In 1612, despite her early talent, Artemisia was denied access to the all-male professional academies for art. Therefore, her father hired the Tuscan painter Agostino Tassi to tutor Artemisia privately. During this tutelage, Tassi raped Artemisia and was reported to the authorities.
During the trial Artemisia was tortured using a device made of thongs wrapped around the fingers and tightened by degrees — a particularly cruel torture to a painter. This was done to corroborate the truth of her allegation, due to the belief that if a person can tell the same story under torture as without it, the story must be true.
Her next painting, Judith beheading Holofernes:
...has been interpreted as a wish for psychological revenge for the violence she suffered.
From Wikipedia.
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5 comments:
I remember I watched a movie about her ages ago...I had the impression that she was actually enjoying herself with the guy :)
Great painting.
You're right. I looked it up:
The movie is a biography of the painter Artemisia Gentileschi, but many major details of her life were changed, leading to widespread criticism. In the movie, the relationship between Artemisia and Agostino is portrayed as a beautiful love affair, and the reason Artemisia is is tortured is because she refuses to testify that he raped her. In reality, Agostino really did rape Artemisia (and other women), and the reason she was tortured was because she did testify in court that he had raped her.
She must be rolling in her grave!
"She must be rolling in her grave!" LOL
If you had to compare Artemesia's painting of the same subject to one painted by a man you would immediately notice striking differences, mainly in the pose and expression of Judith. It is said that this figure of Judith is a self portrait of Artemesia.
As a side line, there is actually an Artemesia Gentileschi painting in the Museum of Fine Arts in Malta.
The same thought crossed my mind yesterday when I was looking for the photo and came across Caravaggio's interpretation. In his painting, Judith's facial excpression is like "Geez... I hope this doesn't hurt" and she's not even tensing her muscles while lopping Holofernes' head off - she wouldn't even cut through butter with that stance.
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