Exhibition Artemisia Heroine of art

At the Musée Jacquemart-André

Through to August 3rd, 2025.

© Artemisia Gentileschi, Allégorie de l’Inclination, v. 1615-1616, Huile sur toile, 152 × 61 cm, Florence, Casa Buonarroti crédit : Firenze, Casa Buonarroti, Archivio Buonarroti

For the second half of the season, the Musée Jacquemart-André turns its

attention to one of the first female Baroque artists, the Italian Artemisia

Gentileschi (1593-1656). An accomplished and admired painter, she made a name for herself through the power of her art in a century when this was exceptional for a woman. This renowned and successful artist, educated in the brilliant, theatrical pictorial art of Caravaggio by her father, who was a great admirer, Artemisia Gentileschi was sent to learn her craft from the artist Agostini Tassi. However, the young woman was abused and raped by her teacher, leading to a terrible trial during which she was tortured to test her allegations. The ordeal would forever mark her destiny and influence her decisive brushstrokes, as if in revenge for the violent experience she had suff ered. Artemisia later married

a painter and moved to Florence, where she became famous and hugely successful throughout Europe, playing a major role in the era’s art history.

Thanks to loans and the presentation of some forty major works, the exhibition highlights the strong links between the painting of Caravaggio and that of Artemisia Gentileschi. Exhibits include the artist’s imposing oil on canvas depicting Susanna and the Elders, Caravaggio’s The Crowning with Thorns, a series of portraits and self-portraits that pay tribute to her great skills in portraiture, the famous Esther before Ahasuerus from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the fascinating Tarquin and Lucretia, exhibited for the first time outside Germany. A significant proportion of the exhibition is also devoted to the Eros and Thanatos archetype represented in her pictorial art, such as Judith and her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes from the Uff izi Gallery in Florence. While these canvases magnify female heroism, they also appealed to the 20th-century feminist movement, particularly in the 1970s, when they were enthusiastically rediscovered after a century of oblivion, when some works were lost. Recognised as “a painting miracle”, the bold and independent Artemisia Gentileschi is now forever linked to contemporary debates on the place of women in society and respect for women’s rights.

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75008 Paris