There’s something about the feeling of finally standing in front of a painting that you have only known through the pages of books. It is not just the psychological shifting of dimensions (they are usually bigger, or smaller, than you imagined), but a sort of stirring recognition: “There you are.” The surge of emotion I felt standing in front of Susannah and the Elders – painted by a 17-year-old Artemisia Gentileschi in the same year she was raped by the artist who was hired by her father Orazio to teach her – was as powerful as any I have felt in my life. In it, a nude Susannah twists away from the two old letches with horror and disgust; unlike many of the nudes painted by male artists, her body is not an exercise in containment, static and mannered as though it could have been carved from marble: it is living, moving flesh. Why this painting? Why now, as the first exhibition dedicated to the work of Artemisia opens at the National Gallery? I haven’t visited a museum or art gallery in months, so there is that. But also: I have spent years thinking about this painting and this artist. … Continue reading The history of art is full of female artists. It’s time they were taken seriously