The Association of Women will be hosting a talk on Artemisia Gentileschi, as an Italian Baroque painter, who until relatively recently was hardly recognised.
The Talk will take place on Monday, 12th February at 1800hrs.
At the turn of the seventeenth century, Rome was an important city. The Pope was the Florentine Clement VIII (1592-1605) and the post Counter-Reformation Roman Catholic Church was recovering from the trauma of the Reformation and setting out ruthless enforcement of RC dogma with the Jesuits and the Inquisition following the sackof Rome in 1527 and the Papal alliance with Spain. Seventeenth century Rome saw a prolific building of churches. These in turn fostered the demand for artists, architects and sculptors that led to the flowering of greats like Francesco Borromini (1599-1667) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) who were Artemisia’s contemporaries.
She was the first woman in the history of the West to be categorized as an artistic genius.With her Lucretia, Magdalen and her many others Cropper considers her to be the equal of Titian in her command of female passion, self-possession and voluptuous force. She has gifted her art to 20th Century and beyond. Moreover, she made herself the most famous female painter of her age.
Speaker Bio
David Bartolo graduated in medicine at St Mary’s in London. He went on to be an Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons and a Moynihan Travelling Fellow. He worked as a colorectal surgeon in Bristol and Edinburgh and finally as professor of surgery at the University of Western Australia.
He retired to Malta with his wife Caroline in 2017 and went to the University of Malta where he gained an MA summa cum laude in Mediterranean Studies and is currently in the final stages of a second masters in Baroque Studies.