Karen McCluskey, University of Notre Dame Australia.
https://doi.org/10.58077/44wh-ws22
People live with multiple and intertwined complexities that do not always fit neatly into defined structures. Indeed, the aim of scholars working in the history of experiences is to scour historical evidence to ‘get at’ or understand that complexity. Traditionally, historians have looked to written evidence – a love letter, diary entry or last will and testament – for signs of experience, as though words might hold the key to truth. Under-utilized, however, is the visual record. This short essay explores the possibility of using visual analysis alongside methodologies in the history of experience to uncover the lived experiences of a particular group of historical actors: artists. Rather than a single fixed event, experience here encapsulates among other things the events, emotions, interpretations, and memories that accrue in the lifeworld of an artist over time, and which motivate them to acts of creative agency. To accomplish this task, I focus on a self-portrait by the renowned Italian painter, Artemisia Gentileschi (d. 1653). First, I will identify some structures that governed the artist’s situated context, and her relationship to them.[1] I will then examine the artwork as material evidence of the artist’s perception of her own world and her embodied responses to it. Thereafter, I will draw some conclusions about what this study reveals about Gentileschi’s experience as a woman and an artist in seventeenth century Italy and the value of combining art history and the history of experiences more broadly.
The dominant structures that shaped Gentileschi’s immediate sphere of experience included the oppressive patriarchal socio-legal systems that governed Italy and the strict cultural standards that regulated the arts at the time. To understand Gentileschi’s experience of this world, historians habitually turn to the trial records in which she was forced to recount intimate details of a sexual violation against her. In this infamous rape trial, the burden of proof was placed on the eighteen-year-old girl who was coerced under torture to prove her claims. Agostino Tassi, the man who stood accused and, importantly for the context, who refused to follow through on a promise of marriage, was convicted. However, he was eventually exonerated of wrongdoing.[2] Despite the weakness and vulnerability expected of young women at the time, Gentileschi comes across in the documents as confident and resilient under scrutiny.[3] Further evidence of Gentileschi’s lived experience is found in letters to her lover, Francesco Maringhi, or later in her professional dispatches to contacts and patrons. In the former, she is characterized as witty, passionate and determined; in the latter, resourceful, ambitious and professional.[4] However, if we put her art at the centre of our analysis, what more can we understand about Gentileschi’s lived experience?
The themes and subjects of Gentileschi’s paintings are often harnessed as evidence of the impact of her challenging relationships with men, professionally and personally, with some scholars pointing to her rape as the key incident that shaped her oeuvre, and therefore her life.[5] The unusually persistent focus on strong female protagonists in her paintings has been posited as evidence of a constant and visceral response to the violence perpetrated against her. For example, in three of her early paintings that portray the biblical hero Judith beheading the Assyrian general Holofernes (1612-25), the sentiment seems clear – the man’s strength is made impotent by the woman’s sword. This reversal of normative experience might be read as autobiographical – as revenge against Tassi or therapy to deal with the memory of his violence against her and the damage done to her family’s honour. Perhaps it is fair to read the works in this way, as they were painted within a decade of her rape. Notwithstanding, there is no doubt that the Judith and Holofernes paintings, both in subject and execution, evidence not a victim but a strong woman and a master in full control of her palette and brush.
Here, it is useful to fast-forward and focus on Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (c1638-9) [fig. 1]. This painting comes in the middle of her career and offers strong evidence of how she perceived herself, how she wanted to be seen by her competitors, patrons, and companions and how she wished to be remembered. The image portrays a female artist in the act of painting. The subject is placed on a dominant diagonal, her body tilting toward the viewer as she leans heavily on her left arm. Her right arm is raised, the hand holding a small paintbrush suspended as though it has been pulled back adroitly from its mark. The artist’s face is turned almost to profile. Her serious and focused expression makes it clear that she is thinking, assessing a work in progress. The brush and gaze are working together, drawing the eye to some external force outside the viewer’s field of vision but Gentileschi refuses to solve the mystery of her focus, instead forcing the viewer’s curiosity and imagination. The palette and left hand sit near the frontal plane, acting as a tromp l’oeil, an artistic trick that invites the viewer into her world, despite their being positioned slightly above the painter. The large blousy sleeve of her dress forces the eye up to the centre of the painting where its lacy neckline emphasizes her décolletage. A bright light penetrates the room from the left, illuminating the top of her exposed bosom as well as her forehead. Around her neck is a long gold chain on which a pendant in the shape of a mask dangles. The figure is deliberately not engaged with the viewer, yet she is fully engaging. The accomplished technique, equally vigorous and alive, is realized through refined brushwork. The strokes, like the subject she paints, are confident and energetic. The textures (damp skin, shiny satin, delicate lace, shimmering gold, and wispy hair) are rich and luxuriant.
The genres around which she chose to structure her self-portrait offer clues to how she perceived herself. Here, in a totally unprecedented way, Gentileschi combines two commonly painted genres from the time: the self-portrait and the allegory of painting motif. Artists’ self-portraits served many practical functions. In them, an artist could characterize and memorialize themselves and promote their new-found status as practitioners within the liberal arts, rather than as lowly craftsmen. Indeed, many male artists portrayed themselves in gentlemen’s attire, eschewing the brush and palette for gloves and lace to avoid associations with manual labour. Further, the self-portrait offered a platform to advertise the artist’s skill in a bid to attract patrons. For this reason, self-portraits were often deftly painted, attesting to an artist’s capacity to capture likenesses, evoke textures and delicate fabrics, or paint elite attire often within landscapes or ornate rooms. Self-portraits are typically identifiable by the rigid three-quarter pose of the sitter and the artist’s penetrating gaze.[6]
Female self-portraits were a little different and usually composed according to the dominant gender discourses of the time. Chastity and modesty were important characteristics to capture, often relayed through plain tones, covered bodies, tidy hair, and interior settings. Piety was often displayed either visually through rosary beads, inscriptions, or devotional books, or through the noble subjects being rendered by the portrayed artist. Painting the Virgin Mary and her son, for example, was a common theme. Even still, women artists painted themselves with a trace of nobility, including delicate laces and quality fabrics. Like their male counterparts, women artists endeavoured to show off their skills, but unlike men they tended to display their artistic tools, hoping to be recognized as legitimate artists within a field dominated by men.[7] Whether male or female, self-portraits were always carefully controlled presentations of the self.
