Good morning everyone!

How's it going? I hope you are alright. I hope everyone you love is alright. You might remember Kerry's excellent Fem Fri on Judith and Holofernes, I thought that this morning you might enjoy firstly revisiting that story and secondly spending a bit of time with Artemisia Gentileschi who has a major new National Gallery exhibition on right now.

Artemisia enjoyed fame and fortune in her own time, which was the tbh not 100% women friendly early modern age. It also appears that she married for love since it certainly wasn't for money or influence. It's nice to read about women doing well, let's do that now:

Artemisia married a little-known Florentine artist, and left Rome for Florence. There she had five children and established herself as an independent artist, becoming the first woman to gain membership to the Academy of the Arts of Drawing in 1616. Artemisia returned to Rome in 1620, by which point she had become an extremely sought-after artist with a “house full of cardinals and princes wanting pictures from her”. […] The last 25 years of her life were spent in Naples, where she had established a successful workshop – an extraordinary achievement considering she wasn’t permanently employed at one royal court, nor did she enjoy the protection of a wealthy, powerful or influential husband.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/artemisia-gentileschi

Okay, but the paintings! These are all stories from the Bible/Apocrypha, let's start with Judith and Holofernes. Quick reminder, the situation here is that the Assyrians, led by Holofernes, are about to destroy Judith's home town. Holofernes, though, is kind of into Judith so invites her to his tent, gets drunk in front of her and passes out (classic move) whereupon, she. Well. Let's allow Artemisia to show us what happens next.

Many pictures of Judith and Holofernes show considerably less effort than this. Artemisia takes care to remind you that Judith is not carving a perfectly cooked turkey here.

How about the story of Susanna and the elders. The text next to this painting in the National Gallery's permanent collection is a quiet masterpiece of understatement, something like "despite having relatively little religious prominence or significance, this story was a favoured subject for wealthy patrons of the arts". The story of Susanna and the elders is the story of a woman being spied on and pressured into sex but standing her ground and winning out. Traditionally artists show the first bit of that story, as Artemisia does:

Finally, here's a story you can read in any Bible today (the others are in the Apocrypha, books of Judith/Daniel respectively if you have a copy) – it's the story of Jael and Sisera! Sisera was an oppressor who sought shelter in the wrong tent; that of Jael, who drove a tent peg through his skull as he slept. Here's Artemisia's rendering of this:

You can also get her picture printed up to mural size. Out to the company who suggested that this would be a good "statement wall" for a hotel room:

Love,

Alex.