteen oh five, her mother died in childbirth,
and at that point it seemed likely that she was
probably going to be sent to a convent to become
(07:25):
a nun. But over the.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Next several years, Arazzio became aware that his daughter had
artistic leanings and he started to teach her how to paint.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, he also had sons, and he was kind of
teaching all of his children, but Artemisia was really the
one that stood out as having a real talent for this,
and she produced her earliest signed work in sixteen ten,
at the age of seventeen, and that's called Susanna and
the Elders, And this painting depicts the biblical story of
(07:53):
Susanna who rejected two men and is then accused by
them of adultery in retribution for her unwillingness to be
with them, and in Gentileski's version, the two men are
very conspiratorial. One is whispering in the ear of the other,
and while Susannah, who is unclothed, holds up her hands
as if to shield herself from their words. The next year,
(08:16):
and back to the warning that we had at the
top of the podcast, would turn into a really harrowing one.
On May sixth of sixteen eleven, Artemisio was raped by
her father's colleague, Augustino Tassi. This is the same landscape
painter that her father worked on church frescoes with. For
(08:37):
historical context, at the time, rape was not really viewed
quite the same way we do today. It was not
so much considered an affront to the female victim or
a brutalization of her. It was looked at a little
bit more as an insult to her family. So the
retribution that Arazzio demanded was that Tassi must marry his daughter.
(09:01):
This is actually not uncommon in sort of the kind
of sexual interactions of the day, that a man would
take a woman by force and eventually end up married
to her as part of an agreement with the family
and Initially, Agustino Tassi agreed to this. He was actually
already already married. There's some question marks around that, and
(09:22):
he apparently used this promise that he was going to
marry Artemisia as leverage to continue his sexual relationship with her.
But eventually he backed out of the deal and said
he was not going to marry her after all.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Tassi's reversal on the matter sent Aratzo into a fury.
He sought legal action against his associate, and this resulted
in the episode of Artemisia's life that often eclipsed her work.
It was a trial that dragged on for nearly eight months,
and the transcript of this trial still exists, and it's
more than three hundred pages long.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And I will confess I did not read it because
it is an Italian but I read various excerpts in translation.
Just fyi. And even though we mentioned it at the
top of the episode, and Tracy mentioned it again just
a moment ago, I really feel like I should issue
a quick warning before we get into sort of talking
about the testimony, because it's very upsetting, not just for
(10:16):
the actual event that happened, but how the victim was
treated in the process.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Of all of this, so Artemisia had to testify repeatedly
during these proceedings, and in her account, she said that
Tossi stormed into her father's studio while she was painting.
And because her father was a working painter with a
studio at his home, people did come and go all.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
The time, and according to her testimony, she said that
Tossi came in yelling not so much painting repeatedly, and
then he took her tools from her and threw them
on the floor and then proceeded to attack her. She
fought back, but she was overpowered. She actually turned a
knife on him. After it was over.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
It wasn't enough that she gave this testimony. The veracity
of her statement had to be tested. It was tested
by torture, using thumb screws to see if she would
change her story under duress, but she remained steadfast in
her account and eventually referred to the torture device when
yelling at her attacker, this is the ring you gave me,
and these are your promises. It's very hard for me
(11:17):
to think about that, especially because Agostino Tassi faced no
such torture when it came to his testimony. Even though
he had at best a checkered history, and he gave
obviously contradictory testimony. Records indicate that the judge would even
stop him periodically and go, wait, that's completely different than
what you said before. He had been imprisoned prior to
(11:39):
this for incest, and he had told multiple witnesses that
he had been sleeping with Artemisia, But then during the trial,
even though those witnesses had testified to those conversations, he
said that he had never had a sexual relationship with
her and that he would only visit the house to
protect her virginity from other would be rapists. So his
story kept changing, and he also claimed that she had
(12:00):
slept with her father, and that her mother and her aunt,
who were women that he did not know, were in
fact whoors, and he insinuated that prostitution was something of
a family tradition, and even at one point suggested that
her father had sold her to other men. In short,
he was utterly vile and just said horrible things, and
he did not have to face this horrible torture that
(12:22):
she did. He didn't even have to really face his sentence.
