From Mannerism to Baroque: Artemisia Gentileschi
As we move beyond the late Renaissance and Mannerist periods and enter the Baroque era, we observe a notable increase in the number of women recognized as professional artists. This shift, driven by changes in patronage and taste, is well documented in the literature provided for this unit.
As discussed in the section on Lavinia Fontana, the Counter-Reformation played a significant role in enabling women to pursue professional careers as artists, particularly by encouraging commissions of religious subjects. However, as we progress into the Baroque period, new opportunities emerged for artists drawn to secular themes—allegorical scenes, still lifes, and landscapes among them.
We previously encountered still-life painting in the career of Fede Galizia, but we will explore further exceptional examples when examining the work of Giovanna Garzoni.
Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome, 1593–Naples, 1654 or later) is one of the most celebrated female painters of the Baroque period. Though internationally renowned in her lifetime, her reputation waned after her death as her naturalistic style fell out of favour, replaced by a preference for a more classical aesthetic. It was only in the latter half of the twentieth century that she was rediscovered, her oeuvre reassessed, and her work featured in seminal exhibitions and publications.
Like many women artists, Artemisia’s legacy was affected by over-attribution. Now that her authenticated body of work has been refined, her technical mastery and artistic significance have become increasingly clear.
Artemisia lost her mother at the age of twelve. A few years later, around 1608–09 her father, Orazio Gentileschi, began to train her. Artemisia was likely around fifteen, or possibly younger.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders, ca. 1610. Schloss Weißenstein collection, Pommersfelden, Germany
The fact that she painted Susanna and the Elders at just seventeen has led some scholars to suggest her father must have assisted her. The story, taken from the Book of Daniel, tells of a virtuous young woman who, while bathing, is accosted by two older men who threaten to ruin her reputation unless she agrees to sleep with them.
In the hands of male artists—Tintoretto, Rubens, Ludovico Carracci, Guido Reni—the subject offered a convenient excuse to depict a nude woman in a voyeuristic scene, typically framed for a male audience. In Tintoretto’s version, for instance, Susanna is shown admiring herself in a mirror, her luminous skin starkly contrasting the dark background, drawing the viewer’s gaze while the two leering elders go almost unnoticed.
Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto, Susanna and the Elders, 1555-56. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Artemisia’s interpretation could not be more different. Feminist art historians have described it as a groundbreaking depiction—telling the story from the point of view of the victim, not the predator. In her version, the men loom ominously over Susanna, who recoils, arms raised in self-defense. The intrusion is unmistakably unwelcome.
The infamous 1611 rape of Artemisia by Agostino Tassi—a colleague of her father who had been hired to teach her perspective—and the following public trial casts a long shadow over her early work.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith beheading Holofernes, 1611-12. Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
The first version of Judith Slaying Holofernes, painted during this tumultuous period and now housed in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples, has often been interpreted as a response to her trauma. Many scholars believe Artemisia identified strongly with the biblical heroine.
Shortly after the trial, she married Pierantonio Stiattesi and relocated to Florence. There, as a respectable married woman, she moved within the city’s intellectual and artistic circles—meeting figures like Galileo Galilei and Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith beheading Holofernes, ca. 1620. Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The second version of Judith Slaying Holofernes, painted around 1620 and now in the Uffizi, shows marked artistic development. Although the first version has been trimmed, comparison reveals refined technique, enhanced use of textiles, and more expressive anatomy—Holofernes’ head being a particularly striking improvement.
One notable compositional change is the longer, more vertically held sword in the Uffizi painting. It now forms the central axis of the work, starting with Abra’s arm and continuing down to the blood-soaked sheets. This detail underscores the women’s coordinated strength in carrying out the gruesome act.
While Artemisia’s trauma undeniably influenced her work, it is reductive to read her art solely through that lens. Her compositional refinements show a keen understanding of local Florentine tastes and a deliberate artistic evolution. Her depictions of biblical violence also align with Baroque aesthetics—dramatic, theatrical, and emotionally charged.
Her most admired works today are those influenced by Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro style. Judith Slaying Holofernes, now prominently displayed in the Uffizi, was long hidden from view due to its disturbing content. By the 18th century, the painting had been banished to a dark, seldom-visited corner of the gallery. In the 19th century, art historian Anna Brownell Jameson even wished she could “burn it to ashes.”
As seen with Sofonisba Anguissola, early women artists often produced self-portraits. But seventeenth-century artists like Artemisia began experimenting with new forms of self-representation. Unlike their male counterparts—such as Caravaggio, who may have used his own face for his Medusa, or Annibale Carracci’s meta-self-portrait in the Hermitage—women artists often depicted themselves as allegorical figures, shaped by sources like Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia and the theatrical visual culture of the Baroque.
