Artemisia Gentileschi (July 8, 1593 – c. 1656) was an
Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters
in the generation following that of Caravaggio. In an era when women painters
were not easily accepted by the artistic community or patrons, she was the
first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.
She painted many pictures of strong and suffering women from
myth and the Bible—victims, suicides, warriors—and made it her speciality to
paint the Judith story. Her best-known work is Judith Slaying Holofermes (a
well-known medieval and baroque subject in art), which "shows the
decapitation of Holofernes, a scene of horrific struggle and
blood-letting".
That she was a woman painting in the seventeenth century and
that she was raped and participated in prosecuting the rapist, long
overshadowed her achievements as an artist. For many years she was regarded as
a curiosity. Today she is regarded as one of the most progressive and
expressionist painters of her generation.
Self-portraitas the Allegory of Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi