Artemisia Gentileschi: The Female Perspective in Baroque Art

Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1638–39, Oil on canvas, 38.8 in x 29.6 in.

In this article, I will explore the importance of Artemisia Gentileschi to the Baroque era and how her perspective as a female artist is vital for understanding contexts from the female perspective in ways the male perspective falls short. To achieve this, I will analyze several of her paintings to comparable works of similar subject matter by her father, Orazio Gentileschi. Works considered will be Judith and Her Maidservant by Artemisia and Judith and Her Maidservant by Orazio, Danaë by Artemisia and Danaë by Orazio, and Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia and Susanna Suprised by the Elders by Orazio. When looking at these paintings, I will explore the societal and cultural issues women artists faced during the time and how that has evolved even into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I will analyze the revolutionary role that women had within Artemisia’s paintings. Finally, I will present biological data that support that gender-related differences exist in various parts of the brain, explaining gender differences in cognition, memory, and emotion. Before we analyze the previously mentioned themes, I think it is essential to take a closer look at the formal elements of the paintings stated, as this will lay the foundation for the ideas I will propose later in this article.

For formal analysis, I will analyze the artworks in pairs as there are three sets of like subjects. First, we will look at Judith and Her Maidservant by Artemisia and Judith and Her Maidservant by Orazio. Both of these paintings depict the biblical subjects of Judith and her maidservant after they cut off the head of Holofernes. Both works use a similar deep, rich color palette and the signature tenebrism common in the Baroque period. I would note that Artemisia pushes her painting slightly further regarding tenebrism. The contrasts are more extreme, and the shadows appear darker on the subjects themselves. There is a defined direction of light in both works that are coming in from the left of the canvas. Artemisia’s version is a little more specific regarding the light source because we see the candle depicted on the left of the painting that conceals her face in shadow as she moves to cover it with her hand. Additionally, the treatment of the fabrics in these paintings compared to the other works in this paper is nothing less than precise. Every fold of the fabric is captured in the dramatic depiction of light. Second, we will look at Danaë by Artemisia and Danaë by Orazio. Both of these works have a similar color palette and depict a story based on a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which a King imprisoned his daughter to avoid the prophecy that she would birth a son who would kill him. Here, Zeus takes the form of a shower of gold and impregnates Danaë, who later gives birth to Perseus (Saint Louis Art Museum). There is an essential difference in these works regarding the portrayal of the golden coins. The coins falling in Orazio’s version simply shower from above but make little contact with Danaë’s skin. Her facial expression is engaged but difficult to read. In Artemisia's version, the coins fall directly onto Danaë and into her lap, pushing this painting into more of an erotic scene. There is physical contact in this version of the story, and the facial expression that Artemisia paints here only supports this depiction of pleasure mixed with more complex emotions. Third, we will look at Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia and Susanna Suprised by the Elders by Orazio. This pair of paintings are perhaps the most different in the collections discussed in this paper. The composition of the figures in both works are entirely different compared to the previously mentioned paintings. The colors used are also different, more specifically in the tone of Susanna’s skin. As previously mentioned, Artemisia seems to push the contrasts between light and shadow further than her father in his painting. This is best seen in the faces of the elders. I think the most notable difference lies in facial expression of Susanna. Artemisia’s version shows a reclusive, withdrawn expression as Susanna faces away from the Elders. In contrast, Orazio shows, in my opinion, perhaps more stress in Susanna’s face as she seemingly looks up for divine help. You can really see the strain in her eyes as they look red and irritated, perhaps indicating that she is upset. Interestingly enough, there looks to be some kind of fountain or bird bath in the foreground and a tree in the background of Orazio’s painting that frames the subject in the middle, implying a feeling of entrapment, whereas Artemisia’s composition focuses solely on the figures in the middle ground. Keeping these formal elements in mind with their similarities and differences, I will analyze the societal and cultural issues women artists faced during the 17th century.

