Hello and wellcome to he Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition
at the National Gallery
Artemisia was one of the greatest of all baroque artists
but she was also a woman and that of course made her special
in interesting ways.
I mean, she wasn't the first woman artist in western art
but she was the first who imbued all her work
with a sense of her femininity.
It makes her work powerful, it makes it pioneering
and it certainly makes it exciting.
As you come through the door, the first picture you see,
kind of slaps you around the face really is this,
and it shows this famous biblical story of Susanna and the elders.
Susanna was a hebrew wife
who was lusted over by a couple of old men in the village.
and they watched her while she was bathing
and tried to force her to have sex with them.
She refused and they took her to court.
They lost the case, she won the case.
So, it's a kind of feminist story, if you like.
But Artemisia has made something so creepy out of it.
Lots of baroque artists painted Susanna and the elders
but never with this intimate sense of the blokes crushing into her space,
leaning right over into her confidence zone.
But the really extraordinary thing here
is that when she painted this she was probably 16 at most 17.
Now, this show ahead of us tells us an awful lot of things
about Artemisia Gentileschi.
But one of the first things it says is that she was a prodigy.
She could paint better earlier
than just about anybody else in western art.
When Artemisia was 17,
she was raped by a friend of her father's,
another painter called Agostino Tassi
and this rape was to have a powerful impact on her life, of course
and it was a very infamous court case that resulted from it.
And one of the things they've got here
is an actual transcript of the court proceedings.
And what's wonderful about it, is that you can hear Artemisia's voice,
the things she said, the way she spoke.
Sometimes they tortured her to make sure she was telling the truth
but she always came back with these snappy reposts,
these witty answers
and she emerges in this show as someone who wasn't just a tragic victim
but was a really rounded and interesting figure.
This is probably Artemisia's most famous image,
so famous she did it twice
and fortunately the National Gallery
managed to get both versions up at once.
It's "Judith beheading Holofernes".
That Judith was a jewish heroine who fought back against Holofernes
and beheaded him.
So, a very feminine subject
and a subject which, because of Artemisia's rape
felt particularly personal.
But what i like is the way the two pictures are subtly different.
I mean, they're both gory
because one of the great lessons of Caravaggio
was that violence is something that makes people look at art.
It's a bit like Sam Peckinpah movies in the 80s and 90s.
You know, violence is just something that shakes you out of your everyday rythm
and makes you notice things.
What's wonderful is the actual detail here.
Look at this gigantic sword that she's wielding
as she cuts off the poor guy's head.
And here there's just a little bit of blood
pouring out of him, it's savage,
but it's not quite a gore fest.
By the time she does this, the second version,
wow, look at the blood there.
It's pouring out like water from a baroque fountain.
What a piece of drama that is.
Now, the National Gallery didn't own any Artemisia Gentileschi
still a couple of years ago when, very fortunately,
they managed to buy this masterpiece by her.
And this is Saint Catherine who was tortured
with a horrible wooden wheel with spikes in it
that was turned over her,
but also it's a self-portrait of Artemisia.
So, as Artemisia as Saint Catherine
identifying fiercely with her.
And this is Artemisia as Saint Cecilia.
There's another early christian martyr
who was tortured for her beliefs
and who became the patron saint of music.
That's why she's strumming away there.
Look at that look on her face,
it's very accusatory, isn't it?
Sort of picks you out and seems somehow to make you feel a bit guilty.
It's self-portraiture but self-portraiture with these bigger ambitions,
I think, to somehow reach across the ages
and identify with these sad martyred figures
of young women from the early christian days.
Now this room here shows the work that she started to paint
when she moved back to Rome in the 1620s
and it's particularly clear here
that everywhere she went, everytime she moved on,
her art changed a bit.
I mean, this too is Susanna and the Elders.
So, it's that first subject in the show
the creepy guys staring at the naked woman
but here it feels less antagonistic, it's calmed down
It seems to be more about the beauty of the flesh
and even the blokes don't look quite as horrible as they do
in that wonderful picture that she painted when she was 16.
So, there's an attempt here, I think,
to become a slightly more respectable Artemisia.
So, it's important to remember that she wasn't this feminist heroin
beheading men all the way through her career.
She had these phases and the show judges beautifully, I think.
The development from one phase to another.
Although the show is basically chronological
and takes us through all the main periods of Artemisia's career
it loses that chronology at the end
and with a bit of sneaky exhibition making
it fast forwards through the neapolitan years
and brings us straight to the time that Artemisia spent in England,
because yes she came to England,
in 1638, just before the civil war.
She arrived here and worked
on various decorative schemes with her father Orazio
and what I really like here
is that this famous painting was also painted in England
and it's one of her most famous images:
Artemisia Gentileschi, embodying art,
art itself,symbolically.
A lot of people have always said, it's a self-portrait,
Indeed, it's called a self-portrait,
but we've seen the other self-portraits in the show
and it's clear that isn't her.
So, this isn't a literal self-portrait
it's a symbolic self-portrait of her,
her presence, of what art can be in the world
and because she's working with one figure,
it's got that intensity about it again.
So, it's a fantastic ending to a fantastic show.