Much attention has been paid recently to the life of the Italian Baroque master, Artemisia Gentileschi—specifically, her rape, her torture with thumb screws while testifying during the trial of her attacker and her representations of muscular women inflicting bodily damage on men. She’s been the subject of novels, films, Broadway plays and operas, but no attention would be paid to her at all if she were not an artist of exquisite skill, bold vision and striking originality who painted women as they’d never been shown before in Western art—as agents of their own destinies.
Like many women artists of earlier centuries whose work has survived, Artemisia came from a family of artists. Born in Rome in 1593, she was the oldest and most artistically inclined child of the painter Orazio Gentileschi. Trained from an early age, she was conversant with art history and artists of the day, including Caravaggio, whose influence can be seen in her paintings.
Her life was complex, peripatetic and successful. She married and had a daughter, accepted major commissions and became the first woman accepted to Florence’s Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (the Academy of Arts and Drawing). She was famous during her lifetime and had the admiration of her peers and the patronage of important collectors. In short, she was brilliant, albeit written out of history for centuries. What follows are ten of her most important works:
10. Esther before Ahasuerus, in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art
Typical of Gentileschi’s oeuvre is this imposing Biblical scene at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. History paintings were the highest order of art. Florals and still life paintings were okay for women artists and male artists of the lower ranks, but if you wanted to make a statement and a name in the 16th and 17th Centuries, grand epics were the ticket.
With a depiction of a swooning woman before a seated, regally dressed man, it’s challenging to suggest a proto-feminist message without unpacking the story first. The Book of Esther tells how the Persian king Ahasuerus fell in love with Esther. When the Jewish people were threatened, she fasted until weak and then went to her husband unbidden (an action punishable by death). Dressed sumptuously but fainting, she opened his heart, unleashed his pity and saved her people. Keith Christiansen, former chairman of the Met’s Department of European Paintings, described this complex and ambitious work noting that “Artemisia makes Esther more than a paper-doll role model: she gives us a believable woman, full of dignity, boldly risking all as she faces the young, capricious king.”
9. Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, in London’s National Gallery
Here we find a powerful, revered woman with the attributes of a saint, but with the face of Artemisia Gentileschi herself. While holding a palm frond, symbolizing martyrdom, the subject calmly regards the viewer. Looking more hero than victim, this is also a study in female self-representation.
She made the painting after joining her father in London in 1615. When it reappeared as a treasured addition to the National Gallery in 2018 and last year toured England as part of the celebration of the gallery’s 200th anniversary, it caused sensations (partly because it was only the twenty-first painting by a woman to be included in a collection of over 2,000). By 2024, the world was ready to welcome this message of female empowerment and gaze into the face of its maker.
8. Danaë, in the St. Louis Art Museum
Danaë lies naked across a pillowed bed. The rich red cover and the bright blue dress of her attendant contrast starkly with her pale flesh. Gentileschi’s skill in depicting colors, textures, light and dark is on full display, as is her deft hand as a storyteller. In Greek mythology, Danaë was confined by her father to prevent her from becoming pregnant because an oracle had predicted she would bear a son who would kill his grandfather. However, Zeus would not be denied.
Or would he? The painter had seen her father’s treatment of the subject where Danaë stretches out a welcoming hand to the gold coins through which Zeus fell upon her. Artemisia’s Danaë, as appealing as she may be to the male gaze, closes her eyes and her legs, subverting the story. It was painted the year after her rape and brings to mind a quote by the artist, “As long as I live, I will have control over my being.”
7. Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, in the Doge’s Palace in Venice
Gentileschi had previously portrayed Mary Magdalene, the follower of Jesus. Paintings of the penitent saint were popular and generally presented an eroticized view of the saint who had once been a sinner. Usually, Mary holds a jar of ointment or regards a skull, identifying her to audiences of the day. Here, Artemisia paints the saint alone in her rapture.
Against a black background, enclosing her own form, her head thrown back, Gentileschi’s portrayal is less about penance and more about the journey of the self. It may have been based on Caravaggio’s treatment of the same subject from 1606, which was also a departure from the norm. But Caravaggio painted Mary Magdalene draped in red, with all the sinfulness that conjures, with her mouth open, her dress half off and her body practically sliding into the viewer’s space. Gentileschi covers her Magdalene in purple and white (symbols of majesty and purity), leaves her mouth closed and covers her breasts. Judith W. Mann, curator of European art at the Saint Louis Art Museum, wrote, ”Artemisia has presented her in her post-conversion state, completely at peace with her newfound path. This is an entirely original interpretation and one that bespeaks an artist of exceptional narrative talent.”
SEE ALSO: Five Exhibitions to Check Out During Women’s History Month
6. Judith and her Maidservant, in the Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, in Florence
Baroque art, particularly history paintings, sought to capture the decisive moment. Like a film trailer conveying a narrative in the most concise way, the trick was to find the point on which everything turns. Artemisia had depicted this subject before, but, as is often the case, collectors wanted something similar. So, this time, she considered the story from a different angle, focusing all the attention on two powerful women.
