(Note: this post contains some sexual violence triggers.)
I was most gratified some days ago to come across Ginmar’s post about screening Artemisia, the 1997 film about the artist of the same name. I thought I was the only one.
That movie enraged me for years. Years. And I had no one to complain to, because everyone else was all, “Artemisia who?”
Exactly.
I first encountered Artemisia Gentileschi’s work a few years before the movie came out. I believe I found her in a feminist art-history text, maybe the Guerilla Girls, and spent some time in the library after that. She’s hard to find. Her works are even more difficult to find, even though she was both prolific and successful during her lifetime. Many of them were attributed to her male contemporaries, and are only recently being reclaimed as her own.
She was a brilliant artist. Give me Artemisia over Tiziano any day of the week. When she was a teenager, she was a mature artist creating work in her father’s studio. “Susanna and the Elders,” painted when she was only seventeen years old, is one of her more famous works. Her patrons included King Charles I of England and Grand Duke Cosimo II of the Medicis. (“Judith Slaying Holofernes,” perhaps her most famous painting, hangs in the Uffizi next to Caravaggio’s “Sacrifice of Isaac.”)
Here’s an image archive with links to some of her work. Here is a site with a more comprehensive biography, including a guided chronological tour through 32 of her paintings. See? See how gorgeous?
I was overjoyed to see that someone was making a movie out of her life and career. Then I saw Artemisia.
The movie is not in fact about her as a painter. Her illustrious career is reduced to a short note that appears on the screen at the end. The movie is about her early life, the Susanna-and-the-Elders period, when she was painting in her father’s studio, and something that happened to her there.
Except not really.
Artemisia’s father was Orazio Gentileschi, a very famous painter in his own right. He had a colleague named Agostino Tassi, who is not particularly famous. His fortes were illusionistic architectual interiors (trompe l’oeil, basically), and landscape painting. He spent a lot of time hanging out in the Gentileschi household, where he met Artemisia. He pursued her, and attempted to see her and see her alone as much as possible. He managed to get her alone in her bedroom, where he raped her.
He continued to rape and assault her for months after that. He told her that he would marry her. She may or may not have believed him for very long. She apparently felt that marriage was her only option; it was the only way for a raped woman to regain some respectability. She realized eventually that he would neither marry her nor leave her alone, so she did an incredibly courageous thing: she accused him of rape. (Her father brought the charge of rape in court, because rape wasn’t a crime against the raped woman.)
The trial lasted for seven months, and followed a very familiar pattern:
…She was accused of not having been a virgin at the time of the rape and of having many lovers, and she was examined by midwives to determine whether she had been “deflowered” recently or a long time ago. Perhaps more galling for an artist like Gentileschi, Tassi testified that her skills were so pitiful that he had to teach her the rules of perspective, and was doing so the day she claimed he raped her. Tassi denied ever having had sexual relations with Gentileschi and brought many witnesses to testify that she was “an insatiable whore.” Their testimony was refuted by Orazio (who brought countersuit for perjury), and Artemisia’s accusations against Tassi were corroborated by a former friend of his who recounted Tassi’s boasting about his sexual exploits at Artemisia’s expense.
Oh, and he was a serial rapist, apparently:
Tassi had been imprisoned earlier for incest with his sister-in-law and was charged with arranging the murder of his wife.
The trial had a happy ending of sorts:
He was ultimately convicted on the charge of raping Gentileschi; he served under a year in prison and was later invited again into the Gentileschi household by Orazio.
…But it’s not like he wasn’t welcome for dinner.
Artemisia the movie presents Tassi’s ridiculous defense of his months-long victimization of Artemisia Gentileschi as fact. Their affair was entirely consensual–initiated by her, even. They were lovers. The whole rape thing was totally bogus. In the movie, her father discovers them together and is so outraged that he cries rape. She doesn’t want to cooperate. She even denies being raped under torture. (In reality, she provided extensive testimony detailing the rapes, and affirmed her story under torture.) Tassi’s actually a stand-up guy: he accepts the charge of rape to protect his best girl. She and Tassi say their tender goodbyes through the bars. She and her father have a falling out–over him treating Tassi too harshly, not too amicably. Then blah blah she becomes a really famous painter blah blah credits.
Oh, and that whole thing about how she was a terrible artist? The young woman who created this, remember? Also totally true! In the film, he looks at exactly one of her paintings prior to the trial, “Self-Portrait as Allegory of Painting,” which is one of her minor works and which was actually painted decades later. He gives her a perspective lesson, and then they fall in love. “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” which was painted right around the time of the trial and which many thought was a comment on her feelings about the rape, is presented as her way of working through her feelings of guilt over Tassi being railroaded.
Bastards.
Here’s a more extensive recap of the film and its transgressions, with more Artemisia links. According to that site, he “acquired” his first wife through rape.