He was found guilty and exiled from Rome for five years,
but it appears that his exile was not enforced. And
a note on the timeline, We're going to jump back
a little bit and talk about that painting that we
mentioned earlier. So, because the dates of Artemisia's paintings are
generally all approximated, some people place her painting of Susannah
(12:46):
and the Elders in different positions, suggesting slightly different interpretations
of the work. So scholars that place it as being
painted just prior to the rape suggest that she may
have been expressing a scenario in which she had been
fending off the advances of her father's friends for a
while already, and we do know some of that was
(13:06):
going on. There was another man in addition to Augustino Tassi,
named Cosimo Corli, who had been pretty sexually aggressive with
her and had perhaps even attempted to rape her as well.
So the idea of.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
The two men in the painting being Corley and Tassi
is certainly one possibility and is a popular interpretation. Alternately,
when scholars placed the painting of Susannah concurrently on the
timeline with the trial, or just prior but after the rape,
it's perceived more as a statement about her defense of
her virtue having been taken from her and her being
(13:40):
innocent in all of it.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
After the Tassi ornell Artemisia did marry and she married
another painter, and this is a match that was arranged
by her father. Her husband, Pierantonio de Vicenzo Stia Tesi,
was also a painter, and the couple left Rome and
headed to Florence. Arazzio had already written to the Grand
Duchess of Tuscany on his daughter's behalf, asking for a patronage.
(14:06):
The patronage was granted and Artemisia and her husband stayed
in Florence for almost a decade. While she was there,
she was producing works for the Grand Duke of Tuscany,
Kuosimud di Medici, and she became really ingrained in the
art world there and she made a lot of friends.
She even became friends with famed astronomer Galileo. One of
the paintings that Artemisia worked on during her time in
(14:27):
Florence was Judith's Slaying Holofernes, And as with Susannah and
the Elders, it focuses on a female character, and in
this case that's Judith and she's killing the Assyrian military
leader holophernes to save the Jewish people of Bethulia, and
this painting is quite graphic. Her painting shows Judith cutting
(14:48):
the general's throat with the assistance of a handmaiden, and
in a follow up painting entitled Judith and her maid Servant,
the two women are depicted after the general's defeat, carrying
the head of Holophernies in a basket. A popular theory
about these paintings, particularly the first, is that this was
part of how Gentileski was working through her experience of
(15:09):
having been sexually assaulted and then having to go through
the horror of that long trial, and that depicting a
woman enacting such brutal violence on a male figure was
something of a revenge statement when the painting was unveiled. This,
of course, is all speculative, though it's all art interpretation,
and also as a counterpoint, there are scholars who are
(15:29):
quick to point out that there was definitely a taste
for violence and gore amongst art patrons at the time,
so she may well have just been making lucrative decisions
about her work subjects. There's a two thousand and two
interview with Smithsonian in which Judith Man, who's a curator
of early European art at the Saint Louis Art Museum
at the time, and she mentioned that while a lot
(15:52):
is made of Artemisia's work being vengeful in nature, fewer
than a quarter of the painter's works feature women in
that vein. And before we get to what happens to
Artemisia after she leaves Florence, do you want to have
another quick word from a sponsor, let's do so.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Back to Artemisia around sixteen twenty, she was ready to
leave Florence. She and her husband had had four children together,
but three of them did not make it past childhood.
