Artemisia Gentileschi in a changing light

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"Raised to the status of an international luminary by her contemporaries and now revered as one of the defining talents of the seventeenth century, Artemisia Gentileschi poses urgent questions for ...

"Raised to the status of an international luminary by her contemporaries and now revered as one of the defining talents of the seventeenth century, Artemisia Gentileschi poses urgent questions for today's scholars. The recent outpouring of new attributions and archival discoveries has profoundly enriched our knowledge of the artist, but it has also complicated, and somewhat contradicted, the former storyline. If she was illiterate and unschooled, how did she befriend Galileo and playwrights Jacopo Cicognini and Michelangelo Buonarroti il Giovane? If she could not pay her bills, why did she continue to spend lavishly on clothing and domestic servants? How do we identify new autograph works if experts still disagree about the chronology and contours of her oeuvre? In these eleven essays, an international assembly of experts grapples with these problems, opening new paths of inquiry and laying bare their methodologies in fields as diverse as laboratory analysis, economic and cultural history, literary analysis, and feminist art history. Among these approaches, connoisseurship takes center stage. By reconstructing the chronology and rationale of Artemisia's artistic progression, connoissership reveals the intricacy of her visual dialogues with prominent contemporaries like Caravaggio, Annibale Caracci, Simon Vouet and Stanzione, and with past artistic giants like Donatello and Michelangelo. These essays infuse our understanding of Artemisia with complexity and nuance, yet they also confirm the characteristic mix of intelligence and verve that marked her art, her correspondence, and her deft social maneuvering runnling like a thread through all stages of her fascinating life"--Jacket.

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