Artemisia Gentileschi the most celebrated female painter of the 17th century.
12, The birth of St. John the Baptist.
In 1630 Gentileschi moved to Naples in search of new and more lucrative commissions.
Many other artists, including Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci and Simon Vouet had stayed
in Naples at some point during their careers.
At Fthat time, Jusepe de Ribera, Massimo Stanzione, and Domenichino were working there, and later,
Giovanni Lanfranco and many others would flock to the city.
Gentileschi remained in Naples for the remainder of her career with the exceptions of a trip
to London and a few other journeys.
Naples was for Gentileschi a kind of second homeland, as her daughter was married and
lived there.
On 18 March 1634, the traveller Bullen Reymes records in his diary visiting Artemisia and
Palmira (‘who also paints’) with a group of fellow Englishmen.
She received letters of appreciation, being in good relations with the viceroy, the Duke
of Alcalá, and started relations with many renowned artists, among them Massimo Stanzione,
with whom, the eighteenth-century writer Bernardo de’ Dominici reports, she started an artistic
collaboration based on a real friendship and artistic similarities.
The 1635 canvas, The Birth of St. John the Baptist, now held in the Museo del Prado,
Madrid, presents an unusually domestic and tranquil scene, dominated by female figures,
traditionally associated with childbirth.
The solitary elderly male resembles a model that Caravaggio used in several of his paintings.
The tender golden light helps strengthen the strong bonds of female companionship delineated
in the composition.
The women appear locked in their shared communication, each paying careful attention to the other
woman looking at her.
The all-consuming world of the household, discussing the many daily concerns affecting
a Neapolitan housewife, are intimately brought to life in the complex group arrangement and
exchange of subtle interactions.
This was a difficult time for Gentileschi, when despite the demand for her paintings,
she was often short of money and felt compelled to write letters begging for commissions.
She would have been very familiar with the day to day cares of running a busy household
and making ends meet in an ever demanding modern world.
13, Adoration of the Magi.
Painted during her Naples residence, Adoration of the Magi (c. 1636-37) is one of three paintings
that Gentileschi completed for the renovation of a cathedral at Pozzuoli, dedicated to Saint
Januarius in the amphitheatre of Pozzuoli.
Like Velázquez’ version of the subject, completed about sixteen years before, Gentileschi
has conjured a solemn and reverent mood, with sombre tonalities and underplayed drama — apposite
for a liturgical painting.
The male figures seem disproportionally large compared to the dignified Madonna and Child,
annexed to the left.
The standing Magus bends down awkwardly, directing our attention towards the Christ Child, the
true central focus of the image.
In their compositions, Gentileschi and Velázquez often favoured large-scale figures in groups,
which seem to act slow and gracefully, adopting a more reverential style of art than is found
in early Baroque canvases that preferred more violent and dramatic scenes.
Gentileschi represents Mary as calm and mature – a much more dignified subject than the
more violent and revengeful heroines of the artist’s earlier canvases.
The decorous image of the Virgin helps establish her figure as a more maternal and sacred image.
This change in tact is a direct reaction of a changing shift of the art in the mid-seventeenth
century, sheering away from the fascination with intense emotional scenes and instead
opting for a more philosophical and stately approach, as represented by the mythical idylls
of Poussin and his followers.
14, David and Bathsheba.
Orazio Gentileschi died suddenly in 1639, when we know that his daughter had her own
commissions to fulfil, though there are no known works assignable with certainty to this
period.
It is known that Artemisia had already left England by 1642, when the civil war was just
starting.
Nothing much is known about her subsequent movements.
Historians agree that in 1649 she was in Naples again, corresponding with Don Antonio Ruffo
of Sicily, who became her mentor during her second Neapolitan period.
The last known letter to her mentor is dated 1650 and makes clear that she was still fully
active.
Housed in the Museum of Art at Columbus, Ohio, the following image is believed to be the
first painting of Gentileschi’s second residence in Naples.
According to the Book of Samuel, Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam and the wife of
Uriah the Hittite, and afterward of David, by whom she gave birth to Solomon, who succeeded
David as king.
David’s seduction of Bathsheba, narrated in 2 Samuel 11, is omitted in the Books of
Chronicles.
The tale relates how David, while walking on the roof of his palace, saw Bathsheba,
who was then the wife of Uriah, having a bath.
He immediately desired her and later made her pregnant.
In an effort to conceal his sin, and save Bathsheba from punishment for adultery, David
summoned Uriah from the army in the hope that he would re-consummate his marriage and state
the child was his.
Uriah was unwilling to violate the ancient kingdom rule applying to warriors in active
service and preferred to remain with the palace troops.
After repeated efforts to convince Uriah to have sex with Bathsheba, the king gave the
order to his general, Joab, that Uriah should be placed on the front lines of the battle,
where it was the most dangerous, and left to the mercy of the enemy.
After Uriah was dead, David made the now widowed Bathsheba his wife.
Gentileschi’s David and Bathsheba (c. 1645) portrays a partially draped Bathsheba, shown
frontally in three-quarter pose, slightly to the right of centre in the foreground,
before a balustrade.
A kneeling maid on the left holds a silver basin with water; Bathsheba turns to the right
to look at the necklace the other maid is holding out for her.
In the distant background to the left, David watches Bathsheba from the balcony of a classical
palace, while a maid behind and to the left of Bathsheba prepares to hand her his letter.
The right background affords a view of an elegant park, and the painting of this section
of the canvas is judged to be the work of Domenico Gargiolo, while the background architecture
is the work of Viviano Codazzi.