Her subjects look over their shoulders at something off the canvas, bringing us into their experience. Judith, dressed in a brocaded, gold-trimmed gown with jewels in her hair, hoists a sword in her muscular arm. She and her maid, Abra, confidently consider their next move. It’s quintessentially Baroque: a moment of heightened emotion and import captured in a shaft of light—a picture full of action and stillness, violence and beauty.
5. Allegory of Inclination, in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence
What makes a work of art great? Naturally, the artist. But other factors like subject matter, provenance, backstory and the collector who commissioned it all play a part. Allegory of Inclination was commissioned to adorn the ceiling of the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, a private museum built to commemorate Michelangelo Buonarroti. Artemisia Gentileschi was the first artist commissioned for the multi-panel mural and the only woman tasked with making a painting that spoke to the greatness of the Renaissance master. While it looks like a rather simple composition, she loaded it with meaning.
Inclination is a word with dual definitions. Michelangelo’s inclination was that of an artist, and Gentileschi includes a mariner’s compass indicating the artist was always headed for greatness, but inclines are also angles. Artemisia had befriended and corresponded with Galileo Galilei, who had used an inclined plane to prove the effect of gravity. Above the head of the figure (thought to be a stylized self-portrait) is the North Star, the guiding light of artists. Galileo used his observations of stars to prove the Earth orbits the sun. Artemisia painted the work in 1616, the year Galileo was banished by the Roman Catholic Church. It speaks of her admiration for both men.
4. Susanna and the Elders, in Schloss Weißenstein in Pommersfelden
A popular subject, Susanna and the Elders had been painted by Italian artists in ways Artemisia was likely to have seen. But it was never painted like this before. Completed when Gentileschi was only 17 years old and her earliest dated work, it showed indisputable mastery. Her father, Orazio, noted that with this piece, she had surpassed her teachers.
Susanna, ogled by two men who threatened to shame her if she did not consent to their advances, looks horrified by their attentions. The figure is literally boxed in, pressed against the hard stone behind her and the picture surface, heightening the sense of discomfort. In presentations of the subject painted by men, Susanna is often coquettish. Here, she is repulsed. The artist’s biographer, Mary Garrard, said, “Artemisia’s Susanna presents us with an image rare in art, of a three-dimensional female character who is heroic.”
3. Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura), in the Royal Collection Trust in Windsor Castle in London
This masterful self-portrait is typical of the way Gentileschi rewrote the rules. She is both herself and a representation of herself—a painter and the act of painting at once. Looking not towards the viewer but towards her unfinished canvas, she fills the space, stretching and reaching, deep in concentration. Her tools are loosely brushed, while her figure and dress are detailed and naturalistic, proving she could handle paint with great skill.
She gives herself all the iconography of the allegorical figure of painting: her palette and brushes, multicolored fabric in her dress, her hair a bit messy from the effort of painting and around her neck, a golden mask hanging from a cord. Some representations show “Painting” as a woman with her mouth covered because pictures, as opposed to other art forms, are mute—but not Artemisia’s version. She reserves the right of speech. According to art historian Letha Ch’ien, “It was an unprecedented representation and a triumphant exploitation of cultural gender assumptions in 17th-century Europe crafted to appeal to knowledgeable art viewers.”
2. Judith Beheading Holofernes, in Uffizi Gallery in Florence
For sheer drama, tension and possibly revenge art, it’s impossible to top this painting. Here, the Caravaggist outdid Caravaggio. With tension, passion, pictorial and narrative sweep, chiaroscuro lighting and gushing blood, it’s hard to look away. When feminist art historian Linda Nochlin published her groundbreaking 1971 ARTnews essay, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, it ran with this photo and a caption saying, “A banner for Women’s Lib could be Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes.”
The masterpiece of the Uffizi from 1620 has created a buzz for over 400 years. Painted after her rape by fellow artist Agostino Tassi with a central figure that resembles the artist, it’s been seen as the artist’s way of giving visual voice to her anger. It’s yet another painting of empowered women taking things into their own hands. Art critic Jonathan Jones noted that by communicating the personal and universal when women were locked out of art by guilds, patrons and society, “Gentileschi achieved something so unlikely, so close to impossible, that she deserves to be one of the most famous artists in the world.”
1. Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, in the Detroit Institute of Arts
Judith and her maid, Abra, have just slaughtered Holofernes and now must escape. Judith’s pose suggests they’ve heard someone or something. “Wait,” her brightly lit hand seems to say. It’s a moment of extreme tension, emphasized by the artist’s choices. A sweeping diagonal composition is enlivened by the arc of Judith’s arm, the upheld sword dripping with blood, and the maid’s arms holding an almost visual afterthought of the head. The painting is precise, the chiaroscuro extreme and the powerful heroines and the juxtaposition of pathos and patience, beauty and horror make it as compelling now as it was when it was made. Mann and Christiansen state in Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, “The painting is generally recognized as Artemisia’s finest work.”
Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes was given pride of place when it was included in The Brooklyn Museum’s 1977 exhibition “Women Artists: 1550-1950,” curated by feminist art historians Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris. Christopher R. Marshall, author of Artemisia Gentileschi and the Business of Art, said of the curatorial choice, “It presented her as the woman’s Raphael, Michelangelo and Caravaggio all rolled into one.”
