Self portrait in the guise of the 4th-century Christian martyr, Saint Catherine of Alexandria.
Artemisia Gentileschi’s Baroque masterpieces are all about the women. More specifically, they show women in action, actively asserting female agency and defying the alternately lecherous, murderous and feckless men surrounding them. Even in paintings lacking a male presence—for example, the 1615-17 “Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria,” which finds the artist clasping a broken torture wheel as she offers viewers a defiant side-long stare—the subversion of gender norms is readily apparent, emblazoned on the very fabric of Gentileschi’s stunningly realistic, proto-feminist creations.
