Artemisia at the National Gallery

Hello! And welcome

to the 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.

When she refused them, 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 there 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 could 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

has managed to get both versions

up at once.

It's Judith beheading Holofernes.

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 rhythm.

And makes you notice things.

What's wonderful is the actual detail here.

Look at this gigantic sword that she's weilding

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 Gentileschis until

a couple of years ago

when very fortunately they managed

to buy this masterpiece by her.

And this St. 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 it's Artemisia as St. Catherine.

Identifying fiercely with her.

And this is Artemisia's St. Cecelia.

It was 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?

It sort of picks you out.

It 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,

every time 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 heroine

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's 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, Horatio.

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.

Now, 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.