Artemisia

Art in America, Oct, 1998 by Mary D. Garrard

Distorting well-established evidence, a new film by Agnes Merlet presents Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, history's first acknowledged female master, as an artistic ingenue grateful to her sexually exploitive teacher.

In early May, the film Artemisia opened in theaters across America. Created by French filmmaker Agnes Merlet and distributed by Miramax Zoe, the picture was based on the life of Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, specifically the period of the infamous rape trial of 1612. The relationship of the film to historical reality was problematized at the outset by a claim that originally appeared in the opening frames and in accompanying advertisements: "The true story of the first female painter in art history." Given the vast discrepancy between the facts of the trial and their interpretative rearrangement by Merlet, this assertion provoked a strong reaction from the feminist and art communities.(1) The immediate result was that Miramax removed the offending claim from the film and subsequent publicity. The film was sharply criticized on both historical and esthetic grounds at a symposium on May 14 sponsored by the Richard L. Feigen Gallery in New York, in conjunction with an exhibition of works by Artemisia and Orazio Gentileschi and Agostino Tassi.(2) At the end of May, however, Miramax was still insisting that "a lot of research went into this film... we stand by it 100 percent."(3)

There can be no doubt that the basic facts of the story are inverted in the film. In Merlet's narrative, Artemisia begs to study under and then falls in love with the artist Agostino Tassi, is deflowered by him--an act accomplished with tender solicitude on his part and minimal resistance on hers--and is initiated by the older painter into the mysteries of love and art. When her father, Orazio Gentileschi, brings suit against Tassi for rape, Artemisia testifies repeatedly, even when tortured by sibille (strings tightened around the fingers), that Tassi did not rape her but gave her pleasure, and she loves him. Pained to see Artemisia suffer physical torment, Tassi magnanimously accepts the charge of rape and his own conviction, thus ending the trial as something of a hero. A vague nod to Tassi's unsavory past is given when Artemisia learns that he already has a wife, briefly complicating the course of a love affair clouded otherwise only by Orazio's paternal (and, it is hinted, jealous) intervention.

A very different account is given in the extensive testimony of the rape trial--documents that were fully published in Italian in 1981 and in English in 1989.(4) When Artemisia was tortured by the sibille, she insisted repeatedly that she had been sexually pressured and then raped by Agostino, an event she described in graphic detail. Judicial torture to establish veracity was a standard procedure in Rome at the time, and in this instance, Artemisia voluntarily submitted to the sibille to prove she was telling the truth. Even so, a test designed to select between conflicting accounts by torturing the blameless party rather than the accused was gratuitous physical insult to a girl who had allegedly already experienced rape.

Tassi himself testified that he had never even had sex with Artemisia--a claim so preposterous that the judge admonished him about bearing false witness--and he never confessed to the crime, instead accusing virtually every male in sight, including her father, of having slept with her. Tassi did not come to court as an innocent. He had previously been sued for raping and impregnating his sister-in-law (an act equated at that time with incest), and there was substantive testimony in the trial that he had arranged and paid for the murder of his own wife, whom he had also acquired by rape. This multiple sex offender couldn't even manage his own defense credibly--one of his six witnesses testified that the others had lied (prompting Orazio to file another suit). Tassi was convicted, but got off lightly; he was given a choice of five years of service on galleys or a five year exile from Rome.(5)

Why did Merlet change the story? Describing herself as a feminist who has made a feminist film, she justifies her version as an effort to reflect Artemisia's inner struggles, rather than what she seems to consider the ambiguous facts of the trial.(6) In interviews, Merlet has argued that the reality of the love affair is proved by the fact that Artemisia continued to have sex with Tassi after her violation. Yet Artemisia herself explained this: "What I was doing with him, I did only so that, as he had dishonored me, he would marry me."(7)

Here, it helps to have some of that historical knowledge that Merlet considers to be constrictive to artistic freedom.(8) Artemisia's conduct was consistent with Mediterranean mores, then and later. In the 17th century, sexual intercourse with a virgin was considered to be dishonorable unless as a prelude to marriage. If the man promised to marry the woman, as Tassi allegedly did, she was expected to allow further sexual favors.(9) Artemisia evidently believed Tassi's promise at first, but came to doubt his intentions. Tassi's evasion of marriage defined the act retroactively as rape (this is probably why Orazio waited a year to file the suit)--if he had been willing to commit himself, it might have been called a love affair. Yet Tassi neither confessed to the rape nor honorably offered marriage. Even during the trial, he was still dangling matrimony as Artemisia's sole honorable solution to the problem he had imposed upon her, on the ignoble condition that she blame someone else for her defloration. We know that she resisted this pressure, for she never changed her testimony and went on to salvage her honor through an arranged marriage.(10)