Artemisia

Fabulous exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the life and work of Artemisia Gentileschi.

I have so looked forward to this show. I discovered Artemisia when I spent time in Florence and read a couple of books about her and have hoped for a show of her work since then. I was already to go pre-lockdown but the exhibition was an early cancellation as it was proving difficult to get the works to the UK. I have to say it was worth the wait!

Artemisia was a 17th century female artist who was well know in her day but fell out of favour and was virtually unknown until the 1970s. Her art is often overshadowed by her life story from the trial for her rape trail when she was 17, it was very moving to see the transcription of that trial in the exhibition, though to her independent life as a sought after artist and friend of contemporary intellectuals. However, this show puts her art centre stage.

I found the earlier work most powerful and there were some wonderful juxtaposing of pictures. It was fantastic to see the two violent versions of Judith and Holofernes from her time in Rome and Florence next to each other and see the likelihood that she took a tracing of the Rome picture with her to Florence to recreate it there. In the same room were a wonderful array of herself portraits as saints. I love her rich use of blocks of colour and the female view she brings to Old Testament stories such as the Judith and her Maid shown here where they are contemplating how to escape Holofernes tent having killed him.

I found the later pictures from her years in Naples less satisfactory, but it was interesting to see how she absorbed the style of that city. Here were two altarpieces from that period, her first, and I left her heart wasn’t in the subject as in the earlier work. You could also see her becoming more pragmatic as she become more successful, working with collaborators to add landscape and architecture which I suspect was both an artistic and commercial choice.

It was a lovely choice to include three versions of Susannah and the Elders starting with her first known dated painting from 1610 though a mid-career picture to one of her last works. In all the pictures the Susannah covers herself from the gaze of the men who have found her bathing but by the last she is turning to chastise them. All in all the hang had a lot of space between works and clear labelling. You could download an audio tour, which I will do next time I go, first time I just wanted to enjoy the pictures. It was a well set out show for the Covid world.

Closes 24 January 2020

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