Artemisia is frequently seen as inserting her own likeness into her heroines. Recurring features—shaggy hair, high forehead, drooping eyelids, pronounced cheekbones, pursed lips, a long neck—suggest that many of her protagonists may indeed bear her image.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as a Lute Player, 1615-1617. The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford
In Self-Portrait as a Lute Player, Artemisia does not reference her profession or status, but instead disguises herself wearing a theatrical costume. Rediscovered in 1998, it may have been commissioned by Cosimo II de’ Medici. Some suggest Artemisia, in her early twenties, portrayed herself as a noblewoman-musician, echoing earlier portraits by Anguissola and Fontana. The use of ultramarine for her satin dress emphasizes the luxury of the costume—paralleling contemporary Florentine painters like Cristofano Allori, godfather to Artemisia’s son Cristofano.
Cristofano Allori, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1610-12. Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Letizia Treves, curator of the 2020 London exhibition, and others have proposed that the painting reflects Artemisia’s performance at the 1615 Ballo delle Zingare (Dance of the Gypsy Women) at the Medici court. Her headscarf and earring support this reading, as gypsies were often painted with turbans. The idea that she painted herself as a prostitute—an outdated and unfounded claim—is firmly rejected by modern scholars.
In 1616, Artemisia joined the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno. Although she is often cited as the first woman to join, she was not an accademico, meaning she could not participate in governance. That honour would not come until Giovanna Fratellini’s election in 1711.
Despite her success in Florence, Artemisia never received a permanent court appointment. Following Cosimo II’s death, his regents—Christine of Lorraine and Maria Magdalena of Austria—supported many female artists, but not Artemisia.
She left Florence in 1620, separated from her husband by 1622, and returned to Rome, where she supported herself independently. In Rome, Artemisia painted Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, another grand and powerful depiction of the heroine of the Israelites–remarkable in size (the painting measures 184 x 141.6 cm), composition, colours, and chiaroscuro.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, ca. 1623-25. Detroit Institute of Arts
Filling the space of the painting, Judith and Abra are shown after the master stroke. They are looking as if considering it safe to leave the tent with the head of Holofernes. While drops of blood are about to fall from the blade, you can’t help feeling sorry for the stain it will leave on that magnificent gold silk dress. Creamy white fabrics, which became the hallmark of Artemisia’s Neapolitan period, already make an appearance.
This is a true masterpiece with the strength and bravery of Judith and Abra matching Artemisia’s technical skill, especially her command of chiaroscuro.
Chiaroscuro is mostly associated with Caravaggio, who was an acquaintance of Artemisia’s father, and whom she may have encountered as a young adolescent.
The scene is illuminated by a candle, and another light source coming from the lower left side of the painting. While this is a technique used by Caravaggio, the raking lamplight reminds the nocturnal subjects painted by Gerrit van Honthorst.
Although van Honthorst had left Rome in 1620, Artemisia must have been familiar with the several works the Dutch painter had left behind. She had in fact begun associating with Flemish, Dutch, and French painters as soon as she had moved back to Rome from Florence. It has been suggested that she was hanging out with the foreigners because she felt a bit like an outsider herself.
The attention to details in the folds of the gowns and the draped velvet curtain in the background, the diadem and the pearl drop earring is equally superb.
Finally, there is the still life vignette on the left to consider. On the table, covered with a velvet malachite green tablecloth decorated with gold thread, rests a brass candle holder with a burning candle, a gauntlet for the right hand, and the cover of the sword which is still in Judith’s hand.
Although both women are young, they couldn’t be more different in their references to Classicism and naturalism. While Judith is idealised in her paler complexion, Abra reminds Caravaggio’s models in her bare feet and humble attire. Artemisia, though, used for Abra’s skirt the most expensive of the blue pigments – ultramarine blue.
In 1627 (or late 1626), Artemisia moved to Venice, possibly following the 3rd Duke of Alcalá, a devoted patron who had arrived in Rome in 1625 as the first Spanish Ambassador to the Holy See, that is the court of Urban VIII.
With such a fine growing reputation, both in Spain and Rome, the Barberini family, and the Barberini secretary Cassiano dal Pozzo, started to think of Artemisia as politically useful.
In Venice, where Artemisia turned from the Caravaggesque naturalism to the Bolognese idealism, the painter’s style became more graceful, the brushwork softer and looser.
