What Artemisia Gentileschi is Teaching Me

Art as Justice, Art as Resistance

These past few weeks, ever since January 20, I have struggled to write. I know I am not alone. Many writers I know are struggling to put words onto the page, as our world seems to be crumbling and we are grappling with a constitutional crisis. I have been reading a lot. I have scanned the newspapers around this country. I can understand why people reading local newspapers might not quite see the gravity of the situation. So much of what is happening in Washington is buried under local news in those papers — I can see evidence of the burying right on the digital front page of outlets like the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune. Corporate media is complicit, it seems, in the takeover. They are bending the knee.

But I live near the eye of the storm, surrounded by neighbors who are federal workers. The chaos that Musk-Trump have sown here is wild, and the confusion and fear runs deep. That chaos will bleed out to the rest of the country sooner or later. It is only a matter of time. I hope it isn’t too late.

I could not write because I couldn’t find the words to meet the moment. I could not write because so many brave journalists have been drilling down, and I wanted to read their words, rather than focus on my own. I could not write because so many brave protesters have been making their voices heard, and I wanted to listen to them.

I couldn’t write because I was overwhelmed, confused, and frankly grieving for my country. I could not write because I have been trying to get up in the morning, put a smile on my face, and send my kids off to school with the assurance, however feigned, that it was all going to be okay. It has been exhausting to pretend.

Mostly, I could not write because I simply didn’t know what to say.

But this morning, I woke up and the sun was shining. I made my coffee, and it was extra good. I had a piece of toast with peanut butter, and it was extra crunchy.

And I sat down at my keyboard.

This morning, I am thinking about the historian Timothy Snyder, who studies autocracies. Snyder’s advice for resisting autocracy comes down to five words: do not submit in advance.

The novelist Margaret Atwood puts it slightly differently in The Handmaid’s Tale: “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.” Don’t let the bastards grind you down.¹

I am a writer and a historian. If I go silent, am I not submitting in advance? Am I not letting them grind me down?

So here I am, alone in my office, sipping my coffee, tapping the keys.

And I am thinking about the seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi.

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A warning that the following contains themes of rape and images of violence.

A few days ago — as executive orders flew out of the Oval Office and federal workers received notices not to show up to work the next day — I searched through my shelves, hunting down an old book about Artemisia Gentileschi. Gentileschi is considered one of the most accomplished painters of her time. Like other female artists, she didn’t always sign her paintings, and many of them have, until relatively recently, been attributed to male artists. Several of her paintings were once attributed to Caravaggio (who, admittedly, did inspire Gentileschi). You have probably seen a Gentileschi painting but didn’t realize that a woman had painted it.

Gentileschi often painted women who fought tyranny and oppression or who somehow resisted the patriarchy. She drew most of her subjects from classical myth, history, or the Bible. One of her most famous paintings depicts the biblical story from the Book of Daniel that recounts Susanna resisting the elders, two old men who lust after her as she bathes. In the biblical story, when Susanna refuses to sleep with them, the old men have her arrested. She is about to be executed for adultery, when Daniel steps in and proves her innocence.

Gentileschi’s painting of 1610 does not include Daniel. She depicts Susanna naked, her hand held up as if to shield herself from the gaze of the old men. She captures the moment when Susanna is at her most vulnerable; it is also the moment when Susannah begins to resist.

This is the earliest known painting by Artemesia Gentileschi, completed in 1610.

But her most famous painting is probably this version of Judith slaying Holofernes.

Judith Slaying Holofernes, completed in 1612-613.

Do you know the biblical story of Judith? Judith, a young Jewish widow, is furious that the people of Israel have done little to resist their Assyrian occupiers, led by Nebuchadnezzar and his general, Holofornes. She has told them to trust in God. But the people won’t listen to Judith. They have no faith in what she says.

One night, in the company of her loyal maid, Judith sneaks into the Assyrian camp. There, she ingratiates herself with Holofornes, promising to deliver valuable information about the Judean armies. Then, she waits for the right moment. One evening, Holofernes falls into a drunken sleep. Seizing the moment, Judith beheads him with a sword, all the while assisted by her maidservant.

Judith brings the head back to Israel, the Assyrians flee in panic, and Israel is saved. Judith is revered by her people - but despite her youth and beauty, she decides to remain unmarried for the rest of her life.

“Judith Slaying Holofornes” was a wildly popular subject for late 16th and 17th-century European painters and their patrons. Everyone wanted to own one, and many painters complied. Caravaggio himself painted a famous version. Artemisia Gentileschi painted this episode multiple times, and at least six of her Judith paintings have survived.

Clearly, Artemisia was moved by Judith’s story because she kept coming back to it in her work. But it wasn’t just because her patrons asked for it.

