Artemisia Gentileschi: Rome 1593-Naples 1652/3

 

La Pittura.
Self portrait as the Allegory of Painting.
Currently exhibited in Windsor Castle

 

Judith beheading Holofernes 1612-13

Agostino Tassi

Artemisia Gentileschi was the daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, a famous painter and major follower of the revolutionary Baroque painter, Caravaggio and she, too, became a proponent of Caravaggio’s dramatic realism. As a young woman, she was a pupil of both her father and of Agostini Tassi, his friend and a well-known landscape painter; originally she copied her father’s interpretation of Caravaggio’s example, but gradually developed her own distinctive style. Her first recorded painting was of Susannah and the Elders, 1610, an accomplished and mature work, long believed to be by her father. She also attempted two versions of a subject, painted by the master, of Judith Beheading Holofernes 1612/13; 1620.

 In 1612 she was raped by Tassi and their relationship continued briefly with Artemisia believing that Tassi intended marriage. When it became obvious that he did not, her father, Orazio, brought him to trial which proved an intense experience for her, tortured, as she was, to ‘prove’ her accusation. Tassi was found guilty eventually but appears to have served little time in prison. Meanwhile, father Orazio quickly arranged a marriage for his daughter to a Florentine, Pierantonio Stiatesi, a minor artist, and she moved to Florence, joining the Florentine Academy of Design in 1616 and further developing her style in history painting, an unfashionable subject for a woman artist of her time; still life and portraiture were generally considered more appropriate for 17^th century women artists. She became associated with the Medici court and also painted an Allegory of Inclination, c 1616, for the series of frescoes honouring the life of Michelangelo in the Casa Buonarotti. She continued to use more brilliant colours than her father and to make full use of the art of the juxtaposition of light and dark as exemplified by chiaroscuro.

Self portrait as a Lute Player

Artemisia painted in Rome and Venice for a while, moving to Naples in 1630 before settling for several years in London with her father, to work together for King Charles 1. They collaborated on the ceiling paintings of the Great Hall in the Queen’s House and she was awarded several commissions from a number of aristocratic and royal patrons, quickly surpassing her father’s fame at a time when few women artists were recognised. Later she returned to Naples, around 1640/1, painting several versions of the story of David and Bathsheba but gradually slipping from view. Little is known of her later life. Her work fell out of favour in the 18^th and 19^th centuries but during the last fifty to a hundred years, she has become highly rated for her powerful and empathic depictions of women from history. In fact, her artistic vocation was only really rediscovered in the early 1900s by the Caravaggio scholar, Roberto Longhi.

Susannah and the Elders.

This Artemisia blog has been initiated by the very recent rediscovery of a rare surviving painting of hers, in the Royal Collection, after being misattributed two centuries ago. It is her first major work, Susannah and the Elders, and conservators hope that its discovery will add fresh light to her creative processes as well as adding weight to the collection of her paintings as the greatest female artist of her generation. Art historian, Dr. Niko Munz, decided to try to track down paintings from the extensive art collection of King Charles 1 which had been sold off and scattered after his execution in 1646. Seven paintings by Artemisia had been recorded in the King’s collection but only the Self-Portrait was thought to have survived, although this Susannah painting may possibly have been purchased by Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles. However, during this recent search, curators were able to match the description of Susannah and the Elders, to a painting in store for 100 years at Hampton Court Palace, in poor condition and attributed to ‘the French School’. Conservation work discovered a ‘CR’ on the reverse of the painting, confirming that it had been in the collection of the King. [‘Carolus Rex’] Conservation also involved the painstaking removal of centuries of surface dirt, discoloured varnish, and clumsy early attempts at renovation and ‘improvement’. Canvas strips added to enlarge the original painting, were removed; the canvas was re-lined and re-framed and the newly-restored painting is now on display for three weeks, in the Queen’s Drawing Room at Windsor Castle with another of Artemisia’s oeuvre, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, [La Pittura], considered one of her greatest works, together with Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife by Orazio, her father, painted during his London period.

