Milan, Palazzo Reale
22 september 2011 - 29 january 2012
"ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI. Storia di una passione" is edited by Roberto Contini and Francesco Solinas enriched by scenographic and teatrical intervention of Emma Dante.
The exhibition is composed by 40 works and some unpolished documents and it wants to present the specificity of Artemisia's painting.
For the first time, the exhibition of Milan - thanks to Cariparma-Credit Agricole - gives Artemisia's works a great space with a particular attention to her life experiences helping to discover a great artist that painted in large number of themes and pictorial genres.
Artemisia was born in Rome in 1593; she was the daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, a famous painter celebrated all over the Europe and she was capable to be as famous as her father even if her different passion towards painting.
Roberto Longhi wrote about her in 1916: «she was the only woman in Italy that known what painting, colours, mixture and similar were in their essence...»; by the way, the artist has had to wait more than three centuries in order to see her status of great painter recognized.
In fact, until the second postwar, Artemisia was remembered more for the defloration trial of her father towards his colleague Agostino Tassi - that sorely marked her life and career - than her obvious artistic credits. Since the early sixties, the story of her adventurous life and freedom, as the expressive power and the rich and imaginative language of her art, were the subject of studies and interpretations by the feminist critique: Artemisia became the symbol of courage and empowerment, but her excellent painting, admired and sought after since the seventeenth century by the powerful all over Europe, was overshadowed.Rediscovering the right place of Artemisia Gentileschi in the large painting of her time and investigate the events of her life in the light of documents published and unpublished, are among the goals of the Milan exhibition conceived and curated by Roberto Contini, the conservative of the Gemäldegalerie of Berlin, with the collaboration of Francesco Solinas, Maître de Conférences at the Collège de France.
The exhibition includes a prestigious Scientific Committee composed by Alessandro Cecchi (director of the Palatine Gallery in Florence, Palazzo Pitti, the Boboli Gardens and the Royal Apartments), Roberto Paolo Ciardi (Accademia dei Lincei), Mina Gregori (president of the Fondazione Longhi), Judy Mann (curator of the Saint Louis Art Museum), Lorenza Mochi Onori (special Superintendent of the historical, artistic and ethno-anthropological heritage for the Museums of Naples), Wolfgang Prohaska (honorary curator of the Museum of Vienna Kunshistorisches), Nicola Spinosa (superintended of the honorary Neapolitan Museums), Renato Ruotolo (Academy of Fine Arts of Naples) and Andrés Ubeda de los Cobos (curator of Prado Museum).
The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalogue - published by 24 ORE Cultura - Gruppo 24 ORE - with essays by Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Roberto Contini,Mina Gregori, Rodolfo Maffeis, Judy Mann, Renato Ruotolo and Francesco Solinas. Biographies and critical of Michael and Yuri Nicolaci Primarosa.
The sections of the exhibition
The exhibition is chronologically divided into four phases that characterize Artemisia's life: the beginnings in Rome under the influence of his father Orazio, the years in Florence where her style is developed independently leading to a unique encoding, the return to Rome in the early twenties and the next nearly quarter century in Naples until her death in 1653 (?).