They died, and moreover, her marriage was not a particularly
happy one. Pierre Antonio had a problem with spending money
more quickly than they were taking it in, and he's
(16:41):
alleged to have cheated on her repeatedly, and just sort
of that. They had a contentious and unhappy union.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
So, perhaps hoping for a fresh start, Artemisia, Parantonio and
their surviving child, who was named Prudentia, moved to Rome, and,
as had been the case in Florence, the painter made
friends within the art community, and this put a strain
on her already crumbling marriage. Pier Antonio actually slashed the
face of one of Artemisia's male acquaintances, and not long
(17:10):
after that he left the marriage for good, leaving behind
his daughter as well. So roughly ten to twelve years
after she had painted the image of Judith and her
maid servant carrying the severed head of Holophernes, Artemisia revisited
that same subject of Judith again in her work, and
this was somewhere around sixteen twenty three or sixteen twenty five,
(17:33):
so it was during her time in Rome, and the
painting that she created at this point was Judith and
her maid servant with the head of Holofernes. This time
it's still a depiction of two women and again after
the beheading, and it's in a way that creates tension
and urgency. The scene is lit by candle light, and
that candle light itself is part of the composition. The
(17:54):
light and shadows she creates around that light source are
just incredible. Even the gossip fabric that's draped over one
of Judith's shoulders is affected by the light of the
flame in a way that makes the candle almost seem
like it must be flickering. There's also a less This
is also a less brutal representation of the story than
(18:14):
the earlier works. There's a lot less gore. Yet it
feels a little bit more like it is less about
the murder and more about the two women, if that
makes sense. I will be pinning all of these on Pinterest,
and then our listeners can go and kind of get
a sense of what we're talking about and decide for
themselves how they feel.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Like it looks. And while she was not the toast
of Rome the way that she had been in Florence,
and this was largely due to shifting tastes among art patrons,
Gentileski did receive a commission from King Philip the fourth
of Spain in sixteen twenty seven, and this particular project
provided her enough money that she could stay afloat and
(18:54):
also support her daughter.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
In sixteen thirty, the Bubonic plague took a huge t
on Venice that killed a third of the people there,
and to escape the sickness, Gentileski moved to Naples.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, this, other than a brief fora elsewhere which we're
about to talk about, Naples really became her home for
the rest of her life. Around sixteen thirty eight or
sixteen thirty nine, depending on when you look, but most
favor sixteen thirty eight, she went to London to work
with her father on the Queen's House for Queen Henrietta Maria,
(19:30):
and she had resisted several requests to go to London
prior to this, in part because she did not want
to work for the Anglican king, although Queen Henrietta Maria
was Roman Catholic. But frankly, her work had really dried
up in Italy. She was having trouble making ends meet,
so she finally acquiesced on this trip to London. During
the work on a house at Greenwich, Arazzio died, and
(19:52):
that was in February of sixteen thirty nine. Artemisia stayed
in London for a couple of more years, but as
soon as she had work back in Italy, she went
back to Naples. Yeah, and she continued to work for
the rest of her life. But she died in Naples
around sixteen fifty two. She would have been approximately fifty
nine at that time, and while she had been painting,
(20:14):
really most art scholars kind of regard her earlier works
as her best work. So for a long time, Artemisia's
works were actually attributed to other artists, and this was
in part due to the fact that her father had
been her primary teacher, as well as the fact that
she was a woman, and there are even sort of
(20:35):
ongoing debates about this. We mentioned earlier that Susannah and
the Elders was her first sign painting, and that was
in about sixteen ten, But there is another piece called
Madonna and Child from sixteen oh nine that is sometimes
credited to Artemisia and sometimes to her father. We mentioned
it earlier as one of her father's pieces, but that
continues to be some debate about it. Even though Susannah
(20:57):
and the Elders has her signature, it was long believed
to be her father's work because a lot of people
found it really difficult to believe that a young woman
of seventeen could paint with that much maturity, and also
because she was a woman, that rape that had so
affected her life we mentioned earlier sometimes really overshadowed her
(21:18):
abilities in her work, and having been part of a
rape trial basically cast doubt on her sexuality and her
honor for her entire life, even though the aggressor had
been found guilty, it still just kind of put a
stain on her reputation. And even prior to that assault,
her reputation was constantly questioned because of the open nature
(21:39):
of her father's studio and the men and women who
often visited as both colleagues and models. Just the idea
that she was exposed to so many people coming and
going led to some rumors about her. So while her
talent was really obvious, people really wanted to talk about
the possible scandals attached to her. Her amazing skill in
the amazing work she is doing. For her own part,
(22:02):
she readily recognized and openly discussed her struggles working in
a field that was dominated by men. In a letter
to a patron later in her life, she described the
tiresome nature of trying to defend her work as her
own and the fight to get a fair price for it.