Orazio Gentileschi
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife
Painted for Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles 
1633/4
Now on show at Windsor Castle

Artemisia  Gentileschi
Portrait of a Lady, Seated, Dressed in a
Gold Embroidered Elaborate Costume

Monet's Beloved Giverny

 

Enjoying Giverny

 

The entrance to the house

This week, a short, short visit with my grand-daughter to see the house and gardens into which Monet poured his artistic soul during forty three years; virtually, half his life. Giverny, in Normandy, is understandably acknowledged as one of the most important cultural sights/sites in France, both for the French and for visitors, to experience. His wonderful sensitivity to light and to colour, inspired the creation of his gardens and infused the interior of the house he loved. One can view the whole, as a stage for the man and his extraordinary artistic talent.

The sun-filled dining room.
Photo taken when only two visitors from
the 1000 others in the house, were present

The house is splendid, particularly the dining room, to enter which is like walking into pure sunlight! The creamy yellow walls and Normandy dressers, a mixture of pale yellow and a stronger yellow, painted at a time when dark walls, heavy curtains and antique furniture were the norm, are striking and uplifting. This, together with the magnificent kitchen, were one of the two most important hubs of the house [the other naturally being centred on the studio.] Monet and his wife, Alice, loved entertaining; they loved good food, conviviality, conversation and friendship, and this sun-filled room and the spacious kitchen beyond with its rows of gleaming copper pans, provided the perfect setting. The lemon dining room walls presented a superb backcloth for many of Monet’s large collection of Japanese prints, an enduring passion of his. The spacious kitchen, in two shades of blue with blue and white Rouen tiles, has, as a focal point, a large cooking range with a wall of blue and white tiles above. The kitchen manages to be both food-and-cooking-focused and aesthetically beautiful, a very Monet achievement.

Blue and white tiled fireplace and kitchen range

We had to queue for entry, apparently “not for long”, about 20 minutes, and so many people were admitted that, once inside the house, a group shuffle tour was all that was possible. This was mass tourism in action and, of course, little of Monet’s soul was experienced. The rooms are delightful, crowded with furniture and pottery, walls are lined with Impressionist paintings, including many of Monet’s, plus family photographs but it was impossible to stop and savour our surroundings and indeed, to actually see everything in situ. Alas, this is the modern price of renown. Our best experience in the house, was in the dining room and kitchen which, by some miracle of ebb and flow, were relatively empty during our 2/3 minutes there. We both admired the sunny décor, the ambience, the creamy walls lined with prints; long enough to doff our caps to Monet’s artistic grace. And we continued to satisfy our artistic sensitivities through the Blue Salon, the Epicerie, the Studio Drawing Room and the Water-lily Studio. In truth the extent and variety of the Giverny house provides a feast for the eyes.

Luscious landscape on all sides

Beneath the foliage, the Japanese bridge

For my grand-daughter and me, the gardens were perhaps the biggest treasure of our day; from the Grande Allee and many other corners  curves and crannies, arches and vistas were revealed, little paths with overhanging plants en fleur, materialised and idyllic lawns and flower beds opened up to delight the senses. Monet began almost immediately after he arrived in Giverny, to plant flowers which pleased both sight and smell. And as he acquired more income and land, and gardeners, his Impressionistic eye and love of gardening resulted in evermore profusive and lavish planting. Wherever one walked there were garlands, banks and hedges of flowers; further along, lawns, a stream, a lake. He walked the gardens several times a day, noting and deciding; indeed the gardens at Giverny became his central passion, and the results are still in evidence today. Arsene Alexandre felt that the garden gave Monet the arena to experience pure happiness and provide him with a spiritual refuge; ‘the garden is the man,’ he judged.

Claude Monet in the garden, near the house

                                                                              

The crowds were a little thinner in the gardens on our visit, and the space for pleasurable appreciation consequently the greater. The water area of the grounds is a beautiful magnet again with surrounding floral planting, water lilies in profusion, a slender bamboo forest alongside a meandering stream. One can sense the contentment and aesthetic judgement of the artist who imagined all this beauty and was able, not only to achieve and present it, but also to share and bequeath it.

