Artemisia

The art and lettering are a little scratchier than I'd like, but this graphic novel provides a moving, fictionalized portrait of the life of Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi. All her strength and talent are on display even as she suffers emotional abuse from her father and sexual abuse from the art tutor foisted upon her. The storyline jumps between her teen years in Rome the 1610s and a road trip she is on with her own teen daughter in the 1630s.

If you want more factual details about Gentileschi's life and Italian politics in graphic novel form, you might seek out the much duller I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi by Gina Siciliano.

Between when I kickstarted this project and when I received my finished copy, I read enough about Artemisia's life elsewhere that this delivered little new information, and where this slim volume chose to spend its time I did not love. So much time spent on the rapes, the trial, the part of her marriage where her husband was terrible. Hardly ANY time on her building her reputation as an artist, not nearly enough on the friendships she built, the rich and powerful who advocated for her and protected her.

I did like the frame of this story being told by her daughter though, the way she built a life where her children could grow up relatively peacefully, painting only when they liked and for the joy of it.

If you HAVEN'T read much or show more anything about Artemisia before, you would probably like this better. show less