by Larry WithamVREELAND'S 'PASSION' OF ARTEMISIA PLAYS ON FEELING AND GRIEVANCE
SUSAN VREELAND HAS earned a reputation as perhaps the
leading romance writer of historical art fiction, ranging in her characters
across the northern Renaissance, the Italian baroque period, the French
Impressionists, and more.
She came on
the scene in 1999 with the sleeper bestseller The Girl in
Hyacinth Blue (1999), published by a small Denver press. It tells a kind of
romantic and tragic story surrounding the Dutch artist Vermeer and one of his
paintings.
With her publishing platform secure,
Vreeland moved on to a second art history novel, telling the story of the
Italian baroque-period painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656), the
first woman to be accepted into the Florence Academy.
The novel
is titled The Passion of Artemisia, (2002), and this time it came out with a major New York
publishing house. It was a curtain raiser for other of Vreeland’s upmarket art
historical novels to come, and in this benchmark work, Artemisia’s “passion” is
a very appropriate term.
Of all the Artemisia novels (see
Part I), Vreeland’s is by far the best known and the most commercially
successful. In Passion of Artemisia,
Vreeland’s graceful prose pulls out all the stops when it comes to a woman’s
longings, feelings, resolves and resentments. Of course, Artemisia—as all of her
biographers have detailed—had some very legitimate things to complain about,
despite her otherwise successful and interesting life (at least compared to virtually
all other women in the seventeenth century).
The first is her rape at age
eighteen, made famous now by a rape trial that was documented in historical
records. Vreeland opens her story here. She presents the trial in its raw
gynecologic detail. Not only are the church officials the epitome of evil, but
we also find Artemisia passionately loathing her father, a betrayer. He sued
the rapist over a stolen painting, and this had dragged Artemisia into a
humiliating public spectacle.
The passion shows up in a few other
strong themes. A central one, perhaps second only to the rape, is Artemisia’s
artistic specialty—painting a violent biblical scene in which a wronged woman
cuts off the head of the man. This is the story of Judith, and in several such head-cutting
oil paintings, Artemisia both innovates in composition and, as this novel
suggests, gets vicarious revenge against such wanton men.
Vreeland’s novel also focuses on
Artemisia's additional quality as a painter: she does nude females. To paint biblical
and mythological stories that required naked women, Artemisia could use a
female model, whereas (officially, at least), male guild artists and students
could use only male nudes, otherwise it was said to be a scandal.
In painting women, Artemisia made some obvious changes in the expressions on their faces. For narrative
effect, Vreeland reads the painter’s thoughts into some of the works,
suggesting how Artemisia had revealed a true female psychology in facial
expressions and bodily gestures (versus the idealized, passive looks
used by male painters).
By the subject matter and the
psychology, Artemisia introduces a woman’s point of view into Western art, the
novel implies. If that’s not clear, Artemisia states it plainly to her father.
Society can change its view on women, she tells him: “Things will
change, father, they must, and art can help create the change.”
Artemisia's passions, and the training she received from her father, would gradually put
her in significant company. For a start, her husband—with whom we are treated
to a few sex scenes—takes her to Florence, away from Rome, with its bad
memories. In Florence, she becomes friends with the nephew of Michelangelo, gains introduction to the house of de
Medici (for whom she paints), and becomes a close friend of no less than
Galileo. They are both trying to drag the medieval world into the modern one,
as this story goes.
Still, the most passionate
side of Artemisia stems from the sense of injustice she feels toward her
father. It is also shown in her devotion to her daughter, raising her to be a
painter and an independent woman. However, the daughter does not agree; she
doesn’t like to paint, and would rather marry a nobleman. Indeed, Artemisia
chastises her daughter for not “feeling” passion (“white hot passion”), and not
feeling utter indignation over the “pain and humiliation” that her mother’s
life has undergone (again, focused on the rape trial).
In one of her rare critical moments
(of herself) Artemisia admits that she is actually a lot like her father. He
has sacrificed her for his art, and looking back, she has also left her husband
and neglected her daughter for her art. “We have both chosen art over
our daughters,” Artemisia confesses.
In this
novel, Vreeland is looking for emotional drama, a strong sense of grievance,
distinctly good people and bad people—and finally, a symmetrical plot. For
example, the real Artemisia had at least four children, some of them boys. In The Passion of Artemisia, Vreeland
simplifies it down to one daughter, an only child, so that a mother-daughter
dialogue can stitch across the novel uninterrupted.
Also
symmetrical, Artemisia ends up in London with her father (true to history) and
they reconcile (an unknown in history). Art is pain. Life is like that, and
older and wiser Artemisia realizes. At least her father taught her to see, to use
her imagination, and to paint.
The number
of Artemisia novels—three so far—pales next to the hundreds of graduate student
papers done on the most notable female artist of Renaissance Italy. As noted in
Part I, literary critic Susan Sontag spoke of the first Artemisia novel (Artemisia, 1947, by Anna Banti), as
solace for aggrieved women, both readers and Banti herself. As the author, Banti
could, by “assuming the full burden of sympathy, console and fortify herself,”
Sontag says. “And [console] the reader—especially the woman reader.” One virtue
of all Artemisia novels, to be sure.
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