Gentileschi’s self-portrait is assiduously crafted too, but she does not so readily follow expected norms. Her paintings show an unabashedly-unidealized woman engaged in active labour with pushed up sleeves, dirty hands, and a sheen of sweat on her brow. Her bodily proportions are heavy set and her hair unkempt. She portrays a figure of average means wearing a stiff apron over a satin dress. She is hard-working, determined, and focused. Indeed, she creates the illusion that the viewer has come upon her in mid-action.
Complicating the portrayal, Gentileschi taps into the allegory of painting or ‘Pittura’ motif; a genre created to position the discipline of painting firmly within the liberal arts, thereby increasing the status of the (male) artist. Ironically, allegorizing the concept of painting as a female legitimized women artists too, facilitating their own agentic acts within the tradition.[8] According to Cesare Ripa, who codified the form, Pittura should be portrayed as ‘a beautiful woman with black hair … [and] arched eyebrows that show imaginative thought, the mouth covered by a band tied behind the ears, with a gold chain around the neck, from which a mask hangs… In one hand she holds a paintbrush, and in the other a palette… [with] some instruments of painting to show that Painting is a noble exercise…’. Ripa describes Pittura as imaginative, energetic and noble. Importantly, he notes, the mask signifies Pittura’s principal characteristic: deception.[9]
In Gentileschi’s hands, the genre takes on new life. The artist takes advantage of her almost unique position as a female artist, to bring the allegory and the self-portrait together.[10] Here, following Ripa, in subject, technique and composition she expresses the dynamism and energy exemplary of the genre. She articulates Pittura’s creativity, imagination, and intellectualism through the light hues that hit her forehead. The luminous tones of her breast symbolize both the femininity of the subject and the truth of the image. Yet, the necklace with the mask pendant, acknowledges the subject matter as an allegory – highlighting artifice, the specialty of artists. Unlike Ripa’s description, Gentileschi’s mouth is not bound; she defies the ancient claim that painting is mute.[11] She overtly announces her craft – palette and brush explicitly in hand, forearm leaning on the grinding stone. The painting is self-referential. Rather than an objective subject like the Virgin Mary, she is painting herself painting the allegory of painting. Here, Gentileschi performs a circular trick – where does the illusion end and reality begin? The allegorical figure, Pittura, is seamlessly embodied in Gentileschi herself. Indeed, this is how she wanted to be remembered – as the physical embodiment of painting.
When examined within her situated context – as a woman and artist within a highly patriarchal society – her paintings suggest that Gentileschi might have had challenges, even significant ones, but that she confronted them head on. Her self-portrait reveals a very confident and innovative artist, and a bold woman willing to break rules and shun decorum. Whatever her trials, the impression she leaves us with is a woman in control of her circumstances, hardworking, defiant, and gifted. Gentileschi is self-conscious of her skill, of where she stands in relation to her peers. The self-portrait verifies that she sees herself as superior. Here, Gentileschi is not apologising for her exceptional presence in a largely male sphere, she is demanding respect for her accomplishments as an artist. We know this because by careful analysis of this visual manifesto, we see a bold woman announcing her place, not as a victim or imposter, but as the very epitome of painting. Perhaps, then, we should read her painting as evidence of the embodied response of an enterprising woman and a genius artist to the constraints imposed on her by the context in which she lived. By combining visual analysis and history-of-experience methodology, we see something more nuanced and representative of the evolving inner life of this artist. It seems reasonable then to suggest that bringing the two approaches into conversation more often might change how we understand artists and their lives more broadly. Further, this analytical framework might extend to other marginalized groups who were not always able to use conventional methods to express themselves.
Notes
[1] Rob Boddice and Mark Smith, Emotion, Sense, Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
[2] The trial record published in English by Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
[3] Elizabeth Cohen, ‘The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi: a Rape as History’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 31 (2000): 47-75.
[4] Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 53, 83-91; Francesco Solinas, Lettere di Artemisia (Rome: de Luca Editori, 2020).
[5] Jeanne Morgan Zarucchi, ‘The Gentileschi “Danaë”: A Narrative of Rape’, Woman’s Art Journal, 19 (1998-99): 13-16; Raymond Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonné (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), among others. Many interpreters follow Garrard’s feminist approach; Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 24; Letizia Treves, Artemisia (London: National Gallery Company, 2020).
[6] Peter Paul Rubens’ Self Portrait (1623) at the National Gallery of Australia is a strong example.
[7] Sofonisba Anguissola’s Self-Portrait (1556) Łańcut Museum, Poland is instructive.
[8] Peg Brand Weiser, ‘Pittura: a Gendered Template for Painting’, The Routledge Companion to the Philosophies of Painting and Sculpture, eds Noël Carroll and Jonathan Gilmore (Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 2022), 322.
[9] Cesare Ripa, Iconologia book II (Venice: Cristoforo Tomasini, 1645), 490-1.
[10] Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 337-9.
[11] Brand Weiser, ‘Pittura’, 328.