In later years, Gentileschi reserved her talent for the main figural work, letting her collaborators
take on the more subsidiary aspects of the composition.
Divine light floods in from the left, accentuating the beautiful figure of Bathsheba.
The delineated figures are more slender and less bulky than in Gentileschi’s earlier
work, with small heads in proportion to body length and more classical restraint of emotions.
Gentileschi shows us the scene of temptation prior to Bathsheba’s awareness of David’s
intentions; her nude body appears vulnerable, as she is spied upon covertly by David in
the background.
Once again the artist presents a victim of events over which she has no control, encouraging
our sympathy for Bathsheba.
The strict diagonal line, aligning the three brighter figures illustrates the artist’s
faithful emulation of Caravaggio’s practice of placing figures.
Several other versions of the Bathsheba theme survive, though they lack Gentileschi’s
accomplished finish and so may be workshop paintings completed by assistants, possibly
her daughter.
15, Lot and his Daughters.
Housed in the Toledo Museum of Art, the following canvas concerns the biblical character Lot,
who with his wife and daughters had escaped Sodom, but received God’s warning not to
turn and gaze on the fire and brimstone that destroyed the doomed city.
Lot’s wife disobeyed and was turned into a pillar of salt.
Gentileschi depicts an unsettling scene in Lot’s life that happens after the more famous
earlier events in Sodom.
According to the Book of Genesis, Lot’s daughters are convinced that the world has
come to an end and that all humanity has been annihilated with the destruction of Sodom.
They therefore decide they must conceive with their father, who they believe to be the only
man left on Earth.
Together, they collude and get Lot drunk, tricking him into impregnating them.
Gentileschi portrays the scene of seduction with Lot sitting between his two daughters
at the entrance to a cave.
In the left background, the city burns and in the middle distance Lot’s wife is frozen
as a statue, her arms outstretched in horror.
Unlike in other depictions of the scene, Gentileschi has not depicted Lot as drunken and so incapable
of knowing what is happening and unable to resist the seduction.
The male figure is not represented as a passive victim of the affair, but instead could be
interpreted as a willing collaborator.
All three family members have an active role of what is about to happen.
The daughter to the right is lighted prominently and arrayed in the rich blue often used in
a portrayal of the Virgin Mary, blended with the white that symbolises innocence and purity.
She twists round, almost contorted, to look at her father.
One end of the rich blue fabric snakes between her thighs, whilst the other end lies close
to her father’s thighs.
The face of the daughter to the left is hidden in shadow, as she holds the wine flask with
one hand and tenderly lays a hand on her father’s shoulder with the other.
She appears more reluctant than the other two, who both seem unaware of her presence.
Lot passes his wine glass to the daughter on the right, as if he is plying her with
wine and not the other way around.
Unlike the biblical account, he does not appear drunken or ignorant of the imminent seduction,
but instead a conscious and consensual participator of the scene.
As with many of her biblical works, commentators have connected this negative depiction of
Lot to the artist’s rape and the subsequent trial.
Alternatively, we could view the figure of Lot as a naïve and trusting father, completely
unaware of the incestful designs of his daughters.
The painting was attributed to Bernardo Cavallino until Gentileschi expert Mary Garrard pointed
out in 1989 that it was much more likely that Gentileschi was the author, due to stylistic
features identified in other prominent Gentileschi paintings of biblical women.
Cavallino and Gentileschi sometimes collaborated, which may explain the error.
16, Corisca and the Satyr.
As Gentileschi grew older, her work became more graceful and ‘feminine’, reflecting
in part the general shift in taste and sensibility in later Baroque art.
The following late canvas, now held in a private collection in Naples, concerns the story of
Corisca as narrated by Battista Guarini (1538-1612), an Italian poet, dramatist and diplomat, in
his Il Pastor Fido (The Faithful Shepherd) — a pastoral tragicomedy set in Arcadia,
first published in 1590.
The story relates how a satyr attempts to seduce the nymph Corisca, who escapes his
grasp; the satyr is left holding only the hair of her wig, pulled free from her scalp.
In the painting, the satyr holds up the wig with a look of confusion, while the nymph
glances back as she makes her escape, holding a hand to the back of her head.
Gentileschi is keen to represent woman eluding a lustful male by the means of stripping away
surface decoration, fleeing with her honour intact.
Interestingly, the painting was misattributed to the Neapolitan artist Massimo Stanzione,
before Artemisia’s signature was discovered on the right in the early 1990’s.
The strong light floods in from the left, allowing the artist to skilfully play with
the rich folds and texture of Corisca’s garments and the muscular torso of the satyr,
which contrast strongly together.
The seated pose of the attacker gives this image of seduction a softer impression and
the face of Corisca, which appears almost regretful that she has eluded the attacker’s
grasp, lacks the horror or violence of Gentileschi’s earlier female figures.
Attention has seemed to shy away from the intended rape, but instead focuses upon the
posture and appearance of the figures in the drama.
The heightened emotion of earlier Baroque art is shifting to the more subtle interaction
of characters in the composition.
Gentileschi lived her last years in Naples, continuing to paint on into her late forties.
It was previously thought she had died in c. 1652; however, recent evidence has revealed
that she was still accepting commissions in 1654, though she was increasingly dependent
upon her assistant, Onofrio Palumbo in her last years.
Some art historians have speculated that she died in the devastating plague that swept
Naples in 1656, virtually wiping out an entire generation of Neapolitan artists.
As with many details of Gentileschi’s life, much uncertainty still surrounds the actual
time or nature of her death.