Exhibiting Artemisia
Written by Margrethe Nielsen
Edited by Nicolas Poblete
As one of the first artists introduced into the feminist art historical canon, Artemisia Gentileschi’s work was unearthed from the annals of history and propelled to art stardom. Artemisia’s1 works are recognized for the depth in which she renders the female emotional experience in dramatic scenes, and it is in part to this that she owes her contemporary clout. However, this clout is complicated by the scholarship on her work which too often focuses on the violence experienced in her life and how it appears on the canvas, instead of her success as an artist and businesswoman. Touching on this only briefly, as I believe it is crucial to understanding the exhibition of Artemisia’s work, this essay will primarily discuss the reception of Artemisia’s work by considering and critiquing the display methods in a three-city tour of her and her father Orazio Gentileschi’s work in 2002. The following analysis of the exhibition will provide an opportunity for the application of feminist methods into the context of the modern blockbuster exhibit.
During her life, Artemisia encountered prejudice from patrons and male colleagues alike, and repeatedly had to make the case for her skill. Nonetheless, she achieved commercial success in her lifetime, and even after her marriage, she lived by the brush.2 Artemisia’s work often focused on female biblical figures, regularly returning to the same stories. In this way, her work brought a new perspective unto the established and popular Caravaggisti style, creating a space for desexualized powerful female heroines.3 She often painted women caught in moments of suffering, contemplation, or bravery. Artemisia’s painted women are thus rendered with agency and are available to the viewers, not merely for the pleasure of the viewer, but as complex beings experiencing intensive psychological stress at the unfolding events. While successful in her lifetime, her legacy had contended with art historians and writers’ prejudice, who often focused largely on the events of her life as opposed to her work. Artemisia was a victim of sexual assault which culminated in a very public rape trial and many scholars use as evidence for certain interpretations of her work. These interpretations often frame her work as revenge fantasies or as evidence of hating men.4 This is posited by art historian Grisellda Pollock as the art life problem, affecting a great deal of historical women artists.5 These scholars, Pollock suggests, having been unable to read her work for the “expected signs of femininity, weakness, or delicateness, turn instead to the dramatic events of her life, suggesting that she was an unnatural woman.”6 These scholars thus rely on patriarchal narratives that result in essentialized interpretations of Artemisia's work.
FOLLOWING THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition, titled Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy7 was a three-city tour of a large collection of work by Artemisia and her father Orazio. The exhibit was initiated by The St. Louis Art Museum’s Judith Mann who convinced the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) and the Museo del Palazzo di Venezia in Rome to collaborate on this ambitious exhibition which for the first time displayed the works of Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi in dialogue with each other. The curators claimed that an exhibition focusing on the work of both artists would allow for a more nuanced view of the achievements of both painters.
While the art historical literature on Artemisia is more extensive and sophisticated than that of her father, the public understanding of her life is much more rudimentary.8 Fundamental facts, such as the date of her death or the duration of her marriage remain unknown. Additionally, significant portions of her career have no recovered works. As is too frequent for female artists, after their death they are omitted from art historical texts and many works are left unclaimed in archives. Orazio, having a complete oeuvre, had 51 works exhibited whereas Artemisia had 35. This fundamental inequality between the two Gentileschi became a problem for exhibition curators, who approached the exhibit in similar but distinct manners.
In Rome, the exhibition was presented as two sequential shows, in which the work of Artemisia followed the work of her father. In Rome specifically, the selection of Orazio’s work was much more selective due to the allowances of various loans for the Roman location. The breadth of the presentation of Orazio’s work left no doubt as to the artist’s talent. As for Artemisia, her work “raised interesting questions as to her style, but it was difficult to assess the relationship of father and daughter and the stylistic debt that Artemisia owed her father.”9 This in of itself demonstrates how Artemisia’s work was framed within the context of Orazio’s mastery, due to the patriarchal nature of art historical discourse. This also indicates that the Roman display methods were unsuccessful in critiquing or shifting this problematic framing. Artemisia could not have been the successful artist she was without her father. While her father allowed her access to materials, painting lessons, and live models which otherwise would’ve been largely impossible for a woman to procure in seventeenth-century Rome, this largely negates Artemisia’s individual achievements for which she is recognized.10 In the Roman exhibit, Artemisia’s emotionally provocative approaches to the canvas are unrecognized, or, at the very least, uninteresting to curators.
