After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - 400 Year Old Artist's Dark Revenge

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Artemisia Gentileschi's paintings personify female rage against men. She paints women beheading men, hammering nails into their skulls, brandishing their dead faces. In her personal life, Artemisia was the victim of sexual abuse, torture and public shaming. Can we read her traumatic personal life into her work?Edited by Anna Brant and Hannah Feodorov. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rome, 14th of May 1612. The courtroom is stifling, thick with whispers, and the rustle of onlookers leaning in. At its centre stands Artemisia Gentilesi. Her gaze fixed, her breath measured. The judge's questions slice through the air, clinical, relentless, yet she does not look away. months of scrutiny, fear and public judgment press hard against her, but she lifts her chin and steadies her voice. The cords twisted around her fingers tighten, supposedly testing her resolve, drawing pain to the surface. Still, she refuses to waver.

In this moment of brutal tension, Artemisia is not only fighting for justice. she is shaping the legacy that will blaze through her art for centuries. The revolutionary Baroque painter Artemisia Gentilesi's personal life was marred with trauma and violence, and she channeled this suffering into explicit art. In the years following her death, attempts were made to diminish her legacy with several of her paintings misattributed to men,

yet her voice and her artistry refused. used to disappear. Genda Lesse's story is a testament to survival and the power of a woman whose work could not be erased despite society's best efforts. Welcome to After Dark. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie and you might notice that Anthony's not here. Now, this episode is coming to you during my maternity leave.

So picture me, I'm probably covered in vomit. I'm changing some nappies. I'm probably crying at 3. while you're listening to this, very relaxed. So do enjoy this. Anthony's having the day off. He's doing a stellar job without me, but I thought I'd give him a break.

We are going to be discussing a topic and an artist I have wanted to talk about on this podcast for so long. Today, we'll be exploring the extraordinary life and legacy of Artemisia Gentilesi. Born into a world that denied women artistic and bodily agency, Artemisia carved a space for herself

through sheer talent and relentless determination. Her paintings, which depict complex, women, let's say, resonate centuries later. From her early masterpieces to her hard-won recognition, Artemisia's story is one of resilience, vision, and the transformative force of art. Now, before we get into this episode, just a little warning to listeners and viewers on YouTube, we are going to be talking about a case of sexual assault. So if that's something you don't want to talk about, you don't want to hear today, go back to our back catalogue and enjoy something else. But if you're still with us, I am now going to introduce our amazing guest.

is the presenter comedian and art historian Verity Babs and the author of The History of Art in One Sentence, which I am so excited to read. It's been sat on my shelf for quite well. I'm really excited for it. You also host an art-themed comedy event called Art Lafs. That's amazing. Tell me about that. Yeah. So, I mean, thank you for having me as well. That's quite all right. So Art Laf's, we bring comics into arts spaces, museums, galleries, and we do some art fairs and basically disrupt people who want to have a nice time. And also if they want to see some improv comedy, which they mostly don't. But we do stand-up nights in the National Gallery. And basically, it's a way, hopefully, to bring new audiences into art

spaces and kind of encourage people that any reaction you have to art is okay. I think we think of art as like, it's really dour and really serious experience. But like, a lot of it very funny. You can tell her both two recovering art historians where like, we need it to be less serious, please. Exactly. And there's so many sort of really brilliant stories, really uplifting stories, but also quite nice to just revel in quite how nasty almost all of the blokes were. Yeah. Quite fun, actually. Well, we're not here to talk about the nasty blokes of art history today. We're here to talk about Artemisia Gentilesi.

I wanted to talk about her for so long. For people who don't know who she is, give us a little bit of an overview of her life, when she's born, when and where is she in time? So she's born in 1593 in Rome, and she is the daughter of Aratio Gentileski. And also the different ways I will pronounce her name and everyone's name throughout this episode is is multiple. But she's the daughter of a really successful painter and she's the eldest of four children.

And her mother, Prudencia, dies when she's 12. So she then is sort of basically by Oratio is kind of kept in the studio because Rome's quite a rough place for a young girl. So she's kept in the studio and trained under her father and she sort of becomes a surrogate mother for her younger brothers as well. It's so fascinating, isn't it, that she has that kind of dual experience where on the one hand, she becomes the eldest woman of the household and therefore has to take on the domestic responsibilities,

but also that she's allowed into the studio space and not only that, but to train as an artist, which is so rare in this moment. And, you know, this is a space in which sometimes naked men are being drawn. This is a space where it's, you know, somewhere for sort of discussion of ideas and intellect. This is not a space that women occupy ordinarily, is it? So she would have stood out, right, in her father's studio. Yeah, I mean, looking back now, there are, a handful of names vaguely happening at this time of women who we now think of as some of the most successful women artists of all time. But it's taken a long time for anyone to realise how good they were

that, like, Gentileski, her show, there's a show in the National Gallery in 2021, which was the first major show of hers in the UK, which is ever. Oh, wow, I didn't know that. And it was huge, a really big deal. But now, I think with, basically since the 1970s, I guess, in art history, she's really been popped back into the centre of things.

