Artemisia (film)
Encyclopedia
Artemisia is a 1997 French/Italian/German biographical film
about Artemisia Gentileschi
, the female Italian Baroque
painter. The film was directed by Agnès Merlet
, and stars Valentina Cervi
and Michel Serrault
.
Michel Serrault... Orazio Gentileschi
Miki Manojlovic... Agostino Tassi
Luca Zingaretti... Cosimo Quorli
Emmanuelle Devos... Costanza
Frederic Pierrot... Roberto
Maurice Garrel... The Judge
Brigitte Catillon... Tuzia
Yann Tregouet... Fulvio
Jacques Nolot... The Lawyer
Artemisia seeks the tutelage of Agostino Tassi (Mike Manojlovic), her father's collaborator in painting frescoes, to learn from him the art of perspective. Tassi, is a man notorious for his night-time debauchery. The two hone their skills as artists, but they also fall in love, and their relationship moves into the realm of physical pleasure. Artemisia's father spots the couple making love and files a lawsuit against Tassi for rape. In the subsequent trial, Artemisia's physical state is investigated by two nuns, and then she is tortured by thumbscrews. Nevertheless, even under torture, Artemisia denies being raped, and proclaims their mutual love. Tassi himself, devastated by her plight, admits to raping her in order to stop her ordeal.
Merlet said of her film, “I didn’t want to show her as a victim but like a more modern woman who took her life into her own hands.”
In the transcript (of Gentileschi's testimony at the trial, based on records preserved in an archive in Rome), Gentileschi describes the rape in graphic detail and states that Tassi continued to have sex with her... with the understanding that he would protect her honor by eventually wedding her..... In the movie, by contrast, she's a willing partner in lust. During the trial, she says only that "I love him"; "he loves me"; "he gives me pleasure." In the movie, Gentileschi refuses to testify that she was raped, even under torture, a sacrifice that prompts a devastated Tassi to make a sham confession..... Just as problematic, says Garrard, is the way the movie ascribes Gentileschi's creative maturation to the influence of, of all people, the man whom history records as her assailant.... At the same time, many inconvenient details -- most glaringly, Tassi's relentless campaign during the trial to smear Gentileschi as a slut -- didn't make it into the movie....
from Alyssa Katz, SALON, May 15, 1998
Art historian Mary Garrard and feminist Gloria Steinem, incensed by the misinformation in the film, organized a campaign to inform audiences for "Artemisia" that what they were seeing was not, as was promised in early advertisements, "The Untold True Story of an Extraordinary Woman.". They put up a website attacking the film as untruthful in presenting what they say was Artemisia's rape by her teacher, Agostino Tassi. At the New York premiere screening of the film on April 28, Gloria Steinem and other women in the audience circulated a fact sheet prepared by Steinem and Garrard, This intervention led Miramax to retract its claim that that film presents a "true" story. Steinem and Garrard's intention was not to interfere with the filmmaker's creative freedom, nor with Miramax's distribution of the film, but rather to counter its historical distortions with concrete factual information about the subject.
Excerpts from the fact sheet:
NOW THAT YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM, MEET THE REAL ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI...
THE RAPE
In the film, Artemisia Gentileschi and Agostino Tassi are presented as voluntary and passionate lovers. When her father (Orazio Gentileschi) brings Tassi to trial on the charge of rape (to protect his own reputation), Artemisia testifies even when tortured that Tassi did not rape her. Tassi is presented first as a reluctant lover, then as a flawed but noble character who protects Artemisia by accepting the false charge of rape.
HISTORY: In the fully documented trial of 1612, Agostino Tassi was charged with and convicted of the rape of Artemisia Gentileschi. He never confessed to the crime, and on the contrary, tried to accuse Artemisia's father of having deflowered her, and to insist she had also written love letters to other men—though she could barely write at the time. Artemisia testified repeatedly under oath and torture that she had been raped by Tassi. She described the event in explicit and graphic detail, and her own resistance to the point of wounding him with a knife. After the rape, Agostino promised to marry Artemisia, which would have been the only socially acceptable remedy in 17th century Italy for a woman who had become "damaged property." She evidently believed him at first (though she came to doubt his intentions) and had reluctant sexual relations with her assailant: "What I was doing with him, I did only so that, as he had dishonored me, he would marry me" (from her rape trial testimony).
