Artemisia Gentileschi Influence On The Renaissance

The Renaissance was a period of time between 1300 and 1600, following a devastating outbreak of the bubonic plague. It gets its name from the French word for rebirth, because of the positive political, economical, and intellectual changes that came after the Black Death. People gave less power to religion and to the church, instead focusing more on secular topics. The idea of humanism arose, and the Feudal System of government failed. The most influential people from the Renaissance were the artists, poets, and intellectuals, who lead the creative movement. There were great artists, such as Michaelangelo and DaVinci, political thinkers such as Thomas More, and scientists such as Galileo and Paracelsus. There was also religious reformers like
She had 4 younger brothers, two of which died when they were still children. Her mother died during childbirth at age 30, when Artemisia was 12. She studied painting under her father when she was young, and then, later, under a friend of her father, a man named Agostino Tassi. At age 18 Artemisia was raped by Tassi, which lead to a highly publicized trial over 7 months that resulted in Tassi’s exile. Just two days after Tassi received this sentence, Artemisia married a Florentine artist Pierantonio Stiattesi, and they left Rome a few weeks after the marriage. Between 1616 and 1621, Artemisia was very successful in Florence. They came back to Rome, however, along with their daughter Prudentia/Palmira in 1621. In 1622 her husband was charged with assaulting a Spaniard outside their home. In the next few years, Pierantonio and Artemisia appeared to have separated, Pierantonio no longer being listed as a resident of their home. By 1630 she was living in Naples, until 1639 when she went to England to work with her father, who was there under commission of Queen Henrietta Maria. She then returned to Naples until her death, which was around 1652 or 1653. One of her most famous works is titled Judith Slaying Holofernes, completed around 1612. It depicts the biblical story of the Jewish heroine Judith saving the Jewish people by slaughtering Holofernes, the
Completed between 1638 and 1639, her Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting depicts Artemisia herself, as the female embodiment of painting. At the time, female painters were a rarity, and were not taken as seriously as their male counterparts. In this piece, she follows the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa, in which painting is described as a woman, but she makes subtle changes that make a powerful statement about her own beliefs about painting, including using her own image to identify herself with the art form in a way male artists of the time could have never done. Artemisia’s self-portraits are highly sought after by art collectors and other art enthusiasts, because of the rarity of her