But up until then, It was really like she might be mentioned every now and again, but so she's really had like a comeback. That's extraordinary in and of itself, but it seems particularly extraordinary to me when you see her paintings. And you're like, how could anyone have overlooked this woman? I mean, her work is just, we'll get into it, but it's so full of passion and rage and beauty and power in an extraordinary way. One of the other famous painters working in this moment, of course, is Caravaggio. And she's very influenced by her own father's work, but also by Caravaggio, isn't she? Tell me a little bit about that and how his work kind of creeps in to her early development.

Yeah, so I mean, Caravaggio is mates with her dad, basically. So she actually knows him. Artistic world in Rome. And they're all living in the artist's quarter in Rome. They're basically all living in like Hackneywick together. And so she knows Caravaggio. And there's this really like grim moment in history where potentially Caravaggio and Gentilesky are like drawing a lot of inspiration from the same thing.

So Gen Flesi would only have been like six years old, quite a young child, when basically in Rome there's a really famous public beheading of a woman called Beatrice Chenchi, not C-E-M-Benzsche, we'll go with that. Write in and tell us that we've got it on. So there's really famous public beheading. And potentially she witnesses this, Caravaggio definitely witnesses this, and both of them supposedly draw on that experience for their own later depictions of people being beheaded. Do we know why this woman's being beheaded?

So she is beheaded. Basically, she has been imprisoned by her father. She is repeatedly sexually assaulted by her father, and she does him in, as she should. And she goes to the court, and then she's done for the murder. There's no extenuating circumstances. She's done for the murder and is publicly beheaded. And there's still, to this day, the night before her anniversary of her beheading, she's meant to pop up in Rome and carrying her severed head to sort of spook people out.

Almost all of Rome basically could have. seen this appalling thing, which adds into, yeah, both Caravaggio and Gentileski having this really dark and very, like, visceral approach to brutality. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting that it's this particular story and this beheading and the woman's backstory leading up to that moment that is going to have such an effect on Artemisia herself, for reasons that are going to become clear. Let's think a little bit first, though, about her ambitions as an artist, because she trains, as you say, under her father. And she's serious about this. And she's serious about this. And she's, She is seriously talented. I mean, he speaks openly about his daughter's talent. He's very proud of her, isn't he? But what kind of obstacles would be in place for a woman wanting to professionally paint in this moment? I mean, there are sort of the base level barriers that all women are experiencing to do anything. There's fundamentally a lack of belief that women can succeed in comparison to their male counterparts. So she's coming up against that. She's coming up. I think oddly, it ends up being a bit of an issue that she is training under her father in her father.

the studio because it ends up being basically despite the fact that Aratio writes letters saying how talented his teenage daughter is and people must come and see this work and how she's massively accomplished as such a young age. People still think that Aratio is basically making them and sort of signing her name on them kind of as out of charity kind of just as a gimmick maybe. Like it's a nice daddy thing to do. Yeah. So he's a bit cringe. There's like there's a there's an Fopo baby thing going on. but so she almost has to battle against the idea that maybe he's sort of doing them. But, you know, this is a problem that anyone has trying to specifically date or specifically attribute works in this era to artists.

So she's got the problem of basically people think her dad's done it. People are shocked and surprised that she's a woman and that she's so young as well. So it's like a double whammy. I mean, she's painting as a teenager, isn't she? Incredible works. Completely brilliant works. When you look at them in comparison to the work her dad does is actually like a lot softer. and a lot sort of more, I think that her dad's work is quite sort of classical and like intense.

But she also has this problem that all artists have in this period, which is when she kind of comes into her own as a sort of fully grown adult artist, she's working in a workshop. So by nature, other people have worked on these works. So it's then quite hard to tell that she was the one who did it. Yeah, I mean, let's just explain that for people who maybe don't know about this. You know, that often if you, I mean, right up until the 19th century, right, if you look at particular portrait, for example, let's take a portrait. The artist who's attributed to that work may have done the face, for example, but maybe not the clothing or the background. That could have been several of the hands, right?

That this is a completely different way of working to how we expect we have the sort of the idea of, I suppose, the lone male genius. Working away in his studio, I'm thinking about, you know, we see this all the time on screen, things like the Vermeer film with Colin Firth, you know, where it's just one manless studio. And maybe Vermeer did work like that. But, you know, there's a kind of lack of depiction in our. popular imagination of what art working was like in this moment. And yeah, so you're going through your traditionally as an artist. You go through your apprenticeships and you work in someone else's workshop. You present a masterpiece to the guild.

