The first mem­ber of the artis­tic Gen­tileschi fam­i­ly that I became aware of was the Ital­ian Baroque artist, Orazio Gen­tileschi, whose Rest on the Flight to Egypt I came across a few years back in Vienna’s mag­nif­i­cent Kun­sthis­torisches Muse­um. How­ev­er, as acclaimed as Orazio was, it is his daugh­ter, Artemisia, whose name has come down to us today bear­ing the most crit­i­cal acclaim, and not just because she is cham­pi­oned as a woman who thrived in a man’s world, but also because she was lit­er­al­ly a bril­liant and accom­plished world-class artist.

Artemisia flour­ished in the first half of the 17th cen­tu­ry, work­ing in her father’s work­shop in Rome but also lat­er work­ing in Flo­rence, Venice, Naples and even in Lon­don where both she and her father had a spell work­ing as court painters for Charles I not long before the out­break of the Eng­lish Civ­il War. She spe­cial­ized in paint­ing nat­u­ral­is­tic pic­tures of strong and suf­fer­ing women from myth, alle­go­ry, and the Bible — Susan­na and the Elders, Judith Slay­ing Holofernes, Delilah, Salome, Bathshe­ba, Lucre­tia, Cleopa­tra, Jael, Mary Mag­da­lene…

Her works are con­vinc­ing depic­tions of the female fig­ure, any­where between nude and ful­ly clothed, and she clear­ly had a won­der­ful tal­ent for han­dling colour and build­ing depth. Her Judith Slay­ing Holofernes, paint­ed between 1614 and 1620, is a dra­mat­ic piece of art the­atre. It depicts the scene of Judith behead­ing Holofernes, an episode tak­en from the apoc­ryphal Book of Judith in the Old Tes­ta­ment, in which the Assyr­i­an gen­er­al Holofernes is assas­si­nat­ed by the Israelite hero­ine Judith. The paint­ing shows the moment when Judith, helped by her maid­ser­vant, beheads the gen­er­al after he has fall­en asleep drunk. Artemisia was just sev­en­teen when she paint­ed this, so pre­co­cious was her tal­ent.

That she was a woman paint­ing in the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry is wor­thy of note, of course (how much more art would exist today had tal­ent­ed female artists, the ones that were less con­nect­ed or gut­sy than Artemisia, been allowed to express them­selves?). But pure­ly on her work alone she was one of the most pro­gres­sive and expres­sive painters of her gen­er­a­tion, and that was a gen­er­a­tion that was already rich in artists inspired and flour­ish­ing in the foot­steps of Car­avag­gio. As it hap­pens, she is due to be com­mem­o­rat­ed this spring in a ret­ro­spec­tive exhi­bi­tion at London’s Nation­al Gallery. I’ll be there, hope­ful­ly!