Artemisia

In 1985, the Florentine daily La Nazione announced the death of Anna Banti with the heading “Addio Artemisia!” (Wood 119). Although Banti published many other novels, short stories, and art history essays, Artemisia was, and still is, her best-known work and arguably the source of her popularity.The controversial Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome in 1593 and died around 1653 in Naples. Until the 1970s, she was generally considered a minor figure of her time. When Banti published Artemisia in 1947, the only in-depth art-historical engagement with Artemisia's work was the article “Gentileschi padre e figlia,” which had been published in 1916 by Banti's husband Roberto Longhi. He recognized that Artemisia “was a first-rate painter technically,” but rated her as being “intellectually inferior, even to her father” (Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi 357). Banti's fictional biography, which to this date is the only biography of Artemisia—fictional or otherwise—written in Italian, challenges this latter assessment.1 Today, art historians tend to agree with Banti's re-evaluation rather than with Longhi's verdict.For feminist scholars, Artemisia has become an icon on account of having experienced the violence of patriarchal oppression—both intellectually and physically. She was ignored by art historians for several centuries, and as a young woman she was raped by her tutor, Agostino Tassi. Because of the relative absence of documentary material about her life and because a detailed account of her rape survived in court records, Artemisia has become both a mystery to be unravelled and a figure for identification.2In this article, I reflect on Banti's self-conscious process of identification with Artemisia and contrast it with other treatments of the Baroque artist by feminist critics involved in the debate generated by the 1998 film, Artemisia, arguing that Banti's Artemisia reveals more about the ideological locations of Artemisia's interpreters than about the ‘real’ story of the woman who is the novel's subject. I take the argument that in Artemisia Banti creates herself in order to define herself as an exceptional woman struggling to gain recognition as a writer, one step further and propose that her process of self-invention is not less fictional that her creation of Artemisia.3 In the following, I show how her narrator and Artemisia are two characters searching for an author and finding that the author's knowledge is not in any way ‘authoritative.’The novel covers roughly forty years of Artemisia Gentileschi's life. Banti's Artemisia is a motherless daughter of an absent and uncommunicative father, the painter Orazio Gentileschi. During her teens she is raped by one of her father's friends and fellow painters, Agostino Tassi. The rape and its succeeding trial force Artemisia to live for three years as a recluse in her father's house. During these years she works incessantly to become a professional painter. This time of isolation ends when her father chooses a husband for her, whom she soon leaves behind when following Orazio to Florence.In this new city, Artemisia succeeds as a painter. She paints her famous Judith Beheading Holofernes, but in Florence she also becomes aware of her ambiguous and difficult position as a female artist. Her recognition and success, in fact, cannot protect her, and when her father leaves Florence for London, Artemisia returns to Rome to live under the ‘protection’ of her husband. When the latter leaves her, Artemisia moves to Naples, where she gives birth to a daughter and where she truly becomes Maestra Artemisia. Years later, she joins her father in England where she finds herself isolated, both artistically and linguistically. Yet it is here that she paints the Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, and it is here that her father finally acknowledges her ability and artistic talent.From such a summary Banti's novel appears to be a story recounting the coming into being of Artemisia as an artist. But Artemisia could also be seen as the hitherto untold story of a neglected female artist who is discovered and brought to life by her biographer. Such a reading. however, is complicated by the process of self-identification between artist and biographer, which the narrator openly discusses within the narrative. For Artemisia herself is brought into the novel as both narrator of her story and character whose story is told by the author / narrator. The novel opens in the Boboli Gardens in the summer of 1944, during the last days of the Resistenza's fight in Florence, which was then in the hands of German troops. The narrator is grieving for the loss of a manuscript in which she supposedly told the life story of Artemisia Gentileschi.The opening words of the novel are uttered by Artemisia herself, who appeals “Non piangere” (9) to a woman, the narrator, who is sitting on the gravel of a path, wearing only a nightdress, racked by sobs. The woman is crying for her devastated city, but also—indeed most of all, as she comes to comprehend—she is “attonita, nella scoperta della perdita più dolorosa” (10): the hundred pages in which she had given life to Artemisia. Such a realization is unbearable for the narrator, since the loss of the manuscript marks Artemisia's second death.Consequently, the novel is also the story of the narrator's and of Artemisia's attempts to remember the lost manuscript. The narrator and the character share the memories of Artemisia's life as it was recounted in the lost novel. What they struggle to remember and to narrate is not the story of the ‘real’ Artemisia Gentileschi but rather the life of the fictional Artemisia, a character in a lost manuscript. The text which is produced is, as