In reality, Tassi was known as what might now be called a multiple sex offender. He had been sued for raping and impregnating his sister-in-law, equated with incest, and there was testimony at the trial that he had arranged and paid for the murder of his own wife, whom he had also acquired by rape.
THE ARTIST
The theme of the film is that Artemisia's sexual awakening, initiated by Tassi, launched her artistic creativity. Tassi is cast as a guiding creative spirit, whose ability to visualize landscape inspired Artemisia's art. His work is also portrayed as rivaling that of Artemisia's father, Orazio Gentileschi.
HISTORY: Tassi is known for technical skill in perspective and for conventional marine landscapes. Artemisia's art had nothing to do with landscape (she hired other artists to paint the landscape backgrounds in her pictures). Contrary to the film, she never drew or painted independent images of the nude male body. There was no known effect of Tassi's "teaching" on her art, and Tassi's own art is judged to be second rank, no rival for that of Artemisia or her father. Every detail of the historical story has been inverted to produce a romanticized narrative of "true love" between Artemisia and Agostino Tassi, her rapist.... Those who study women's history, who know how fragile the truth about women in history always is, and how vulnerable it is to conflation with female stereotypes, have been and will be outraged by the latest injustice to Artemisia Gentileschi, who has repeatedly been subjected to sexualized explanations of her life and career success.
Kari Boyd McBride, in Gentileschi's biography page, writes:
"Among those with whom Orazio worked was the Florentine artist Agostino Tassi, whom Artemisia accused of raping her in 1612, when she was nineteen. Her father filed suit against Tassi for injury and damage, and, remarkably, the transcripts of the seven-month-long rape trial have survived. According to Artemisia, Tassi, with the help of family friends, attempted to be alone with her repeatedly, and raped her when he finally succeeded in cornering her in her bedroom. He tried to placate her afterwards by promising to marry her, and gained access to her bedroom (and her person) repeatedly on the strength of that promise, but always avoided following through with the actual marriage. The trial followed a pattern familiar even today: she was accused of not having been a virgin at the time of the rape and of having many lovers, and she was examined by midwives to determine whether she had been "deflowered" recently or a long time ago. Perhaps more galling for an artist like Gentileschi, Tassi testified that her skills were so pitiful that he had to teach her the rules of perspective, and was doing so the day she claimed he raped her. Tassi denied ever having had sexual relations with Gentileschi and brought many witnesses to testify that she was "an insatiable whore." Their testimony was refuted by Orazio (who brought countersuit for perjury), and Artemisia's accusations against Tassi were corroborated by a former friend of his who recounted Tassi's boasting about his sexual exploits at Artemisia's expense. Tassi had been imprisoned earlier for incest with his sister-in-law and was charged with arranging the murder of his wife. He was ultimately convicted on the charge of raping Gentileschi; he served under a year in prison and was later invited again into the Gentileschi household by Orazio.
The other side
Feminist Germaine Greer
points out in her chapter on Artemisia in her book on women painters, the Obstacle Race, that the rape trial transcripts are not transparent, and that there is evidence that supports Merlet's construction. The rape trial records may be found in an appendix to Garrard's book. Garrard interprets them one way (Artemisia was raped, didn't love Tassi; Greer interprets them differently (Artemisia was raped, but came to love her rapist); Merlet offers a third interpretation (Merlet loved her rapist from the start). Garrard's accpunt was savaged by a number of feminist reviewers, and most recently calleneged (in a friendly way) by Griselda Pollock
in Differencing the Canon.
