Artemisia

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

As some journalists have pointed out, the re story is much more interesting than the film version. It is also more genuinely feminist. Merlet's heroine is a young girl whose courage consists of acting on her sexual impulses, whose challenge to society lies in her "giving in to love in an era of arranged marriages." The historical Artemisia broke larger rules. She was one of the first women artists to make a living from her art, producing work for some of the major patrons and collectors of the period--the scholar-antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo, Cardinals Antonio and Francesco Barberini, King Charles I of England, Don Antonio Ruffo of Sicily.

In a period when women were typically consigned to paint diminutive still lifes and portraits, and rarely given grand public commissions, Artemisia broke the mold, turning out large narrative compositions which feature biblical heroines but also figures of both sexes. What is more important, she challenged the gender norms of her day through her art, presenting traditional themes with altered emphases that bring out the perspectives of the female characters. It is an art that deals expressively with female experience in a masculinist world, exposing--perhaps for the first time--the realities of rape and sexual harassment that underlay romanticized themes of love, seduction and suicide.

One might expect Merlet to have picked up on Artemisia's theme of unwanted sex, for a recurrent motif in the film is the inappropriate sexualizing of what are really artistic interests. Tassi mistakenly assumes that Artemisia's drawings of male nudes are signs of her sexual experience. Artemisia's young boyfriend's eagerness to strip for sex turns to embarrassment when he realizes she wants to draw his body. Yet the boy's discomfort at being objectified is, tellingly, not allowed a group of female models who are stripped for inspection. The particular dangers of the volatile mix of art and sex for female models and artists is a worthy topic for filmmakers or scholars, but despite Merlet's flirtation with its manifestations, she doesn't really give us a feminist perspective on this. Indeed, her viewpoint is so relentlessly masculinist that many viewers have expressed surprise that a woman made the film.

For some odd reason, Merlet chose to portray Gentileschi's defiance and strength at the climactic moment by having her say nothing. As the filmmaker explains, Artemisia's silent gaze at Tassi during her torture forced him to break down and confess; she "stared adversity in the face and saved herself."(11) This doesn't even work cinematically. His action speaks much louder than her silence, and one's net impression is that he confessed voluntarily. The device is particularly horrifying because, through the ages, women's silence has been a tool of their oppressors; it's what wife beaters count on. Furthermore, Artemisia wasn't silent in the trial; she was eloquent. When the sibille were administered, she cried out to Tassi: "This is the ring you give me, and these are the promises? And, "It is truth that has induced me to testify against you."(12)