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Read The Passion Of Artemisia (2003)

The Passion of Artemisia (2003)

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3.85 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
0142001821 (ISBN13: 9780142001820)
Language
English
Publisher
penguin books

The Passion Of Artemisia (2003) - Plot & Excerpts

Susan Vreeland fairly faithfully follows and recounts the real events in the life of 17th century Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi Lomi. Passionate about her art, she fought for acceptance in the artistic community and was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence. Raped at seventeen, Artemisia was indignant when her father, Tuscan painter Orazio Gentilesch, was paid off by her rapist to drop the charges. She had suffered during this male oriented trial, tortured with the Sibille, a type of medieval thumbscrews and has her lack of virginity publicly examined by two midwives in front to the entire courtroom.“[…] I started Judith Slaying Holofernes. I could hardly bend my fingers to grasp the egg-shaped muller to pulverise the pigments on my marble slab. Pain is unimportant. I have to ignore it. I couldn’t keep my thumb in the hole of my palette […] The smears of colour made me breathe faster. Steeling myself against the pull of my skin when I held a brush, […] My heart quaked. I felt alive again.” Artmisia’s magnificent rendition of the well-known medieval and Baroque subject gives you an idea of her emotion. ‘Judith beheading Holofernes’ was completed in her late teens: Artemisia depicts herself as Judith and her rapist, the painter Agostino Tassi, as Holofernes.Married off by her father to an artist from Florence, Artemisia struggled to make a good married life in her new town. She finally gained acceptance into the Academy and enjoyed the patronage of the Medici family and Charles I. She favoured painting works of strong and suffering women from myth and the Bible – victims, suicides, warriors – and made it her speciality to paint the Judith story (from the Old Testament). Florence was a successful place for the artist but eventually her sullied reputation followed her. This and her realization of her husband’s affair sent Artemisia and daughter to Genoa. She painted her beautiful rendition of Cleopatra and the Asp: Settled and happy in Genoa for nine years, she is forced to flee back to Rome when her father and her rapist move to Genoa. In Rome, she will have to resort to portrait painting, for one thing and then there is how some people greeted her, with that old stigma "whore"....“Inclinazione may have been beautiful. […] For me, the pleasure had been visual, in creating the shape and applying the colour, and tactile, in smearing heavy creamy paint onto my palette…”“The two things I wanted most in life - painting and love – and one had killed off any chance of the other.”Definitions of the word ‘passion’ are: affection, anger, ardor, dedication, devotion, excitement , feeling, fervor, fury, intensity, spirit, temper, warmth, and zeal. There is no doubt Artemisia felt each and every one of these emotions about her art and her life as a painter. Vreeland successfully draws for you a physical and emotional portrait of an artist who would be remembered long after her lifetime. The author adeptly lured me into Artemisia’s world, her painting and her life so successfully that at the novel’s close, I spent hours on the Internet images of her work. 4★

This was a great book about a famous female artist, Artemisia Gentilechi, who lived from 1593 to 1653, mainly in Rome, Florence, and Naples. After I read the book I was so intrigued by her that I did some research on the internet and found that even though this book is a novel, that most everything in the book really happened, i.e., the paintings that the book describes, the rape trial, and her friendship with Galileo. I loved looking at the actual paintings online after having read the book. Obviously during this time it would be very difficult to make it as female artist but Artemisia is actually the first female to ever be admitted to the "Acamdemia Del' Arte", an exclusive group of artists in that time. The reasons that I only gave this book four stars were that it jumped forward too quickly and did not explain how she got from point A to B and little details that were left out that should have been an integral part of the story, i.e., it was not revealed until pg. 246 that her daughter had artistic abilities. It also never explained why she never married the creep who raped her (Agostino), as would have been customary for the time and she had always planned on it.....although it was later revealed that he was a married man who had had his wife murdered to marry her.....but then never did? It also bothered me greatly that she left her wonderful position in Genoa just because creepy Agostino was coming there, then later relocated to Rome as a pauper when that was his home town and she went through some much ridicule as people never forgot the rape trial. Why not go back to her wonderful life in Genoa once he was gone? Why go back to his home town?She looks at herself as being selfish and thinking of art only but I really feel like it was Pietro who was selfish, not her. Fun book. I am a historical fiction freak. Let me know if you read it and what you think!