Griselda Pollock states, “Merlet’s film is, I would argue, not really a biography, for there is no analysis of the impact of the early death of the artist’s mother and her bereavement, no exploration of how she made a massively successful career in Italy and beyond after the horrors of the trial and her torture, how she married and mothered several daughters who also became artists, how she negotiated with some of the major patrons of her time for the commissions on which she lived and through which she, not their father, accumulated dowries for her daughter. No one wants to tell that story.”
This handsomely photographed film, whose indoor scenes recreate the heavy chiaroscuro of Caravaggio paintings, takes a decidedly 90's view of a woman whom feminist art historians rescued from obscurity in the 1970s. If the central character emerges as a feminist heroine for flouting patriarchical taboos, she also happens to be a tantalizing sex kitten whose artistic curiosity smacks of voyeurism. As portrayed by Valentina Cervi, Artemisia is two distinctly different entities. One is a gorgeous early-17th-century Lolita. The other is a fearlessly ambitious teen-age prodigy who is so sure of her talent that she breaks the rules of female decorum and dares go where no nice woman of her time and station has gone before. These two Artemisias don't really fit together, but they make for a ripely sensuous portrait of the artist as a saucy but virtuous siren.
Roger Ebert also liked the film:
Artemisia is as much about art as about sex, and it contains a lot of information about techniques, including the revolutionary idea of moving the easel outside and painting from nature. It lacks, however, detailed scenes showing drawings in the act of being created (for that you need ``La Belle Noiseuse, Jacques Rivette's 1991 movie that peers intimately over the shoulder of an artist in love). And it doesn't show a lot of Artemisia's work. What it does show is the gift of Valentina Cervi, who is another of those modern European actresses, like Juliette Binoche, Irene Jacob, Emmanuelle Beart and Julie Delpy, whose intelligence, despite everything else, is the most attractive thing about her.
Daphne Merkin in the New Yorker wrote:
This controversial and confused new film, written and directed by Agnès Merlet, is ostensibly about the seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, but it is really the silliest form of late-twentieth-century iconography. The movie, which stars the fetching Valentina Cervi, makes a sexy love story out of Artemisia's relationship with her teacher, Agostino Tassi (played by Miki Manojlovic): it's art lessons as foreplay. "Let yourself go," Tassi tells his young pupil, as though he is quoting from Masters and Johnson, and Artemisia not only expertly guides him in bed but insists that he gave her pleasure when he raped her. Although the real Artemisia did flout the conventions of her time by insisting on painting from live models, it's hard to believe that she proceeded with the air of defiant entitlement she's given here. Once you accept the film on its own fraudulent terms, however, it's quite engaging-not least because of the erotic subtext.
Other works inspired by the artist's life
Suggested reading
External links
Biographical film
A biographical film, or biopic , is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people. They differ from films “based on a true story” or “historical films” in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a person’s life story or at least the most historically important years of their...
about Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Early Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation influenced by Caravaggio...
, the female Italian Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
painter. The film was directed by Agnès Merlet
Agnès Merlet
Agnès Merlet is a French film director who is known for directing Son of the Shark, Artemisia and Dorothy Mills...
, and stars Valentina Cervi
Valentina Cervi
Valentina Cervi is an Italian film and television actress.Cervi was born in Rome, Italy. She is the daughter of director Tonino Cervi and granddaughter of the famous Italian actor Gino Cervi. Cervi started her acting career at age ten in Carlo Cotti's 1986 film Portami la luna...
and Michel Serrault
Michel Serrault
Michel Serrault was a celebrated French actor who appeared in over 150 films.-Biography :...
.