The Roman exhibition emphasized Orazio’s influence on his daughter, a frustrating patriarchal notion that was only exaggerated at The Met in New York. To this end, the layout of the exhibition was somewhat amended. Instead of two separate exhibitions following each other, a section of Orazio’s work from 1605 to 1615 was installed in conjunction with Artemisia’s earliest canvases. As there was still an unequal number of artworks between the Gentileschis, the exhibit progressed with a continuation of Orazio’s work which was resumed with Artemisia’s work from her time in Florence. The narrative of this exhibition was focused on the discrepancy between Artemisia’s fame and her extant oeuvre. This is aligned largely with the marketing on block-buster exhibits. To sell tickets to the broader public, curators can rely on the narratives of the artist's life as opposed to the formal characteristics of their works. This is another facet of the art/life paradigm. Especially within the context of female artists such as Artemisia, where her life story has informed the public perception of her art, the exhibition focused largely on this narrative. These interpretations are shallow and problematic as they allow for a reductive understanding of Artemisia’s work.
The critical review of the Orazio and Artemisia exhibition by critic Sheila Ffolliott explains that “the effect at the Met, as well as in the catalog, is to give Orazio's story integrity and split Artemisia in two.”11 Additionally, Ffolliott regretted the use of the color on the walls which was meant to create distinction between the two artists’ works. Orazio’s works hung on a neutral beige wall whereas Artemisia’s were given a vibrant red background. This compelled Ffolliott to wonder “whether such a strong color interfered with the viewers' ability to perceive her color use or to distinguish modeling.”12 Ffolliott concludes that “the exhibition in New York creates an impressive upward trajectory for Orazio's career… while it fragments Artemisia's career and does not do justice to her late works.”13 Thus, the curators were more interested in creating a thoughtful retrospective of Orazio’s work, of which Artemisia’s work figures as evidence of Orazio’s genius influence, as opposed to independent innovation.
The exhibition in St. Louis decided to install the exhibit so that an initial gallery of Orazio’s work prior to Artemisia’s career then led into five galleries of their work together. The exhibit concluded with a gallery of Artemisia’s work after the death of her father. In St. Louis, several pieces were added which helped to round out Artemisia’s oeuvre. Thus, there was more flexibility in formulation for an exhibition narrative that does not so heavily rely on Orazio’s influence. However, the presentation of the work in St. Louis reinforced the stylistic similarities between father and daughter, formulating the narrative that Artemisia’s contemporary fame is owed to her father.
CRITICS RESPOND
The exhibit was commercially successful and well regarded insofar as its display of Orazio’s many works, but it received critique for the way in which Artemisia’s work was treated. The formulation of the one exhibit displaying both artists would inherently create the narrative that Artemisia’s fame is owed to her father, but this choice was justified by the curators for three main reasons. The first was that seeing both Gentileschi's works together would display the broad impact of Caravaggio’s work. Critics countered that several other shows have already served to illustrate Caravaggio’s broader impact, which has never been questioned.14 The second justification is that Orazio has yet to receive a monographic show whereas Artemisia received a small solo show in the 1980s in Italy and therefore to focus more heavily on Artemisia’s work would be redundant. Critics questioned the implication that Orazio deserves a solo exhibition.15 Additionally, if that was the interest of the curators, the exhibition should have displayed Orazio’s work only. An additional reason given for the dual exhibition is that Orazio's seventeenth-century fame eclipsed his daughters. Today, the inverse is true, and the exhibition therefore intended to champion Orazio’s claim to fame. Critiques emerged here due to the implication that this a regrettable development, asking why there is a desire to reclaim Artemisia’s success.16
Additionally, the exhibition was critiqued as ignoring the larger feminist discourse present in the art historical discipline. The catalog that accompanied the exhibit included an essay by Elizabeth Cropper entitled “Life on the Edge: Artemisia Gentileschi, Famous Woman painter.” In this essay Cropper attempts to historicize Artemisia’s situation and push back on earlier thought (which drove the exhibition’s display of Artemia’s work) that rejects the feminist interpretation of Artemia’s work, favoring instead to place her simply as an “artist”.17 Cropper explains that the feminist “interpretation cannot simply be ignored because the term ‘artist’ itself ignores important gendered implications. Including the gender dynamic present in both Artemisia’s life and work, Cropper (as according to Ffolliott) allows for a more subtle analysis that was absent in the exhibition.18 During the symposium following the exhibition, Pollock mentioned that “the debate rarely departed from the usual range of curatorial, connoisseurial, formal and iconographic investigations into attribution and quality. Only a moment was spared for what was, however, neatly repackaged for this audience as the ‘gender-based’ readings typical of feminists in the 1970s.”19 Between these two critiques, it becomes obvious that the focus of the exhibit was not on any feminist aspects of Artemisia’s works, which as we will now discuss, is an oversight.
