Noble Blood - Lucretia as a Symbol

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Why did the Roman Empire do away with kings? Simone de Beauvior would write that, through women, "certain historical events have been set off, but the women have been pretexts rather than agents. The suicide of Lucretia has had value only as symbol." CW: Sexual assault, suicideSupport Noble Blood:— Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon— Noble Blood merch— Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong,

dance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. One brief content note before I begin, I talk about sexual violence and suicide in this episode. So if those themes are something that you're particularly sensitive to, this might be an episode to skip. The story of Medusa, like many ancient legends, plays out differently depending on which version you're reading. It was Ovid in his Greek mythology fan fiction Metamorphoses, who introduced the version of Medusa's story that most listeners are probably familiar with today. In that version,

Medusa was the daughter of a sea god who grew up to be a beautiful young priestess of Athena, or Minerva, as the goddess would have been known to Avid and the Romans. Medusa tragically caught the attention of Poseidon, or Neptune, who proceeded to rape her in Minerva's temple. Ovid uses the brutal word vitiasei, injure, defile, or damage to describe the act. You might know what happens next in the story. It's not Neptune who's punished, but Medusa herself. Her hair is transformed into snakes by her own goddess.

There is a feminist reading of that outcome, in which some see Minerva giving Medusa a means to protect herself against future assault. That's a generous reading, as classic scholar Natalie Italy Haynes reminds us, Minerva wasn't exactly a girl's girl, but it's also a fairly depressing reading in my view. Protected maybe, but Medusa's fate is also sealed. She will be a monster to be hunted, and her severed head will later be turned into a weapon for another's use. Avid's Metamorphosis is far from a light read, both in terms of its length and content. Sexual violence is pervasive throughout many of its stories.

Jokingly calling Metamorphosis Greek mythology fanfiction is not really inaccurate, but it's also not fully painting the whole picture. The text was meant to serve as a history of the world, from creation to the death of Caesar. Just as it's pervasive in the pages of the text, sexual violence is also pervasive in the history of the world. Ovid followed Metamorphoses with Fasti, which instead of focusing on Greek legends

finishes what the last three books of Metamorphoses began, turning the lens to Roman history, religion, culture, and figures, Because both books blend genre and because of the time they were written, much of the content in both metamorphoses and Fausty fall somewhere in between myth and history. The noblewoman Lucretia and the famous story of the rape she suffered at the hands of sextist Tarquinius, who is also known as Tarquin, is one such mytho history found in the pages of. of Avid's Fausti. Some historians take an extreme view on Lucretia's story, claiming that it was a complete fabrication. But the more widely accepted understanding is that the legend probably grew out of real events, but that it was later shaped, or metamorphosed, over time to create a poignant, symbolic narrative. Though Medusa and Lucretia hail from different cultures and different Ovid poems,

their stories say a lot in conversation with one another. They were both daughters of powerful fathers, both hailed for their beauty and purity, both were raped by men with more power than they had, and in death they both became weapons to be yielded by yet more powerful men. But where Medusa's head was quite literally wielded by Perseus, who used it to turn his own enemies to stone, Lucretia's body became more of a symbolic weapon. After her rape and subsequent suicide, her body was displayed on the streets by revolutionaries to incite rebellion. Lucretia's suicide after her assault

is known as the catalyst that led to the fall of the Roman monarchy, the reason that the Roman Empire no longer had kings. The story of the ideal Roman woman, driven to take her own life because of the actions of a man drunk on his own power, became itself a powerful enough narrative to be, as the French philosopher Pierre Bale put it, quote, one of the hinges on which the history of the Romans turns. Perhaps more critically, we can look at Lucretia

through the words of Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote that it is through women that, quote, certain historical events have been set off, but the women have been pretexts rather than agents. The suicide of Lucreux. Lucretia has had value only as symbol. But where did the story and the symbol come from? What role has it played in different moments and history?

