" A painting which did not begin in emotion is not art" - Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906)
An Artemisia Conundrum
October 22nd, 2016

An Artemisia Conundrum
An Artemisia Conundrum
 
The head and shoulders image of a previously little known painting by the woman Baroque painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, The painting entitled, Suffering Mother and Child, is concealed within this group of the artist's self portraits. 
 
Scholars are still trying to still determine if she created the painting, in or about 1612, as a reaction to a feeling of personal impotence in the face of a society where violence against a woman was the norm; that had the power, and had used it, to treat her with intolerance and disrespect. The Florentine courts to which she had appealed in 1612, inflicted on Agostino Tassi, a contemporary painter and Artemisia’s bête noire, a mild six-month jail sentence for raping her.