And then the perk of that is you can then have your own workshop and get other people to do bits of the work you don't like. So lots of artists are then like guys, I wish you could do that with books. Yeah. Could someone else do the footnotes? I mean, exactly. What men did throughout the 20th century, right? The thanks for typing idea of all those wives who did the footnotes. notes and the research often.

But you know, basically, you earn the right to go, I'm not doing any more hands. I'm out of hands. I mean, hands are hard, right? Hands are hard. So she struggles with being attributed her work because of that. But then also when she's massively successful, when she's living in Naples later on in her story, there are so many churches in Naples. She's really doing quite well with getting church commissions.

And if you're commissioned by church to do an altarpiece, you don't need to write your name on it. Like, it's kind of irrelevant that you did it because it's sort of holy and above you. Right. So we don't know necessarily everything that she did. Exactly. And or it's been really hard one to prove that it was her and how much was her. And, you know, so she's up against all these issues that actually quite a lot of Baroque and Renaissance masters are up against. Plus the being a woman and being young and, you know. Yeah. And having to take responsibility in that domestic space, et cetera, et cetera. She's got a lot going on. Okay. One painting from, I think the age of around 17 that we do know that she painted is Susanna and the elders.

I'm going to describe this. I've seen this so many times, but I'm just going to give a brief description, and then we can talk about it because it's so, I mean, must have been remarkable at the time and revolutionary in terms of the vibe. This is, you know, there's a biblical topic that comes up again and again.

We'll talk about the story behind it, but this is a very different take to what you see in this period, particularly painted by male painters. Okay, so this is a painting of Susanna, who is in the foreground. She's sat on some kind of marble bench. She is nude, but for a little piece.

piece of cloth that is sort of wrapped around her thigh covering her modesty. And she is recoiling in horror and anguish from the two men, the elders who are behind her, who are chastising her, whispering about her, leering at her in this really grim way. I mean, it's sort of a depressing snapshot of the female experience across time, but this feels to me the work of a 17-year-old who understands this story from a very specific point of view. Like she has lived this experience to a certain extent, hasn't she? Tell me about this painting. Well, I mean, this is, like you say, a really radical depiction of Susanna and the elders.

So the story of Susanna and the elders, basically, Susanna, lovely, young lady, and two of the elders in her community are purving on her one day, and they spot each other purving, and they say, well, why don't we... Perf together? Why perv alone? compare with a friend. And they say, what we'll do is we will blackmail her for sex. Otherwise, we will tell the community that she has been adulterous, for which you can get the death penalty at the time. So there's like high stakes. And Susanna declines. And then they do claim that she

committed adultery. There's no one else to witness against that fact. And then eventually she, you know, she pleased to God and God sends Daniel. This is in the book of Daniel in the Old Testament to tell the truth. And so it all ends up okay. And God, another man comes along to sort this out for her. God bless Daniel. So basically this is the first depiction, though, of Susanna not fundamentally kind of being coquettishly sort of into it. Lots of older depictions of this scene, which happens time and time again. It's a real like staple for art history. She's always quite like fun and flirty rather than appalled. Completely serene and sort of like, oh, this is just happening, but I will remain dignified.

But this is, I mean, this is, she's literally holding a hands to be rejection. She's pushing them away. She's the look on her face and the kind of, that very actually Caravaggio-esque twist of her body, like the absolute agony of what she's going through. It's so powerful. And to paint that at 17 is completely remarkable. Let's talk a little bit about one of the major events in her life. And I'm hesitant to define her by this, but it nevertheless is a crucial part of her story, isn't it?

And this is an assault that happens too much. her that is done to her and the subsequent trial. And it's, I mean, it's remarkable for so many reasons in terms of the publicity around it, the fact that this is taken into the public sphere, the fact that accusations are made and the way that she is treated in that moment. But talk to me about the man who does this to her and how he appears in her domestic space, what happens and how this crime unfolds. Sure. So Aratio has Artemisia in the studio. And he, decides that he's going to hire his friend, a man called Agostino Tassi, to give her private tutelage in painting. So Tassi is a painter. He works quite a lot with Aratio. They do papal commissions

together so that they're very close and work together. And presumably, this is like a good opportunity for him to ingratiate himself further. It's a trusted role, etc. Exactly. So brought it into the, into the Gentileschi family home. Now, Tassie, like for background, almost regardless of what happens next is already like a total shit. He's in his 30s and he is. I mean he really is, isn't he? I was reading about him in prep for this and what an asshole.