Derek Duncan suggests, “an act of restitution for the forgotten life of Artemisia Gentileschi,” but also “a discourse of self-identification which is pursued throughout the text” (160).This process of explicit self-identification reveals Banti's understanding of art and literature as a means by which one may challenge the reproduction of, or even the possibility to reproduce, a commonly accepted view of reality. As Duncan argues, what is at stake in her novel, is the use of literature to engage with the systems of power through which an idea of the real is expressed and made natural (163). Hence Banti presents Artemisia as a fictional character looking for her story, which is, in turn, supposed to exist only in another work of fiction. The complexity of Banti's novel lies in the fact that it recounts three parallel stories: the account of the life of the artist Artemisia Gentileschi, the struggle to remember the lost manuscript and to rewrite it, and the relationship between the fictional character Artemisia and the narrator.Although the three stories run parallel, they are also interconnected by the issue of the lost manuscript. The lost manuscript, the grieving for its loss, and the attempt to rewrite it become metaphors through which and loci in which Banti rejects clear-cut boundaries between the historical novel, autobiography; biography; and fiction. Furthermore, the lost manuscript stands for the lost histories of the many women who over the centuries have lived, loved, suffered, and hoped for a better life. Consequently, the despair for the loss of the manuscript is the despair for the loss of women's history which Virginia Woolf articulated in A Room of One's Own. From this point of view, one may argue with JoAnn Cannon that Banti, with Artemisia, anticipated the revisionist work of feminist scholars committed to challenging the prejudices and biases of traditional historiography (326).Yet Artemisia is not an attempt to set the record straight. Banti uses her dialogue with the fictional Artemisia to reflect on the role that writing may play in order to provide alternative memories, or in order to ‘remember,’ as she would have it. For Banti, ‘to remember’ is a process whereby history becomes historical memory through interpretation. ‘To remember,’ then, especially for women, means to participate in the writing of history, which, as Banti underlines, does not write itself.This emphasis on remembering has become a significant issue for feminist historians. Billie Melman, for instance, asks how women have come to be remembered and what kinds of narratives have been invented to include them in the collective memory—which she defines as “the national memory or the memory of the elites or social classes”—from which they were excluded (5). Banti's Artemisia provides a narrative of inclusion, yet one that carefully emphasizes the role of writing and fiction in (re)creating historical memory.Banti's perception of the role of writing as a means by which one may counteract the loss of memory finds expression in the bond between the narrator and the fictional Artemisia. Through the depiction of a communal effort to remember the lost manuscript, Banti grants Artemisia Gentileschi a life story in which she is both a participant narrator and a biographical subject. In several instances, as, for example, in the opening scene of the novel, Artemisia either speaks in the first person or she addresses the (initially) reluctant narrator.Artemisia's active presence in the shaping of her own story facilitates trust in the veracity of her narrative and elicits empathy and emotional involvement on the part of the reader, who cannot help but share Artemisia's intense desire for her story to be told. Her presence in the story's present also reminds the reader that Artemisia is a fictional character: how could a woman dead for three centuries speak to us now?The reader may not, and indeed may not need to, distinguish between Artemisia Gentileschi, the painter born in 1593, and Artemisia Gentileschi, Banti's (and probably, by the end of the novel, the reader's) companion “che respirava adagio” (10) on the pages of a novel. The fictional and the real have become interwoven, for the only ‘real’ image of Artemisia Gentileschi that lives in the present is the one that Banti's narrator, and the reader's own relationship with her, bring to life. In a dialogue with her character, the narrator expresses the collapse of the ‘real’ into the imaginary, and as e a a Artemisia come e in e this as in many in the novel, Banti the of her writing The which the narrator addresses to Artemisia and to herself (and to the to Banti's that her account of the is yet another act of interpretation. She the position of the revisionist who to a to a woman the whose does the woman The at Artemisia's ability to speak on the author / narrator's to her The author / narrator is, in fact, the one who has the to a story for her Yet Artemisia's and a that the narrator's The narrator the of her own as she and Artemisia's in the of her Artemisia comes a and speaks with and della position of the who to the forgotten story of the painter Artemisia Gentileschi is The between one that is and is The Banti to to Artemisia is her it is a that it to Anna Banti, to Artemisia Gentileschi, or to as such it is the of a woman who in order to her own What is even the historical Artemisia Gentileschi, in her is lost to us Banti's engagement with that lost image has which come the but live in the Banti's Artemisia on her own the narrator (and the to that she is a of the For Artemisia, and fiction are Artemisia e e a e “Non Artemisia, effort to remember that which is that Artemisia's real history, Artemisia's fictional history, or women's history at part of the