Post on 31-Jan-2023
Matthew Whyte (University College Cork)
Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes
The art of Artemisia Gentileschi could be interpreted as a
response to her surrounding environment and her personal
experience to a greater degree than any other artist of the
Baroque. It is precisely by viewing her art in this way, as
the product of a woman of 17th-Century Italy, which has shaped
the majority of the formidable scholarly attention she has
received in recent years. It is this – her adaptation of self,
of her art and of her figures – upon which this essay shall
focus also. Using Artemisia’s monumental Judith Beheading Holofernes,
located today in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence and executed
around 1620, this essay will explore how, and the extent to
which, Artemisia adapted and modified her female figures,
allowing them to take on connotations which may distort their
femininity, tweaking the impact they have on their beholders.
In this investigation, the question will be raised as to why
it may have been necessary for Artemisia to do this, keeping
in mind, and adhering closely to documentary evidence from her
own times, and the pressures which she indubitably felt as a
woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated discipline. As it
will be demonstrated, the demands and the prejudices exerted
against her forced Artemisia to adopt a distinct persona which
she carries sometimes with subtlety and sometimes with irony
among her contemporaries, and which bleeds into the heroic
female figures which define her oeuvre. This essay will use the
ideas put forward by Judith Butler in her many studies on
conceptions of gender, namely her article ‘Performative Acts
and Gender Constitution’1, as a lens through which to study
Artemisia’s conception of herself and her female figures.
Butler conceives of gender as being a phenomenon which is
defined and invented through the acts and behaviours of the
subject – a self-stylization as opposed to being something
anatomical which is realised at birth.2
A brief note on scholarly views of Artemisia from recent
years is required here in order to highlight the stance and
direction which the argument of this essay will take. The
large-scale feminist movement of the 1970’s saw published a
flurry of writings on Artemisia which would view her in a
whole new light. Leading up to this, the only in-depth,
scholarly examination of Artemisia and her art had been
undertaken by Roberto Longhi, who claimed that though
Artemisia was a skilled painter, she was, because of her
gender, “intellectually inferior, even to her father”.3 At the
early stages of the development of the scholarship seen in the
1970’s, writers desperately attempted to deviate from the
masculinist bias placed on analyses of Artemisia, which as we
have seen seeped right into the 20th Century. The result was a
body of scholarship which placed the majority of the focus on
biographical details of the artist. These details consisted
mainly of the famous rape trial of Artemisia against her tutor
1 J. Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, 4, 1988, 519-531.2 Ibid 519.3 S. Scarparo, ‘”Artemisia”: The Invention of a ‘Real’ Woman’, Italica, Vol. 79, 3, 2002, 363.
and aggressor Agostino Tassi, the widespread publication of
which, according to Contini and Solinas, made “…tragic
banality both public and defamatory.”4 This information was
analysed in tandem with only perfunctory nods to Artemisia’s
body of art, creating of her an overtly heroic figure, to be
swept up and consumed among the swiftly growing movement of
feminist art historical scholarship.5 Not only did this detract
from Artemisia’s merits as an artist, but it also led to an
aggrandised and wholly inaccurate conception of Artemisia as
an autonomous, liberated woman in her contemporary society.
Mieke Bal addresses this problem in the introduction to her
recent publication The Artemisia Files: “If the traditional art-
history discourse, which diminishes Artemisia’s merit,
continues to need addressing and redressing, the feminist
revisionist discourse that tends to heroize her also invites
critical reflection.”6 Bal goes on to describe a movement in
the discourse which attempted to re-examine Artemisia in terms
of her skills and abilities as an artist.7 This style of
writing about Artemisia can be most satisfyingly summed up by
referencing the reappraisal of Artemisia and her art
undertaken in Mary Garrard’s monograph Artemisia Gentileschi,8 and,
from the perspective of connoisseurship, in Raymond Ward
Bissell’s catalogue raisonné.9 While writings such as these have
offered an illuminating analysis of Artemisia’s work in a vein4 R. Contini and F. Solinas ed., Artemisia Gentileschi: The Story of a Passion, Milan, 2011, 13.5 M. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art, Princeton, 1989, 5.6 M. Bal ed., The Artemisia Files: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other Thinking People, Chicago, 2005, x. 7 Ibid.8 Garrard, Artemisia, 1989.
which the work of a female artist of such a period had not
been revealed before, it will be shown in this essay that
there still remains a tendency among scholars to project
Artemisia into modern day views on how women can function in
society. Thus this essay will aim to situate Artemisia firmly
back in her own era and context, that is as a female artist in
17th-Century Italy, in a bid to make clear the adaptations and
contortions she imposes on her female figures, and the
reasoning behind such artistic choices.
