Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi by Mary D Garrard  Order this book about Artemisia.

a self-portrait

ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI

As a woman, she learned that in a baroque

Renaissance she was not less proficient

Than a man, in fact, just as good stroke-for-stroke in each

Endeavor—canvas by canvas—that she undertook.

Men—those lying devils—were not, not

Including her father Orazio, to be trusted,

Should not be believed. They bruited falsely.

Instead, she followed her own golden thread.

Ahead of her time, she would take (like Clio and Minerva)

Great strides, paint greatly the tropes of

Each dream that would in a Medicean terrain

Not leave the orbit of her mind, that would

Take over her Roman spirit, that would

Inculcate within her a desire, a drive, to

Live the artistic life—courtly and ecumenical—despite

Every offense given her—rape, neglect, abuse—by those

Single-minded, lazy, self-indulgent, brutish

Curs that sniffed around her chiascuro.

Her dream grew in perspective with her visual

Intelligence and skillful hand—innately hers.

This acrostic poem was first published in Creative Woman, Miami Dade College, 2008; and subsequently in the Ann Arbor Review, Fall 2009.  This female artist was overlooked until the 20th century.