                                                       Observations on Monet and Giverny

“One must absolutely make a pilgrimage to Giverny, to this flowered  sanctuary, to have a better understanding of the master, a better grasp of the sources of his inspiration and to imagine him still alive among us."      Gerald Van der Kemp.

I sometimes went and sat on the bench from where Monet had seen so many things in the reflections of his water garden. My inexperienced eye needed perseverance to follow from afar the Master’s brush to the ends of his revelations.”    Clemenceau.

Japanese bridge with a small audience

“The general aspect of the garden, especially the little green bridge, gave it the name ‘Japanese
garden’’ to the area. Mr. Hayashi, the organiser from Japan at the Paris exposition in 1900, was also struck by this resemblance, which Monet said he hadn’t sought after at all. He nonetheless had a deep love of Japan.”    Maurice Kahn.

“From a bare meadow, without one tree, but watered by a babbling and winding branch of the river Epte, he created a truly enchanting garden, digging a large pond in the middle and around its edge planting exotic trees and weeping willows whose branches fall in long tears on the bank, designing all around paths whose arches of greenery, in continually crossing and recrossing one another, giving the illusion of a large park, sowing on the pond a profusion of thousands and thousands of water lilies, whose rare and selected species colour, with all the colours of the prism, from violet, red and orange to pink, lilac and mauve, and lastly, planting on the river Epte, at its outlet, one of those small rustic humped bridges, as we see in the watercolours of the eighteenth century and in the paintings of Jouy.”     Thiebault- Sisson.

"It took me time to understand my water lilies ...I planted them without thinking of painting them ...A landscape doesn't imbue you in a day ....And then, all at once, I had the enchanting revelation of my pond. I picked up my palette. Since that time I've hardly had another model." Monet.

Bronze of Monet in a sitting room with
walls lined with Impressionist paintings

Copper utensils against the Rouen tiles in the kitchen

Edge of the bamboo forest with
picturesque stream fed by the River Epte

"It is at Giverny that one had to have seen Claude Monet to know him, to know his character, his love of life, and his innermost nature...... This house and garden are also works of art and Monet spent his whole life creating and perfecting them."    Gustave Geffroy.

Claude Monet in front of one of his iconic water lily paintings

                                                                    Monet: 1840-1926

“What has become of me, you can well imagine: I work and with difficulty because I’m losing my sight each day and I spend an enormous amount of time looking after my garden: it is a joy for me and with the beautiful days that we’ve had, I’m jubilant and in admiration of nature: with it, one doesn’t have time to be bored.” Monet writing to Gaston Bernheim-Jeune.

Old Houses

   

Sunlight streaming through broken windows 
in an old empty house

Extract from : Old Houses by Robert Cording.

Year after year after year

I have come to love slowly

how old houses hold themselves…..

…..I have come to love

how they take on the colour of rain or sun

as they go on keeping their vigil

without the need of a sign, awaiting nothing

more than the birds that sing from the eaves,

the seizing cold that sounds the rafters.

From: Walking with Ruskin Robert Cording

Cavan Kerry Press 2010.

Old cottage in Matlock, Derbys.

I began to appreciate old houses in my thirties when my husband and I, then living in a modern house, were looking for a four bedroom cottage in Derbyshire. As we looked, I grew aware that I no longer loved the modern teak furniture [Danish. All the rage in the 1950s/60s!] which we had painstakingly saved up for and gradually bought, but increasingly loved the varied bits and pieces of elderly, old, even antique furniture which we came across on our cottage-hunting expeditions. This same search also began to open our eyes to, and concentrate our minds on, old houses, some of which were gorgeous but financially totally out of our financial reach. But eventually we found an old hall, not in the really rural parts of Derbyshire we so admired, but close to where a coal mine had been and perhaps a mile or two from a brickworks. It was near a village which was not particularly beautiful, though the situation was actually, immediately, rural surrounded by fields and with two acres of land with stream and pond and a Victorian greenhouse which had seen better days. The fact that the hall was in a poor state having been mined beneath years before still suffered from subsidence damage, in spite of which, the price was more than we had envisaged. Eventually, dear reader, Waingroves Hall was purchased and our little family of five moved in. My father came to have a look at our somewhat disheveled purchase and opined that we would be prisoners of war for life. We loved it though my husband’s enthusiasm cooled somewhat eventually as the physical remedial work required seemed endless.

