Artemisia Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting

Abstract

In her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-ca. 1652) made an audacious claim upon the core of artistic tradition, to create an entirely new image that was quite literally unavailable to any male artist. Her apparently modest self-image was, moreover, a sophisticated commentary upon a central philosophical issue of later Renaissance art theory, indicating an identification with her profession on a plane of greater self-awareness, intellectually and culturally, than has previously been acknowledged.