Art Chowder July | August 2018, Issue 16 | Page 38

Caravaggio (1571-1610)
P
ortrayals of women wearing gorgeous
garments of fine fabrics were an essential
part of her pictorial trademark. 8 Records list
dresses that she owned, including “a purple
satin zimarra (overdress)” and “a colored
silk zimarra with gold trim,” 9 closely
matching the dress worn by Judith in her
Judith and Her Maidservant (Pitti Palace).
In like manner, Artemisia also paid careful
attention to keep her residence and place of
work decorously furnished. Writing from
Rome to her friend and supporter Francesco
Maringhi in Florence, she delightedly tells
him that she had made her abode, “a house
fit for a gentleman to see and be in.” 10
The Maringhi correspondence, which only
came to light after the discovery of a cache
of letters by Francesco Solinas in 2011,
challenges another “received opinion.”
She was by no means as “unlearned”
as had been thought, based on a lack of
sophisticated literary allusions in her
few other extant writings. In his essay
“Artemisia Gentileschi: The Literary
Formation of an Unlearned Artist,” 11 Jesse
Locker discusses references to the Roman
author Ovid and Italian poets Petrarch and
Ariosto in letters from Artemisia to her
friend and supporter Maringhi in 1620. (In
one of these she includes a paraphrased
allusion to a poem by Petrarch when she
writes, “Oh my soul, remember that I love
you and that I can’t exist without you. In
short, keep in mind the sweet time of peace
and sweet anger, the tender replies, and,
finally the fruits that we gathered in the
garden of love.” In another letter not long
after she writes, “…although your Lordship
has another woman, for this I do not
deserve to be left discarded…But it is true
what Ariosto says: ‘Be specially careful of
those whose cheeks are still downy,’ and
I must bear witness of the truth of this.”
The reference is from Canto X of Ariosto’s
Orlando Furioso, a caution to woman about
the changeable affections of young men. 12
38
ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610)
The Lute Player
ca. 1600
oil on canvas
37 x 47”
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632)
Concert
ca. 1622-1625
oil on canvas
68 x 84 1/4”
Louvre Museum
The music on the table has been identi-
fied as stanzas by Petrarch set to music
by Flemish composer Jacob Arcadelt
(1507-1568). Caravaggio died the same
year that Artemisia signed her Susanna
and the Elders (Pommersfelden).