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• 1 media/Self-portrait cropped.jpg 2020-10-14T21:50:11+00:00 Elisabetta Sirani: Representing the Underrepresented 14 by Even Johnson image_header 2020-10-19T16:29:21+00:00      Elisabetta Sirani was a Bolognese painter who lived a brief life from 1638-1665. She was known for innovative interpretations of female characters in her history paintings. One such character being Timoclea from Plutarch’s biography of Alexander the Great. In this painting, Sirani’s use of dynamic movement, lighting, and blocking contribute to its purpose of showing a female character as the hero of her own story. 
  
  Observing this painting from a denotative perspective, we see a woman pushing a man into a well. Based on the man’s facial expression, he seems to have been caught completely off guard. The woman has a look of resolute determination on her face. There is not a smidge of hesitance or concern to be seen. She believes her actions to be entirely within the right in this situation. We can deduce the social statuses of these characters based on several visual cues. The man is a soldier in the army because of the sword hilt seen at his waist, the long red cape, and the body armor. It looks like the woman is someone of wealth and high status due to her elegant black dress, matching headpiece, and earrings. We can tell that the woman, the man, and the well are the most important subjects of the painting because they take up the most space and have been painted with the most detail. Everything else is either in shadow or painted less clearly. Observing the setting, I believe the characters are outside in a garden, because wells are usually in gardens. The well itself is decorated with images depicting some Greek myth with centaurs and humans fighting each other. The pot for drawing water from the well is noticeably made of metal (possibly bronze) instead of wood. This is a personal garden in someone’s home because of the wall seen behind the characters making it seem less public. Sirani has also made a point to sign her name on the bottom of the well. 
       For context, the story being told by Sirani is that of Timoclea, a character from Plutarch’s biography of Alexander the Great, shoving her rapist down a well. As the story goes, in 335 BC Alexander the Great conquered Thebes and his Thracian forces then pillaged the city. One of the captains in Alexander’s army raped Timoclea, a wealthy young woman of high character and reputation. Afterwards, he demanded to know if there was any hidden money in the house. She said there was some hidden in the well in the garden. She led him there and when he leaned over to look in, she pushed him into the well and threw heavy stones into it until he died. This is known as a “history painting” because it depicts a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject like in a portrait or still life. The dimensions of Timoclea Kills the General of Alexander the Great are about 7.5 x 5.5 ft. For comparison, the painting is about as tall as your average store-bought Christmas tree. 
       This painting contains the usual style characteristics of a Baroque painting, all of which contribute to telling the story. Sirani wanted to make Timoclea the hero of her traumatic tale instead of a victim. The first way she accomplishes this is through dynamic posing. Looking at the position of the characters,Timoclea is upright in a position of physical power while the general is pointed headfirst into the well at a forty-five-degree angle.This makes a triangle shape between the three characters with the well at the point of convergence between the other two character's sight lines. Next is lighting. Because two of the most illuminated characters in the painting are facing the well it automatically makes it the object of most importance. There are two reliefs embellishing the well. The one on the left shows the battle between the Lapiths and centaurs after the centaurs misbehave at Hippodamia’s wedding. The one on the right is of Galatea, a statue carved by Pygmalion which then came to life. According to Amy Golahny, Richmond Professor Emerita at Lycoming College, what these stories have in common is, “Both subjects demonstrate the conflict between higher powers of reason and lower instincts.” Another point worth discussing is the vibrancy of the general’s red cape. Vibrant colors were also an important characteristic of baroque paintings. The blood red color of the cape adds a feeling of violence to the painting without Sirani having to paint actual blood or gore. “Seeing red” is also a phrase that comes to mind when looking at the cape. It's a phrase that’s commonly used to describe feelings of intense anger. Timoclea must have felt incredible anger towards her rapist. Enough that it would give her the strength to shove him into a well. Speaking of Timoclea, Sirani has painted her in a nearly all black gown. This could mean several things. Because it is black and blends in with the shadows, it takes the focus off her body, keeping the intended line of direction towards the well. Black also means death which makes Timoclea seems like a “harbinger of death” like character. An appropriate choice considering she is literally murdering someone in front of the viewer. Black is also the opposite of white, a color usually associated with purity. Since Timoclea was raped, Sirani could be implying through the color of her dress that she has lost her purity.
  