Although the post-Caravaggesque works often disappoint modern viewers, they were the most appreciated and celebrated by her contemporary critics. What is more, eighteenth-century writers would consider Artemisia Gentileschi not a follower of Caravaggio but the heir of the Carracci tradition.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Esther Before Ahasuerus, ca. 1627-30. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
In Esther Before Ahasuerus the brave and beautiful dressed wife of the King of Persia is shown fainting before her husband (but held up by two women) as she had been fasting for several days after knowing of the order to execute all Jewish people in the Persian Empire.
As said in the Old Testament, Esther took a huge risk showing up without being summoned and challenging the King's authority in public while pleading for her people. Thankfully, the King, who also looks ready to come to his wife's rescue with his left leg outstretched, responded well to Esther’s plea and decided to revoke the order.
As more of Artemisia’s personal history is discovered by scholars, a more complex picture emerges. When Artemisia moved to Venice, she met members of the Accademia degli Incogniti—a society of intellectuals, mainly noblemen who used to have debates on the role and nature of women (the so-called “questione della donna”).
Recognizing that being a woman offered her a rare perspective and authority on many artistic subjects, Artemisia started dealing with such themes and putting biblical heroines, but also more controversial women, at the centre of her production.
It has been noted that in time Artemisia's women became more clever than violent, preferring to tease men instead of beheading them. A good case in point is this depiction of a wife, Esther, who knows how to convince her husband, King Ahasuerus. Looking anything like a calm ruler, the young king is cutting a rather comic figure in his high white boots and thigh-length trunk hose—an attire very similar, too similar perhaps, to some seventeenth-century theatrical costumes.
The Venetian period didn’t last longer than three or four years if in 1630 Artemisia was already living in Naples. It is likely that Artemisia left Venice because of the plague and moved to Naples to accompany, as suggested by the Barberini family, the Duke of Alcalá who had in the meantime become Viceroy (1629-31). It is worth noting that this office was the most lucrative Spanish post.
Another important woman artist of the seventeenth century, Giovanna Garzoni, left Venice and moved to Naples in 1630. It is not clear if it happened because of the admiration of the viceroy for the work of these two women painters or the friendship formed between Artemisia and Giovanna.
In the 1630s, Artemisia continued exploring cunning and dangerous women—Omphale, Delilah, Corisca—who outsmarted men not for redemption, but to highlight male vulnerability.
Of the playful, gendered twist on the myth of Corisca and the Satyr, I have written here.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Corisca and the Satyr, 1636-37. Private collection, Naples
Naples, like Spain, was not interested in the contemporary Tuscan and Roman schools but looking, instead, at the Flemish, Lombard, and Venetian artistic productions.
Artists living and working in this city during the 1630s started focusing on colour combinations, moving on from Caravaggio’s style and looking at what contemporary Venetian and Bolognese artists were producing. Also, it's important to remember that it was in Naples that Domenichino, one of the most important painters of the Bolognese school, spent the last decade of his life, from 1631 to 1641.
During this decade, not only Artemisia's style changed but it caused changes in Neapolitan painting too. The eighteenth-century biographer, Bernardo de Dominici wrote that Artemisia’s colouring inspired, or at least affected, Massimo Stanzione and Bernardo Cavallino. In time that led to works by Artemisia being attributed to these two important Neapolitan painters. Corisca and the Satyr, for instance, has been for a long time attributed to Stanzione.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait, 1630-35. Galleria Nazionale, Palazzo Barberini, Rome
As gallerie were spaces where private art collections were exhibited and admired by strolling and conversing guests, self-portraits became a prompt for witty conversations.
This self-portrait was painted for such a space—the galleria of Palazzo Barberini in Rome—and it can still stimulate conversation among the viewers as the man on the easel hasn’t been identified yet. Orazio Gentileschi, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Diego Velásquez, and Nicolas Poussin are among the names that have been suggested.
For years it has been thought that Artemisia was honouring the father Orazio with this double-portrait. Considering similar works by women artists (Elisabetta Sirani, just to name one) we can understand why Orazio Gentileschi would have been the first name coming to mind. But now that details of Artemisia’s artistic and private life have been unearthed, we can see why he may not be the ideal candidate. Orazio Gentileschi influenced Artemisia’s artist career only up to a point as, very soon, they went separate ways.
In recent years, another name has been put forward, that of Artemisia’s lover—Francesco Maria Maringhi.
