Artemisia Gentileschi was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence and one of the most accomplished painters of her generation. Working in the Caravaggesque tradition of dramatic chiaroscuro, she specialized in large-scale narrative paintings of strong female protagonists — Judith, Susanna, Cleopatra — rendered with a physical confidence and psychological intensity that was entirely her own. At 17 she was raped by her painting tutor Agostino Tassi; the subsequent trial left its mark on her art. Her repeated treatments of the Judith and Holofernes theme have been read as acts of symbolic revenge.