Let us begin with Artemisia’s great Judith Beheading
Holofernes. Artemisia chose a well-known biblical narrative,
notably one which is already bound up with questions of
gender-dynamics, and treated it in the quintessential Baroque
manner. The viewer does not observe Judith authoritatively
raising the sword or triumphantly yet furtively stashing the
decapitated head – the deep breath before or the sigh of
relief which follows – as artists such as Donatello and
Mantegna had previously treated the scene. In Artemisia’s
rendition, the viewer is presented with the moment of the most
intense action – the climax of the narrative. Positioning the
beholder in this way – as a very real onlooker to a scene
which is unfolding – the painting solicits an emotional,
almost physically engaged response. The figures burst forth
from a dark and forbidding background; the blackness a frame
for the intensity of the heroine’s face and body; the
whiteness of the bed underneath a mere canvas for the
expressive violence of the spurt of blood. Eve Straussman-9 R.W. Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonné, University Park, 1999.
Pflanzer outlines how the taste for theatricality in the
Medici Court in Florence allowed Artemisia to exaggerate this
particular Caravaggesque quality.10 Each subject bears some
form of red in their drapery, a premonition of the extreme
violence which ultimately unites the three figures as the
shockingly crimson blood exudes from the neck of Holofernes to
spatter the hands, arms and busts of Judith and her
maidservant. The artistic sphere into which this painting was
introduced was exclusively dominated by male ideals on how
gender and femininity should operate, making this well-
established scene suddenly problematic, as it was produced by
a woman.11 Being confronted with such images of female
dominance, the male audience constructed an idea of
‘Artemisia’ as an ideal for feminine beauty, where ‘to own an
Artemisia’ made what had become a frighteningly independent
female artist symbolically possessible.12 It was against this
fictive image of beauty which Artemisia had to struggle.13
Thus Artemisia’s Judith can be viewed as a resistance to
the desire among her contemporaries to categorise her within a
stable feminine identity which was consistent with gender
norms.14 Though this is a highly relevant insight by Garrard,
it stills lacks illumination as to exactly how, aside from
choice of narrative, Artemisia uses her female figures to
achieve this. It is at this point that a consideration of10 E. Straussman-Pflanzer, Violence and Virtue: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes, New Haven, 2013, 11.11 Ibid 12.12 M. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi Around 1622, the Shaping and Re-shaping of an Artistic Identity, California, 2011, 8.13 Ibid.14 Ibid 14.
Butler’s ideas on gender performance and their application to
Artemisia’s grand painting can broaden an appraisal of
Artemisia’s Judith. Butler says of gender as a performative
phenomenon: “This formulation moves the conception of gender
off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that
requires a conception of a constituted social temporality.
Significantly, if gender is instituted through acts which are
internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is
precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative
accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including
the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the
mode of belief.”15 These words bear a great significance upon
an examination of how Artemisia constructs her Judith, for one
cannot but notice a distinct deviation from the rhetorical
norm for representing women in this figure.16 Artemisia injects
into her Judith an energy, not to mention certain anatomical
references (to be discussed later), which connote masculinity,
especially among the long-established traditions for
representing women in the 17th Century. Thus the artist allows
her Judith to become a constructed ideal of gender. While still
generally anatomically representative of a woman, Butler’s
ideology outlines that it is not this which defines the gender
of the subject, as can be seen in Butler’s reference to and
expansion on Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas: “When Beauvoir claims
that ‘woman’ is a historical idea and not a natural fact, she
clearly underscores the distinction between sex, as a
biological facticity, and gender, as the cultural
15 Butler, ‘Performative Acts’, 520.16 Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi Around 1622, 6.
interpretation or signification of that facticity…to be a
woman is to have become a woman…to induce the body to become a
cultural sign, to materialize oneself in obedience to an
historically delimited possibility…”17 While Butler wishes to
critique modern contemporary views on gender and femininity,
these ideas are nonetheless highly applicable to an
interpretation of Artemisia’s Judith. In an inversion of the
process which Butler describes, this being a woman instigating
her gender and femininity through her subjective participation
in a set of cultural norms adhering to femininity, Artemisia
allows her Judith to participate in the cultural norms which in
her time conformed to masculinity.
