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• 1 2020-10-14T21:53:08+00:00 Jamie Weiss Essay 1 41 Feminism in Artemisia’s Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting plain 2020-12-07T17:04:24+00:00

  Feminism in Artemisia’s Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting
  
  Artemisia Gentileschi is considered one of the most well known female Baroque artists because she defied gender roles being the first woman to be accepted into the prestigious Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (the Academy of Arts and Drawing) and created paintings that represented the female perspective with quality that was on par with the work of her male counterparts. Despite her accomplishments, she faced many hardships as an artist being raped and trivialized by the men in her profession, society, and her story being overshadowed in art history. Her art typically depicted heroines who were outlets to convey the adversity and hardships she experienced as a woman artist. Artemisia Gentileschi’s, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, c. 1630s is a feminist piece that is the cumulation of Gentileschi’s experience being a woman during the Baroque era in her patriarchal profession and her desire for recognition, equality, and acceptance.

  Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome in 1593 to Prudentia Monotone Gentileschi and Orazio Gentileschi, an Italian painter. As his only daughter, Orazio taught her early on to follow in his footsteps as a painter and connected her with many artists in Rome such as Carvaggio whose chiaroscuro style, contrast of light and shadow, would greatly influence her own works throughout the years. However, since craftsmanship and academia were limited to men during the Baroque era, Artemisia would not be able to practice painting, reading or writing through a school. Instead, her father would go on to hire Agostino Tassi who was brought in to help Artemisia refine her painting techniques. As her mentor, Tassi had a lot of alone time with Artemisia and she revealed that during this unsupervised time that he had raped her. Following the rape, she began relations with Tassi thinking they would later wed since she was a virgin, but Tasssi refused to partake in marriage. As a response to his refusal and Artemisia losing her virginity, her father pressed charges against Tassi and she was forced to endure gynaecological procedures to prove her virginity and was tortured with thumbscrews in order to prove her story. While Tassi was eventually found guilty and exiled from Rome, he received protection from the Pope because of his artistic skills and notoriety. As a result of Tassi’s pardon and her reputation being hindered, her subsequent paintings depicted heroines either being attacked by men like in Susanna and the Elders, 1610 or as seeking revenge like in Judith and Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, 1620 - 1621. It is very evident that the events Artemisia experienced as the student of Tassi influenced the themes she explores in her work as she provides an alternate female perspective of often religious paintings and real life. 
  
   

  Artemisia was invited to London in 1638 by Charles I, where she was thought to have produced her later piece, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, c. 1630s in England. In this piece, she utilizes what is assumed to be her own self portrait as the subject for her oil painting on canvas. During this time, it was often uncommon for women to be the depictors of their gender since they were typically painted by men, giving Artemisia the rare opportunity to represent herself as she saw herself. In this case, a professional and skilled woman painter with confidence who held her brush in one hand and her palette in the other. Gentileschi also utilized elements of the standard iconography from Cesare Ripa’s Allegory of Painting by having “a beautiful woman, with full black hair, dishevelled, and twisted in various ways, with arched eyebrows that show imaginative thought, the mouth covered with a cloth tied behind her ears, with a chain of gold at her throat from which hangs a mask, and has written in front 'imitation.” While she implements almost all of these in her self portrait, she does not include the gag that covers the mouth. This might suggest her refusal to be silenced as a woman artist and/or her disinterest in following the traditional path for a woman during this time. 
  
  

  In her self portrait, she wears a muted green dress and brown apron as she is surrounded by a brown background which can be interpreted to be both the background for her portrait and the blank canvas for which her self portrait will create. The portrait serves as an allegory because the woman in the self portrait doesn’t represent Gentilschi but the act of a woman painter. With her confident, skilled, and detailed posture, she illustrates the female personification of the painting, to which her male peers are unable to produce on both a portrait and allegorical level. Self portraits during this time period typically illustrated the person sitting or standing, with the subject looking at the viewer, their body positioned facing left or right and rarely showing the subject as being engaged in an activity. For Artemisia, her subject of the portrait is not centered so as to bring attention to the subject as a painter and the movement of the brush which creates the illusion of depth. This is achieved by the light source of the spotlight separating her body from the background with a dramatic chiaroscuro style and the subject tilting their head towards the viewer which makes it seem like it goes beyond the canvas’s surface. Her attention to detail and being able to replicate texture so realistically proves her profound ability of imitation. This work can be considered a feminist piece as Artimesia proves she can equally create a painting a man is capable of painting. Not only does this piece demand the viewer to reflect on the technicality of the painting, but more importantly commemorates her place in the profession of the art world. This is also emphasized through the lighting that does not highlight the tools needed to paint but her mind and her as the artist. Finally, Artemisia provokes feminism by using her painting to empower women unlike paintings created by males that sexualize and demean women. 

  Considering the time at which Artemisia created this self portrait, revolutionary seems like a bit of an understatement. Unless you had connections or a father who was an artist like Artemisia, women were not allowed to pursue education or craftsmanship. Even though Artemisia was more privileged than other women at that time and was able to have the proper training, she still was a victim to violence and patriarchal oppression both physically and intellectually. Despite this, she was able to channel her traumatic past into her feminst art that forces herself to be recognized as an artist, questions the roles of women in the Baroque area, and normalizes conversations about what she and other women experience. While her work often gets compared to her father and those of her mentors because of their similar styles and techniques, her work stands as its own due to its unique feminist approach during a time that supressed women’s voices. In Artemisia Gentileschi’s, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, c. 1630s, she depicts a realistic self portrait that asks its viewers not to examine the work as made by a female but to look at the work as if it was created by an artist.