Again Artemisia? Why am I tired of seeing the artist Adalid of feminism

“Art is the most sublime form of protest. ”This is a phrase that Goya, Picasso, Banksy or even the Girls guerrillas could have pronounced, but an Italian artist of the seventeenth century said that, strange thing, he knew how Judith and Holofernes It is almost better known than that of Merisi himself. In fact, in our 21st century it seems unthinkable to conceive the Italian baroque without Artemisia Gentileschibecause we have it everywhere: in museums, at auctions, in the news … even politicians talk about it!

His life has that novel component that he likes so much. And I do not mean that he suffered abuses as soon as he reached the age of majority, an episode that has been repeated until satiety as if that was his greatest claim, but to his love messes with Francesco Maria Maringhi, to his alleged escape from Rome because of her husband’s game debts, or the friendship she held with Galileo himself by letter. He had a fascinating existence, but when we thought of her we only recall a single moment that, by luck or unfortunately, has made him Adalid of feminism.

It is true: she was raped and deceived by her teacher (after the abuse, Agostino Tassi promised to marry her, as if she was not already married). Then, she was mistreated during the trial, which questioned her version – then the excuse of “libertine” – and denied by his own father was used, which he probably felt jealous of his enormous talent. But it was much more than all that. Therefore, his best protest was to paint. Painting to take revenge on your aggressor, paint to show Orazio her worth even outside the borders of Italy, and paint to challenge the conventions of the time (she was the first woman to be admitted to the Academy of Arts of the Drawing of Florence).

Artemisia Gentileschi forged a name within the competitive world of the Italian seicanto, along with Saraceni, Guido Reni, our riverbank and many others. He traveled through Florence, Genoa, Venice and Naples before working for King Carlos I of England and returning to the city partial converted into an entire celebrity of art. The patrons of the time fell to their brush, but the later criticism, so yours, decided to condemn her to oblivion. And there it was, locked in the deposits, until His figure has been recovered in the era of #Metoo. His status as an ignored artist for centuries and abused was too sweet to go unnoticed …

Now it is as if Pandora’s box had been unleashed, because that deliberate amnesia of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, suddenly, has become an unconditional fever by this Baroque teacher who was always there, although at times it seemed invisible.

The museums that are now paid for it for her

The artist’s works have multiplied in museums, auction houses and at the fairs. Even in the storage rooms, such as the scene of Susana and the old which appeared dusty, forgotten and poorly attributed in the Palace of Hampton Court. Of course, it has immediately become part of the most prominent treasures of the Royal Collection and now hangs from the Windsor Castle.

Suddenly, all cultural institutions have become obsessed with it and seek it even under the stones. The lucky ones who are lucky enough to keep some work of them, until very hidden in the deposits, have removed the cobwebs to expose it to the public and join a ‘artemisiamania’ of which, of course, The meadow has not escaped (A year before his bicentennial, he rescued the Birth of San Juan Bautista for your room 5). And the unfortunate ones who had no painting from the artist of the moment, have had to scratch their pocket to get one of their precious fabrics, because their value has shot in a matter of a five years.

Already in 2014, Gentileschi reached its first important auction with a Magdalena which was awarded at 1.1 million dollars in Paris and ended at the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas. A world record that was overcome years later, when London’s National Gallery took the unpublished Self -portrait as Santa Catalina de Alejandría For 3.6 million pounds, a figure that had nothing to do with the one asked for the drug auction house months before, which estimated the work between 300,000 and 400,000 euros.

But that was not his roof, because in 2019 he beat a record with a Lucrecia topped in artcurial for nothing less than 4.8 million eurosagain to an American museum – the Getty of Los Angeles – which for which they have the funds to take the best pieces (with the permission of the sheikhs, of course). Fever by Artemisia has even arrived in Spain, as Alcalá aukes also encouraged to take a couple formed by Holy Lucia and Holy Apolloniasold in 2015 for 300,000 euros.

The madness lived in the art market has had its correspondence in the exhibition field, because in the case of classic teachers, both worlds do hand in hand. Moreover, they are feedback. One of the pioneer institutions to bet on the Roman artist was the Mailol Museum, when in 2012 he organized in France the first solo sample of the then “daughter of Orazio Gentileschi.”

Eight years after that, there was no trace of the coletilla left. The author had become so well known, that she had stripped of the last name to presume only her own name: Artemisia. That was the brief title of the retrospective that presented in 2020 the National Gallery of London, in which he took the opportunity to show his new new acquisition. Although, of course, the country that has been given the most times to the charms of the baroque painter has been Italy, where it has been able to see and enjoy widely at the Sanpaolo Intessa Museum of Naples –2022–, the Buonarroti house of Florence –2023– or the Ducal Palace of Venice –2024–.

Now the witness has taken it again Paris, specifically the Jacquemart-André Museum, with a sample that Until August 3 promises to delight the public. The title, Artemisia, art heroineit is a declaration of intent, and proposes an itinerary by 40 paintings of various eras. Of course, keep the hits of the artist, those powerful female characters loaded with expressive force, in addition to some novelty with which to seduce the most specialized visitor, such as the Magdalena of the Cathedral of Seville that returns to his hand, after the doubts raised during his restoration.

The other artemisias that remain to be discovered

That the Italian author has become the chicken of the golden eggs nobody doubts it. But perhaps it is already well squeezed and it is time to look for another. Because there are many female classic authors in limbo hoping to receive that same attention. Baroque painters who, like Artemisia, have had to fight to get rid of their father’s yoke, like Luisa Roldánthe sculptor who last year finally shone with his own light at the Valladolid Sculpture Museum; Josefa de Ayalaborn in Seville, although she developed her art in the Portuguese town of Obidos, where she took her nickname, which is still a mystery; or flamenco Clara Peetersto whom we discover thanks to the meadow and we have not seen again, self -portraiting in the tiny reflexes of the pots that represented on their lifting nature.

But also from artists prior to Artemisia who paved the way, like the sculptor ‘Rossi’s perpealedwhich according to Vasari was endowed with a “capricious ingenuity”; Sofonisba AnguissolaChamber of Felipe II chamber portrait, although he had to settle for painting Queen Elizabeth of Valois; either Lavinia Fontanaofficial painter of Pope Clemente VIII who today remains the first woman in having her own workshop. Even Amber Catharina van Hemessenwho managed to work under the protection of the governor of the Netherlands and sister of Emperor Carlos V, María de Hungary, performing mainly miniature portraits.

And who was Giovanna Garzoni? His name is barely lavished in the art world, but in the last edition of Tefaf Maastricht we could see Fig plate with a acorn that has brought us a little closer to the work of this still lifes specialist and watercolor full of botanical dyes and anecdotal details. Like Artemisia, he traveled through Venice, Naples and Florence, but he has not yet had the critical fortune of his compatriot, with whom by the way he maintained a friendship. And that also has an exciting story, because he married Tiberio Tinelli after having made a vote of celibacy, which is why he accused the husband of trying to break that vote through magical arts. Another bombing to discover: Giovanna ‘La Casta’.

The truth is that the current validity of Artemisia is such, that it begins to make almost as much as Picasso or Sorolla. In that sense, we have achieved it: that the same as the male names that the museums monopolize. Hopefully the new King Midas del Arte will remain in time and not just a passing fad of using and throwing while interesting its history of abuse and redemption. Because the reality is that it was not a hero, but a talent artist.