And is it possible to know who Lucretia was, really? Or will she always be in the hands of men using her for their ends? I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. Just as with the myth of Medusa, the story of Lucretia will differ from historian to historian, storyteller to storyteller. The first recorded account of Lucretia's story comes from the Roman historian Livy in his history of Rome, written nearly 500 years after the event described. Before Livy, the story existed in oral tradition, and after him, it would continue on in the hands of other writers and historians, like Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Diocassus,

Avid, and eventually Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Rousseau, each with their own interpretation and agenda in their tellings. The scholar Ian Donaldson in his book Raps of Lucretia, a myth and its transformations, reconstructs the earliest versions of the story to give a complete. composite picture of what might have been the, quote, historic event. It goes like this. In 509 BC, the Roman king, Tarquinus Superbus, was attempting a siege of the town of Ardia. One night during the siege, a group of nobleman, the king's son among them, were having a wife off, boasting about whose wife was the most virtuous, the most beautiful, the most exemplary. One nobleman, Caladness, insisted that his wife Lucretia, daughter of the magistrate Lucretius, was second to none.

Her virtue, the most virtuous, her beauty the most beauteous. When the boasting turned competitive, it was suggested that the group would make the 20-something-mile trip back to Rome to assess each wife. themselves. Most of the wives were found together, chatting and engaging in idle pastimes. But Lucretia, hashtag not like other girls, was found at home alone, spinning wool, homemaking while her husband was away on the front lines. Lucretia won the contest of best and most wife. Though the story begins light and even a little bit silly to our modern ears, the story story takes a dark turn. In Livy's words, in translation, the king's son, quote, sextus Tarquinius was seized with a wicked desire to debauch Lucretia by force. Not only her

beauty, but her proved chastity as well, provoked him. The men returned to Ardia, but Tarquin later returned alone. Lucretia courteously received the king's son as an end. And anyone would be expected to, giving him food and a room to stay in for the night. But when the household was asleep, he entered her bedroom in the middle of the night. With a sword on his person, Tarquin first attempted to seduce Lucretia, with promises to marry her and make her queen. But when that didn't work, he turned to threats. If he couldn't have her, he would kill her.

She continued to deny him, and so he came up with another plan. He threatened to kill not only her, but also one of his slaves, and to place their naked bodies in her bed together, and then claim he found them together and killed them in outrage. The posthumous shame of that final threat was too much for Lucretia. She stopped resisting, and Tarquin proceeded to rape her. The following morning, Lucretia summoned her father, Lucretius, and her husband, Calatinus, to their home, and she asked each of them to bring a trusted friend. Calatinus brought Lucius Junius Brutus, not the A2 guy, to be very clear, but a nephew of King Superbus, a nephew and not a fan. Brutus was generally thought of as an idiot, but he was in reality,

putting on an act of ignorance, waiting for his moment to get revenge on the king who murdered his father and brother. And so with those four men gathered, Lucretia told the story of what happened the night before. And when she was done telling the story, she revealed a knife beneath her garments, which she used to stab herself and die. Brutus removed the knife from her body and swore an oath by the blood of Lucretia, none more chaste to tell a tyrant wronged her, that he would drive the Tarquins from Rome. With that, a revolution began to form. Lucretia's body was displayed at the form in Rome,

where Brutus rallied the Romans by showing them the tyranny of the Tarquins and its consequences. It was a successful publicity campaign, and the people drove the royal family out of Rome, vowing to have no more kings. Brutus and Lucretia's husband, Calatnis, were installed as the first consuls of the Roman Republic. The end. Or is it?

That is the SparkNotes version of events. But technically, yeah, the last mention of Lucretia in her story is that of her body on display. While she was alive, however, she does get a bit more characterization in other versions of her story. In Livy's telling, Lucretia has a poignant, rallying speech before she takes her life. Quote, my body alone has been violated. My heart is guiltless, as death shall be my witness. But pledge your right hands and your words that the adulterer shall not go unpunished.

Her death is then heroic, even masculine in a sense, as death by knife was not traditionally associated with women at the time. It's portrayed as a morally virtuous death. Lucretia is killing herself, she explains, so that promiscuous women cannot use her as an example to justify their own actions. Ovid, for his part, gives Lucretia more dialogue in the story's beginning, when she lamented the danger her husband may be in on the front lines, and when she joyously throws herself into his arms upon his return, even in front of all of his comrades. Lucretia is portrayed as devoted and tender, while also sheltered and a little naive. Avid also gives us a physical description for the first time. Her complexion is snowy.