Waingroves Hall

For me, living in the Hall was like falling in love; in fact I experienced a sort of coup de foudre; it was love at first sight, the strength of which continued for me during the entire 15/16 years we spent there. I loved it all; the two acres of trees and gardens; the pond; the old greenhouse; the ever-present effort to keep the grounds looking good. And the privilege of living with my family in such a familiar yet old house, a central part of our lives but also of so many former lives with their hopes and dreams.

In a snowy downfall in Wye.
The 'perpetual twilight' was solved by the
addition of two dormer windows

 

 

I felt similar emotions when I later bought a timber-framed house dating from around 1600, in Kent. Again I couldn’t afford it and there were several problems! What seemed an endless stream of air, i.e. draughts, found entry at numerous tiny gaps around innumerable beams; an old fireplace was blocked off with badly-painted hardboard; the top of the lower stairs was in perpetual twilight, as was the attic bedroom. The paved courtyard adjoining my small garden at the back, was owned by the business next-door and the other next-door, whose half the original Hall house, adjoined mine, had right of way through my little garden and across the courtyard. Good neighbourliness was at a premium but the house was a joy!! My 31 happy years there saw my old house grow ever closer to my heart and increasingly part of me! My circumstances changed during that time, but the essential essence of my life remained invested in, and nourished by, the lovely old house.

Study area, Wye, Kent

I left to go on an adventure when I was 80 and now, nine years later, I can still [and do] take mental walks through the Hall [bought in 1968 though built in the late seventeenth century] and the Kentish timber-framed beauty [bought in 1984 but built around the time that Elizabeth 1 died] Every part of each house is still readily accessible to my wandering through in my imagination; I see the furniture, the pictures, the grandfather clock, the curtains and cushions, the tight little turn in the dark upper stairs where it was so difficult to manoeuvre the chest for one bedroom in the roof!

Gaston Bachelard
1884-1962

I imagine that this is not exceptional; the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, believed that there is a dynamic interplay between the mind and its surroundings, each shaped by, and responding to, the other. A house and its contents does, in any case, reflect the tastes of the person who chose them but I have a strong feeling that each of these two houses which were so dear to me, remains within me, part of me, with lighted rooms still there in images in my mind, all still awaiting my arrival. Somehow, memories become embodied by the places in which we live. These two houses continue to provide my inner landscape.

In spite of the interwoven nature of house and inner self, nonetheless, if one were to revisit a formerly much-loved house, there would be no physical evidence of the former connection.

                                                      In 55 Etisley, Ted Hughes laments:

Our first home has forgotten us.

I saw when I drove past it

How slight our lives had been

To have left not a trace.

Ted Hughes
1930-1998

But my children grew up in the old Hall and my memories of rooms and spaces like the garden and the Tarzan swing above the pond, are punctuated by remembered scraps and episodes of their, of our, lives. My sense of self is so closely related to those two fondly-remembered houses as to be inseparable from them. So perhaps, a house is like a theatre of remembered lives; whole histories are played out and the memories of these are portable and precious; perhaps only ghosts remain in the house itself but clear images live on in the person’s mind.

Culture under seige.

 

Putin's objective

Cherniv Library for Youth in earlier glory

 Disturbed to have confirmed that a key part of Putin’s strategy vis-a-vis the invasion of Ukraine, is to eradicate the Ukrainian sense of identity. He openly questions the legitimacy of Ukraine’s contemporary borders, arguing that Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussions are one people, sharing a common heritage and destiny. The decisions of the Ukrainian Government now are driven by a Western plot against Russia and he labels the Ukrainian governmental personnel as Nazis in spite of its leader, Volodymyr Welenskiy, being Jewish.

..... and, aerial shot, after Russian bombing.

