Renaissance Project: Artemisia Gentileschi

Jajaira Flores
Professor Maureen Farrell
Art History
Due: April 15, 2015

Renaissance Project: Artemisia Gentileschi

        The artist I chose for this project is Artemisia Gentileschi. Artemisia is an artist born in Rome, Italy. She is the daughter of painter Orazio Gentileschi. At a young age, Artemisia was put into painting. She would develop her skills by the help of her father. Once she turned 18 her father set her up to work alongside his colleague, Agostino Tassi. While working with him he began to grow a strong lust towards her. This lust pushed him to the extremes and he ended up raping Artemisia. After the rape, Tassi refused to marry Artemisia so her father pursued a legal case against him. [pic 1]

        After this experience Artemisia took out her feelings of anger and sadness in her paintings. She would paint pictures of women protagonists. The painting I will be speaking about is called Judith Slaying Holofernes. This painting is just one of the many that Artemisia painted after her rape. It shows so much emotion in this one photo. While it is depicting a scene from the Old Testament Book of Judith, it is also portraying her underlying story about the trauma she had faced and her repressed rage that she is feeling. 

        The painting shows two women, Judith and her maid, holding a man, Holofernes on a table. While he is being held, Judith is portrayed as cutting off his head. This is something that can be disturbing to some but show great passion and power to others. This piece is a great example of art from around the Renaissance times.

        The piece is from during the renaissance art period. It has many characteristics of art from that time. It is an oil painting. The painting itself uses a lot of reds and blue. These two colors are much known for the time period. They show different emotions throughout the painting. The dark shadows also help to show the anger that is underlying in the painting. The paintings in the renaissance showed a great deal of individualism within the artwork. You are really able to see the anatomy of the individuals in the art as well. This is a characteristic of the renaissance art period, many artists studied the human anatomy heavily to make sure that they could really get everything to show as nicely as possible. They wanted everything to be extremely humanistic. The painting is also a good example of linear perspective. Linear perspective is like when you are looking through a window and paint everything the way you see it, including the sizes of each object.