It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. If the old maxim is true, doing justice to the life of such a prolific painter as Artemisia Gentileschi is a daunting task at best. Fortunately, for fans of painting and literature alike, it is not impossible.
Although Irving Stone's masterpiece on the life of Michelangelo, \The Agony and the Ecstasy,"" set the bar remarkably high for novelizing an artist's biography, it proved that in the hands of the right author, it is possible for prose to do justice to pictures. Fortunately, Susan Vreeland is one of those special writers and her second novel, ""The Passion of Artemisia,"" is an impressive, beautiful work of art unto itself.
The subject of the novel, Gentileschi, was one of the first woman painters to achieve fame within her lifetime (1593 - 1653). She was an immense talent that even her misogynistic society could not ignore.
The vivid colors and startlingly real facial expressions that gave her paintings such beauty, however, concealed a great tragedy, and in the hands of Vreeland, a struggle for the artist to make peace with her art and her society.
Raped by a painting instructor and shamed before the papal court, Artemisia feels abandoned by her father when he fails to defend her and is forced into a marriage of convenience, which will shape the course of both her life and her painting.
According to Vreeland, Artemisia's marriage to fellow painter Pietro Antonio is not perfect by any means, but is a blessing in that it allows her to move beyond her reputation as ""fallen woman"" in Rome by moving to Florence. There she blossoms as an artist, surrounded by some of the greatest works of art known to man. As her name reaches greater fame, Artemisia finds friendship with such legendary figures as Galileo Galilei and patronage with Cosimo de' Medici II, both of whom Vreeland outlines in as exquisite detail as her heroine.
Artemisia is brilliant, artistically gifted and acutely intelligent, but is constantly struggling for respect. She faces the jealousy of her husband over her success while at the same time trying desperately to maintain her family life, which is often sacrificed for her passionate love of painting.
The lessons that Artemisia learns from her relationships help to bring her full circle, back to the father who allowed her disgrace. On plotting this path for Artemisia, Vreeland creates greater understanding of who the artist is not only as a painter, but as a human being.
Vreeland's characters are rich and multidimensional, and her use of Artemisia as first-person narrator gives the story astounding depth. Her struggles to please her husband, daughter, peers, and herself, are moving and the characters' ties to each other almost tangible. Both the story and its main character are vibrant and engaging, and the book is rich with detail of both the artist's life and the day-to-day occurences of post-Renaissance Italy. The supporting characters, especially her daughter manage to be compelling in their own right, as their own stories come to light.
Perhaps Vreeland's greatest achievement, however, is the gorgeous prose she uses to describe the paintings and the emotion and process behind it. It is a true gift for the reader to witness Artemisia's brilliance and to share in the passion and fervor, to be present at the moment of her creation. The novel is part character study, part history lesson, but greater than either alone: it is an absolute joy to read.
