Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonné - Tapa blanda

"One of the most impressive monographs on a seventeenth-century Italian artist to be published in recent memory. It is a learned and scholarly work, exemplifying traditional art history at its best, and a beautifully designed volume with high-quality black-and-white illustrations and color plates. It is also a book certain to provoke considerable debate and to serve as the springboard for much further study of the life and art of an extraordinary painter." - Steven F. Ostrow (University of California-Riverside), CAA Reviews This is an extraordinarily important piece of work that any serious press would be proud to publish. The catalogue is essential for seventeenth-century studies and will be the cornerstone for all future work on one of the most important artists of the century and the most important 'Old Master' female painter. The book takes the form of a classic catalogue raisonne, with substantial chapters on the artist's biography and work followed by an exhaustive catalogue. The material is original, meticulously argued, and exemplary in its substance." - Elizabeth Cropper, Johns Hopkins University"

One of the most memorable creative personalities of the Baroque age and arguably the most forcefully expressive and influential woman painter in history, the Roman-born Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 1652/3) has become the central figure in the recovery of the history of art produced by women. Applying a rigorous methodology, this profusely illustrated study with interpretative text and catalogue raisonne embeds Gentileschi s pictorially and emotionally compelling pictures within the actual sociocultural contexts in and for which they were created.The interpretive text analyzes key pictures and primary literary evidence to reveal the sweep of Artemisia s oeuvre, chart her travels, define her standing with artists and patrons of the period, investigate the links between her financial situations and the artistic decisions that she made, and assess the validity of proposals regarding her activity as a still-life painter, her access to professional organizations, her level of literacy, and the nature of her subject matter. Exploring the question of the interrelationships among Gentileschi s gender and experiences as a woman, the state of her psyche, and her art, the text also confronts and often challenges the widely embraced feminist interpretation of her pictures. Many of the conclusions in the text are supported by an extensive register of archival documents and by the very core of the study: the first and only catalogue raisonne of Artemisia s autograph works, each of the fifty-seven pictures exhaustively investigated as to basic factual information, condition and color, iconography, history, documentation and dating, existing copies, and bibliography. Catalogues of misattributed and lost paintings complete this comprehensive volume."