You know when you hear about like the worst thing a historical character did and then you hear about all the rest of it was horrible. Yeah, you're like, oh, okay, that wasn't a one off. Yeah, so we overlook all the fact that he's like fundamentally a really nasty piece of work. He is accused of having sexually assaulted his sister, sexually assaulting his wife.

He brags quite a lot about it's not quite clear how many times he was married, but he boasts about the fact that he's had one of his wives killed for being unfaithful. So generally, like, that could be the end of his story, and he's still a dastardly person. Yeah, like terrible vibes. And he works with Gentilesky and is giving her private tutelage.

And the interesting thing about this whole case is that Gentilesky gave such detailed testimonial. So we have her, like her exact words translated of what happened. So she says that he basically accosts her, he follows up her upstairs, and he pushes her into the bedroom despite her protestations, and he rapes her. And she gives the most gruesome and horrible and visceral details of this happening, which is remarkable at the time. I mean, it's remarkable now. She's 18 years old at this moment. And she gives details about the fact that she tried to scream, but he was covering her mouth. She said that she gripped his penis so hard,

she took away a piece of the flesh, but it didn't bother him. at all. Wow. So there's like really like serious details in this. So, you know, it's horrific and then Tassie offers to marry her. Oh, what a gentleman. Yeah. So I'm sure she's thrilled at that offer. But the thing is, it's like she at that point in this society, she has lost one of the most significant things that make her sort of marriage material. Right. So she is no longer a virgin. She doesn't want her father to find out. So she, she agrees. She and she wants to keep this secret from her father, but he does find out in 1612. And then he is furious, not because his daughter has been traumatized, but because essentially

his goods have been damaged. So he takes Tassi to court. It's not like, you know, Artemisia isn't taking him to court. Tassi is taking, erratio is taking him to court. And it's a sort of case of the family honour has been, yeah, has been kind of damaged in some way. Yeah, and the goods, as you say, I mean, it's really grim because you think on the one hand, you know, Aratio is kind of.

ahead of his time maybe in that he has this daughter that he brings into this all-male space and he is willing to push her forward and to encourage her talent and to train her in this profession that is not for women in this moment. And yet, this tells you the context in which they live and how they understand their roles. And yeah, it's sort of disappointing from a modern perspective. But it is unusual that it goes to court, right? I mean, you know, even today there are thousands of alleged sexual assaults and rape that never make it to court at all. So even for this to happen in the 17th century really is remarkable. Tell me a little bit about the trial because it's very public.

And as you say, Artemisia gives these really, yeah, visceral, brutal details. She's not, I mean, she might be afraid, but she's brave enough to give this level of information. And to testify against her attacker, but also to stand up for herself, she's defending herself, really. Tassie might officially be the one on trial but she is not necessarily believed here, is she? So what happens in this circus? Yeah, I mean, her reputation is completely in Tatters and it remains in Tatters for quite a while afterwards.

But also the interesting thing about this trial, because it is, you know, the grim phrase of he said, she said, there are academics who don't really buy it who basically believe that it was a vague set up by Gentilesky and her father. they wanted Tassie to marry her. Even now. Even now.

Interestingly, I've only ever heard men tell me that they doubt the sort of validity of her testimony. So we can't ever really know what happens. So the trial goes on. It's one of Rome's still to date longest ever rape trials. It goes on for nearly a year. It's massively public. At one point, there's a horrible little detail. Basically Tassie, who we all know is like a horrible little man.

He does a little drawing in court and they still have this copy of this drawing. And it's of some kind of loot. It's something kind of musical. and over the top it says something like, you know, I am guilty for my bad situation, which isn't interpreted as a declaration of guilt. It's interpreted as him basically saying, I, like any saintly man, feel bad that this is happening generally. So he's basically saying, I'm sorry you feel that way.

So yeah, really grim. Through a little sketch. I mean, that couldn't get any more obnoxious. It's very performative, very soft boy, like very not good. But, yeah, so this trial goes on. and in its 10th month, they decide that they're going to resort to torture. And this isn't torture of Tassie? No.

And it's not torture of Tassie because basically Tassie is being commissioned at that time by the Pope. And in Rome, which is ruled by the Vatican, it's a really bad idea to mess with the Pope's workers. Well, lucky for him, there was no council culture of this moment so we can carry on working through the trial. So they decide they're not going to torture Tassie because the way that they were going to do the torture and the torture that they did on Gentileski instead, involve wrapping ropes around their fingers and pulling very hard to sort of, it gets rid of the blood flow in your fingers. It's like agonisingly painful. Not ideal if you're an artist.

