The Passion of Artemisia - Softcover

Susan Vreeland

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074726533X ISBN 13: 9780747265337

Publisher: Headline Review, 2002

Synopsis

From extraordinary highs - patronage by the Medicis, friendship with Galileo and, most importantly of all, beautiful and outstandingly original paintings - to rape by her father's colleague, torture by the Inquisition, life-long struggles for acceptance by the artistic Establishment, and betrayal by the men she loved, Artemisia was a bold and brilliant woman who lived as she wanted, and paid a high price. Now Susan Vreeland, author of the acclaimed GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE, brings her story to passionate and vivid life.

About this title

Review

Like her bestselling debut, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland's second novel, The Passion of Artemisia, traces a particular painting through time: in this case, the post-Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi's violent masterpiece, "Judith." Although the novel purports to cover the life of the painter, the painting serves as a touchstone, foreshadowing Artemisia's rape by Agostino Tassi, an assistant in her father's painting studio in Rome; the well-documented (and humiliating) trial that followed; the early days of her hastily arranged marriage; and her eventual triumph as the first woman elected to the Accademia dell' Arte in Florence. Although Vreeland makes a bit free with her characters (which she admits in her introduction), attributing some decidedly modern attitudes to people who would not have thought that way at the time, her book is beautifully researched and rich with casual detail of clothing, interiors, and street life. She deftly works history and politics into the background of her canvas, keeping her focus on Artemisia and her family. Beyond the paintings Artemisia left behind, Vreeland's vision may be as close as we can come to understanding the anger and ambition that kept this talented woman at the doors of the Accademia, demanding entrance, in a time when respectable women rarely left their homes. --Regina Marler

From the Author

Artemisia Gentileschi burst upon the post-Renaissance art scene with all the drama of an Italian opera. When I learned that she was the first woman to be admitted to the Accademia dell' Arte in Florence, producing paintings of startling invention which expressed a feminist sensibility, and the first woman to make her living solely by her brush, and furthermore, that she was raped at seventeen by her father's friend, her teacher, I knew I'd found material for a novel.

Rather than focusing on the rape or using a broad brush to paint a sweeping biography, I chose to explore the inner Artemisia, her developing state of mind, her transcendence over misfortune and resentment, the possibilities of forgiveness and love in a ruptured life, and the connecting tissue of beauty, art, spirituality, and wholeness.

Such a focused work of fiction about an historical person must be a work of the imagination, true to the time and character always, but true to facts only so long as fact furnishes believable drama. To suit my purposes, I combined actual people into composite characters, eliminated others, and invented still others. Though I used the trial record, her paintings, and her associations with Galileo, Cosimo de' Medici II, and Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger as recorded in art histories, I imagined the personalities and interactions of Artemisia, her father and her husband, and devised dramatic moments that would propel a plot. This is the process by which an historic figure moves from yellowed archives to scholarship, and from academic interest to heroic popular legend, becoming more complex and beloved as a result. With The Passion of Artemisia, I wanted to participate in giving Artemisia her cultural moment.

Edition details

• Publisher: Headline Review
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 074726533X
• ISBN 13: 9780747265337
• Binding: Paperback