Review time! with ‘Artemisia’

“Appreciate your concern, you’re gonna stink and burn”

This French comic was originally published in 2017, but it’s now been translated into the world’s best language, English, so I get to read it! It was written by Nathalie Ferlut and drawn by Tamia Baudouin, and it was translated by Maëlle Doliveux with assistance from Andrew Dubrov. Beehive Books, which is located in beautiful Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, published this.

Ferlut and Baudouin tell the story of Artemisia Gentileschi, a painter who lived in the first half of the 17th century. She’s notable for a few reasons: She was the first woman accepted into the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, and when she was 17/18, she was raped by Agostino Tassi, a painter working with her father, and her father eventually sued Tassi and won, although his sentence of exile was never carried out and Artemisia was tortured at the trial to make sure her testimony was true (it’s good we know that torture doesn’t work these days, right?). Her rape and subsequent trial has overshadowed her work, which is quite excellent – she focused on Biblical scenes of women, partly, as Ferlut writes at one point, because the law restricted her from painting male nudes, but a big reason has to be her rape, because she seemed to very much dig painting Judith killing Holofernes, for instance. Some of her work is reprinted in the back of this comic, and it’s quite excellent – I had heard of Artemisia before I read this comic, but I had never seen her work. It’s really good.

Ferlut tells the story mostly in flashback, as Artemisia is traveling with her teenage daughter, Prudenzia. Their maid, who’s been with Artemisia for a long time, tells Prudenzia the story of her mother’s life. Her father, Orazio, was a talented painter himself, and he taught his daughter from an early age how to paint, as in the book he’s disappointed that his two sons have no talent. When he takes Tassi to court, it’s not necessarily because he raped his daughter, but because he believes Tassi stole from him and reneged on his promise to marry Artemisia, thereby mitigating her “shame.” Ferlut makes Artemisia an interesting character – she’s extremely prickly, so while we never believes she “deserves” the treatment she gets, it’s fascinating to watch her bang against the constraints society puts on her in a far from demure way. She doesn’t want to go to court, because she knows that her father doesn’t really care about her, just his own reputation, and when a man takes pity on her and agrees to marry him, she treats him poorly even though he’s the source of her money to get art supplies. Ferlut shows how her husband slowly comes to resent her, but she also makes clear that Artemisia didn’t really try to make the marriage work, despite knowing her circumstances if she were not married. It’s a very interesting book because Ferlut makes is obvious that Artemisia is living in a society that doesn’t value her at all, even though her father, for instance, knows how good she is and the grand-nephew of Michelangelo champions her for the Academy. They are still men who think of her as lesser, and Ferlut shows that so even though Artemisia is not the nicest person around, it’s still awful what happens to her – not only the rape, but the torture she endures in the trial and the dismissiveness she encounters throughout her life. Ferlut is good enough to make some men treat her better (like Michelangelo the Younger) but still remain bound by the limits of the time and place. It’s not surprising she liked painting women killing men.

Baudouin has an angular, slightly stiff style that works pretty well for the snooty Italian Renaissance period, with its emphasis on restrictive clothing and appearance above all. There’s not a lot of action in the book, and Baudouin doesn’t do a great job with it, but it’s not a big deal. She does an amazing job recreating the look of 17th-century Italy – the clothes are sumptuous, the buildings are grand and baroque and just the slightest bit seedy, and the few nature scenes show a world not quite tamed by man yet and ready to reclaim its dominance if the humans slip up. She does a nice job with the men, who always look slightly creepy, as many of them probably were simply sizing Artemisia up as a sex object, and Baudouin makes it clear without Ferlut needing to put it in the actual story. Her coloring is wonderful, as she gives us a decadent Italy grown satiated on its reputation as the artistic center of the world, an Italy that was slipping behind France in continental politics but was resting a bit too much on its laurels. There’s an element of play-acting to her characters, which is what we see from a ripened culture, and Baudouin’s art makes it easy to believe that Artemisia would paint scenes of leaders being butchered.

This is a fascinating book about an artist who is finally getting more recognition, and a time period that is modern in many ways but still feels far removed from ours. It’s not a gripping thriller, of course, but there’s a lot of tension in the way Ferlut and Baudouin present the story. I dig historical stuff, of course, so I’m a bit more inclined to like this than some people might be, but both creators still do a very good job of showing how a woman had to survive in a world that resembles today in a bit too many aspects.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