Artemisia

Artemisia Gentileschi is seventeen, trained in her father Orazio's workshop, and wants to be a painter in an age when women cannot enter the academies. Her father arranges lessons for her with the landscape master Agostino Tassi. What follows leads to a trial held in Rome in 1612. The film constructs a mutual love affair between the two and presents the trial as a question of honour brought by Orazio. The record says otherwise. In the trial transcripts Artemisia describes the rape in detail, and her fingers are put to torture to test whether she is telling the truth. When the film was released, art historians and Gloria Steinem objected, and the distributor withdrew its claim that this was a true story. Agnès Merlet directs, with Valentina Cervi as Artemisia and Michel Serrault as Orazio.