narrative as Banti the story of the relationship between the narrator and her character / narrator in the of the novel. Such a relationship also Banti to her own narrator, her into another character of the The narrator, the act of remembering Artemisia's story, becomes herself the of Banti's this the relationship between the two characters / becomes part of the narrative and into a story within the stories that Banti's Artemisia and her are both involved in the that of remembering the lost manuscript. The of the lost manuscript is an act that both women to the memories as it is the narrator who the manuscript in the first she attempts to remember her own act of She to remember her own that of writing the manuscript. the the of the manuscript is Artemisia's life Hence Artemisia, the narrator, to remember her woman is to remember her own through the her on historical fiction and on Banti that for her, historical memory is only through a process of Her of history is by means of fictional This is how the narrator in Artemisia her of the of Artemisia's life to her in the e e come in Agostino e e Orazio Gentileschi a Artemisia a e in Artemisia memory for us by the historical of Artemisia's life is in the of the lost manuscript, with the narrator's effort to ‘remember,’ that which has to be in order to be The of her desire to Artemisia the of both the lost manuscript and the historical of her life the narrator's to what have had not been her the of Artemisia with the second of the of her as a historical subject. In the words of JoAnn that the of Artemisia's history are on a with the is to view of what is for “the of history the of to Banti's of the over for the her to writing historical narratives by both characters and characters who a Hence that Banti the by the of historiography on In Artemisia, however, Banti a between history, historiography and the The by the lost manuscript, in be as it on the other as the writing of that is what us to by way of then, only be the writing of the and historiography the writing about the writing of the in other the own process of This process of remembering that the is a of the and lives in and by it For the to and of this it is that it be to a This which historical “the of the into own material and it into its the writing of histories becomes a way of of the of the for Banti, of the of the does not the attempt to the as a but a on her process of the of the under which Artemisia paints Judith Beheading how the process of which historical as the fictional the identification between Banti and Artemisia. A commonly accepted view is that the of Artemisia Gentileschi's on her Agostino or not this Banti's narrator does that is identification between her character, Artemisia, and Artemisia's character, a e Artemisia e identification between the painter and her in Banti's novel is significant not because Artemisia uses Judith in order to her Agostino but because the painter herself in the act of her character looking into the it is Artemisia's the narrator, who her own character in the process of another Artemisia's identification with her character, the narrator in her own identification with her character, Artemisia. a process of is set in whereby the reader is to remember that the narrator is also a character, who is seen in the act of her character who creates another As character to character, the image of Artemisia looking into the reminds us of Banti's identification with both her that is, the narrator and the between the history, and historiography by as part of her fiction both the attempt to the lost manuscript of Artemisia's story and the dialogue with Artemisia which then becomes the recognition of the to remember the painter as she In this the lost manuscript two the one it is a for Artemisia Gentileschi, the painter whose work and life have been by the of the But on the it is significant that the manuscript has been lost and that the only novel that is for the narrator is the account of this loss, which, in turn, in the account of the to remember lost manuscript and the account of its order to the author reminds us that the historical Artemisia is another Artemisia, a fictional character, who has been and by of being reminds the narrator that what is lost cannot be discovered and brought to years since the of Artemisia, and at a time when many and of history have the idea of a that be brought to the controversial debate following the of Artemisia, a 1998 about the the of Banti's of the role of fiction in the writing of the into was by the of rape of Artemisia as a act of and to the in the its feminist them and to participate in a The since the film, and the art a in which they what they as “the (Garrard, by The fact was then at the and on the under the the the Artemisia of the fact were at in several her film, Artemisia as a and young woman who a and relationship with her the that women to Artemisia a to for to about she on a on a and through the her is in an with Her about and about are supposedly by her desire to become more in of and for the of her for as an for her with Tassi. her for is it is by her for the artist. This is by the fact that the story is over by the Artemisia's artistic are by way of an at the end of the Artemisia is a young woman whose as on her and whose challenge to lies in her in to in an of by her a also her as a and “a but is that of Artemisia is and Artemisia as an of desire for both and the Although Artemisia herself expresses her own desire for the desire of the is Artemisia as a of the film, of the with her cannot take the at the first I to a documentary about the but made own interpretation. For she was in with but was around who herself as a feminist and to have made a feminist film, that her story of the is an effort to