ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI: Lives of The Artists

Artemisia Gentileschi was the greatest female artists of the Baroque age and one of the most brilliant followers of the great Caravaggio. As a young woman she was raped by her tutor, and then had to endure a seven month long trial during which she was brutally examined by the authorities. This very readable short biography tells us everything we need to know about the life of an extraordinary woman from a rough bit of Rome who survived multiple misogynies to become one of the most sought-after artists of the 17th century, and most celebrated artists of the Italian Baroque. She is currently being celebrated at the Royal Academy of Art in London in a special exhibition. A contemporary of Shakespeare and Rembrandt and friend of Galileo, she was a great woman in an age we usually associate with great men. The emotional directness of her paintings helped to make European art more human and approachable in the democratisation of culture known as the Baroque. She was a child prodigy trained by her artist father and could paint like an expert by the time she was 17. An obvious example of her pain and anger about her own rape is Judith and Holofernes, in which two women are depicted slaughtering a man. Artemisia escaped a hopeless marriage to live independently as the head of a household and brought up her daughter by herself, had at least one passionate affair, and became celebrated for her articulacy, talent and beauty. She worked for the Medici in Florence, and for Charles I in London. She could certainly dress the part and perform music like a born courtier, but she had in reality been born on the wrong side of a dung-spattered alley, growing up illiterate among artists who acted like thugs and who were in and out of prison. She never really lost her rough edge and was as real as her paintings. Painter, murderer and friend of her father, Caravaggio's sensational fusion of art and life enthralled her. A superb introduction, 128pp with 20 colour plates including her most famous works Daivd and Goliath and Susanna and the Elders.