Exactly. Which is why Tassie basically could say, you know, I can't. I'm busy and important. Like when Steve Coogan got like a speeding ticket and he was like, I'm about to film another TV program where I have to do driving, so sorry, I can't do it. So it's very much like that. We will be hearing from Steve's team. But, you know, and there are worse versions of this.

men, the women apparently get like, get it a bit lighter, but, you know, there are other versions of this torture where there's wood attached to the ropes, their iron, like they make it, it's horrible. And presumably there's like potentially long-term damage to your hands. Yeah, big time. And she, under torture, still testifies that this is what happened to her. So Tassie is found guilty. He is found guilty and it handed a sentence of five years exile, which he does not do.

He does like a year or two in prison, we think. But, you know, he... And that's it. I mean, it is amazing to me that he's found guilty at all. And I suppose it says something about the store that is placed by torture as a way to elicit the truth from a situation. But even then, that he is able to essentially walk free. Yes, maybe he does a little bit of prison time. Yeah.

But presumably for Artemisia, her, as you say, her reputation's been ruined. Yeah. What is life like for her after this? How does she recover from this moment? Yeah, I mean, so for her, even though she's technically won, her reputation is completely in tatters. And she basically has two options. She either marries to try to save some face, basically, and save the family's reputation. Because, you know, this is Arakos' reputation as well. It's all kind of tied up with the kind of grim patriarchal bow. So it's like they're part and parcel with each other. So to save the family's reputation, she either has to marry or basically become a nun. I don't love those odds.

No. I don't love those options. That's a terrible, yeah, terrible TV game, isn't it? Like, welcome to... Nun swap. Imagine how many people would be like, I really should just become a nun. Who married, young, and they're like, I should have been a nun. Should have been a nun?

But in options as well, Tassie, actually, when he's found guilty, he's given options as well for what he wants to do. He's either given the option of exile or hard labour, and he takes exile, which I think says a lot about his character. So much about him, yeah, yeah. These hands need to remain soft for painting. So her reputation is tatters. She either has to marry or join a convent.

She is then set up with the brother of one of A Ratsio's lawyers. Oh, okay. She meets him on the afternoon of the wedding. And luckily, he turns out sort of by chance to be kind of young and hot, which we love for her. Like, yes, please. Like it could have gone, you know, given that this, it was really, really, really, really, really, I just need her reputation to be saved. So she marries her husband, who is Pierre Antonio Stia Tessi.

And he's a Florentine, and they move to Florence together. But there's a really beautiful fact about their wedding, what beautiful, but interesting, fact about their wedding, that when they were married, they were married in a little tiny side chapel, because basically all of the Gentileski family are really worried about Tassie turning up, about someone trying to exact revenge. So they end up getting married in a tiny side bit of the chapel. Wow, so even in this moment, the whole trial is still looming so large in her life.

There's a lot of like really ill feeling towards the Gentileski family in general because of this Tassie has like, you know, a gang basically. Because they've had the audacity to call someone out for a crime that's presumably happening. All the time, exactly. So they get married in this tiny side chapel and they lock all the doors, which is illegal because you have to have the doors open at a wedding so that anyone can run in should anyone want to not hold their peace and say they're already married. Okay. Wow. So they do basically an illegal wedding. She's the only woman there.

It's like a tiny little affair. And then they move to Florence together. Wow. Okay. So she's been given, I don't want to say a second chance because all she's done so far is just advocate for herself and live her life. But she is given this opportunity, if we want to dress it up as such, to have a life, to have some kind of opportunity and some kind of future, I suppose. How does her husband feel about her painting? Does she still continue to paint?

So actually it turns out not only is he young and hot that he's actually quite, it seems quite open-minded. I mean, this guy sounds great. Dreamy. And so he... The bar is literally so... God. But he ends up being like a really good business partner for her essentially. So she carries on painting.

She has five children. So she's like heavily pregnant a lot of the time. Wow. She's still painting. She is in Florence. She basically manages to build her own network, her client book, basically. which is massively helped by the fact that she becomes mates with the nephew of Michelangelo. So he really helps.

That always helps. Yeah. If you happen to know Michael Angelo, it's always massively helpful. So she's building her reputation. Her husband is like suitably supportive. And she's painting a lot. She's building her own client book. She has five children, the first three of which pass away, which is like even for that time, terrible odds.

So she's like a businesswoman and an artist and a mother, but also like a grieving mother. So she is... She's been through a lot of trauma. Yeah, there's like a lot going on for her. Her daughter, who is the only one who survives into adulthood, it also gets trained by her to be an artist, which is lovely... And do we have works of hers?

No, we don't. We don't. We have any trace of work she's done, but it's believed that she was trained to be an artist. There's like a historical fiction novel, isn't there? It's like Artemisia's daughter. What happened to Prudencia? Yeah.