She wrote, you feel sorry for me because a woman's
name raises doubts until her work is seen. If I
(22:23):
were a man, I can't imagine it would have turned
out this way. But it's also important to note that
there was also a lot of a claim for her
in her lifetime, and in fact, some scholars have suggested
that because of the huge scandal when she was seventeen,
it actually kind of opened the door for her to
be able to paint some of her more gory and
(22:47):
graphic pieces. That it was more accepted for her at
that point to be able to do those things, but
still again an issue of debate. In sixteen thirty five, though,
she wrote this note to her friend Galilee quote, I
have seen myself honored by all the kings and rulers
of Europe, to whom I have sent my works, not
only with great gifts, but also with most favored letters,
(23:09):
which I keep with me.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Those ceiling panels that she and her father worked on
together in London were removed from the Queen's House and
now they're in Marlborough House in London. And in two
thousand and two, so it's more than a decade ago,
but quite neat the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art
hosted an exhibit entitled Arazzio and Artemisio Gentileski, father and
(23:33):
daughter painters in Baroque Italy, and the works of both
of the artists were featured together, which is kind of
a lovely wait to sum up their lives and how
they affected one another, and we'll link to We have
one of the catalogs from that exhibition was one of
my sources, so we'll have a link to that in
(23:54):
the show notes. And it's worth a look because it's
very interesting to see sort of the lineage and development
of style. You can see like the Caravaggio style and
a lot in her father's work, and then it evolves
in his work, and then her work kind of evolves
it some more. It's it's pretty interesting to look at
if you're into art history. Thanks so much for joining
(24:17):
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
the archive, if you heard an email address or a
Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show,
that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is
History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Our old house Stuffworks
email address no longer works. You can find us all
(24:37):
over social media at Missed in History, and you can
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you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(24:59):
or where whoever you listen to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday. Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileski is going to come
up in one of our upcoming episodes, so we are
bringing out our episode on her as Today's Saturday Classic.
This episode originally came out on March fourth, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
In this episode, we mentioned that we are going to
put the paintings we are talking about on our pinterests
so people can see them, and we did do that,
but unfortunately a while back, we had to archive several
of our pinterest boards because our website moved to a
new platform and eventually all of those old links no
longer worked, which meant all the pins were broken. That
(00:39):
included the bord where we had pinned all of this artwork.
But fortunately, her artwork is all over the web, and
a search for something like Artemisia Gentileski art should bring
it right up, even if you muddle up the spelling
of her name. I checked, yes, so enjoy.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Wilson. Today's topic is often called the greatest female painter
of the Baroque period. But that's kind of one of
those things that makes me chuckle because there weren't very
many women painters to speak of during that time, though
there were a couple of others in addition to today's topic,
but today's subject was quite extraordinary. We've had a couple
(01:32):
of requests for this one, but the most recent one
came from mother and daughter Shelley and Annie, and also,
interestingly enough, right before we came into the studio today,
I got another one from another listener named Sophie. I
believe I'm going from memory, so apologies if that is wrong.
So we are talking about artmedia. Gentileski and I have
(01:52):
to issue a trigger warning because this episode does talk
about sexual assault and it's not something we can kind
of skip through really quickly because it's part of an
event in the artist's life that was quite significant. So
if that is a topic that you would rather not
hear or share with younger listeners, be advised this may
not be the episode for you. We're also going to
(02:12):
do something a little bit different here, and before we
actually get into Artemisia's story, we're going to talk about
her father, Orazzio Gentileski, because he was a vital part
of his daughter becoming a painter. He is an important
figure in art history and his own right, and because
the pair did collaborate, we just wanted to give you
a little bit of context on him, because he is
(02:33):
referenced a good bit and he's, as we said, pretty important.
So we're going to start with Orazzio's story. Arazzio was
born Orazzio Lomi in fifteen sixty two in Pisa, Italy,
and when he was still a young man, so not
a child anymore, Lomi moved to Rome, and the timing
(02:54):
of this move is uncertain, but most historians will date
it somewhere around the late fifteen seventies or early fifteen eighties.
He would have been roughly twenty at this time. As
a caveat sort of going forward with this episode, almost
any date that we mentioned, without with a few exceptions,
are going to be approximated, and we'll talk about that
(03:15):
some a little bit later. But anytime you look up
the work of Arazzio or Artemisia, when you see their
works painted, they're always circa these years or these years,
So just know we'll use some specific years, but it's
really kind of a it was around this time, so Arazzio,
like we said, would have been about twenty when he
moved to Rome in the fifteen seventies or early fifteen eighties,
(03:38):
and this is also roughly the time when he started painting.