I wanna go back in time and kill him.
Damn Temporal Prime Directive.
For what it’s worth, Artemisia’s work is starting to be taught. At least, we saw “Susannah” and “Judith” in my art history 101 class at U Colorado last year.
That’s great to hear. She’s also been the focus of museum shows and non-academic books from the nineties onward. I don’t mean to imply that there’s some total media blackout, although I definitely don’t think she’s gotten the recognition she deserves. And I don’t think that I’ve ever heard the movie’s version of events presented in any source purporting to be historical.
The post was mostly about the movie.
Oh-I had the same reaction, piny! A movie about Artemesia Gentileschi??? Fantastic! I was so excited, and then to find out the plot. The were lovers? WTF? Then, and every time since that this movie comes up, I taste bile. Bastards.
What I could never get my brain around was how her father stood up for her at the trail, but then invited the rapist back into the house.
Are you fucking kidding me??? The woman held up under torture – torture that could have ended her career as an artist – and they changed it in the movie?? She and Tassi are lovers ???? Whaaaaaaaaat? I need my thesaurus so I can find every single word for “appalled”. UGH.
I never saw the movie (very glad, now that I’ve read this post), but I also wanted to add that we covered Artemesia in my art history class (I was an art major back in the early 90′s), and the facts about her life and her rape by Tassi were generally known. It wasn’t extensive by any means, but it seemed like she was thought of as a major artist worth knowing.
Off topic, piny, but I wonder if you’re aware of Claude Cahun? She was briefly associated with the Surrealists, but really developed her own unique idiom dealing with identity and gender. She’s absolutely ripe for rediscovery, but, unfortunately, nothing about her has been published in english yet.
Sorry, I was so annoyed that I forgot something. My best friend was an Art History major in the early 90′s, and they covered Artemesia and her history. In fact, she (the best friend) is the reason why *I* picked up a book about Artemesia and fell in love with her paintings.
Someone should to do a movie that actually follows the historical documentation.
Know any filmmakers?
Have you read Susan Vreeland’s book, The Passion of Artemisia? It’s a more grounded-in-reality piece of historical fiction, and a pretty nice read.
I first heard about Artemisia Gentileschi in a Women’s Studies course, and the professor had the same concerns about the movie that you do. It really is a ridiculous distortion of historical fact. But it’s heartening to see that Gentileschi’s work is becoming more well-known. I see that other commenters here have encountered her paintings in classes of their own. She really did have an amazing talent. Her portrayals of Judith are part of what inspired me to write my undergraduate honors thesis on the Judith story.
I haven’t seen the movie-I read Susan Vreeland’s “The Passion of Artemisia” as well and loved it so I was interested when I heard there was a movie about her-but once I read the description off the cover in the video store I threw it down in disgust. What were they thinking?!?
I’m supposed to be more consistent with my posting for the anti-violence group that’s been set up to accompany the movie North Country. I referenced this post today.
No, they are not paying me. It’s a non-profit.
I saw this movie in my Feminism and Art History intro class last year. First we read some articles arguing certain readings of Artemisia’s paintings and attributing works to her. Then we had a viewing of this movie. I remember being completely disappointed and maddened at the ridiculous crap they portray, and even more saddened when after the movie ended my classmates’ comments were akin to “oh wow, that was a good movie.” I thought i was the only one who saw what a load of shit it was, what with Artemisia running through fields of flowers and forests with her hair blowing behind her and always gasping and sighing over her ‘mentor’ and ‘lover.’
and i was oh so relieved the next day in class when the point of discussion was the completely vile and basically sexist revisionist nature of the film. the best part about the movie though is the female director’s claim that it is ‘empowering.’ god i hate that stupid word.
Ok, I never took any art history as I didn’t have the option of paying for classes that didn’t have a complete link to a ‘career’ motive. One of my biggest arguments with my children is that higher education is SO absolutely important beyond getting a damn career or ‘training’. My ignorance and the awareness of the rest of you speaks volumes for the cultural divide a la education that is so rampant in this country.
Anyway. I get the jist and I don’t have to have seen or known artemesia’s story (although now i will search it out) and her work, to have not seen this sick theme played over and over again in our culture:
The rapist is really a well meaning mentor/teacher
Girl’s use the ‘rape rap’ to their ‘advantage’
Women really enjoy being ‘taken’
A female who has an interest in the male physique or sexuality is a slut
A slut has no boundaries to respect
A rapist turns a virgin into a slut which in turn then becomes his property
Men who overpower women are strong and valient
Men never have bad designs on young, naive females
I could go on but i’ll stop here. I’m getting older and can think about these things without going full blown ballistic. Unfotunately, although I am getting older and changing, these attitudes seem to have no end in sight.