"La Donna Terribile " Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith Paintings

Date of Award

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Carrasco, Magdalena

Keywords

Gentileschi, Artemisia, Judith, Baroque

Area of Concentration

Art History

Abstract

The apocryphal figure of Judith was interpreted again and again during the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. Writers and artists depicted her first as a symbol of virtue and institutional triumph in the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance she was reinterpreted politically as a pious tyrannicide, and in the Baroque Judith became an excuse for biblical erotica. Artemisia Gentileschi's seven paintings of Judith do not strictly adhere to any of these types. The ambiguity and originality of Gentileschi's Judiths have allowed scholars to interpret both the paintings and the artist in multiple ways. The first interpretations, by Roberto Longhi, Germaine Greer, and Mary Garrard, among others, rely on Gentileschi's gender as a starting point. Only recently has scholarship begun to return to the actual artwork and the circumstances surrounding its production. A framework wider than gender is needed to examine Artemisia Gentileschi's life and career, and especially her series of Judith paintings.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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