Artemisia Gentileschi: The Artist in Novels

Rivaling, perhaps, only Frida Kahlo, Artemisia Gentileschi is the preeminent woman artist whose life and career has been the subject of multiple novels, graphic biographies, plays, and films. Since Anna Banti's publication of Artemisia in 1947, three more novels (not including graphic novels) have been published by major publishers: Alexandra Lapierre's Artemisia (1998), Susan Vreeland's The Passion of Artemisia (2002), and Joy McCollough's novel in verse Blood Water Paint (2019). In this presentation, I will posit how and why Gentileschi has become a popular literary subject and discuss how the novel as a literary form can enact new, nuanced portraits of the artist. In particular, I will consider how authors such as Joy McCollough have used biofiction (and more specifically the subgenre of the verse novel) as a means to communicate the strength, triumphs, and devastation of Gentileschi's story with new, non-specialist audiences. Most importantly, I will consider how the relationship between creativity, trauma, and sexual violence is narrativized by authors like McCollough. What, I ask, is unique about novels and the ways they teach readers about the often fraught experiences of women artists and how to engage with their work? Ultimately, then, I will examine the ways that such biofiction takes seriously the artist's experience with sexual violence.