After seeing an exhibition of Baroque artists that included works by Artemisa, I was prompted to read Alexandra Lapierre's fictionalised biography of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656) which has been on the TBR forever...

Artemesia is a comprehensive work of research about this remarkable artist. Book One 'The Great Adventure' covers the traumatic period of Artemisia's childhood and adolescence. It begins with her father's loving relationship and enthusiasm for teaching her everything he knew about painting; covers the death of her mother and Artemesia's subsequent role as assistant to her father now bad-tempered, abusive and ungrateful; and goes on to the complete breakdown of that relationship when the family honour (yeah, *sigh* I know) was besmirched by her rape by Agostino Tassi, a family friend who was also an artist.

The book devotes many pages to the ins and outs of the trial that eventuated when her father Orazio took Tassis to court because he had lied about the death of his wife and could not marry Artemisia. This humiliating exposure of what had happened, made messier by the fact that Artemisia had subsequently consented to a relationship with Tassi in the hope that he would marry her, included her torture to 'prove that she was telling the truth' (only to show some pages later, that torture failed to get the truth out of a 'witness' who was an abject liar). TBH I tired of it all. It seemed a rather heartless retelling in which the political and legal machinations swamped the real story of a young girl's trauma, her attempts to come to terms with it and the lack of support from anyone, and that includes the live-in female friend of Orazio, Tuzia.

Because that real story explains why, when she made her subsequent career as a successful artist, so many of her works feature violence.

Book Two opens with the marriage that was engineered so that her father Ortazo could offload the 'spoiled goods' and she's in Florence, seemingly happily married with one son and another baby on the way.

Motherhood had calmed and softened her. She had melted into the solid old family of Stattesi craftsmen as smoothly as butter into a mould. Who would have believed it? This dishonoured daughter whom her father had described — out of 'honesty to his future son-in-law — as a shrew, bowed in everything to the wishes of her husband. Admittedly, Pierantonio was not known to be greatly demanding. He had only two weak points: a liking for comfort and a passion for luxury. Luxury was something Artemisia had no notion of at the time of their marriage. Pierantonio was the one who had taught her to recognise and cultivate a preference for rare cloths. (p.204)

Far be it from me to argue with a scholar who spent years researching this book, but I fail to see understand how Artemisa could have had no notion of luxury when part of her father's scheming to restore their position after the embarrassment of a notorious trial was to parade her prowess as an emerging artist in front of Scipione Borghese (yes he of the Villa Borghese and its sumptuous gardens). I bet he was dressed in rare cloths! Look at those skirts in Ottavio Leoni's portrait!!
Portrait of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (by Ottavio Leoni)

Yet this 'calm and softened' wife and mother, naive about luxury and power, produced the artworks you can see in the slideshow on my blog. Her works feature Biblical stories and mythological themes, and a shocking number of them feature women as victim and women wielding knives in revenge. Influenced at first by Caravaggio, she eventually developed her own naturalistic style of dramatic realism.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/02/04/artemisia-1998-by-alexandra-lapierre-transla... ( )

Loved it. No longer have it ( )

I gave this a good effort, but I just couldn't stick with it.

Biographie romancée ( )

History of Artemisia Gentileschi, a famous painter of 17th century Rome, her father, and the rape that shaped her life. Fascinating view of Italian society of this era and the world of painters. ( )