Unfortunately I had to miss the recent meeting of the regional Italian Circle, on Artemisia Gentilleschi, because of our visit to London. I would very much have liked to have been there. The Secretary very kindly sent me, however, the text of the talk, together with the illustrations. Finally, I have managed to get around to looking at them and reading the text. Although I knew some general facts about the life and work of Gentilleschi it was very interesting to be able to extend that very rudimentary knowledge. While I was working in the studio this morning I was ruminating, in some back room of my consciousness, about what I had read.
I did know before the talk that Gentilleschi had been raped when about seventeen ore eighteen years old, by a man known to her father. It had not really registered before just what a defining experience this had been for her. This became rather clearer when I discovered that, having brought a law-suit against her attacker, she was subjected to torture in order to see whether she would maintain her accusation under that kind of duress. She did, indeed, hold to her story.
Looking at the work she later produced I was struck by the apparent extent to which this became a defining image in her art. I knew that she had painted both Judith and Holophernes, and Susannah and the Elders, but had not appreciated the fact that she returned to these subjects throughout her life. The second of these themes I found particularly thought-provoking. Susannah’s privacy and modesty are being violated by two men, although only one person was directly responsible for her violation. There has been a suggestion that the rape took place with a degree of compliance from her father. Is he, by implication, the second intruder in these pictures? Whereas her treatment of Judith can be understood as a kind of symbolic revenge on her attacker, I can’t help but wonder whether more is being said in the Susannah pictures than simply an account of a biblical story.
In several ways it is possible to point to Artemesia’s experience of rape as a defining moment in the development of her art. Thinking about the natter this morning, however, it occurred to me that I cannot think of another case of an artist being so strongly influenced by a single, incident in their early life.
After a good deal of procrastination (as usual) I finally got down to my new painting this morning. This will be another contribution to my “Green Man” theme.