Dr Angela Ryan
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 - c. 1653): Artist Genius of Light and Darkness
The Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Lomi Gentileschi (1593 - c. 1653) is considered one of the most talented seventeenth-century artists. Her paintings are celebrated for her humanist naturalism, virtuoso handling of colour and texture, dramatic choreography of the characters with vibrant contrasts of chiaroscuro, often related to the drama of the subject-matter. Her success is the more outstanding for a period when access for women creatives to training, and professional independence was not easy, and she survived oppression in her life. Her portrayal of a range of powerful female subjects is especially remarkable: Cleopatra, Bathsheba, Judith, Jael, Susanna, Esther, Lucretia, Delilah, Mary Magdalene, a self-portrait as a lute-player, another as the Allegory of Painting, an extraordinary Annunciation. An exceptional recent exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris brought together many of her most famous works from international museums and private collections, adding to the reputation of this genius of the painting of intense human, especially female experience.