Reframing Artemisia Gentileschi’s Success: The Market Appeal of Feminist Art in the 17th Century

The annual Mary Strauss Women in the Arts lecture will be given by Sheila Barker, director of the Center for Women in Renaissance Archives, The Medici Archive Project.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–c.1656) was one of the most celebrated artists of her time. It has long been recognized that feminist thought underlies some of her most famous images, and in popular media accounts of the artist today, she is often presented as a cultural warrior bent on vindicating the oppression of women. However, recent scholarly investigations reveal that Gentileschi formed many friendships with male associates and colleagues who were strongly supportive of her career. This new insight challenges us to understand how certain men of her era benefitted from the rise of strong women like Gentileschi and to ponder why her artworks, event those with the most strident feminist content, were celebrated and collected as ardently by men as by women.