Reconstructing Artemisia: Twentieth-Century Images of a Woman Artist

Abstract

In 1916 Roberto Longhi dedicated to Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi an article that is bound to leave a modern reader puzzled and uneasy. After acknowledging Artemisia's importance as l'unica donna in Italia che abbia mai saputo cosa sia pittura (253) (the only woman in Italy who ever knew what painting is),' the great art critic proclaims her inferiority not only to her father Orazio but also to Massimo Stanzione and Bernardo Cavallino. Although one could consider this opinion, however questionable, to be based on aesthetic and critical criteria, the same cannot be said of several other remarks that diminish and attack Artemisia not as an artist, but as an individual and a woman. Longhi was undoubtedly aware of the infamous rape trial that has made Artemisia's name well known to anyone interested in the history of Western women. In the courtroom Artemisia claimed consistently, even under torture, that Agostino Tassi had raped and deflowered her, while Tassi-never subjected to torture-used a defensive strategy that suspected rapists have successfully employed throughout the centuries, denying all charges and casting doubts on Artemisia's sexual conduct.2

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.