She uses no cosmetics. Her hair is golden and flowing freely. It's this physical Lucretia that we will most often see in artistic depictions to come. Her appearance was a feminine ideal by Avid's time. Most Roman women had dark hair and an olive complexion. To imitate the desirable German beauty standard, sex workers were actually known to wear blonde wigs, while women across classes wore chalk on their faces to appear paler. Lucretia's characterization, through her words, actions, and appearance then, all serves to portray her as an ideal in every sense. But what happens when you kill an ideal?

Avid's telling takes an arguably more human approach when compared to Livy. His Lucretia does not die grandly calling for revenge. Instead, the morning after the horrific event, she's visibly disheveled and wearing a mourning gown. She's distraught and finds herself having trouble telling her father and husband what has happened. This Lucretia is overcome by grief. and cannot find her heart guiltless. Instead, her last words are,

quote, though you forgive me, I cannot forgive myself. Only through death does Lucretia believe that she can preserve her virtues. But her death becomes far bigger than that. In the end,

she doesn't just die for what she saw as her sins. She also dies for the birth of the republic. As the ideal woman of the Roman, Roman Republic, Lucretia's death both literally and metaphorically expunged the tyrant and his lineage from Rome, literally because she might have been pregnant with the son of the son of the king. Lucretia's role in Roman history is not completely dissimilar from that of an earlier woman in Roman mythology, one of the famed Vestal virgins, Rea Silvia, who, according to legend, was raped to by Mars and gave birth to Ramos and Romulus, the wolf-raised twins, whose battle for divine favor is remembered as the traditional founding story of Rome. Both stories were that of a chaste woman. One would bring about the kingdom of Rome and the other the Roman Republic. If we remember

Simone de Beauvoir's words here, quote, women have been pretexts. rather than agents. Livy states in his history that his writing is not just intended to be a history lesson, but also moral instruction, hoping Roman readers of the day could learn from Romans of the past, which probably explains Lucretia's inspirational speech. Ovid was less concerned with the morality of the average Roman. His Lucretia's story was actually written during his exile from Rome by the Emperor Augustus. The reasons for this exile were never actually documented, but do not worry, the city of Rome did revoke his exile in 2017, only 2,000 years later. Both Ovid and Livy had a vested interest in portraying the corruption of power, emphasizing in

their stories the inherent wickedness and immorality of the son of the king, Sextus Tarquinius. This This is how the story would be understood for many years, with Tarquin as a monster and Lucretia as both a victim and a martyr. It wasn't until Augustine, the bishop and theologian who wrote on the city of God against the pagans, that Lucretia's role would be altered in the public consciousness. Regarded today as a cornerstone of Western thought, Augustine's work was written by between 413 and 426 AD, in the context of the ongoing conflict between Christians and pagans

after the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410. Pagans were beginning to fear that Christianity and the abandonment of Roman gods was the cause of their suffering. And with City of God Augustine from the Roman province in North Africa, was seeking to counter those arguments and bolster the faith of Christians. The title comes from the idea that, even if earthly empires fall, the city of God will ultimately prevail. When it comes to Augustine's writing on Lucretia, he begins, quote, they, as in pagans, will certainly bring out Lucretia with great praises for her chastity. If that feels,

feels a little mocking, it's because it was. Augustine goes on to question why Lucretia killed herself if she was truly guilty of nothing. He argues that she actually killed herself because even though she was attacked, she eventually consented. And her consent, rather than being out of fear of the consequences, as in the original tellings, was in Augustine's mind, because she was, she secretly desired Tarquin. Eleanor Glendinning writes in her analysis that, quote,

a person committed to the Christian faith could suffer any bodily suffering and emerge with an even stronger mind and conviction in the existence of God by doing so. Augustine's city of God also laid the foundations for early Christian beliefs surrounding suicide in general. Augustine believed that thou shalt not kill, also referred to oneself. Augustine is disparaging a pagan hero using a Christian narrative, and the Western world will, of course, only continue to move further from paganism and towards Christianity as time marches on.

