Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome 1593-Naples 1652/53) was one of the few successful female painters of the Sixteenth century. She was adopted by the feminist movement as a standard-bearer and through a distorted psychoanalytic reading she was believed to be exacting her revenge through her cathartic brushstrokes, transforming herself into Judith slaying Holofernes/Agostino Tassi. Her paintings, along with those of her father were exhibited in Florence, Rome, New York and Saint Louis. The exhibition planned from September 2011 to January 2012 in Milan aims to, at last, make amends for the unfair favours attributed to her otherwise excellent father and will provide the visitor with each essential knot in the pictorial evolution of his vibrant and chameleon-like daughter. This book, along with the exhibition, will finally allow the reader and viewer to draw their own conclusion. Contents: Her Roman beginnings between the work of her father and her gaze towards his colleagues and rivals The Florentine years; The 1620s in Rome, her father in absentia, she herself becomes a leading figure among the surviving naturalists Nearly a quarter of a century of Neapolitan activity Public works and adequate national and international acclaim of her qualities AUTHOR: Roberto Contini studied at the Universities of Florence and Pisa and has alternated research - specifically 17th-century painting and graphic art - with his contributions to publishing houses in Milan and Florence. From the spring of 1999 to the summer of 2000, he worked for the Piedmont region's Soprintendenza per i beni artistici e storici [Office for Artistic and Historical Heritage], and since August of that same year he has been the Curator of Italian and Spanish painting from the 16th to the 18th centuries, as well as 17th-century French painting at the Berlin Gemäldegalerie. SELLING POINTS: ? The only complete monograph of the artist's work ? Artemisia Gentileschi was one of the greatest of Caravaggio's followers in the Baroque style, and the first female artist to gain an international reputation ? Accompanies the exhibition at Palazzo Reale, Milan, from 23 September 2011 to 30 January 2012 ILLUSTRATIONS: 100 colour *