Artemisia met and started a relationship with Francesco Maria Maringhi, an aristocrat at the service of the Frescobaldi family, immediately after arriving in Florence after the infamous rape trial of 1612. Up until 2011, when the art historian Franscesco Solinas discovered in the archive of the Florentine banking dynasty a cache of letters written by Artemisia, it had been thought that the relationship had ended after the painter left Florence for Rome in 1620.
Besides the letters, some likeness with the sitter of a portrait currently in the Louvre—Portrait of a Gentleman by Simon Vouet—has been noted. A link to a video that, produced by Palazzo Blu in Pisa, explores the theory that the gentleman portrayed is Artemisia's lover can be found in the ‘Taking it further’ section.
Simon Vouet, Portrait de jeune homme, 1616-18. Louvre, Paris
In 1638 Artemisia left Naples for London, possibly because after France had declared war to Spain in 1635, life in wartime Naples (which was under Spanish rule at the time) had become difficult.
In London Artemisia assisted her father Orazio in completing the nine paintings commissioned by Queen Henrietta Maria to celebrate the reign of her husband, King Charles I, in the Great Hall of the Queen’s House in Greenwich. When Orazio died the year following her arrival, Artemisia stayed to complete the group now known as An Allegory of Peace and the Arts and exhibited in Marlborough House on Pall Mall, London.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Allegory of Painting, 1638-39. Royal Collection Trust, London
Following Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, the popular hand book for allegorical personifications that must have been the principal source for the iconography of the afore-mentioned group of paintings, Artemisia painted her Allegory of Painting as a beautiful woman with unruly locks and wearing a gold chain with a mask as a pendant. Painting is depicted at the stage of inventing—the canvas is blank—and this gives the work great visual energy.
Although it has been, and it still is, considered a self-portrait it has been pointed out that this is not one. The confusion is the consequence of a misreading of the Hampton Court inventory which mentioned two paintings, an Allegory of Painting and a Self-Portrait. The latter has been lost.
In 1640 Artemisia returned to Naples where, although commissions from the viceregal court had declined, a few generous aristocratic patrons from all Southern Italy were still supporting her.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders, 1652. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna
Susanna and the Elders is Artemisia’s last dated painting—a large canvas in which the artist revisits one of her earliest themes.
During her career, Artemisia had repeatedly returned to this subject in order to respond (and conquer) a niche market that flourished during the Counter-Reformation—that of female nudes.
As in the one painted in 1610, at the beginning of her career, Susanna is seated on a balustrade. But that is where the similarities end as, in this version, Susanna does not turn away from the two onlookers—she stares at them just as they stare at her. Seated under a rather tenebrous sky (the clear blue one is gone), Susanna raises her arm and, in doing so, casts a shadow on her face and neck. The hand succeeds in blocking the men’s gazes. Also, Susanna’s body is covered by a veil which contrasts vividly with the heavy fabrics of the two men’s clothes.
The painting is in the collection of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna because when it was left to the Italian State in the 1940s it was believed to be by the Bolognese painter Elisabetta Sirani and therefore assigned to that city's art gallery.
Also, Artemisia’s soft, light, and fluid brushwork must have led art historians to believe the work to be a product of the Emilian painting school. Hence, the attribution to Elisabetta Sirani.
By the eighteenth century, Artemisia had achieved a great artistic reputation, mainly owing to the works produced after her second stay in Rome. This is because, while in fiercely competitive Rome, Artemisia didn’t receive any public religious commission and, with her paintings produced for private patrons and displayed in private spaces, her art remained inaccessible to most people.
Averardo de’ Medici, the eighteenth-century owner of the painting, wrote in 1792 what is believed to be the first complete biography of the painter. Based on this and other literary accounts, we know that Artemisia’s reputation grew up until the first half of the nineteenth century.
We do not know the exact year of Artemisia’s death. She was last documented in Naples in 1654, and likely died shortly thereafter, possibly a victim of the plague that ravaged the city. According to tradition, she was buried in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Florentine national church in Naples, though the building was later destroyed and records remain incomplete.
Taking it further
Artemisia in her own words | 2020 Exhibition at the National Gallery, London
Artemisia’s letters to her lover translated in English
[In Italian] Artemisia. Le lettere indirizzate all'amante Francesco Maria Maringhi | Palazzo Blu | Video
The Marlborough House ceiling by Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi | An Allegory of Peace and the Arts, ca. 1635-8
Artemisia’s Neapolitan period has been reassessed in the last decade or so mainly through these two exhibitions:
Pisa, Palazzo Blu, 2013 | Artemisia: La musa Clio e gli anni napoletani
Napoli, Gallerie d’Italia, 2023 | Artemisia Gentileschi a Napoli