The other change Augustine makes here is distancing Lucretia from the revolutionary narrative. Augustine does not care about the Tarquins or Brutus, He is just focused on Lucretia as an unworthy pagan martyr figure. It's important to discuss Augustine because his words will have permeated the culture of every writer that tells the story of Lucretia going forward, whether they agreed with him or not. Disconnecting her from politics also gave way to new narratives, ones about chastity, lust, and temptation. There are many Renaissance paintings of Lucretia, but most are domestic, not political scenes. Domestic scenes with her in various states of undress, either fending off her attacker or pointing the knife at her own chest.

There's also an eroticism to these paintings that can arguably be traced back to Augustine. All of this brings me to Shakespeare. Shakespeare's main source for his narrative poem, The Rape of Lucreche, wasn't Augustine, but actually the originals, avid and Livy. There are, though, a number of ways in which Shakespeare's poem departs from its source material. But one in particular is shockingly different. Lucretia's suicide in Shakespeare's poem does not lead to a revolution. In fact, there is no mention of the Roman Republic at all. Late in the poem, Lucretia has a lengthy speech reflecting back on her rapist's crime.

Quote, thou seest not what thou art, a god, a king, for kings like gods should govern everything. How wilt thy shame be seated in thine age? When thus thy vices bud before thy spring. If in thy hope thou darts do such outrage, what darest thou not when once thou art a king? Right off the bat, we are in a very different political atmosphere than the world of Livy and Ovid. Maybe it's obvious Shakespeare lived in England under a monarchy. His Lucretia is comparing kings and gods in a positive way, going so far as to say that they should govern everything. The message is not that absolute power corrupts absolutely, it's that

Tarquin is corrupted absolutely. One bad apple. Shakespeare's Lucretia continues, quote, This deed will make thee only loved for fear, but happy monarchs are still feared for love, with foul offenders thou perforce must bear, when they in thee the like offenses prove. If but for fear of this, thy will remove. For princes are the glass, the school, the book, where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look. Lucretia is speaking with more political language than she has in any other version of her story, but it is a far cry from what the original political purpose of her story was.

Shakespeare is instead working within the genre of mirror-dure for princes, a literary genre that was popular throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which sought to, as the title implies, provide advice and examples for rulers, to give advice on how to be a good prince. Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucretche ends with Brutus, declaring to avenge her death, but this is done by banishing Tarquin from Rome, not starting the run. Republic. The poem ends, quote, when they had sworn to this advised doom, they did conclude to bear dead Lucreche thence to show her bleeding body through Rome, and so to publish Tarquin's foul offense, which being done with speedy diligence, the Roman plausibly did give consent to Tarquins' everlasting

banishment. Lucretia's body is still a political weapon, but as a symbol she carries much less weight when Tarquin is simply banished, as opposed to he and his family being forever removed from power and the entire system of government of Rome changing forever. Shakespeare is much more focused on the actions of the individual, and make no mistake he thinks Tarquinius is corrupt, though he is writing in a post-Augustine world, it is clear that what Lucretia feels towards her attacker in Shakespeare's poem is fear. She is not consenting. Shakespeare uses a metaphor of Tarkwin as a predator. The wolf hath seized his prey. The poor lamb cries. Compared to Augustine, Shakespeare also displays a far greater understanding of the reality of the physiological

repercussions of rape. While Lucretia's family believes, quote, her bodies stain her mind untainted clears, he writes that, quote, with a joyless smile she turns away, the face that map which deep impression bears of hard misfortune carved in it with tears. Her suicide is not the result of her secretly being unchaste. In Shakespeare's version, it is. as it was in the beginning, a preservation of her chastity. We know this because Shakespeare has her tell us, quote, for me, I am the mistress of my fate, she states as she contemplates what to do in the aftermath of her assault. She's given more dialogue, more of an inner life here than in any other telling, aligning her more with Shakespeare's other tragic heroines. Shakespeare's telling

of Lucretia may appear to be removed from key points of its original context, but again, it fits quite nicely in Elizabethan England. It's not a stretch to draw parallels between the Virgin Queen, who proudly sacrificed marriage for her country, and Lucretia, who was so chaste that she died for hers. The poem was written around the same time Shakespeare would make another reference to the virgin queen in a midsummer night's dream when Oberon speaks of, quote,