In the
obsessive drive to  keep Ukrainians ‘Russian’, Putin, from the Feb 24^th 2022 beginning of the invasion, has set out to destroy historic libraries and archives in Ukraine. In an Observer article of 4/12/22 by Stephen Marche, the huge efforts of Ukrainian librarians and their staff throughout the country are outlined as they have focused on protecting their books and archives at all costs. Libraries and archives are a nation’s cultural life blood, at least as important as other aspects of a nation’s identity and, indeed, are foundationally and intricately bound up with all                                                                        the other elements.

President Volodymyr Welenskiy who has experienced a
profound change of life, from popular actor
to leader of a nation at war.

Three days before Putin invaded, he publicly declared that Ukraine is a fiction, entirely created by Russia and without the stable traditions of real statehood. Ukrainian identity was an attempt by the West “to distort the mentality and historical memory of millions of people.” Welenskiy, Ukraine’s President, countered Putin’s fiction in his powerful speech to the European Parliament insisting that a strong Ukrainian identity not only existed but was European in nature, not Russian. So the war seeks to reclaim its own territory and people, in Russian terms, while the Ukrainians’ struggle is to define their past as well as forge their way to their future in Europe.

Anatoli Khromov,
Head of State Archival Services

Russians targeted libraries immediately in this existential struggle. The first was at Chernihiv where sensitive NKVD and KGB information about Soviet-era repressions and killings which Russia wanted erased, were stored. They continued to destroy archives in Bucha, and in Ivankiv, in Mariupol and Volnovakha, in Irpin and Borodianka, setting what has become a steady and destructive pattern. Meanwhile, archivists and librarians throughout the country, under the leadership of Anatoli Khromov, Head of Ukrainian State Archives, have removed, hidden or transferred archival material elsewhere, often abroad. By May 2022, a month after Russia's invasion,  an online survey by the Ukrainian National Library revealed that 19 libraries had already been destroyed; 115 partially destroyed and a further 124 permanently damaged, plus several thousand school libraries had also gone. By December 2022, over 300 state and university libraries had been destroyed.

One library which almost survived

Khromov labels this Russian destruction as cultural genocide and describes the Ukrainian resistance as “fighting for our national memory.” This has involved both the preservation of physical artefacts and the digitisation of archives that already exist. Pre-war, digitisation had been tiny in volume; the large State archives were only 0.6% digitised so momentum here has been rapid. The record is impressive. The war began on Feb 24^th and by the end of the first week in March, an organisation. SUCHO, [Saving  Ukrainian  Cultural Heritage
Online] had been formed with efforts combined efforts from the Ukrainian military and various international organisations and individuals, to effect widespread data rescue. By March 7^th, more than 1000 volunteers, furloughed from regular jobs, were working up to 12 hours a day. And now, eighteen months later, the war continues, and has developed into a massive Russian onslaught on the civilian population and a ceaseless bombardment to destroy as much Ukrainian infrastructure as possible. Putin’s plan is to effect total devastation on Ukraine through cultural, physical and emotional genocide.

Young Russians leaving their homeland

The strong identity of the Ukrainian people and their furious national courage as they defend 
their homeland against the Russian invaders, are undoubted and much admired. Ukrainian morale has remained strong in the face of frequent low morale shown by the Russians; tens of thousands of Russian young men have left the country rather than do their patriotic duty! A large number of conscripts have also fled. There seems to have been genuine misinterpretation by the Kremlin that the Ukrainians would not resist [and would, indeed, welcome, the Russians] and this failure to understand the distinction between the two cultures, has resulted, in a strengthening of the Ukrainian identity which will inevitably, be anti-Russian in the future. An irony indeed.

Russian conscripts fleeing mobilisation

Meanwhile, eighteen months of warfare continues; libraries are re-opening; personnel recruited; reading rooms are welcoming back citizens while the important distinctive cultural protection of books and archives, continues, thanks in part to Putin’s blindness to the cultural realities of two separate nations. The libraries are also demonstrating their ability to forge additional paths; libraries are now taken into hotspots when people shelter from prolonged bombing, as in Underground stations. Reading helps frightened people to cope. There is also a large upswing in requests to learn the Ukrainian language. Nearly one third of the Ukrainian population has Russian as its mother tongue and libraries are responding by sourcing Ukrainian language lessons for the rapidly increasing demand. This is a war over language and identity.

Sheltering ....