I think she takes revenge on everyone related to Tassie. So on commission this, now, please. I will write this immediately. Just thinking about her art then that she's continuing to make, but she's been through all this trauma, but she clearly has such passion and commitment to what she does. Do we see a shift in tone in her art? I mean, it was, you know, pretty outspokenly feminist already, thinking back to Susanna and the elders. I'm going to describe the next painting that I want to talk about. And I think this is one that people will have in their mind, if they know anything about Artemisia Gentilessly.

This is the one that you will have seen. This is a later painting that comes later in her life. And I mean, where to start with this? It's really quite hard to describe. There is at the centre of the scene a man lying on what looks like a bed. He is upside down. He is facing the viewer. And he is having his head cut off with a sword by two women who are leaning over him.

One of them is holding him down. The other one is wielding this weapon, and there is blood spurting everywhere. And there's this great kind of kioskuro lighting, which is, again, typical of the period, and very Caravaggio, actually. But it lights up not only the absolute panic on this man's face, the anguish of his death, but also the determination and the rage of these two women. It's pretty dark and angry and magnificent in art historical terms, just the composition, the delicious kind of text. textures of all the bedding, the clothing that they're all wearing, the lighting. It's, it's, it's so stunning and so arresting. Is this typical? First of all, what is this painting? And is it typical of the art that we see her producing? Sure. So, yeah, this is Judith slaying Holofernes. And yes,

so the story is that Judith, she's a widow in the city of Bethulia. And Nebuchadnezzar's army takes over Bethulia. She decides in order to save her city, she will basically, caught Olofonez. At a banquet, he gets drunk and she beheads him. Just a normal night out. It's a big one. You're going to need a greggs in the morning and a lie in. You're going to wake and be like, what happened?

Oh, that happened. Oh, my head. Oh, yeah. Better than his. But, yeah. So, you know, another story of, you know, all the way through her career, Artemisia builds her reputation on depictions of women and oftentimes wronged women, women who are misunderstood.

So you get Judith and Susanna and Mary Magdalene and Cleopatra. She does a lot of these sort of women who are done wrong by. And women as well who are not only done wrong by, but who take matters into their own hands in some way, often to their own detriment, I think of Clio Patra and her suicide, of course. But, you know, women who often are taking revenge in some way. And there's a real proactivity in all of their stories. I mean, it's a problem that some academics have with,

the way that Gentilesky's story is told is that we basically take everything back to this really traumatic event. So this Judith is painted in 1612, 13, so it's the year that the trial ends. And we often think of it as the art history's ultimate revenge piece. That's what it's about. It's secretly about this. It's the revenge dress of its age. Very much. And also, like it's like Susanna is remarkably sort of fighting back in the earlier work. In this one, this is so grisly. When you see even Caravaggio's beheading, which is quite gruesome, this is so full of fury because he's very much still alive. There are lots of other ones where he's kind of, he's a bit sleepy, but he's basically out or where he might have his eyes open, but, you know, there's,

there's not much life there. The man in this painting is struggling for his life. He is fighting back. He has got his hand up, so there's still strength enough in his body to be, to be fighting back. Yeah, he's pushing one of the women away with his hand, isn't he? So it's like, this is remarkably, remarkably active and remarkably grisly when you think about exactly what's happening here. So I think that it stands out maybe because of where it comes in the timeline in terms of this year, the revenge dress.

But it is something that she's always been doing of the perspective of women. She does self-portraits, which is very unusual at the time. She has this one self-portrait of herself in the allegory of painting, which demonstrates sort of her belief in her position as a serious painter as a serious artist.

And yes, So I think these strong women come up time and time again. So the interest has always been there for her, but maybe it's fair to say that there's something that just tips the scales after the trial in terms of the tone is, she's gone down a certain road and fair play. And also we love biography. We love artist biography that, you know, it's, I think it's human nature to try to attach events to the thing that when the artist they're made. And, you know, even if that's not her intention, even if she's actually trying to separate herself from it, we, you know, it's natural that our reading. then is she is standing in for Judith and Tassie is her lovathenies. Where do you sit on that argument? Do you think that that is a helpful way to look at this piece of work?

I don't know. I'm always pro-artist biography feeding in. And largely that's because I don't think that it matters that much because they're dead. I actually think that history can be more useful as a tool for us to learn from and live our lives by and art especially to sort of inspire us, I think that we can get really bogged down in artist's intention, whereas actually if this piece is really meaningful to someone because they now associate it with that thing happening to her,

maybe that's relevant to them, or whatever you read into it, I think that that is more beneficial to our lives, the lives of the living, than it is necessarily to sort of really respect the opinions of the long dead, but there might also be considered sacrilegist by many, so I don't really mind. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really interesting take.