a fair vestal throwned by the West. Shakespeare's flattery also appears in Richard III, in which the mad, villainous, hunchbacked king is overthrown not by a revolution, but by combat with the next king, who happened to be Elizabeth's great-grandfather. But for a pretern, perspective on Lucretia's story that returns to the original revolutionary sentiments,

let's go where else to France? Or more specifically, Geneva, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau bounced between European countries throughout his life. His unfinished, tragic play, Lamorte de Lucretche, was composed around 1754, 1756, still early years in Rousseau's career, 1726. 1756. 1750s. 1954 was the same year he wrote his foundational discourse on the origin and basis of inequality among men, in which he argued that moral inequality is not innate to humans, rather a product of, quote, wealth, nobility or rank, power, and personal merit. Given Rousseau's lofty enlightenment ideals, his play does, as you might imagine, return Lucretia's story to its Republican roots, the roots that were lacking in Shakespeare's telling. But like in Shakespeare's, a number of details have been changed for storytelling purposes. Lucretia begins, Rousseau's story

engaged to sexist Tarquinius, but her father breaks it off despite the wishes of the king, and Lucretia instead marries the less powerful Calatin for different political reasons. There may have once been something between the two, but Lucretia tells her handmaiden that she prefers, quote, the constant and peaceful love of Colleton to the fiery passions of Sextus, referring to Tarquin. Still, she prays, quote, O God who sees my heart, clarify my judgment, guarantee I do not cease to be virtuous. You know that although I want to be, I will always be if you want it as well. So in this version, there is a temptation to return to Tarquin, but Lucretia fights against it. Because this is theater, we're given a story that's, A, more dramatic,

and B, an introduction to a number of additional moving parts that weren't present in any other version. In Rousseau's version, Tarquin has promised that he'll arrange a marriage between two lovers, his servant and Lucretia's handmaiden, if the two of them can arrange a secret meeting between him and his ex-fiancee Lucretia. Lucretia's maid is wary, believing her lady is, quote, not capable of feeling anything but for her spouse and her duty. But Tarquin's servant argues that Lucretia only puts up appearances of virtue, and no one would ultimately put virtue above personal passions. While all of that is going on, Brutus is already plotting his revolution to overthrow the Tarquins. He tries to persuade Colleton to join his cause by telling him about how Tarquin is in love with his wife,

but Colleton simply tells him, quote, I know the virtues of Lucretche's heart. On top of that, Colleton fears war and the possibility of anarchy, slavery, and civil strife after the monarchs are driven. out. Lucretius, his father-in-law, accuses him of being childish, taking the easy way out by continuing to live in comfort under tyrants rather than fighting for the greater good of liberty and equality. The rest of Rousseau's play is only available to us in fragments. Tarkwin laments that Lucretia's, quote, virtue deserving of adoration by the gods has been soiled by him, quote, vilest of mortals, before, in a twist, he kills himself. It's unclear in this version whether rape or consensual sex happened, but Lucretia ultimately kills herself as well. In Rousseau's

autobiographical work, Confessions, he describes his reasoning for writing about Lucretia. Quote, I planned a prose tragedy on no less a subject than Lucretche, with which I had some hope of overcoming derision, even though I ventured to bring that unfortunate woman back to the stage when she had become an impossible subject for the French theater. He was referring to two failed productions by French playwrights, first Jean-François Regnard and Charles de Francaise, who had produced comedies of the story, not tragedies, which I have to imagine is probably why they didn't work. Rousseau instead believed Lucretia could be a, quote, useful heroine with whom Parisian audiences could identify. Melissa M. Mathis in her book, The Rape of Lucretia and the

founding of republics, writes that, quote, for Rousseau, the story of the rape of Lucretia is in part an apt encapsulation of deterioration and renewal, an allegory for the loss, and potential rebirth of the Republic. And for Rousseau, women are the perfect emblem of both corruption and the possibility of renewal. Who else in 18th century French society has fallen further than women, specifically the bourgeois women of the salons? Yet upon whom else can the possibility for renewal be placed? If even the wretched can be redeemed, made into the virtuous, nursemaids of the Republic, surely there is still reason to believe in the possibility of a Republican rebirth. That is why Rousseau's Lucretia struggles with temptation, not because she is