What do You think about The Passion Of Artemisia (2003)?

A fictionalized look at the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian Baroque painter in the 17th century. I'd never heard of her before this, and I found looking up her paintings enhanced my enjoyment of the book. The story begins during the latter part of the trial of her rapist, and continues through her times in Florence, Genoa, Rome, Naples, and London. It's interesting how the rape trial was all but skipped, seeming to imply that we all know that story already, even though it shaped the course of her life for the next several years. I have mixed feelings about this book. I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but taken as a whole I'm a little disappointed. Huge chunks of time are glossed over, few of the characters are given any personality or physical description, and the main plot arc - Artemisia's relationship with her father - feels like it was shoehorned in. Despite all that, I'm still glad I read it. Reading about painted is often inspiring, and I've now been introduced to another talented artist.
—melydia

Ex Bookworm group review:It took me rather a long time to read this book. Despite the fact the life of a female painter in what was pretty much a man's world was a great subject, the book failed to engage me somehow. I felt unmoved by Artemisia's suffering in the same way she suspected her daughter Palmira was, and for the same reason, I suspect. It was too far removed from the world I know to have any real meaning for me.My progress through the book was a series of highs and lows. I liked the descriptions of Florence and some of the great works of art to be found there. I was fascinated by Artemisia's thought processes when she was creating a new painting, and by the details about proportions, light and shade and the mixing of pigments (the colours had wonderful names), how she looked at things and tried to paint truth. I was immensely irritated by the Italian words scattered needlessly (and, on the whole, meaninglessly) throughout the book. In italics, too (my pet hate). I couldn't be bothered to look them up and find out what they meant, sometimes I guessed, sometimes I didn't care. But I didn't see the point of putting 'cassone' when trunk would do just as well (if I guessed right). Perhaps I shouldn't object to Italian words and Italics in a book about Italy, but I did.Artemisia was a bit too much of a victim for my liking, and often, she was a victim of herself. She wanted to be loved but she wasn't very loving. She was supposedly betrayed by her husband, but she was not exactly a bundle of warmth and love herself. She wanted everyone to accept her for what she was, but she didn't do that. She was determined Palmira would be a painter despite her having no interest in painting. I'm sure she felt betrayed by Palmira too, but she betrayed little understanding that her daughter might have different aspirations. In many senses, Artemisia was as wooden as Palmira's Bathsheba. Painting was her only passion and when she wasn't painting, she was not particularly interesting. But even painting didn't seem a source of joy to Artemisia, just an essential part of her being. She was rather lacking in joy overall, though there were some funny moments, they were unintentional, such as her rather carnal use of Michelangelo's paintbrush and her statement to Galileo that she would try to feel the earth move.To my own surprise I was moved by the ending of the book, which brought quite a lump to my throat. Looking back on what I had read I decided Artemisia was a very interesting person despite what I thought of her along the way.
—Hilary G

I liked this better than her first book (The Girl in Hyacinth Blue) because of it was (1) a less familiar artist and (2) because of the elaborate interweaving of Gentileschi's motivations in painting with her life. It's an amazing true story with appropriate embellishments to make it a great read. Vreeland's brief notes make the facts and her telling of the story clearly distinguishable.I did not appreciate before reading this book about the difference between painting well and painting with imagination. Sometimes it's nice to be ignorant just so you can learn a stunning lesson! It helps me understand why some paintings move me more than others. It feels like I have been let in on a secret that artists don't share. I will no longer avoid studying paintings of Judith killing Holofernes. Now I also understand why artists can paint the *same* thing without repeating themselves. Maybe you all knew this already, but I am excited to learn this.It's also a good story about a woman who fought female oppression in an unlikely time. Her legitimate claim to greatness stiffened her determination to support herself by painting in spite of the highs and lows of her career. It's also a story of forgiveness without weakness--another subtlety convincingly built into the story.I don't know if it was during this book or her earlier one that she was doing her research during treatment for bone marrow cancer. It is moving to know Vreeland transcended her physical problems to create such a beautiful book.
—Martha Bratton

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