Until the 1970s, Artemisia’s contributions to art were considered to be of little importance. Prior to that, in an article published in 1916 by Roberto Longhi, she was recognized as a “first-rate painter, technically” but still “intellectually inferior, even to her father.” (Scarparo). Although I disagree with Longhi’s assessment of Artemisia’s intellect, this opinion can be understood in light of the Baroque era glass ceiling for women artists and how its constraints have even impacted views of the modern twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This limitation on women of the seventeenth century boiled down to Education. During this time, art focused on learning about classical antiquity, philosophy, anatomy, and mathematics. These skills were learned and honed during an apprenticeship in a professional art studio. Gender norms of the seventeenth century meant that women were expected to be wives and mothers, and their education rarely extended past those parameters. Still, there were instances where women did become artists during this time. Nuns learned in monasteries, and noble women with education backgrounds above average for women of the time learned these elements required to study art. Most common among these instances, however, were women born into a family of artists (MacDonald). There, they were exposed to the craft daily. This was the case for Artemisia as her father, Orazio, was an established painter. The stigma that women could not be successful artists is further evident by the misattributed authorship of Artemisia’s Susanna and the Elders, where the original understanding was that Orazio created this painting on the grounds that the dates of the work put Artemisia as a teenager. It was simply not believed that woman, teenager or not, could produce such remarkable work. It was later proven otherwise and this painting was correctly attributed to Artemisia (Christiansen). In fact, most of her famous works were created before she reached the age of 25. Among those is Susanna and the Elders, completed when she was only 17 (Google Arts & Culture.) The late twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw Artemisia’s climb to iconic status among feminist movements. She has a place setting in Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party , a contemporary art installation honoring strong female figures throughout time. There were also fictional novels and a movie created around her highly sexualized life stemming from her rape trial with Agostino Tassi (Ramirez). It is a general belief that the subject matter of her paintings comes from these experiences. In opposition to this belief, I would caution that boiling her works down to an answer in response to sexual violence is a disservice to her work. I believe that Elizabeth Cohen summarizes it best in her journal entry about the artist, “In her [Artemisia’s] case, the old-fashioned notion that women are defined essentially by their sexual histories continues to reign, as if a girl who suffers assault must be understood as thereafter a primarily sexual creature (Cohen).” I am not suggesting that artists live in a vacuum without exterior influences. While it is likely that her experiences informed her paintings in some way, they must not overshadow the paintings for what they are–masterpieces in their own respect. Comparing works like Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia and Susanna Suprised by the Elders by Orazio, I believe that Artemisia surpassed her father's technical and intellectual abilities even at the age of 17. Much of this has to do with how she renders the visual forms in the paintings in ways that are superior to her father’s painting of the same subject. While Orazio’s painting shows the emotional complexity of a woman in distress, it also shows her helplessly giving in to the unwanted advances. In Artemisia’s version, the female subject is actively trying to take control of the situation by denying the elders and moving in a direction that suggests her resistance and potential escape. Fate is in her hands in this painting. That is just one example of how women have the power in Artemisia’s paintings. This has much to do with the way Artemisia depicts the role of women in her works, emotionally and intellectually.

The female subject's role in Artemisia's paintings cannot be understated. Rarely seen before the works of Artemisia, the woman is placed in a position of confidence and strength. The female figures were the subjects of action and heroism rather than passive observers in her paintings. This idea is especially present when comparing Judith and Her Maidservant by Artemisia to Judith and Her Maidservant by Orazio. While both paintings show women in a position that triumphs over their male counterpart, Holofernes, the energy from one painting to the other differ in several ways. Firstly, Artemisia’s painting shows an emotional depth in Judith, symbolized by how the light falls on her face from her hand in front of the candle. This gesture implies the idea of both concealing and revealing. There is also an intense connection between the poses of Judith and her maidservant. Their facial expressions might indicate the sound of someone coming that could catch them in the act of concealing the head of Holofernes. There is a sense of immediacy and bravery in the face of danger portrayed by Artemisia’s Judith that keeps the viewer on edge. In the words of art historian Dr. Vida Hull about this painting, “It’s that terrifying moment. No one else has portrayed that moment but Artemisia Gentileschi. It’s something that’s just very, very real and gives you the feeling that these are not just great heroes, it also shows their danger and what they risked (Hull).” In comparison, Orazio’s version of this encounter places the women in a more passive role than that depicted in his daughter's painting. The women here are still performing a heroic act, but there seems to be a physical and emotional disconnect between the immediacy of what they are doing in terms of their body language and facial expressions. I do not feel as tense when I view Orazio’s painting of this encounter compared to Artemisia’s. I would further suggest that this same physical and emotional disconnect exists in the other paintings by Orazio previously mentioned in this paper. There is just something different in how Artemisia portrays female subjects compared to her father. This difference may be found in comparing cognitive functions between the male and female genders.

