''Artemisia'' is a 1997 French-German-Italian

biographical film A biographical film or biopic () is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or group of people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from Docudrama, docudrama films ...

about

Artemisia Gentileschi Artemisia Lomi Gentileschi ( ; ; 8 July 1593) was an Italian Baroque painter. Gentileschi is considered among the most accomplished 17th century, 17th-century artists, initially working in the style of Caravaggio. She was producing professional ...

, the female Italian

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

painter. The film was directed by

Agnès Merlet Agnès Merlet (born 4 January 1959) is a French film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in ...

, and stars Valentina Cervi and

Michel Serrault Michel Serrault (24 January 1928 – 29 July 2007) was a French stage and film actor who appeared from 1954 until 2007 in more than 130 films. Life and career His first professional job was in a touring production in Germany of Molière's '' Les ...

Plot

Seventeen-year-old Artemisia Gentileschi (Valentina Cervi), the daughter of

Orazio Gentileschi Orazio Lomi Gentileschi (; 1563 – 7 February 1639) was an Italian painter. Born in Tuscany, he began his career in Rome, painting in a Mannerist style, much of his work consisting of painting the figures within the decorative schemes of other ...

, a renowned Italian painter, exhibits artistic talent. She is encouraged by her father, who has no sons, and wishes his legacy to survive after him. However, in the chauvinistic world of early 17th century Italy, women are forbidden to paint human nudes or enter the

Academy of Arts An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

. Orazio allows his daughter to study in his studio, although he draws the line at letting her view nude males. Even so, she is direct and determined, and bribes the fisherman Fulvio with a kiss to let her observe his body and draw him. Artemisia seeks the tutelage of Agostino Tassi (Miki Manojlovic), who is painting frescoes in the same building as her father. She desires to learn from him the art of perspective. Tassi is a man notorious for his night-time debauchery. The two hone their skills as artists, but they also fall in love and begin having sexual relations. Artemisia's father discovers the couple together and files a lawsuit against Tassi for rape. During the subsequent trial, Artemisia's physical state is investigated by two nuns. Seeking the truth, Artemisia is

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...

d by cords wound round her fingers. Nevertheless, Artemisia denies being raped, and proclaims their mutual love. Tassi himself, devastated by her plight, admits to raping her in order to stop her ordeal. Merlet said of her film, "I didn't want to show her as a victim but like a more modern woman who took her life into her own hands."

Cast

* Valentina Cervi -

Miki Manojlović Predrag "Miki" Manojlović ( sr-cyr, Предраг "Мики" Манојловић; born 5 April 1950) is a Serbian actor, famous for his starring roles in some of the most important films of Yugoslav cinema. Since the early 1990s, he successfull ...

- Agostino Tassi *

Luca Zingaretti Luca Zingaretti (; born 11 November 1961) is an Italian actor and film director, known for playing Salvo Montalbano in the '' Inspector Montalbano'' mystery series based on the character and novels created by Andrea Camilleri. Zingaretti is a ...

- Cosimo Quorli *

Emmanuelle Devos Emmanuelle Devos (born 10 May 1964) is a French actress. She is the daughter of actress Marie Henriau. She won the César Award for Best Actress in 2002 for her performance in ''Sur mes lèvres'', directed by Jacques Audiard. She has also been ...

- Costanza * Frédéric Pierrot - Roberto *

Brigitte Catillon Brigitte Catillon (born 20 July 1951) is a French actress and screenwriter. She was nominated for the César Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1993 for '' A Heart in Winter'' directed by Claude Sautet. She was also nominated for the Molièr ...

- Tuzia * Yann Trégouët - Fulvio *

Maurice Garrel Maurice Garrel (24 February 1923 – 4 June 2011) was a French film actor. Garrel was born in Saint-Servais, Isère. He appeared in over a hundred films and was nominated twice for a César Award for best supporting actor: in 1991 for ''La ...

- The Judge *

Liliane Rovère Liliane Rovère () (born 30 January 1933) is a French actress. Personal life Liliane Rovère was born Liliane Cyprienne Cukier. Of Jewish origin, she hid in Catholic institutions under a fake name during the German occupation of France in World ...

- The Rich Merchant's Wife *

Jacques Nolot Jacques Nolot (; born 31 August 1943) is a French actor, screenwriter and film director. Life and career Jacques Nolot was born on 31 August 1943, Marciac, Gers, a small village in Southwest France. A fragile child, Nolot was doted upon by his ...

- The Lawyer * Dominique Reymond - Tassi's sister

Controversy

The film focuses on the incident of Artemisia's rape and its immediate aftermath, and was initially advertised as "a true story" by Miramax Zoe, its American distributor. However, Salon's Alyssa Katz wrote:

In the transcript (of Gentileschi's testimony at the trial, based on records preserved in an archive in Rome), Gentileschi describes the rape in graphic detail and states that Tassi continued to have sex with her... with the understanding that he would protect her honor by eventually wedding her ... In the movie, by contrast, she's a willing partner in lust. During the trial, she says only that "I love him"; "he loves me"; "he gives me pleasure." In the movie, Gentileschi refuses to testify that she was raped, even under torture, a sacrifice that prompts a devastated Tassi to make a sham confession ... At the same time, many inconvenient details – most glaringly, Tassi's relentless campaign during the trial to smear Gentileschi as a slut – didn't make it into the movie ...