What then was Artemisia doing to invite such an
interpretation of her work? One may examine how Artemisia
incorporates this performative aspect of gender into her own
subjective persona in order to underline how she allows this
to assimilate into her painted Judith. As Elena Ciletti points
out, the Uffizi Judith has been considered to be the most bound
up with Artemisia’s psychobiography and her connections to her
society and culture.18 The surviving letters of Artemisia to
patrons and friends contain some very interesting insights
into what may be viewed as Artemisia’s performance of her own
gender. In these letters she plays with linguistic nuances to
create a rather gender-ambiguous mystique which would have
served to intrigue her patrons, distracting them from their
aversion to the idea of an autonomous female agent. In a
17 Butler, ‘Performative Acts’, 522.18 E. Ciletti, ‘”Gran Macchina è Bellezza”: Looking at Gentileschi’s Judiths’,in M. Bal ed., The Artemisia Files, 80.
letter to Duke Francesco I d’Este written January 25th 1635,
Artemisia refers to her “meagre talent” and “humble house”.
However, her use of the word casa, in 17th-Century Italy, would
have implied not only her physical house but an entire
genealogical lineage which traditionally would have been
headed by a man. In this way, she promotes her own casa which
would have included her brother Francesco and, by extension,
her father Orazio. A daring move indeed for a woman but one
which would have intrigued the male patron. Similarly, in a
letter to a patron Don Antonio Ruffo written on November 13th
1649, Artemisia wrote while promoting her artistic skills: “…
you will find the spirit of Caesar in this soul of a woman.”
In the original Italian Artemisia, instead of using anima used
animo, endowing herself and her soul with masculine
connotations. This asserts her autonomy to the patron not as
an emancipated female agent, but as a male agent, which would
have appeared much more acceptable to illustrious male patrons
of the time. Artemisia also uses this performance of
masculinity to describe her skill in terms of a male
intellect, which, in accordance with the ideals on artistic
genius and masculinity, would have heightened the perception
of her artistic ability (indeed, one can observe in Garrard’s
book that Baldinucci, critiquing the work of Artemisia,
describes it as the joining of ingegno with the hand of a
woman).19 Rodolfo Maffeis describes this gender ambiguity
cultivated by Artemisia as “…the subtle balance between the
affirmation of the absolute quality of her painting…and the
non-conventionality that such a painting was indeed produced19 Garrard, Artemisia, 1989, 174.
by a woman.”20 One can clearly see in these instances how
Artemisia, in terms of Butler’s ideas, partakes in established
cultural norms relating to masculinity in order to perform a
gender identity which would have promoted her artistic skill
and lessened the impact of her persona as a feminine threat to
male dominance. As Maffeis points out: “…could she have done
anything else?”21
The painting itself is very carefully coded to produce a
similar effect in her Judith as Artemisia creates for herself.
Resulting from its being painted relatively soon after the
famous rape trial of 1612, following which Agostino Tassi
never actually served his sentenced exile, it has proved very
easy for critics to view this painting as an overt act of
vengeance: a woman expressing her desired dominance over man.22
However, we shall see that in fact Artemisia renders this work
to signify something very different. Garrard holds a similar
sentiment to that just described, albeit one with less of a
feminist bias. She describes Artemisia’s Judiths as being “…
armed with swords that cut, weapons they do not hesitate to
use”, going on to describe the Judiths as being real women, not
imaginary, who share in the world of heroic action not as
would-be-men, but simply as women who partake equally in the
human condition.23 Real women indeed, if one were to compare
20 R. Maffeis, '”Of a Tone and a Vigour that Inspire Terror”: Artemisia Gentileschi in Florence 1612-1622’, in Contini and Solinas ed., The Story of aPassion, 65.21 Ibid.22 J. Mann, ‘Artemisia Gentileschi in the Rome of Orazio and the Caravaggesques: 1608-1612’ in Contini and Solinas ed., The Story of a Passion, 58.23 Garrard, Artemisia, 1989, 171.
Artemisia’s Judith with the idealizations of feminine beauty
offered by preceding artists such as Titian, whose Venus of
Urbino is much more an object produced for scopophilic pleasure
than a manifestation of internal subjectivity. However,
Garrard fails to acknowledge the problematic nature of
implying that a woman of 17th-Century Italy may freely allow a
female figure, especially one shown in such a dominant
position over man, to partake equally in the human condition.
This is not an option that would have been available to
Artemisia in the patriarchal context of her contemporary
society.
Artemisia gets around this problem by constructing Judith
in a way which adopts cultural signifiers reserved for
depictions of masculine vigour as opposed to feminine beauty.