I am pausing here for a moment, hands over the keys. I was taught as a graduate student not to refer to female writers or artists by their first names because it is demeaning. But last names are patrilineal, and Artemisia Gentileschi’s father is not really an upstanding character in this story. So I have decided to call her by her given name.

Artemisia was the daughter of the painter Orazio Gentileschi, and it was from Orazio that she learned much of her technique. Studying under her father in Rome, she was a splendid student, with incomparable gifts. She completed the “Susanna” painting pictured above in 1610, when she was just 17 years old. Scroll back up and look at that painting again — yes, that was painted by a teenager.

Artemisia’s mother died when she was twelve. As she entered adolescence, she was raised solely by her father. She was often in the company of men — in fact, she was surrounded by them both as she painted in her father’s workshop and at home. She had few female companions. But around 1610 or 1611, a young woman named Tuzia moved in with Artemisia and Orazio. We don’t know much about Tuzia, except that she became close to Artemisia, who thought of her as friend.

In 1611, when Artemisa was about 18, she was raped by an artist named Agostino Tassi, who was collaborating with Orazio and who had become a frequent visitor to the Gentileschi home. In fact, Tuzia — as it was revealed later in the trial — likely facilitated some of Tassi’s visits to Artemisia’s home. In other words, she may have been acting as something like a procurer.

Tuzia was in the Gentileschi home when the rape occurred, but she ignored Artemisia as she screamed for help. Later, at the trial, Tuzia countered that there was no assault; she claimed the sexual relationship between Artemisia and Tassi was consensual and ongoing. Artemisia admitted that, after the rape, she did sleep repeatedly with Tassi, but only because she hoped he would marry her and restore her virtue.

During the trial, which lasted 7 months, lawyers and judges were skeptical of her testimony, and Artemisia was tortured to ensure that she was telling the truth. Her fingers were intertwined with cords, which when pulled tight, cut off the blood supply and threatened to break her fingers entirely. Had they broken, she might never have held a paint brush again.

The trial was public and scandalous. And although Tassi was convicted, Artemisia never shed the notoriety of the scandal. The conviction restored the Gentileschi family honor, at least legally — and it was for the sake of family honor, rather than Artemisia’s suffering, that Orazio had pressed charges in the first place. One month after the trial ended, Orazio arranged a marriage between Artemisia and another artist. She went on to become a mother, and to have a brilliant career as a painter.

But she never recovered from the rape, the trial, or Tuzia’s betrayal. Or perhaps she recovered in some fashion. But she certainly didn’t forget.

When I dug up the book on Gentileschi a few days ago, I wanted to sit with the Judith paintings. They are hardly soothing. On the contrary, their graphic violence is agitating. But they are also beautiful: jewel-toned and rich, the colors velvety, the faces vivid. It is hard to know Artemisia’s story and not see in those paintings a kind of vindication. The Judith in her paintings is strong and decisive. She is unafraid. She is gorgeous and glorious. No waif, she is fleshy and robust.

Was Artemisia seeking vindication as an artist? Vengeance as a woman? Or maybe, in a way, a fantasy, one that she indulged in, over and over again, an attempt to heal. I am struck, in these paintings, not by the bloodied head of Holofernes, but by the portrayal of Judith’s maidservant. Unlike in other painters’ versions of the Judith story, Gentileschi never paints Judith without her maidservant, a woman who stood by Judith until the end, putting her own life at risk. She is Judith’s equal in this act. She wants to save her people, too.

From 1623-25

The maidservant is sometimes a young woman, sometimes an older woman. Allyship crosses all sorts of lines. This version was completed in 1639-1640.

The maidservant is the embodiment of solidarity. Judith’s most important weapon is not the sword, but rather this woman’s friendship. It is hard not to see these paintings as Artemisia’s judgment of Tuzia, the friend who betrayed her. What might have happened had Tuzia intervened? Could they have, together, defeated the oppressor, the rapist, the beast?

I have wanted to sit with the Judith paintings because there is something redemptive about them, something brave and transgressive. Somehow, they make me feel bolstered in this fight we are embarking on, a fight not so different than Artemisia’s. Artemisia is teaching me how art makes the idea of justice visible — and how, by making it visible, we give justice shape and substance in the world. Artemisia had no sword, only a paintbrush and canvas. But she could tell a story. And she was telling Judith’s story to find a way to tell her own.

Judith and her maidservant helped Artemisia imagine what was possible, even if that possibility was, in Artemisia’s world, not even close to becoming reality. She imagined a woman with agency. A woman who, finding an ally, summoned the courage to confront a powerful enemy — and who, with her friend, ultimately emerged from the ordeal, alive and victorious.

1. Mock Latin. Effective, nonetheless.