ultimately sinful, but because she is virtuous but human. Rousseau isn't as obsessed with innocence as other Enlightenment figures. He believes that redemption and rebirth can come from places of corruption. This Lucretia's world is one of scheming fathers and maids and servants, all using her as a pawn in their larger games. Even Calatinus, her husband, is corrupt here, fitting the model of the Nouveau bourgeois that Rousseau detested. He, like the bourgeois, is absorbed in his own comfort, reluctant to give up his privileges even for the greater. good. In Rousseau's version, we don't see Lucretia's body weaponized as literally as in the others, but it's still used as a tool, only this time for Tarquin's redemption. Tarkwin is so horrified

by what he has done, whether it was tempting Lucretia or assaulting her, that he's driven to kill himself, as she usually exclusively is. In the wake of his transgression, he rewritten, he realizes that he is the vilest of mortals, reaching a quite literal moment of enlightenment. His violation of Lucretia was his path to redemption. Lucretia, for her part, kills herself in one part to preserve her virtue, but also because of, quote, having shared in the crime. Because these parts of the play are only available to us as fragments, it's hard to do a complete analysis, but it does present an interesting contrast with Augustine.

Augustine believed Lucretia killed herself because she was guilty of desiring Tarquin, and therefore she was unworthy of pagan admiration. Rousseau believes that she potentially killed herself for the same reasons, but he presents it as heroic. There's not a sense that killing herself is purifying her body and her country. as there was in the original version, but rather the larger idea that the Republic can still be born from an imperfect mother.

But no matter which narrative we look at from any date, place, or time, Lucretia is always the pretext rather than the agent. Her value is mostly that of symbol. In some of these tellings, she's given a greater inner life, a richer characterization,

but it's always to serve the ultimate goal of saying something about the place and time in which her story is being retold. It's difficult to answer the question I posed at the beginning of this episode. Who is Lucretia really? Because she's something different to every writer that she's been the subject of. Maybe there isn't even a real Lucretia at all, but that's also a question that's impossible to answer. ultimately, for better or for worse, Lucretia exists, but she exists as legend.

That's the story of Lucretia and the many, many ways she's been interpreted over the course of history, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break for a very important artistic interpretation of Lucretia by a woman. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance. and then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationship.

I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive. scientist and hosts of the podcast a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation.

There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ferdemacia Gentileshi was a Baroque painter, the first woman to become a member of the Academia in Florence, perhaps best known for her paintings of Judith, the Jewish heroine. Not only did several of her paintings focus on Judith, but literally. Lucretia was also a subject that Artemisia returned to multiple times. Her 1625 portrait of Lucretia, fittingly entitled Lucretia, shows a well-known scene with new nuance.

Lucretia is moments from suicide, her left hand clutching the knife and her right hand clutching her breast. She's disheveled in the aftermath of her assault, but the painting doesn't feel erotic, as it sometimes does, in the hands of other masters. She is not fair-haired or flawless. Her brow is tightly wrinkled, and the distress is evident on her face, and she looks up in contemplation. We see the defined muscles of her legs

and the strength in her hands. There is clear pain, but there's also clear strength. When Artemisia was 17, she herself was raped by another Italian painting, Augustino Tasi, and when the case went to trial on the grounds of Tassi dishonoring her family, Artemisia was subjected to torture during her testimony to prove she was telling the truth. Her experiences have affected the way art historians view her paintings, and while many have believed she sought to portray vengeance,

a newer school of thought argues that what Artemisia was actually interested in, was showing strength in her female heroines. There are even some art historians who see similarities between Artemisia's self-portraits, one entitled, quite poignantly, self-portrait as a female martyr, and her 1625 portrait of Lucretia. I encourage you to look at these works for yourself, along with Artemisia's other masterful compositions. She is wonderful both as an artist and just a name that we get to say.

Artemisia Gentileshi. Ultimately, whether or not Artemisia Gentilesi's past influenced her future decision to paint Lucretia, her perspective introduced a new depth that was lacking amongst her peers. Noble Blood is a production of I-Heart Radio, and Grim and Mild from Aaron's, Manke. Noblemud is created and hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noamie Griffin and Rima Il-Ka Ali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from

iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an I-Heart podcast, Guaranteed Human.