Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi was the first woman admitted to the Accademia in Florence, ran workshops in four cities, and painted Judith beheading Holofernes with a directness nobody else managed. She was trained by her father Orazio, a follower of Caravaggio, because no academy would take her. At seventeen she was raped by Agostino Tassi, a painter engaged to teach her perspective; her father prosecuted, and the seven-month trial in 1612 put her through examination under thumbscrews to test her testimony and a gynaecological examination in open court. Tassi was convicted and the sentence was never enforced. She married and moved to Florence, where she was taken up by the Medici, knew Galileo, and was elected to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in 1616. The paintings are large, violent and physically credible - her Judith uses her weight and braces her arms, which is how the act would actually be done - and she returned to female protagonists throughout: Susanna, Jael, Lucretia, Cleopatra. She worked in Rome, Venice, Naples and London, negotiated her own commissions and prices, and supported her daughters by it. Her reputation collapsed after her death, her work was reattributed to men for three centuries, and recovery began seriously only in the 1970s. The trial transcript survives in full and has been published, which is why the case is documented in unusual detail for the period. Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting is in the Royal Collection. Her Judith Slaying Holofernes hangs in the Uffizi and a second version in Naples. She corresponded with patrons about money in terms that leave no doubt she knew her own worth.

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