Artemisia's her role in her of the to as as to the commonly accepted view that Artemisia had been view that herself had to and that she to be is for a she about the of this to that into a story, has been of any fictional of Artemisia's life. In a to her Artemisia and she Anna Banti's Artemisia, it as a fictional and that it the she that about the of art to with the role by the of history in by is in her more to Artemisia. it is to with the woman in the trial because feminist art historians with Gentileschi that she such acknowledges her identification with Artemisia, her that is an act by other feminist art historians. She of Artemisia, because has been an role for women, especially by She does not the role that other have in the painter into a role for women, and that art historians and other scholars are to provide an and of the historical Artemisia Gentileschi.The art by emphasizes that in of its with to the historical the cannot be on the of the it with is more with the of the film, where a is made that Artemisia is considered the first woman painter in the history of to this the of the woman artist as a and a In this the with the stories in with the figure of the woman artist is less in the historical depiction of Artemisia, and more in the it about the relationship between historical and She that Artemisia has been in of feminist of the which she a woman in She be as a for reflect on the relationship between historical and it may be to the that Artemisia be into a for since she to another time and another she was not may be more to own that is, to reflect on the many in which Artemisia is in the present in order to what these of a woman the are about the to write the story of Artemisia as it by to the of the rape trial and to other historical one to that own in the present the history of the one Artemisia Gentileschi as she was is a Artemisia, Banti emphasizes the of her Artemisia and the power that fiction gives her to both herself and her Artemisia's however, Banti us to the that the writing of history art history, and biography they feminist or This is in Banti's of Artemisia's as the Allegory of Painting, which, she is the of a young and painter Artemisia has in comes to a a time of her husband that Artemisia's of the artist as a of female She that an Artemisia the of female through a that the in another Cannon has that Banti's of the into a of feminist in that Artemisia herself as a for the artist Artemisia first in her own memory and then on the for history to have Banti's as an of a female another female they have Artemisia has a image in which the is expressed and through a of a female artist at work and Duncan is how Banti Artemisia's e in a e come desire to her to the The is also an act of restitution for the by the young whose death her the art that would have made her her and by her in the act of the the narrator's of it for to be remembered and to be recognized as an artist. Artemisia art and a relationship between them as Yet the identification between Artemisia and has more Artemisia death to that the young painter had been to her The of the violence by to show what could have to Artemisia herself, had she in a more Artemisia's her Banti the young at being a woman with Artemisia's and to to her however, Artemisia the of being a woman who to at the hands of the husband who her the to the artist. The identification with as she paints her to Artemisia's of her In turn, by in the of her own she the woman an alternative Artemisia's life of comes to be seen in a new her isolation has her to become the artist she herself to also her to be in the position to remember and Banti's narrator presents her character with she also her own identification with and the narrator is seen as with Artemisia, is that by and life to Artemisia finds that the other also becomes a source of for Banti, for herself in another in and Artemisia and This process is then and what is supposed to be her also seen in the act of into her own Anna may not be that and Artemisia's share the Artemisia, come a a nella her Artemisia both and her Anna Banti, into the present of her life in also herself in the present of Banti's writing of the novel. for her, Artemisia becomes a companion for Banti as she the story of her relationship with Banti is through the narrator. Banti herself in the act of her character, the narrator, who in is seen in the act of her character, Artemisia. This becomes a where Artemisia and her that Banti or her other through the of history and the of time that a Artemisia her and of as a how both she and her narrator with Artemisia, her in own arguing with her and that she But by her own act of and Banti also that the writing of the the writing of the on historical is a of is to she both the desire to the of the the present and the to such a Banti's novel the as it was, that is, the historical Artemisia Gentileschi, is as a lost manuscript. her own act of identification and by her as as struggle to remember the lost is then to the act of self-invention and to the ideological in to the The however, Banti's Artemisia, in and through the The for Artemisia, then, is the means through which the of the is made only relationship between Banti and her companion three centuries is one in which the loss for the historical Artemisia is by the the character and the author engage that she had been this loss to both the fictional manuscript and the historical is to and to need her author's of her life as as her author The in such a relationship between and present may Artemisia's biographer, yet comes with the of her behind

Artemisia · Traditional medicine · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Studies in Science · History · Medicine

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