Free walking tour: in the footsteps of Artemisia Gentileschi

Stopped as it was by the Covid-19 outbreak, an exhibition on the Roman painter Artemisia Gentileschi will be viewable in London until January 2022. At this time it is certainly not possible for us to fly abroad and attend it in person, but what we can do instead is to take a walk around the places where this extraordinary artist lived and worked, having been recently rediscovered and compared to masters such as Caravaggio.

The importance of Artemisia Gentileschi is due to a series of recent studies by art critics, historians and experts.

In the seventeenth century, when Artemisia produced her masterpieces, women were not accepted in intellectual and artistic circles, and the fact that her paintings have reached us, and that her figure has not fallen into oblivion, is a testamente to her uniqueness… and obstinacy.

Artemisia’s childhood, Orazio’s workshop

Unlike other artists of the same era, we have a lot of details about Artemisia: we know that she was born on Via di Ripetta, on the corner of what was once the Ospedale San Giacomo, on July 8, 1593. It is not in the hospital there, however, that Artemisia was born, but at her parents’ home: she was the first born of Orazio and Prudenzia.

The exact place is not known, probably because of the demolitions and later buildings on the same street, which at the time of Artemisia’s birth was still called Via Leonina, after Pope Leo X. Anyway, it is still very possible to walk along the street starting from Piazza del Popolo, stopping to remember other historical figures who lived around these parts, such as patriots Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel or Angelo Brunetti, AKA the Ciceruacchio.

From Via Ripetta you can reach in a few minutes both Piazza di San Lorenzo in Lucina, where Artemisia was baptized, and Piazza di Spagna, where the family moved a few years after the birth of other children.

In 1605, Prudenzia died and Orazio moved again, in what is now Via del Babuino, and opened a workshop on Via Margutta: today we associate this street with painters, but at the time Orazio was among the first, if not the first, to set up shop on this street. This was a place always crowded with his peers, not least Caravaggio himself, who apparently used to borrow instruments from the Gentileschi family.

Artemisia grew up here and, by keeping close contact with her father, began to work in the store mixing colors, preparing canvases, and making brushes. As she got older, she began to draw and paint side by side with her father.

What’s interesting about these addresses is that we can safely say that these are premium locations in modern Rome. At the time they were among the poorer areas in the city: overcrowded, unsanitary and unsafe. Via Margutta itself, the address of none other than Federico Fellini in the Twentieth century, was nothing more than a country road! Plus ça change, as the French say…

Assaulted by Agostino Tassi

In 1611 the Gentileschis moved once more: to Via della Croce, once again in the Tridente area of the centro storico. All the addresses listed so far are a short distance from one another, and you can get lost in these alleys imagining you’re walking on the same cobblestones of a very young Artemisia.

In that year, when Artemisia is only 17 years old, her father began a relationship with a widow, a neighbor, Tuzia. Meanwhile, he was working on frescoes for the Casino delle Muse in Palazzo Rospigliosi, on the Quirinale Hill, together with his younger collaborator Agostino Tassi, who has a reputation for violence but the older man seems to like a great deal.

Tassi, struck by Artemisia’s beauty, tried different times to woo her but when refused, he assaulted her and raped her in the family home, with the involvement of Tuzia herself.

If there can be no doubts about the rape, as it was documented in great detail at the time, there are conflicting versions about where it took place: for some it’s on Via della Croce, for others in the area where the church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, near the Vatican, lies.

In a further version, the family was forced to look for a house near St. Peter’s because of the rumors and gossip on Artemisia, spread by the very people who lived near them on Via della Croce.

Regardless of these details, Santo Spirito in Sassia returns in the life of Artemisia as the place where the young painter got married on November 29, 1612… not with Agostino but with Pierantonio Stiattesi, a painter orbiting around Orazio’s workshop. He was chosen by Artemisia’s father to wrap up the painful event (Agostino Tassi, eventually found guilty of “deflowering” Artemisia, never even served his sentence). Standing in front of a judge, both father and daughter had asked that Tassi married Artemisia to repair her honor, a shotgun wedding of sorts, only to discover that he already had a wife!

After her own marriage to Pierantonio, Artemisia moved to Florence. She was again briefly in Rome, but her life continued in Naples, where she died around 1656 because of the plague, and in London.

Artemisia’s paintings in Rome: an unpleasant surprise!

The re-evaluation of Artemisia Gentileschi’s art has created a renewed interest around the painter, and her works are often being loaned to other institutions (as in the case of the London exhibition mentioned at the beginning).

Under normal conditions Artemisia’s works can be seen in Italy…. but not in Rome. Surprisingly, there are only two of them in her “hometown”, and both at the Galleria Spada (just a few minutes from our office!), a Madonna with Child and a Saint Cecilia.

The most famous paintings of this ill-fated artist are in fact scattered around the world, starting with Naples and Florence and continuing with Great Britain, the United States, Germany and Spain (among others).