One of the first female artists to achieve recognition in her own time, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) became instantly popular in the 1970s when feminist art historians "discovered" her and argued vehemently for a place for her in the canon of Italian baroque painters. Featured alongside her father, Orazio Gentileschi, in a recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Artemisia has continued to stir interest though her position in the canon remains precarious, in part because her sensationalized life history has overshadowed her art.

In The Artemisia Files, Mieke Bal and her coauthors look squarely at this early icon of feminist art history and the question of her status as an artist. Considering the events that shaped her life and reputation—her relationship to her father and her role as the victim in a highly publicized rape case during which she was tortured into giving evidence—the authors make the case that Artemisia’s importance is due to more than her role as a poster child in the feminist attack on traditional art history; here, Artemisia emerges more fully as a highly original artist whose work is greater than the sum of the events that have traditionally defined her.

The fresh, engaging discourse in The Artemisia Files will help to both renew the reputation of this artist on the merit of her work and establish her rightful place in the history of art.

CONTENTS:

List of Illustrations
Introduction by Mieke Bal
Artemisia’s Hand by Mary D. Garrard
Judging Artemisia: A Baroque Woman in Modern Art History by Nanette Salomon
"Gran Macchina è Bellezza": Looking at the Gentileschi Judiths by Elena Ciletti
Death, Dispassion, and the Female Hero: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Jael and Sisera by Babette Bohn
Grounds of Comparison by Mieke Bal
Feminist Dilemmas with the Art/Life Problem by Griselda Pollock
Notes
References
Contributors
Index of Names and Titles
Index of Terms and Concepts

AUTHOR:

Mieke Bal is Academy Professor at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and a cofounder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. Her many books include Loving Yusuf: Conceptual Travels from Present to Past, also published by the University of Chicago Press.