Early on in his time in Rome, Arazzio worked on
church frescoes in collaboration with Agostino Tassi. Tassi was a
really well known landscape painter, and together the pair decorated
the walls of the Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni La Terrano,
and Santa Nicola. I'm not quite sure exactly when Orazzi
(04:01):
Lomi changed his name to Gentilesci, but he did and
in the early seventeenth century he became heavily influenced by Caravaggio.
And of course Caravaggio is known for his use of contrast.
He offset light areas by deepening the shadows around them,
and this is known as tenebrism, and this created incredibly
dramatic paintings. Yeah, there are many other things that Caravaggio
(04:25):
is known for, but that's kind of one of the
things that when you're doing a quick art history course,
they'll mention his use of light and dark in contrast
to create great drama, and right around sixteen hundred, when
Arazzio was thirty seven and his daughter at this time
would have been about seven, Caravaggio completed two paintings that
would create this significant shift in the art world and
(04:45):
give rise eventually to what was called the Baroque style.
The Calling of Saint Matthew and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew,
which are two paintings that he did roughly at the
same time, introduced this signature signature style of light and
show shadow that were juxtaposed for both dynamic tension and
also a high level of realism.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Arazzio Gentileski was mesmerized by Caravaggio, and the two of
them became friends and drinking buddies for a while. Their
camaraderie didn't really last, though both of the men had
reputations for being really hot headed, but Arozzio's work from
this period shows a Caravaggio's sway in his style. Erazzio's
(05:27):
paintings David and Goliath, Saint Cecilia and an Angel, and
his sixteen oh nine piece Madonna and Child really bear
a clear mark of his admiration for Caravaggio.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And of course Arozzio's style did continue to evolve, and
while that Caravaggio influence remained in his work, the paintings
that Gentileski produced going forward started to favor this sort
of lighter color palette, and it also reintegrated the mannerist
style that he had studied when he was younger.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
In sixteen twenty three, he paidinted what's considered to be
his masterpiece. It was called The Annunciation. This painting features
the Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel, and there's still
a level of drama and immediacy about the composition, but
it's less visually heavy than the two that we mentioned
a moment ago.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
And just a few years after he painted The Annunciation,
Arazzio was invited to England by King Charles, the first
to become court painter.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
To finish out his artistic career, Arazzio worked alongside his
daughter Artemisia on a huge project in the Queen's House
in Greenwich. Throughout sixteen thirty eight. The father daughter team
painted the ceiling panels there. Yeah, we'll talk about those
a little bit more later. And that's just like I said.
A quick mini biography of Arazzio, And before we get
(06:49):
into Ardemisia's specific story, do you want to have a
word from a sponsor, Yes, I do so.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Arazzio's daughter, Artemisia Gentileski, was born in Rome, Italy, on
July eighth of fifteen ninety three, to of course, her
father Orozzio and her mother, Prudencia Montoni. When Artemisia was twelve,
which was in sixteen oh five, her mother died in childbirth,
and at that point it seemed likely that she was
probably going to be sent to a convent to become
(07:25):
a nun. But over the.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Next several years, Arazzio became aware that his daughter had
artistic leanings and he started to teach her how to paint.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, he also had sons, and he was kind of
teaching all of his children, but Artemisia was really the
one that stood out as having a real talent for this,
and she produced her earliest signed work in sixteen ten,
at the age of seventeen, and that's called Susanna and
the Elders, And this painting depicts the biblical story of
(07:53):
Susanna who rejected two men and is then accused by
them of adultery in retribution for her unwillingness to be
with them, and in Gentileski's version, the two men are
very conspiratorial. One is whispering in the ear of the other,
and while Susannah, who is unclothed, holds up her hands
as if to shield herself from their words. The next year,
(08:16):
and back to the warning that we had at the
top of the podcast, would turn into a really harrowing one.
On May sixth of sixteen eleven, Artemisio was raped by
her father's colleague, Augustino Tassi. This is the same landscape
painter that her father worked on church frescoes with. For
(08:37):
historical context, at the time, rape was not really viewed
quite the same way we do today. It was not
so much considered an affront to the female victim or
a brutalization of her. It was looked at a little
bit more as an insult to her family. So the
retribution that Arazzio demanded was that Tassi must marry his daughter.