Frontiers in Neuroscience, a neuroscience journal article by Jiang Xin, states that there is strong evidence of physical and cognitive differences between the brains of men and women. Biologically, men do not think the same way women do, and recent studies support the notion that gender greatly affects brain function, including perception, emotion, and memory. Research suggests that men and women encode these bits of information differently, which could lead to a difference in the physical brain structure. Through MRI data acquisition and preprocessing, neuroscientists make a compelling case for these significant gender differences. Tests have revealed that “men appear to have more gray matter, made up of active neurons, while women may have more white matter for the neuronal communication between different areas of the brain (Xin).” While complex, these tests support that gender-related differences likely exist in each specific brain region, explaining gender differences in cognition, memory, and emotion. From this data, I advocate that, artistically and biologically, Artemisia was superior at painting the female subject. This is because she understood the cognitive and emotional nuances of being a female, unlike her male peers, explaining why her female representations contain so much depth and emotion compared to other paintings of the time. In comparing the paintings Danaë by Artemisia and Danaë by Orazio, the difference between how the male and female brains interpret emotions are clear. Here, Orazio depicts the female in a moment of ecstasy according to the story of Danaë, but her body language and facial expression could not be less connected to what is happening. After researching cognitive differences between genders, I have concluded that this disconnect is because Orazio did not know how to think like a woman. In comparison, Artemisia’s version of this painting shows visual and emotional pleasure paired with the complicated emotions of what is happening in the moment. Her body language with her arm behind her head shows surrender, while her facial expression shows pleasure mixed with other complex emotion. It is almost as if Danaë is thinking and feeling several things simultaneously. She is giving into the temptations and feelings of the flesh while, at the same time, realizing that she is an active participant in the prophecy that her father was trying to avoid by locking her away. The gold coins, symbolizing Zeus, fall from above and intimately make contact with her body while falling into her lap, a level of contact and sexual tension missing from Orazio’s version. While Artemisia was painting this piece, I imagine she was channeling the thoughts of how it would feel to be in a situation like that. Those raw and complicated emotions are then translated from her mind, through the brush, and onto the canvas, making this an emotional masterpiece.

In conclusion, the contributions by Artemisia Gentileshchi during the Baroque period were essential for understanding the female mind, a nuanced perspective that is difficult to translate from a male perspective. Throughout this paper, I have stated that Orazio Gentilschi constantly fell short of this particular objective. This is not to suggest that Orazio is a failed, unaccomplished artist. I only wish to express that Artemisia’s perspective of the female subject in her paintings is something that cannot be easily achieved by a male. Men may have dominated the art world during this time, but they simply could not understand the female, physically, emotionally, and intellectually in the same way that another woman could. This is why Artemisia’s perspective was essential to the Baroque period, an era of visual and emotional intensity within art.

1. Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Her Maidservant, 1593-1653, oil on canvas, 74 x 56 in.

2. Orazio Gentileschi, Judith and Her Maidservant, 1608, oil on canvas, 54 x 63 in.

3. Artemisia Gentileschi, Danaë, 1612, oil on copper, 16 x 21 in.

4. Orazio Gentileschi, Danaë, 1621-1623, oil on canvas, 63 x 89 in.

5. Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders, 1610, oil on canvas, 67 x 47 in.

6. Orazio Gentileschi, Susanna Suprised by the Elders, date unknown, oil on canvas, 28 x 38 in.

7. Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974–79, Ceramic, porcelain, and textile, 576 x 576 in.

Works Cited:

Christiansen, Keith, and Judith W. Mann. Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi Published to Accompany the Exhibition Held at the Museo Del Palazzo Di Venezia, Rome, 15 October - 6 January 2002 ; the Metropolian Museum of Art, New York, 14 February - 12 May 2002 ; the Saint Louis Art Museum, 15 June - 15 September 2002. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001.

Cohen, Elizabeth S. “The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi: A Rape as History.” The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 31, no. 1, 2000, pp. 47–75. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2671289. Accessed 10 Feb. 2023.

Google Arts & Culture. “8 Things You Might Not Know about Artemisia Gentileschi.” Google Arts & Culture, Google, https://artsandculture.google.com/story/hwWBb49O1FXZqg. Accessed 7 March. 2023.

Hull, Vida. ARTH 4117 Italian Baroque 2: Artemisia Gentileschi. YouTube, ETSU Online, 10 Sept. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE449QPNDMc&t=539s. Accessed 10 Mar. 2023.

MacDonald, Deanna. “Female Artists in the Renaissance.” Smarthistory, 1 June 2020, https://smarthistory.org/female-artists-renaissance/. Accessed 5 March. 2023.

Ramirez, Maya. “Artemisia Gentileschi from Baroque to Neo-Baroque: Reimagining Female Biblical Figures and the Female Gaze.” The Undergraduate Historical Journal at UC Merced, vol. 8, no. 1, 2021, https://doi.org/10.5070/h38155643.

Saint Louis Art Museum. “Danaë.” Saint Louis Art Museum, 22 Feb. 2023, https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/15612/.

Scarparo, Susanna. “‘Artemisia’: The Invention of a 'Real' Woman.” Italica, vol. 79, no. 3, 2002, pp. 363–378. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3656098. Accessed 12 Feb. 2023.

Xin, Jiang, et al. "Brain Differences Between Men and Women: Evidence From Deep Learning." Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 13, 2019, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2019.00185. Accessed 12 Feb. 2023.