Cast
Valentina Cervi... Artemisia GentileschiMichel Serrault... Orazio Gentileschi
Miki Manojlovic... Agostino Tassi
Luca Zingaretti... Cosimo Quorli
Emmanuelle Devos... Costanza
Frederic Pierrot... Roberto
Maurice Garrel... The Judge
Brigitte Catillon... Tuzia
Yann Tregouet... Fulvio
Jacques Nolot... The Lawyer
Plot
Seventeen-year-old Artemisia Gentileschi (Valentina Cervi), the daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, a renowned Italian painter, exhibits her father's talent, and is encouraged by her father, who has no sons and wishes his art to survive after him. However, in the chauvinistic world of early-1600s Italy women are forbidden to paint human nudes or enter the Academy of Arts. Orazio allows his daughter to study in his studio—although he draws the line at letting her view nude males. She is direct and determined, and bribes the fisherman Fulvio with a kiss for letting her observe his body and draw him.Artemisia seeks the tutelage of Agostino Tassi (Mike Manojlovic), her father's collaborator in painting frescoes, to learn from him the art of perspective. Tassi, is a man notorious for his night-time debauchery. The two hone their skills as artists, but they also fall in love, and their relationship moves into the realm of physical pleasure. Artemisia's father spots the couple making love and files a lawsuit against Tassi for rape. In the subsequent trial, Artemisia's physical state is investigated by two nuns, and then she is tortured by thumbscrews. Nevertheless, even under torture, Artemisia denies being raped, and proclaims their mutual love. Tassi himself, devastated by her plight, admits to raping her in order to stop her ordeal.
Merlet said of her film, “I didn’t want to show her as a victim but like a more modern woman who took her life into her own hands.”
Controversy
The film focuses on the incident of Artemisia's rape and its immediate aftermath, and was initially advertised as "a true story" by Miramax Zoe, its American distributor. However,In the transcript (of Gentileschi's testimony at the trial, based on records preserved in an archive in Rome), Gentileschi describes the rape in graphic detail and states that Tassi continued to have sex with her... with the understanding that he would protect her honor by eventually wedding her..... In the movie, by contrast, she's a willing partner in lust. During the trial, she says only that "I love him"; "he loves me"; "he gives me pleasure." In the movie, Gentileschi refuses to testify that she was raped, even under torture, a sacrifice that prompts a devastated Tassi to make a sham confession..... Just as problematic, says Garrard, is the way the movie ascribes Gentileschi's creative maturation to the influence of, of all people, the man whom history records as her assailant.... At the same time, many inconvenient details -- most glaringly, Tassi's relentless campaign during the trial to smear Gentileschi as a slut -- didn't make it into the movie....
from Alyssa Katz, SALON, May 15, 1998
Art historian Mary Garrard and feminist Gloria Steinem, incensed by the misinformation in the film, organized a campaign to inform audiences for "Artemisia" that what they were seeing was not, as was promised in early advertisements, "The Untold True Story of an Extraordinary Woman.". They put up a website attacking the film as untruthful in presenting what they say was Artemisia's rape by her teacher, Agostino Tassi. At the New York premiere screening of the film on April 28, Gloria Steinem and other women in the audience circulated a fact sheet prepared by Steinem and Garrard, This intervention led Miramax to retract its claim that that film presents a "true" story. Steinem and Garrard's intention was not to interfere with the filmmaker's creative freedom, nor with Miramax's distribution of the film, but rather to counter its historical distortions with concrete factual information about the subject.
Excerpts from the fact sheet:
NOW THAT YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM, MEET THE REAL ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI...
THE RAPE
In the film, Artemisia Gentileschi and Agostino Tassi are presented as voluntary and passionate lovers. When her father (Orazio Gentileschi) brings Tassi to trial on the charge of rape (to protect his own reputation), Artemisia testifies even when tortured that Tassi did not rape her. Tassi is presented first as a reluctant lover, then as a flawed but noble character who protects Artemisia by accepting the false charge of rape.
HISTORY: In the fully documented trial of 1612, Agostino Tassi was charged with and convicted of the rape of Artemisia Gentileschi. He never confessed to the crime, and on the contrary, tried to accuse Artemisia's father of having deflowered her, and to insist she had also written love letters to other men—though she could barely write at the time. Artemisia testified repeatedly under oath and torture that she had been raped by Tassi. She described the event in explicit and graphic detail, and her own resistance to the point of wounding him with a knife. After the rape, Agostino promised to marry Artemisia, which would have been the only socially acceptable remedy in 17th century Italy for a woman who had become "damaged property." She evidently believed him at first (though she came to doubt his intentions) and had reluctant sexual relations with her assailant: "What I was doing with him, I did only so that, as he had dishonored me, he would marry me" (from her rape trial testimony).