(09:01):
This is actually not uncommon in sort of the kind
of sexual interactions of the day, that a man would
take a woman by force and eventually end up married
to her as part of an agreement with the family
and Initially, Agustino Tassi agreed to this. He was actually
already already married. There's some question marks around that, and
(09:22):
he apparently used this promise that he was going to
marry Artemisia as leverage to continue his sexual relationship with her.
But eventually he backed out of the deal and said
he was not going to marry her after all.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Tassi's reversal on the matter sent Aratzo into a fury.
He sought legal action against his associate, and this resulted
in the episode of Artemisia's life that often eclipsed her work.
It was a trial that dragged on for nearly eight months,
and the transcript of this trial still exists, and it's
more than three hundred pages long.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And I will confess I did not read it because
it is an Italian but I read various excerpts in translation.
Just fyi. And even though we mentioned it at the
top of the episode, and Tracy mentioned it again just
a moment ago, I really feel like I should issue
a quick warning before we get into sort of talking
about the testimony, because it's very upsetting, not just for
(10:16):
the actual event that happened, but how the victim was
treated in the process.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Of all of this, so Artemisia had to testify repeatedly
during these proceedings, and in her account, she said that
Tossi stormed into her father's studio while she was painting.
And because her father was a working painter with a
studio at his home, people did come and go all.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
The time, and according to her testimony, she said that
Tossi came in yelling not so much painting repeatedly, and
then he took her tools from her and threw them
on the floor and then proceeded to attack her. She
fought back, but she was overpowered. She actually turned a
knife on him. After it was over.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
It wasn't enough that she gave this testimony. The veracity
of her statement had to be tested. It was tested
by torture, using thumb screws to see if she would
change her story under duress, but she remained steadfast in
her account and eventually referred to the torture device when
yelling at her attacker, this is the ring you gave me,
and these are your promises. It's very hard for me
(11:17):
to think about that, especially because Agostino Tassi faced no
such torture when it came to his testimony. Even though
he had at best a checkered history, and he gave
obviously contradictory testimony. Records indicate that the judge would even
stop him periodically and go, wait, that's completely different than
what you said before. He had been imprisoned prior to
(11:39):
this for incest, and he had told multiple witnesses that
he had been sleeping with Artemisia, But then during the trial,
even though those witnesses had testified to those conversations, he
said that he had never had a sexual relationship with
her and that he would only visit the house to
protect her virginity from other would be rapists. So his
story kept changing, and he also claimed that she had
(12:00):
slept with her father, and that her mother and her aunt,
who were women that he did not know, were in
fact whoors, and he insinuated that prostitution was something of
a family tradition, and even at one point suggested that
her father had sold her to other men. In short,
he was utterly vile and just said horrible things, and
he did not have to face this horrible torture that
(12:22):
she did. He didn't even have to really face his sentence.
He was found guilty and exiled from Rome for five years,
but it appears that his exile was not enforced. And
a note on the timeline, We're going to jump back
a little bit and talk about that painting that we
mentioned earlier. So, because the dates of Artemisia's paintings are
generally all approximated, some people place her painting of Susannah
(12:46):
and the Elders in different positions, suggesting slightly different interpretations
of the work. So scholars that place it as being
painted just prior to the rape suggest that she may
have been expressing a scenario in which she had been
fending off the advances of her father's friends for a
while already, and we do know some of that was
(13:06):
going on. There was another man in addition to Augustino Tassi,
named Cosimo Corli, who had been pretty sexually aggressive with
her and had perhaps even attempted to rape her as well.
So the idea of.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
The two men in the painting being Corley and Tassi
is certainly one possibility and is a popular interpretation. Alternately,
when scholars placed the painting of Susannah concurrently on the
timeline with the trial, or just prior but after the rape,
it's perceived more as a statement about her defense of
her virtue having been taken from her and her being
(13:40):
innocent in all of it.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
After the Tassi ornell Artemisia did marry and she married
another painter, and this is a match that was arranged
by her father. Her husband, Pierantonio de Vicenzo Stia Tesi,
was also a painter, and the couple left Rome and
headed to Florence. Arazzio had already written to the Grand
Duchess of Tuscany on his daughter's behalf, asking for a patronage.
