'Artemisia' at the National Gallery

The first major exhibition of paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi in the UK has just opened at the National Gallery in London and it's well worth visiting. She's not a terribly well known artist so hopefully this exhibition will change that and give her the credit she deserves. Born in 1593, her father was an artist and follower of Caravaggio and that influenced her own paintings. She was raped by an artist friend of her dad's who was successfully prosecuted and she is noted for her depictions of powerful women, occasionally cutting off mens' heads. 

She left Rome for Florence where she became the first woman admitted to the Accademia, lived in Venice and Naples, was commissioned by Charles I and spent time in London with her dad who died here and then she returned to Italy. She had children, had love affairs and enjoyed an international reputation as an artist at the time but that reputation diminished over the years and is only now being rediscovered.

'Artemisia' is in the exhibition suite in the Sainsbury Wing and is quite large and spread out. Most of her paintings are large and it doesn't take many to fill up the walls of each room. There are also a few original letters from her and her husband with the curly script you'd expect from the first half of the 1600s. You need to be masked to get into the National Gallery at the allotted time on your ticket, then head downstairs to the exhibition space and join a short queue to get into the exhibition. There's a free audioguide to the exhibition you can stream and listen to on your own device of choice if you want to. And then in you go to the exhibition.

Artemisia seems to have had a stock of subjects she painted and painted again, such as Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes, sometimes with spouts of blood and other times with dribbles. Also Susanna and the Elders where the old men spy on the youthful Susanna and threaten to report her as whore unless she has sex with them. Susanna is definitely the victim of men in these paintings, trying to cover her nakedness from the lecherous old men.

It's difficult not to associate these paintings with her experience of being raped as a girl/young woman. There are also paintings of the death of Cleopatra and the asp, a powerful queen choosing death over slavery. There's a strong sense of morality, of nobility, in these paintings. Better to die in control of one's destiny than die as a slave. 

She used her own image as the basis for some of her paintings, such as her painting of Saint Catherine with her wheel symbol and holding the palm leaf of a martyr which is in the National Gallery collection and herself as a painter in the 'Allegory of Painting' in the Royal Collection. There's also a self-portrait of her as a lute player. I prefer the Saint Catherine painting since we see the face almost full on with a direct gaze, a confident woman knowing her fate and willing to face it without fear or shame.

It's well worth seeing this exhibition if you can, the first exhibition of her work in the UK. She led a colourful life and it's been interesting finding out more about her.