Artemisia Gentileschi: Talent and Torment (Part 1)

Welcome to Stories of Art. I'm James Fox. And I'm Alistair Souk. Two women roll up their sleeves and set to work. One of them holds a man down.

The other plunges a sword into his neck, sending blood spurting across the darkness of the room. He screams and writhes in agony. But the women show no mercy.

They need to complete the job. Their lives depend on it. That was a description of the most famous painting by one of the great artists of the 17th century, a ferocious Italian painter whose life was marked by trauma, violence and criminality and controversy,

whose often brutal pictures still, even today, have the power to shock. Her name, for she was indeed a she, is Artemisia Gentileschi. She's quite the phenomenon, isn't she? She is one of the most compelling artists in the history of Western art. And I think the thing that's fascinating for me about her is the way that she still feels so, I don't know, it's a slightly kind of strange word to use, but relevant. It's sort of almost a cliche to say that. But her work resonates today and I think chimes with all sorts of issues.

and I don't know, you know, she's someone who, she's in all of the art history textbooks and she has been for a long time, but certainly for me, the first time that I really engaged

with her work in any depth, and was this the same for you, was going to see the great Artemisia show at the National Gallery, which I think I checked was in 2020. It was like kind of mid-Covid.

Yeah, it was mid-Covid, wasn't it? It was delayed. One of the interesting things about that show, we've got the catalogue here actually, is that they only needed to use her first name, Artemisia,

because she is a kind of celebrity, isn't she? It's partly because 2020 wasn't just the moment of the pandemic. It was still quite soon after a peak Me Too movement thing. And as well as being a very compelling, vivid artist,

she is an icon for feminist art historians. Yes, absolutely. And that's a big part of her legacy, isn't it? It's a really important part of her legacy.

I mean, she was forgotten for centuries, and it was really only in the 20th century that she was rediscovered. And of course, then, you know,

with the rise of feminism, she became ever more famous and novels were written about her, quite a few novels.

Movies were made about her, stage plays, graphic novels. Michael Palin did a documentary. Did you know this?

I did not know that. If there is any sort of imprimatur of success, it's getting Michael Palin to do a documentary about you.

What era was this? This was about 10, 15 years ago. Have you watched it? I have watched it.

Well, I watched it when it first came out. I liked it very much because I like Michael Palin. So she has become this kind of progenitor of the Me Too movement and this proto-feminist icon, hasn't she?

Yes. I'm still slightly puzzled, but given that she was a feminist icon, was he the most natural fit as a presenter? Are we the most? Exactly. This is an issue. We'll deal with that issue as we go through. It's a fascinating thing. Her story is truly extraordinary.

She speaks to the Me Too age, to all those who care about gender equality, to those who want to smash the glass ceiling, who want justice for victims of sexual abuse and violence. And to understand why, Alastair, we need to dig deep into Artemisia's life.

This then is the story of the life and work of Artemisia Gentileschi. So Artemisia is born in Rome in the summer of 1593. She's from a family of artists and artisans. So I think her grandfather is a goldsmith.

Her uncles are painters. Her father, Orazio Gentileschi, is an artist. And I feel very sorry for him in some ways because he is in the shadow of his daughter

and he is a great artist in his own right. He's terrible at the start. So the first few decades of his career, he's absolutely useless. These paintings are hopeless.

And then in around 1600, I suppose Artemisia is only young at this point, he discovers the work of Caravaggio. And it's a complete, you know, changes everything for him. And he immediately transforms his practice.

He starts to make more naturalistic pictures, more dramatic pictures. And he's actually friends with Caravaggio for a period. They fall out, as you do. Half the course with him.

Half the course. Caravaggio then murdered someone, had to flee Rome. That was the end of that. But Orazio changes his practice and ends up being a pretty successful artist.

He's never top tier. You know, he's like I was at school, captain of the second 11. He's OK, but he's never thoroughly successful. He's never completely successful.

And so that's the lineage, if you like, that Artemisia comes from. We don't know much about her childhood, but my prediction, my thinking is that it was a very difficult childhood. So she has siblings.

She has siblings. So she is the oldest of four. She has three younger brothers. I think life would have been very difficult. I think, first of all, Rome at that point in 1600 was a very difficult place to live. It was a spiky, dangerous, crime-ridden, very violent place. I mean, there was a police force, but very small and ineffective police

for. So it was an effectively lawless society. And then even worse, if you're a woman, because if you're a woman at this point in Rome, as in many other places, you are not much more than property. You know, your father's property, until you get married, you become your husband's property. So the opportunities for women to lead independent lives, to have careers non-existent. And then I

think to go back into the Gentileschi household, it was not an easy household to grow up in. And why is that? I think for a couple of reasons. I think Orazio didn't have much money.

He was very bad at managing his finances. They were constantly trying to keep the wolf from the door. They were constantly moving house. He was constantly getting in trouble with the law.

And everything we know about Orazio is he was, as you say, a difficult person. He's very volatile. He's very vengeful. He's very unpredictable.

He's very unreliable.