(14:06):
The patronage was granted and Artemisia and her husband stayed
in Florence for almost a decade. While she was there,
she was producing works for the Grand Duke of Tuscany,
Kuosimud di Medici, and she became really ingrained in the
art world there and she made a lot of friends.
She even became friends with famed astronomer Galileo. One of
the paintings that Artemisia worked on during her time in
(14:27):
Florence was Judith's Slaying Holofernes, And as with Susannah and
the Elders, it focuses on a female character, and in
this case that's Judith and she's killing the Assyrian military
leader holophernes to save the Jewish people of Bethulia, and
this painting is quite graphic. Her painting shows Judith cutting
(14:48):
the general's throat with the assistance of a handmaiden, and
in a follow up painting entitled Judith and her maid Servant,
the two women are depicted after the general's defeat, carrying
the head of Holophernies in a basket. A popular theory
about these paintings, particularly the first, is that this was
part of how Gentileski was working through her experience of
(15:09):
having been sexually assaulted and then having to go through
the horror of that long trial, and that depicting a
woman enacting such brutal violence on a male figure was
something of a revenge statement when the painting was unveiled. This,
of course, is all speculative, though it's all art interpretation,
and also as a counterpoint, there are scholars who are
(15:29):
quick to point out that there was definitely a taste
for violence and gore amongst art patrons at the time,
so she may well have just been making lucrative decisions
about her work subjects. There's a two thousand and two
interview with Smithsonian in which Judith Man, who's a curator
of early European art at the Saint Louis Art Museum
at the time, and she mentioned that while a lot
(15:52):
is made of Artemisia's work being vengeful in nature, fewer
than a quarter of the painter's works feature women in
that vein. And before we get to what happens to
Artemisia after she leaves Florence, do you want to have
another quick word from a sponsor, let's do so.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Back to Artemisia around sixteen twenty, she was ready to
leave Florence. She and her husband had had four children together,
but three of them did not make it past childhood.
They died, and moreover, her marriage was not a particularly
happy one. Pierre Antonio had a problem with spending money
more quickly than they were taking it in, and he's
(16:41):
alleged to have cheated on her repeatedly, and just sort
of that. They had a contentious and unhappy union.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
So, perhaps hoping for a fresh start, Artemisia, Parantonio and
their surviving child, who was named Prudentia, moved to Rome, and,
as had been the case in Florence, the painter made
friends within the art community, and this put a strain
on her already crumbling marriage. Pier Antonio actually slashed the
face of one of Artemisia's male acquaintances, and not long
(17:10):
after that he left the marriage for good, leaving behind
his daughter as well. So roughly ten to twelve years
after she had painted the image of Judith and her
maid servant carrying the severed head of Holophernes, Artemisia revisited
that same subject of Judith again in her work, and
this was somewhere around sixteen twenty three or sixteen twenty five,
(17:33):
so it was during her time in Rome, and the
painting that she created at this point was Judith and
her maid servant with the head of Holofernes. This time
it's still a depiction of two women and again after
the beheading, and it's in a way that creates tension
and urgency. The scene is lit by candle light, and
that candle light itself is part of the composition. The
(17:54):
light and shadows she creates around that light source are
just incredible. Even the gossip fabric that's draped over one
of Judith's shoulders is affected by the light of the
flame in a way that makes the candle almost seem
like it must be flickering. There's also a less This
is also a less brutal representation of the story than
(18:14):
the earlier works. There's a lot less gore. Yet it
feels a little bit more like it is less about
the murder and more about the two women, if that
makes sense. I will be pinning all of these on Pinterest,
and then our listeners can go and kind of get
a sense of what we're talking about and decide for
themselves how they feel.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Like it looks. And while she was not the toast
of Rome the way that she had been in Florence,
and this was largely due to shifting tastes among art patrons,
Gentileski did receive a commission from King Philip the fourth
of Spain in sixteen twenty seven, and this particular project
provided her enough money that she could stay afloat and
(18:54):
also support her daughter.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
In sixteen thirty, the Bubonic plague took a huge t
on Venice that killed a third of the people there,
and to escape the sickness, Gentileski moved to Naples.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, this, other than a brief fora elsewhere which we're
about to talk about, Naples really became her home for
the rest of her life. Around sixteen thirty eight or
sixteen thirty nine, depending on when you look, but most
favor sixteen thirty eight, she went to London to work
with her father on the Queen's House for Queen Henrietta Maria,