In reality, Tassi was known as what might now be called a multiple sex offender. He had been sued for raping and impregnating his sister-in-law, equated with incest, and there was testimony at the trial that he had arranged and paid for the murder of his own wife, whom he had also acquired by rape.
THE ARTIST
The theme of the film is that Artemisia's sexual awakening, initiated by Tassi, launched her artistic creativity. Tassi is cast as a guiding creative spirit, whose ability to visualize landscape inspired Artemisia's art. His work is also portrayed as rivaling that of Artemisia's father, Orazio Gentileschi.
HISTORY: Tassi is known for technical skill in perspective and for conventional marine landscapes. Artemisia's art had nothing to do with landscape (she hired other artists to paint the landscape backgrounds in her pictures). Contrary to the film, she never drew or painted independent images of the nude male body. There was no known effect of Tassi's "teaching" on her art, and Tassi's own art is judged to be second rank, no rival for that of Artemisia or her father. Every detail of the historical story has been inverted to produce a romanticized narrative of "true love" between Artemisia and Agostino Tassi, her rapist.... Those who study women's history, who know how fragile the truth about women in history always is, and how vulnerable it is to conflation with female stereotypes, have been and will be outraged by the latest injustice to Artemisia Gentileschi, who has repeatedly been subjected to sexualized explanations of her life and career success.
Kari Boyd McBride, in Gentileschi's biography page, writes:
"Among those with whom Orazio worked was the Florentine artist Agostino Tassi, whom Artemisia accused of raping her in 1612, when she was nineteen. Her father filed suit against Tassi for injury and damage, and, remarkably, the transcripts of the seven-month-long rape trial have survived. According to Artemisia, Tassi, with the help of family friends, attempted to be alone with her repeatedly, and raped her when he finally succeeded in cornering her in her bedroom. He tried to placate her afterwards by promising to marry her, and gained access to her bedroom (and her person) repeatedly on the strength of that promise, but always avoided following through with the actual marriage. The trial followed a pattern familiar even today: she was accused of not having been a virgin at the time of the rape and of having many lovers, and she was examined by midwives to determine whether she had been "deflowered" recently or a long time ago. Perhaps more galling for an artist like Gentileschi, Tassi testified that her skills were so pitiful that he had to teach her the rules of perspective, and was doing so the day she claimed he raped her. Tassi denied ever having had sexual relations with Gentileschi and brought many witnesses to testify that she was "an insatiable whore." Their testimony was refuted by Orazio (who brought countersuit for perjury), and Artemisia's accusations against Tassi were corroborated by a former friend of his who recounted Tassi's boasting about his sexual exploits at Artemisia's expense. Tassi had been imprisoned earlier for incest with his sister-in-law and was charged with arranging the murder of his wife. He was ultimately convicted on the charge of raping Gentileschi; he served under a year in prison and was later invited again into the Gentileschi household by Orazio.
The other side
Feminist Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
points out in her chapter on Artemisia in her book on women painters, the Obstacle Race, that the rape trial transcripts are not transparent, and that there is evidence that supports Merlet's construction. The rape trial records may be found in an appendix to Garrard's book. Garrard interprets them one way (Artemisia was raped, didn't love Tassi; Greer interprets them differently (Artemisia was raped, but came to love her rapist); Merlet offers a third interpretation (Merlet loved her rapist from the start). Garrard's accpunt was savaged by a number of feminist reviewers, and most recently calleneged (in a friendly way) by Griselda Pollock
Griselda Pollock
Griselda Pollock is a prominent art historian and cultural analyst, and a world-renowned scholar of international, post-colonial feminist studies in the visual arts. She is best known for her theoretical and methodological innovation, combined with deeply engaged readings of historical and...
in Differencing the Canon.