Feminist

Germaine Greer Germaine Greer (; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and feminist, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminism movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literature, she ...

points out in her chapter on Artemisia in her book on women painters, ''The Obstacle Race'', that the rape trial transcripts are not transparent, and that there is evidence that supports Merlet's construction. The rape trial records may be found in an appendix to art historian Mary Garrard's book. Garrard's account was criticized by a number of feminist reviewers, and most recently challenged was challenged by

Griselda Pollock Griselda Frances Sinclair Pollock (born 11 March 1949) is a British art historian, whose work focuses on analyzing visual arts and visual culture through global feminist and postcolonial feminist lenses. Since 1977, Pollock has been an influen ...

in ''Differencing the Canon'':

Merlet's film is, I would argue, not really a biography, for there is no analysis of the impact of the early death of the artist's mother and her bereavement, no exploration of how she made a massively successful career in Italy and beyond after the horrors of the trial and her torture, how she married and mothered several daughters who also became artists, how she negotiated with some of the major patrons of her time for the commissions on which she lived and through which she, not their father, accumulated dowries for her daughter. No one wants to tell that story.

Garrard and feminist

Gloria Steinem Gloria Marie Steinem ( ; born March 25, 1934) is an American journalist and social movement, social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ...

, incensed by the portrayal in the film, organized a campaign to inform audiences that ''Artemisia'' was not, as was said in early advertisements, "The Untold True Story of an Extraordinary Woman." The campaigners put up a website attacking the film as untruthful in presenting what they say was Artemisia's rape by her teacher, Agostino Tassi. At the New York premiere screening of the film on April 28, Steinem and other activists in the audience circulated a fact sheet prepared by Steinem and Garrard. This intervention led Miramax to retract its claim that that film presents a "true" story. Steinem and Garrard's stated intention was not to interfere with the filmmaker's creative freedom, nor with Miramax's distribution of the film, but rather to counter its alleged historical distortions with factual information about the subject.

Critical reception

''New York Times'' film critic

Stephen Holden Stephen Holden (born July 18, 1941) is an American writer, poet, and music and film critic. Biography Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963. He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually be ...

was very favourable towards the film:

This handsomely photographed film, whose indoor scenes recreate the heavy
chiaroscuro In art, chiaroscuro ( , ; ) is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to ach ...
of
Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (also Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi da Caravaggio; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the fina ...
paintings, takes a decidedly 90s view of a woman whom feminist art historians rescued from obscurity in the 1970s. If the central character emerges as a feminist heroine for flouting patriarchical taboos, she also happens to be a tantalizing sex kitten whose artistic curiosity smacks of voyeurism. As portrayed by Valentina Cervi, Artemisia is two distinctly different entities. One is a gorgeous early-17th-century sex kitten. The other is a fearlessly ambitious teen-age prodigy who is so sure of her talent that she breaks the rules of female decorum and dares go where no ''nice'' woman of her time and station has gone before. These two Artemisias don't really fit together, but they make for a ripely sensuous portrait of the artist as a saucy but virtuous siren.

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...

also liked the film:

''Artemisia'' is as much about art as about sex, and it contains a lot of information about techniques, including the revolutionary idea of moving the easel outside and painting from nature. It lacks, however, detailed scenes showing drawings in the act of being created (for that you need '' La Belle Noiseuse'',
Jacques Rivette Jacques Rivette (; 1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine '' Cahiers du Cinéma''. He made twenty-nine films, including '' L'Amour fo ...
's 1991 movie that peers intimately over the shoulder of an artist in love). And it doesn't show a lot of Artemisia's work. What it does show is the gift of Valentina Cervi, who is another of those modern European actresses, like
Juliette Binoche Juliette Binoche (; born 9 March 1964) is a French actress. She has appeared in more than 60 films, particularly in French and English, and has been the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Juliette Binoche, numerous accolades, ...
, Irene Jacob, Emmanuelle Beart and
Julie Delpy Julie Delpy (; born 21 December 1969) is a French and American actress, screenwriter, and film director. She studied filmmaking at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, and acted in more than 30 films, including '' Europa Eur ...
, whose intelligence, despite everything else, is the most attractive thing about her.

Daphne Merkin wrote in the ''New Yorker'':

This controversial and confused new film, written and directed by Agnès Merlet, is ostensibly about the seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, but it is really the silliest form of late-twentieth-century iconography. The movie, which stars the fetching Valentina Cervi, makes a sexy love story out of Artemisia's relationship with her teacher, Agostino Tassi (played by Miki Manojlovic): it's art lessons as foreplay. "Let yourself go," Tassi tells his young pupil, as though he is quoting from Masters and Johnson, and Artemisia not only expertly guides him in bed but insists that he gave her pleasure when he raped her. Although the real Artemisia did flout the conventions of her time by insisting on painting from live models, it's hard to believe that she proceeded with the air of defiant entitlement she's given here. Once you accept the film on its own fraudulent terms, however, it's quite engaging-not least because of the erotic subtext.

References

External links