Artemisia: A Baroque Powerhouse Gets Her Due

In 2020 the National Gallery in London mounted its first monographic show of a woman artist's work in its near-200-year history — and chose a thunderbolt: Artemisia Gentileschi.

A prodigy of the Italian Baroque, Artemisia painted biblical heroines with ferocious power, above all her blood-soaked 'Judith Slaying Holofernes'. Her art is inseparable from her life: she was raped as a young woman and testified, under torture, at the trial of her attacker.

Long overshadowed by male contemporaries, she has become a feminist icon and one of the most admired painters of her age. The show, delayed by the pandemic, was a triumphant reclamation.

Image: “Artemisia Gentileschi - Judith Beheading Holofernes - WGA8563” — Artemisia Gentileschi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.