  Due to these combining factors of lighting, posing, color, and composition, the eye’s natural path goes from Timoclea’s determined face, down the length of the general’s body, finally ending on the well and Sirani’s signature. Her decision to sign her name on arguably the most important subject of the painting is quite a bold move. She has literally and figuratively carved her name onto this painting. Looking closely at the signature, we see that she did not write her full name. She shortened Elisabetta to Elisab Sirani. Artemisia Gentileschi, a famous painter from the Renaissance era, did something similar on her painting, Suzanna and the Elders, where she cut off the -misia of her first name using Suzanna’s shadow. What these painters did was essentially remove the feminine portions of their names. I believe they did this in order to prevent their paintings from seen as “female paintings.” They wanted their work to be viewed on the same level as a man’s. 
       There were many barriers female artists faced in the Baroque era of Italy that prevented them from becoming great artists. The most prominent obstacle being the inability to receive proper training. Women weren’t allowed to go to art school.They also couldn’t seek out a private instructor because it wasn’t proper for a young female to live with a male teacher, which is how private instruction worked during that time. With a situation like that, there was always the possibility she could be raped. This is exactly what happened to Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few female painters who was allowed to be sent to a male teacher. This is why male painters were not generally the sons of artists, because they were free to leave the family and receive outside education from an art school or private instructor. The few female painters there were only knew how to paint because they had artist fathers or someone in the family who could teach them art. Another barrier female artists faced was the commonly held belief that in order to be a great artist you had to have two qualities called ingegno (intelligence or ingenuity) and invenzione. Invenzione, being defined as, “the ability to conceptualize one’s own ideas and invent ever more ingenious ways of interpreting and representing them,” was extremely important because it was the mark of an artist’s genius. This quality was generally thought to be lacking in women because it was believed they, “… could only produce imitative works, derived from others and not the fruit of their own genius.” Sirani overcame these barriers through the support of her family, the receptive environment of her birth city, and her unique approach to painting. 
       Sirani was born in Bologna, Italy which was the only European city that allowed women to receive systematic art training. Her father, Giovanni Andrea Sirani, also happened to be an artist who studied under the famous Renaissance painter Guido Reni. By the time Sirani was born, her father had his own studio which is where she started her artistic training. The reason why her father decided to train her at all is thanks to some persuasion by Carlo Cesare Malavisia, a Bolognese scholar and art historian. Malavisia was well aquainted with the Sirani family and recognized that Elisabetta had talent. He would go on to to include her in his 1678 publication of Felsina pittrice, a biography detailing the lives of Bolognese painters. In regards to invenzione and ingeno, Sirani was able to subvert the belief that women could only produce “imitative works” by painting themes and subjects not usually depicted in art. You can’t be accused of imitating art if you intentionally paint subjects male artists rarely painted. When Sirani did paint a popular subject that could be directly compared to paintings by other male artists, she did so innovatively through her rejection of erotic portrayals of female protagonists. Instead she opted to present these women as the heroes of their story by emphasizing their integrity, bravery, and intellect. We see this in her painting of Timoclea, seen paragraph one, as she throws her rapist down a well. 
  
  In my research, I only found two other images that depicted Timoclea before Sirani painted her version in 1659. The first image is an oval painting by Domenicino from 1615. This version of Timoclea shows the events of what happened after she killed the general who assaulted her. It’s more about showing off the incredible mercy of Alexander (as he chose to spare her) than representing Timoclea herself. The next image is an illustration by Matthäus Merian found in a world-history book written by J. L. Gottfried in 1629. It is no coincidence that Sirani’s painting looks similar to the illustration done by Merian. This is because Sirani intended Timoclea Kills the General of Alexander the Great, to be an oil painting adaptation of his work. Looking at these two artworks side by side, Sirani kept the requisite narrative elements of Merian’s piece: well, garden, house, and the general poses of Timoclea and the general. What’s interesting is the elements she decided to change. The first noticeable difference is the perspective. In Merian’s illustration the viewer is looking slightly downwards onto the scene from a bit of a distance. Sirani has the viewer much closer to the action and on the same plane as Timoclea. The fact that she’s seven feet tall in the painting also makes her seem more imposing. When comparing the garden setting, Merian shows a lot more of the actual garden than Sirani does. I believe Sirani did this because she wanted the focus to be on Timoclea and the intensity of the scene. Having a lot of trees, flowers, and foliage surrounding her would’ve romanticized her actions too much. Another difference between the two works is while Merian drew the general already halfway into the well, Sirani painted it so the audience could still see his face. Again, the effect this change has intensifies the emotion of the scene. If she painted the general like Merian did, Timoclea’s actions would seem less impactful, as if it were censored. Hiding the general’s face makes it seem as if he’s an object being acted upon, rather than an actual person being murdered. The final difference I’m going to discuss is the silhouette of Timoclea herself. In Merian’s version she is slightly hunched over, staring down into the well. From this angle, the expression on her face isn’t very readable. It’s hard to gauge how she feels about her actions. Sirani makes it plain as day how Timoclea feels. Her brow is furrowed, posture upright and grounded. All these subtle changes lend itself to a powerful portrayal of Timoclea’s character. 
       Elisabetta Sirani faced several barriers throughout her lifetime that would’ve prevented her from becoming a great artist. Nonetheless, she was able to overcome them thanks to her ability to play the system and the support of her family and hometown. One can only imagine how many masterpieces could’ve been created had female artists been granted the same access to art education as their male contemporaries. If there is one bright side to all the hardships women had to go through, it is that humanity would’ve never been graced with the creation of such amazing artworks had women been treated as equals from the start.