The beholder is shown a very different Judith from, for
example, the one which Caravaggio creates in his treatment of
the same narrative. Where his Judith is slight and feminine,
reluctantly guiding the sword with a weak grip and recoiling
as if repulsed by what she is doing, Artemisia’s is strong,
defiant, sure-footed and shows no hesitancy whatsoever. This
is a subject who is in control. Her powerful, muscular arm
pins the great Holofernes to the bed while the other one drags
the sword through the neck of her helpless victim with a self-
assurance which was unprecedented in artistic renditions of
women in Artemisia’s time. Her sleeves are rolled up,
mirroring the laboured contortions of her facial expression
and body language to signify meaningful, self-aware intention
and movement. These features pertain to an artistic language
which, in 17th-Century Italy, was used to depict heroic male
subjects. One can see vestiges of the decisive action of
Gianlorenzo Bernini’s David in the face of Judith, of the
physical and dominating strength of Michelangelo’s David and
Goliath from the Sistine Chapel in the body of the Judith. Even the
hands signify a masculine-oriented language, making ever more
explicit how Artemisia’s Judith corresponds with Butler’s
performative gender. Garrard focuses on hands as defining
characteristics of Artemisia’s portraits, an idea which can
certainly be applied to her heroines also.24 She describes
Artemisia’s painted hands as being “exceptionally strong, more
than adequate for the job to be done.”25 Indeed, Judith’s hands
tell of a strength hitherto unimagined in those of a woman in
17th-Century Italy. Holofernes struggles in vain, his hair
visibly protruding through Judith’s fingers, such is the
strength of her grip. Garrard picks up on an etymological link
in which she describes the breaking of the Judith’s wrist as
conveying the agility of the hand, the word ‘agility’ sharing
a common root with ‘agency’: agere, meaning to set in motion, to
drive or to build. Garrard likens this motif with traditional
representations of male energy: “…their wrists break backward
to show the strain of exertion, just as men’s wrists do.”26
These hands, so far from being manifestations of the passive,
oppressed soul, provide a vision into Artemisia’s performance
of cultural habits pertaining to gender differences which
allow her Judith to connote masculinity.
24 M. Garrard, ‘Artemisia’s hand’, in The Artemisia Files, 1-32.25 Ibid 5.26 Ibid 8.
The performance of cultural habits and norms which
related to masculinity in Artemisia’s contemporary context is
a crucial aspect in an analysis of Artemisia and her art. This
essay has investigated how the adoption of these practices,
according to Judith Butler’s theories on gender performance,
allowed Artemisia to adapt her own persona, and that of her
Judith, to respond to the patriarchal society in which she lived,
and to the male-dominated sphere into which she released her
art. Some possible misconceptions among scholarship about
exactly how Artemisia promoted her own persona and agency,
along with that of her Judith, have been outlined and critically
evaluated to reveal an entirely performed gender identity in
Artemisia and her heroine. By examining documentary evidence
written by Artemisia herself, and by looking in detail at her
representation of Judith, it has been made clear in this essay
that Artemisia adopted an artistic language established for
representations of male subjects, in order to contend with the
pressures she was forced to work under by her patriarchal
surroundings.
Bibliography:
Bal, M., ed., The Artemisia Files: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and
Other Thinking People, Chicago, 2005.
Bissell, R.W., Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical
Reading and Catalogue Raisonné, University Park, 1999.
Butler, J., ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution:
An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, Theatre
Journal, Vol. 40, 4, 1988, 519-531.
- Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New
York, 1990.
Cohen, S., ‘The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi: A Rape
as History’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 31, 1, 2000, 47-
75.
Contini, R., and Solinas, F., ed., Artemisia Gentileschi: The
Story of a Passion, Milan, 2011.
Garrard, M., Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in
Italian Baroque Art, Princeton, 1989.
- Artemisia Gentileschi Around 1622, the Shaping and Re-shaping of an Artistic Identity, Berkeley, 2011.
Mann, J., ed., Artemisia Gentileschi: Taking Stock, Turnhout, 2005.
Scarparo, S., ‘”Artemisia”: The Invention of a ‘Real’
Woman’, Italica, Vol. 79, 3, 2002, 363-378.
Straussman-Pflanzer, E., Violence and Virtue: Artemisia Gentileschi’s
Judith Slaying Holofernes, New Haven, 2013.
Illustrations:
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, c.1620, Oil on Canvas, Uffizi Gallery Florence.
Andrea Mantegna, Judith and Holofernes, 1495, Egg-Temperaon Wood, National Galleryof Art, Washington.
Donatello, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1460, Bronze, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
Gianlorenzo Bernini, David, 1623-24, Marble, Galleria Borghese, Rome.
Michelangelo Buonorroti, David and Goliath, 1508-12, Fresco, Sistine Chapel, Rome.