Using the Orazio and Artemisia exhibition as a case study, we will see an intriguing juxtaposition begin to develop between the two Gentileschi. Since the works they created came from a very similar historical and geographical background and fall into Caravaggio’s style, Orazio’s work will provide us with a sort of independent variable in our study of gender. Orazio and Artemisia were well matched in skill and they painted relatively similar subjects, yet it is Orazio’s work that largely remains. Artemisia has a large swath of scholarly work focused on her, but this is mainly within a feminist context and is a recent development. Historically, however, Artemisia has largely been ignored whereas her father was not. The exhibition was able to precure a more complete collection of Orazio’s work and of the work that was displayed, the exhibition garnered criticism since it did not give complete context to Artemisia’s work, which should have included a feminist interpretation of her art. Since there was a large ignorance of Artemisia’s unique identity as a female painter, much of the meaning of Artemisia’s works are lost, or at the least ignored. The curators explained that they wanted to focus on her work as an artist, but as Pollock posits, “the desire to wish away the ethical burden of difference by appealing to some myth of ‘the general’” is a regression from the progress made since the 1970s.20 To ignore the lenses of gender is to ignore a fruitful means of interpreting works. Much of Artemisia’s artistic innovation and relevance relates to her depiction of women, not as objects for visual consumption, but as emotionally complex beings. Attending to gender is what brings forth these interpretations. Pollock explains further that “feminist interventions in arts’ and cultures’ histories are not some nice, optional or avoidable add-on. They are a redefinition of the objects we are studying.”21 In this way, the curators of the Orazio and Artemisia exhibit failed to compromise their methods in favor of a streamlined approach, and in doing so have disregarded Artemisia’s greater contribution to art history at large.
EMERGING METHODOLOGIES
New methods are required in order to make space for representation and intersectionality in art historical discourse. As Pollock explains, the long-favored methods of monographs, catalogs raisonnés, consideration of membership within artists groups, style, iconography, and the question of quality are not sufficient in creating space for female artists. “This would be a straitjacket in which our studies of women artists would reproduce and secure the normative status of men artists and men’s art whose superiority was unquestioned in its disguise as Art and the Artist.”22 This demonstrates the need for a paradigm shift but, “shifting the paradigm of art history involves… much more than adding new materials—women and their history—to existing categories and methods. It has led to wholly new ways of conceptualizing what it is we study and how we do it.”23
To this point, Judith Mann, the curator for the St. Louis portion of the exhibition, has published an article focusing on Artemisia’s various signatures as they provide additional insight to her ability to cultivate her image and her identity. “Analyzing the ways in which Artemisia Gentileschi signed her canvases broadens our understanding of the artist and proves her to be exceptionally creative in presenting her paintings to her public.”24 Mann discusses that Artemisia was widely innovative in the way she used her name, and the research Mann conducted “helps to advance the whole endeavor of investigating artists' signatures as it underlines the power that signatures could have in the early modern period to enrich the meanings of subjects, expand the enjoyment learned patrons could derive from works of art, [and] enhance painters' prospects for employment.”25 Mann found that the “wide disparities among the signatures in [Artemisia’s] pictures suggest that she used her painted name quite differently, as a means to enhance her identity as an artist, to intrigue her patrons, and to underscore the themes of her subject.”26
CONCLUSION
Artemisia, like many other female artists, has fallen victim to a legacy that has been swept away by history. However, her skill and intellectual approach to painting ensures her oeuvre’s contemporary relevance. Additionally, problematic methodologies must be critiqued. Such is the purpose of the critical discussion on “Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy” which this essay provides. For full impact, critical discourse must be supplemented by inclusive methodologies. Formulation of such methodologies will require creativity and discipline, but are necessary to capture the significance of every work.
