I read Artemisia because of an essay of Susan Sontag’s, which happens to also be this edition’s introduction. It’s a good introduction, indeed, how could it have been better if it made me want to read the book? Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the loveliness that was Anna Banti’s Artemisia.
Banti has written an homage to this historically significant character, Artemisia Gentilischi, a famous female artist in the age of male dominance, and a rape survivor who accused her attacker in a time when one didn’t. This homage, this love letter, originally destroyed during World War II, was reformed, recreated with a bitterness that recalls Banti’s loss of her manuscript, and a sweetness that recalls her love of the character she brought to life, an Artemisia she knew existed, but one she didn’t know. In this way the reader sees two vantages, Artemisia’s and Banti’s, as Banti suffers through her loss of not only her manuscript, but her companion and Artemisia suffers through her difficult existence.
Artemisia functions as a double fiction whose bittersweetness is never overshadowed by pathos. We truly ache for both women as they feel the pain their art causes them continuosly.
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