Artemisia Gentileschi's 'Clio, the Muse of History'
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Whenever an Italian woman artist painted an allegorical figure -- one of the most prestigious kinds of pictures in Renaissance art -- there was likely to be strong identification of the artist with her subject.
This was because abstract nouns such as "prudence" and "wisdom" -- "prudenza" and "sapienza" in Italian -- happen to have feminine endings and were thus personified in art as female characters.
When Artemisia Gentileschi paints an image representing History ("Istoria," whose patron was the classical muse Clio) she becomes that figure as no man could. Artemisia even writes her name down in the book of history that Clio proffers, as its worthy subject and its author all at once.
For this painting, Artemisia drops the slick, hard-edged realism of most of her art, heading instead for a stunningly flamboyant brushwork that shows her, and her picture, to be truly possessed by the enraptured spirit she depicts.
What Renaissance man could pretend to be the divine source of his own inspiration?
-- Blake Gopnik