And I think, you know, you can't help but stand in front of this painting and feel that visceral anger. There is no way that is not present, whether it's coming from her own autobiography or whether it's just something that she needs to put out into her work. There is that rage there. It does exist in the work. I don't think it's possible to not have that. We know that she moves to Florence when she's married. We know that she spends some time in Venice. And you said earlier she spends some time in Naples as well.

she also comes to London. Now, I didn't know this about her story. And I was looking at the notes for this episode. I did a little squeal on the tube. I was like, what? She came to London? How did I not know this? So tell me about this. Why does she come to London when? Because she comes at a really, I'm always really interested in women artists, artists in the broadest sense here, who are sort of embroiled in moments. I think of like Mary Wollstonecraft, who gets sort of caught up in the French revolution and is there in that moment. And Artemisia comes to London at a particular time in history, a particular moment, when things are really changing. So tell me what's she doing there and how is her art received in England? I think it's always really remarkable when, yeah,

women get embroiled in massive historical happenings and you never hear about it in their work because they're just getting on with things. It's like Jane Austen never mentioned it. Yeah, well, Mary Wollstonecraft had a little baby. She was like, I have stuff to do. I've been abandoned by, I think, the American baby daddy and, you know, there's stuff. I'm busy. I'm busy. I'm busy. None of this right now. You guys can revolutionize yourselves over there. That's fine. I'm just cracking on with us. Yeah. But she comes over in. In 1638, her father is already here, and he's like a favourite of Charles I first. So he's in London and she comes over.

Also, at this point, she is estranged from Pierre Antonio, who despite being hot and young, I think it turns out is quite a spendthrifty. Oh, okay. A little bit disappointing. Yeah, like he's not great with money and I think that he had an affair. Like, so, you know, things have broken down. Yeah, they're estranged. And so she comes over in 1638.

and she helps Eratio with the painting of the ceiling in the Queen's House in Greenwich, which lots of people will have seen and not realise that. But isn't it remarkable the idea of, I always find it very difficult to picture historical figures being proper people who go to different places and have experiences. So the idea of Gentilesky sort of cutting about in Greenwich is... It's so weird. It's like a crossover episode where The Simpsons turn up.

I can't actually do this. Our favourite characters are in the wrong place here and it's weird. Yeah, no, I think that's so amazing. and to think that her and her father's hand, their art, is visible in a space that is so iconic but so deeply English in terms of, you know, how we think about it historically, how we present it, how we talk about it now. That's really remarkable. And she's here for the outbreak of the Civil War, isn't she? Yeah. Which is, I just find that absolutely fascinating.

And again, that feels like a crossover episode. It's like, no, I can't, this is not computing. Yeah. She does go back to Italy eventually, though, doesn't she? Yeah, she goes back. She heads back to Naples. and then she's moved about in Italy quite a lot for, you know, the idea that a woman from Italy in this era would go to London is boggling.

The idea, even the idea that she's gone to, she goes to lots of different cities in Italy is amazing. She's really lived a life. She's lived a real life and she spends quite a lot of time, I think, in Italy, moving about in order to avoid the plague. So she goes from Venice to Naples to kind of get away from all. But she goes back to Naples. She spends the rest of her life there.

And she, I think this story or this part of her is like, definitely as worthy as her trauma as being something we remember her by, is that she really played the game. She really played the art-making game. She was known for basically buying really nice clothes, like really lovely clobber on credit, and sort of strolling about near the courts and writing letters to her.

Handing out her business cards. Yeah, like, and, you know, being seen to be this really elegant lady who could be in the court, in the hope that then people who are in the court go, oh, we should get her in. There's one story where she basically, her and a friend, have a pretend argument about money in the street or in a shop just as a wealthy merchant walks by and then sort of chivalrously offers her the money. She gives him a painting back.

But, you know, she's hustling big time. And, you know, she's pen friends with Galileo, which again, it feels like I can't get them to be in the same timeline in my head. She's pen pals with him. She's pen pals with Michaelangela. Does that correspondence survive, do you know? I'm not sure whether it does, but there's a... That would be... I mean, what were they talking about?

That would be incredible to know. She writes quite like basically needy letters. Would you mind? She just wants to borrow a tenor. She wants to borrow a tenant and like, can you mention me to your friends? Okay, that's a bit embarrassing. It's like, got to be done. You know, that thing of like, oh, I don't want to put videos online.

It's cringe. It's like, got to be done. Yeah, yeah. So she would be on TikTok today. Yeah, okay. She really would. Yeah, yeah. So she's sending these slightly needy letters to Galileo.

But, you know, she is aware that there are barriers in the way of her succeeding, which largely revolve around her being a woman and having to make her own money now that her husband is out of the picture. And she goes, do you know what, if I have to sort of lie, if I had to sort of beg. And would we find it as embarrassing if it was a man hustling like this? I don't know. I think, you know, this, and that would have absolutely happened. There would have been men doing that left, right and centre. So, you know, good for her, I say. She dies sometime in the 1650s. we're not really sure, are we? Yeah.

