Artemesia Heroine of Art
18 April 2025
I have recently returned from Paris where I visited a new exhibition about the work of Artemesia Gentileschi at Musee Jacquemart-Andre. I have been an admirer of her art for a long time and I was excited to see art that I was familiar with as well as some that I had never seen before.
If you are not familair with Artemesia Gentileschi here’s a few facts about her:
She was (1593 – c.1656) was an Italian Baroque painter. The paintings of this period were very theatrical and dramatic. As with the Renaissance artists, the Baroque artists worked for the court, the aristocracy and the church as its patrons. Artists of the period included Rubens, Caravaggio and Bernini. Women artists were uncommon and were not allowed to become members of the increasingly important and controlling art academies and so had to be taught by either their fathers or husbands. Her father, Orazio, was an artist, and realising her artistic talent taught her himself. He also employed an artist friend of his, Tassi, to teach her perspective. Tassi raped her when she was 17 and this has been pivotal to how her and her art has been interpreted. The rape trial brought her enormous notoriety, attention and speculation which both now and then often overshadows her actual painting achievements. Women artists usually painted still life and portraiture, which were considered the lower genres of art but Artemesia chose to depict the mythological and biblical themes and in the majority of her paintings a woman is the protagonist. She is unusual as she achieved international fame during her lifetime and made a living from her painting.
There are approximately 50 paintings in existence that are attributed to Artemesia and including the seminal Susanna and the Elders which is included in this exhibition.
The painting that intrigued me was Allegory of Inclination (1615-1617). I had never seen it before and it reminded me of the artworks created by the pre Raphaelite painters.
The Allegory of Inclination was one of fifteen canvases commissioned by Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger (to honour his great uncle, Michelangelo) for the ceiling in the Gallery Room in his home in Florence.
Artemesia painted (oil on canvas) a full size naked woman surrounded by white clouds, holding a compass and looking towards the north star, thought to be a reference to Galileo, who was now in her circle of associates.
However the painting as we see it today is not how Artemesia painted it because in 1684 the subsequent owner of the house considered the nudity offensive and asked another painter, Baldassare Franceschini, to paint drapery over the naked body.
In 2022 (400 years after it was created) Allegory of Inclination was taken down from the ceiling for restoration. The canvas was drooping, the colours had dulled and cracked and the varnish was yellowing. It was not until restoration began that it became apparent that it was impossible to physically remove the added drapery paint without damaging the work, so the painting had to be restored to incude the drapery.
In order to find out what the original painted by Artemsia looked like, advanced diagnostic imaging techniques were used to create a digital replica of the original, with the drapery removed. The whole process took almost a year.
Below is a photograph of the digital replica comparing the original painting, the unrestored original painting with added drapery and the restored original painting with the drapery which is what you will see if you visit the exhibition.
And here is Allegory of Inclination restored and reframed in the Artemesia Heroine of Art exhibition.
This is the accomanying text translated into English.
Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, man of letters and great nephew of Michelangelo, is one of the most important protectors of Artemesia in Florence and his friend. She is pregnant and in a difficult economic situation when he entrusts her with this order, which concerns the decoration of a ceiling of his family palace. Allegory of Inclination, symbolizing Michelangelo’s natural propensity for art, takes the bold form of a naked woman whose features are those of Artemesia.The work is distinguished by its strong Caravesque naturalism. The compass pointing towards the polar star denotes Bounarroti’s links with science, and in particular with the astronomer Galileo. The restoration of the work in 2022-2023 revealed that originally, the figure was completely naked or dressed in a transparent veil, before being covered with a modesty brocade by the artist Baldassare Francheschini at the request of the heir of the sponsor.