Griselda Pollock states, “Merlet’s film is, I would argue, not really a biography, for there is no analysis of the impact of the early death of the artist’s mother and her bereavement, no exploration of how she made a massively successful career in Italy and beyond after the horrors of the trial and her torture, how she married and mothered several daughters who also became artists, how she negotiated with some of the major patrons of her time for the commissions on which she lived and through which she, not their father, accumulated dowries for her daughter. No one wants to tell that story.”
Reviews
New York Times film critic Stephen Holden]is very favourable of the film:This handsomely photographed film, whose indoor scenes recreate the heavy chiaroscuro of Caravaggio paintings, takes a decidedly 90's view of a woman whom feminist art historians rescued from obscurity in the 1970s. If the central character emerges as a feminist heroine for flouting patriarchical taboos, she also happens to be a tantalizing sex kitten whose artistic curiosity smacks of voyeurism. As portrayed by Valentina Cervi, Artemisia is two distinctly different entities. One is a gorgeous early-17th-century Lolita. The other is a fearlessly ambitious teen-age prodigy who is so sure of her talent that she breaks the rules of female decorum and dares go where no nice woman of her time and station has gone before. These two Artemisias don't really fit together, but they make for a ripely sensuous portrait of the artist as a saucy but virtuous siren.
Roger Ebert also liked the film:
Artemisia is as much about art as about sex, and it contains a lot of information about techniques, including the revolutionary idea of moving the easel outside and painting from nature. It lacks, however, detailed scenes showing drawings in the act of being created (for that you need ``La Belle Noiseuse, Jacques Rivette's 1991 movie that peers intimately over the shoulder of an artist in love). And it doesn't show a lot of Artemisia's work. What it does show is the gift of Valentina Cervi, who is another of those modern European actresses, like Juliette Binoche, Irene Jacob, Emmanuelle Beart and Julie Delpy, whose intelligence, despite everything else, is the most attractive thing about her.
Daphne Merkin in the New Yorker wrote:
This controversial and confused new film, written and directed by Agnès Merlet, is ostensibly about the seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, but it is really the silliest form of late-twentieth-century iconography. The movie, which stars the fetching Valentina Cervi, makes a sexy love story out of Artemisia's relationship with her teacher, Agostino Tassi (played by Miki Manojlovic): it's art lessons as foreplay. "Let yourself go," Tassi tells his young pupil, as though he is quoting from Masters and Johnson, and Artemisia not only expertly guides him in bed but insists that he gave her pleasure when he raped her. Although the real Artemisia did flout the conventions of her time by insisting on painting from live models, it's hard to believe that she proceeded with the air of defiant entitlement she's given here. Once you accept the film on its own fraudulent terms, however, it's quite engaging-not least because of the erotic subtext.
Other works inspired by the artist's life
- Alexandra Lapierre:"Artemisia: A Novel"
- Sally Clark: Life Without Instruction, a play by the Canadian playwright
- Cathy Caplan:Lapis Blue Blood Red, a play which opened off-Broadway in 2002
- Susan Vreeland:The Passion of Artemisia: A Novel
- Rauda Jamis: Artemisia ou La Renommée 1990(in French, not translated in English yet)
- Anna Banti: Artemisia
Suggested reading
- Mieke Bal, ed: "The Artemisia Files; Artemsia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other Thinking People". Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005
- Mary D. Garrard:Artemisia Gentileschi around 1622: The Shaping and Reshaping of an Artistic Identity (The Discovery Series) Also found here
- Mary D. Garrard:"Artemisia Gentileschi"
- Mary D. Garrard:"Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art" (Princeton University Press, 1989), The book includes the English translation of the artist's 28 letters and testimony of the rape trial of 1612.
- R. Ward Bissell:"Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art". Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999
External links
- Artemisia's moment, article by Mary O'Neill in the Smithsonian magazine, May 2002