I find this remarkable. Her tomb is destroyed. Am I right? In the 1950s, it's inside a church that is demolished. And I just think that's so interesting. We'll talk a little bit about her legacy in a second, but just thinking about, you know, she's become this kind of pop feminist icon today,

a little bit like Frida Carlo, for example. She's, you know, she's sort of reproduced on tote bags and mugs and all of that. And, you know, that's a whole other kind of conversation maybe about the use of that. But it's interesting to me that there's, there's not really a place of pilgrimage to remember her now. There's not, unless you go and look at her paintings, of course, or, you know, go to the Queen's House and Greenwich, why not? But there isn't the same kind of draw.

I'm thinking, you know, something like Poets Corner in Westminster, Abia, kind of you can go and be with these great minds and spend time with them and sort of commune with them. We don't have that for her. So, and you mentioned previously as well, that she's kind of forgotten about until maybe the sort of 1970s and the sort of feminist rediscovery of her

and reclaiming of her. What has her legacy been in it? Was it literally just centuries of darkness? We forgot who she was. She no longer existed for people and then she's rediscovered in the 20th century.

What happened? I mean, like her reputation, like when she dies, so they think that she probably died like a little bit after 1994 or in 1954 because she's still paying taxes in the early bit of that year.

So they know that she's alive then. Even though the year before, some people in Venice wrote an unpleasant epigraph about her in a book of epigraphs saying that she died and basically be like slagging her off. Oh wow. So her reputation is already not great by the time she dies. So even though she's making this brilliant work, even though she's really, she's made it happen for her as much as she needs to do. So she's a controversial figure. Yeah. And it all links back to fundamentally the Gentileskies are trouble. Yeah. Okay. So she dies. And then this is where sort of my art historical knowledge

about what happens to her legacy in the intervening sort of hundreds of years happens. All we know is that she has this real comeback in the 20th century. And I think in the 20th century, there is this general sense that, like, we need to find some women and big them up, basically, because there have been women with, like, there have been loads of them. But we have, you know, the big art history books that are still wheeled out to a university. I'm like, this is your introduction to art history. And don't, don't ask any questions about the fact there's no women in there.

There's no people of colour in it. Like, just don't ask any questions about that. that there is this sort of she comes back into the spotlight. And a lot of that is kind of coinciding with works being reattributed to her. You know, the more popular she becomes, the more keen people are to reattribute things to her because there's, it feels like there's more of a point to it. And now she does, it's sort of like I was saying earlier, she now sort of represents something bigger than the art.

I think that there are a lot of people who potentially would even name her among their favorite artists. But maybe they know one or two paintings, maybe they don't know any paintings, but they fundamentally sort of approve of her as a sort of figurehead of women who have made it happen despite the shith. She's become a sort of cultural icon. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. If there was one work of hers that you would want people to go and look at, spend some time with either online or ideally in a gallery in front of it, which one would you recommend? I mean, the two you've spoken about, I feel like the real highlights of her. For me, it's got to be Judith

beheading them out. Like it's so we've said visceral a lot in this podcast but it is so visceral and so it's still shocking all these centuries later. The violence of it and the anger of it is remarkable. And it's interesting to look at that piece as well because

we live in a time thank goodness that you see very few beheadings. Like you witness very few beheadings but at this point it's like hard to remember that like lots of people will have seen a beheading, that there is a grotesqueness to actually being able to remember that really up until very, very recently,

we, you know, people saw that level of gore quite regularly. So there's quite, it's, it kind of does, you know, it takes you a back, looking at it to then try to piece it together of like, actually this is not, it's,

it's almost shocking that it wouldn't have been at that shocking. Yes, yeah. That's an interesting point. Very. Verity, if people want to find your work, if they want to know more about you, where can they do that? You can follow me at Verity Bab's Art. You can buy my book, please. Available online and in store? Available in all good and bad retailers. And this is The History of Art in one sentence.

The History of Art in one sentence. I love that title. Thanks. It felt like a slightly, my agent was like, you kind of cheated having to write a book by just doing it in sentences. So it is a slightly cheaty book. But hopefully that's kind of an introduction to art history with some of the funny bits left in. Nice. And yet, art laughs,

the name of the comedy nights, and we're regularly in the National Gallery, and it'd be great to see people, but yeah, I will be coming along. Absolutely, I really will. Thank you so much. And thank you for watching along

or listening at home, wherever you are consuming this. If you want to hear more about any artists in the past, then let us know. You can write into us at afterdark at historyhit.com. Until next time.