Artemisia Gentileschi, Woman Baroque Artist, and the Church: an Extraordinary Story

ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI, WOMAN BAROQUE ARTIST, AND THE CHURCH: AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY

EVENT DESCRIPTION:
In an era when professional women painters were a rarity, Artemisia Gentileschi attained international recognition in the highly competitive arena of history painting, counting Cardinals, kings, and queens among her devoted clients. Her style was initially modeled after Caravaggio’s striking realism, which she made her own by introducing studied psychological portrayals, a jewel-like palette, and elements of Baroque Italy’s most luxurious material culture. Her life was unusually adventurous, distinguished by risky entrepreneurship, domestic turmoil, her spirited condemnation of society’s biases against women, and the stain of rape, yet she was universally welcomed into the most discriminating cultural circles of her era. Unfortunately, historical research on women artists has been hampered by many obstacles. With support from former Philadelphia resident Jane Fortune (1942-2018), our speaker has carried out over a decade of diligent work in Italian archives, resulting in groundbreaking discoveries regarding the life of Artemisia and other pioneering women artists of early modern Italy.


Speaker: Dr. Sheila Barker, who earned her Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University in 2002, has been a major figure in expanding our knowledge of women artists active in Italy between 1350 and 1750, based on her extensive archival research. She also publishes frequently on the history of medicine, pharmacy, and the cultural response to plagues. She is the Founding Director of the Jane Fortune Research Program on Women Artists, and she is Adjunct Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2022 she became Executive Director of Studio Incamminati, School for Contemporary Realist Art, an atelier founded some twenty years ago by the renowned portraitist Nelson Shanks and his wife Leona Shanks.

Lecture Date: September 22nd, 2023.

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