Endnotes
Throughout this essay I will be referring to Artemisia using her first name. This is to engage with the existing scholarship of her life and work, in which she is referred to as Artemisia. It also provides a distinction between her and her father. Mary Garrard discusses this in her book Artemisia Gentileschi and Feminism in Early Modern Europe, claiming that “as Artemisia approaches twenty first century superstardom, it is right that she is now known by one name, just like Michelangelo, Raphael and Caravaggio. After all, her gravestone was reportedly inscribed simply ‘Haec Artemisia’—that single given name standing to attest her fame in her own time.”
Keith Christiansen and Judith Walker Mann, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), vii.
Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), 25.
Parker and Pollock, Old Mistresses, 21.
Griselda Pollock, “Feminist Dilemmas with the Art/Life Problem,” in The Artemisia Tiles: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other Thinking People (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 169–206.
Parker and Pollock, Old Mistresses, 21.
For the purposes of this essay, I have shortened the title and refer to it throughout as the Artemisia and Orazio exhibit.
Judith Walker Mann, Artemisia Gentileschi: Taking Stock (Brepols Pub, 2005), 1.
Mann, Taking Stock, 1.
Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (London: Thames & Hudson, Limited, 2021).
Sheila Ffolliott, "Review: Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi." Woman’s Art Journal 24, no. 2 (2003): 54.
Ffolliott, “Review of Orazio and Artemisia,” 54.
Ffolliott, “Review of Orazio and Artemisia,” 54.
Ffolliott, “Review of Orazio and Artemisia,” 53.
Ffolliott, “Review of Orazio and Artemisia,” 53.
Ffolliott, “Review of Orazio and Artemisia,” 53.
Ffolliott, “Review of Orazio and Artemisia,” 54.
Ffolliott, “Review of Orazio and Artemisia,” 54.
Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference (Routledge, 2015), xxv.
Pollock, Vision and Difference, xxvi.
Pollock, Vision and Difference, xxvi.
Pollock, Vision and Difference, 2.
Pollock, Vision and Difference, 7.
Judith Walker Mann, “Identity Signs: Meanings and Methods in Artemisia Gentileschi’s Signatures.” Renaissance Studies 23, no. 1 (2009): 72.
Mann, “Identity Signs,” 72.
Mann, “Identity Signs,” 74.
Bibliography
Christiansen, Keith, and Judith Walker Mann. Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001.
Ffolliott, Sheila. "Review: Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi." Woman’s Art Journal 24, no. 2 (2003): 53–55. https://doi.org/10.2307/1358795.
Garrard, Mary D. Artemisia Gentileschi and Feminism in Early Modern Europe. London Reaktion Books Ann Arbor, Michigan Proquest, 2021.
Mann, Judith Walker. Artemisia Gentileschi: Taking Stock. Brepols Pub, 2005.
Mann, Judith Walker “Identity Signs: Meanings and Methods in Artemisia Gentileschi’s Signatures.” Renaissance Studies 23, no. 1 (2009): 71–107. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24417558.
Nochlin, Linda. Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? London: Thames & Hudson, Limited, 2021.
Parker, Rozsika, and Griselda Pollock. Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981.
Pollock, Griselda. “Feminist Dilemmas with the Art/Life Problem.” In The Artemisia Tiles: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other Thinking People, 169–206. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Pollock, Griselda. Vision and Difference. Routledge, 2015.