(19:30):
and she had resisted several requests to go to London
prior to this, in part because she did not want
to work for the Anglican king, although Queen Henrietta Maria
was Roman Catholic. But frankly, her work had really dried
up in Italy. She was having trouble making ends meet,
so she finally acquiesced on this trip to London. During
the work on a house at Greenwich, Arazzio died, and
(19:52):
that was in February of sixteen thirty nine. Artemisia stayed
in London for a couple of more years, but as
soon as she had work back in Italy, she went
back to Naples. Yeah, and she continued to work for
the rest of her life. But she died in Naples
around sixteen fifty two. She would have been approximately fifty
nine at that time, and while she had been painting,
(20:14):
really most art scholars kind of regard her earlier works
as her best work. So for a long time, Artemisia's
works were actually attributed to other artists, and this was
in part due to the fact that her father had
been her primary teacher, as well as the fact that
she was a woman, and there are even sort of
(20:35):
ongoing debates about this. We mentioned earlier that Susannah and
the Elders was her first sign painting, and that was
in about sixteen ten, But there is another piece called
Madonna and Child from sixteen oh nine that is sometimes
credited to Artemisia and sometimes to her father. We mentioned
it earlier as one of her father's pieces, but that
continues to be some debate about it. Even though Susannah
(20:57):
and the Elders has her signature, it was long believed
to be her father's work because a lot of people
found it really difficult to believe that a young woman
of seventeen could paint with that much maturity, and also
because she was a woman, that rape that had so
affected her life we mentioned earlier sometimes really overshadowed her
(21:18):
abilities in her work, and having been part of a
rape trial basically cast doubt on her sexuality and her
honor for her entire life, even though the aggressor had
been found guilty, it still just kind of put a
stain on her reputation. And even prior to that assault,
her reputation was constantly questioned because of the open nature
(21:39):
of her father's studio and the men and women who
often visited as both colleagues and models. Just the idea
that she was exposed to so many people coming and
going led to some rumors about her. So while her
talent was really obvious, people really wanted to talk about
the possible scandals attached to her. Her amazing skill in
the amazing work she is doing. For her own part,
(22:02):
she readily recognized and openly discussed her struggles working in
a field that was dominated by men. In a letter
to a patron later in her life, she described the
tiresome nature of trying to defend her work as her
own and the fight to get a fair price for it.
She wrote, you feel sorry for me because a woman's
name raises doubts until her work is seen. If I
(22:23):
were a man, I can't imagine it would have turned
out this way. But it's also important to note that
there was also a lot of a claim for her
in her lifetime, and in fact, some scholars have suggested
that because of the huge scandal when she was seventeen,
it actually kind of opened the door for her to
be able to paint some of her more gory and
(22:47):
graphic pieces. That it was more accepted for her at
that point to be able to do those things, but
still again an issue of debate. In sixteen thirty five, though,
she wrote this note to her friend Galilee quote, I
have seen myself honored by all the kings and rulers
of Europe, to whom I have sent my works, not
only with great gifts, but also with most favored letters,
(23:09):
which I keep with me.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Those ceiling panels that she and her father worked on
together in London were removed from the Queen's House and
now they're in Marlborough House in London. And in two
thousand and two, so it's more than a decade ago,
but quite neat the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art
hosted an exhibit entitled Arazzio and Artemisio Gentileski, father and
(23:33):
daughter painters in Baroque Italy, and the works of both
of the artists were featured together, which is kind of
a lovely wait to sum up their lives and how
they affected one another, and we'll link to We have
one of the catalogs from that exhibition was one of
my sources, so we'll have a link to that in
(23:54):
the show notes. And it's worth a look because it's
very interesting to see sort of the lineage and development
of style. You can see like the Caravaggio style and
a lot in her father's work, and then it evolves
in his work, and then her work kind of evolves
it some more. It's it's pretty interesting to look at
if you're into art history. Thanks so much for joining
(24:17):
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
the archive, if you heard an email address or a
Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show,
that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is
History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Our old house Stuffworks
email address no longer works. You can find us all
(24:37):
over social media at Missed in History, and you can
subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the
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you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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