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Return to Rome (1620–1626/7)
Just as with the preceding decade, the early 1620s saw ongoing upheaval in Artemisia's life. Her son Cristofano died. Just as she arrived in Rome, her father Orazio departed for Genoa. Immediate contact with her lover Maringhi appeared to have lessened. And by 1623, any mention of her husband disappears from any surviving documentation.

Nevertheless, her arrival in Rome offered the opportunity to cooperate with other painters and seek patronage from the wide network of art collectors in the city, opportunties that Artemisia fully grasped. "Artemisia's Roman career quickly took off, the money problems eased," one art historian noted of the period. Large-scale papal commissions were largely off-limits, however. The long papacy of Urban VIII showed a preference for large-scale decorative works and altarpieces, typified by the baroque style of Pietro da Cortona. Artemisia's training in easel paintings, and perhaps the suspicion that women painters did not have the energy to carry out large-scale painting cycles, meant that the ambitious patrons within Urban's VIII circle commissioned other artists.

But Rome hosted a wide range of patrons. Spanish resident, Fernando Afan de Ribera, the 3rd Duke of Alcala, added the Magdalen and David, Christ Blessing the Children to his collection. During the same period she became associated with Cassiano dal Pozzo, a humanist and a collector and lover of arts. Dal Pozzo would help forge relationships with other artists and patrons. Her reputation grew; the visiting French artist Pierre Dumonstier II produced a black and red chalk drawing of her right hand in 1625.

The variety of patrons in Rome also meant a variety of styles. Caravaggio's style remained highly influential and converted many painters to following his style (the so-called Caravaggisti), such as Carlo Saraceni (who returned to Venice 1620), Bartolomeo Manfredi, and Simon Vouet. Artemisia and Vouet would go on to have a professional relationship and would influence each other's styles. Vouet would go on to complete a portrait of Artemisia. Artemisia also interacted with the Bentveughels group of Flemish and Dutch painters living in Rome. The Bolognese school (particularly during the 1621 to 1623 period of Gregory XV) also began to grow in popularity, and Artemisia's Susanna and the Elders of 1622 is often associated with the style introduced by Guercino.

Although it is sometimes difficult to date her paintings, it is possible to assign certain works by her to these years, such as the Portrait of a Gonfaloniere, today in Bologna (a rare example of her capacity as portrait painter) and the Judith and her Maidservant today in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Detroit painting is notable for her mastery of chiaroscuro and tenebrism (the effects of extreme lights and darks), techniques for which Gerrit van Honthorst, and many others in Rome were famous.

Three Years in Venice (1626/7–1630)
The absence of sufficient documentation makes it difficult to follow Artemisia's movements in the late 1620s. Additionally, nearly every painting mentioned in sources as being by Artemisia during her Venetian period is now lost. However, it is certain that between 1626 and 1627, she moved to Venice. Like Rome, Venice was home to a burgeoning art market and some of her artistic network from Rome, notably Simon Vouet and Nicolas Regnier, were making the move at a similar time. While there is little visual evidence relating to Artemisia, her name is repeatedly mentioned in Venetian literary productions. Many verses and letters were composed in appreciation of her and her works, by poets such as Guid'ubaldo Benamaiti and Antonino Collurafi. Artemisia was not just a mute recipient of such praise but actively engaged within the city's literary and musical circles that produced such poems, often designed to recited aloud at cultural gatherings. The art historian Jesse Locker states that "Artemisia was aware of - and evidently involved in - the conversations, recitations and performances that went on around her." . The themes debated within these elite cultural circles are also of interest. They help show that the fascination with strong women characters was not simply an interest of Gentileschi herself but was a keen point of debate and discussion. In particular, the Accademia degli Incogniti, a cultural group established by the Venetian nobleman Gian Francesco Loredan, discussed La Questione della Donna, the nature and status of women. Moreover, Artemisia's involvement with such groups also influenced the choice of her subject matters for paintings. While still continuing to paint women figures, they were increasingly drawn from a broader moral palette: "No longer limited to heroines and saints, but began to include donne infame (infamous women), who were notorious for their actions - Omphale, Corisca and Delilah." These were exactly the kinds of female characters who were discussed in groups such as the Accademia degli Incogniti

The few remaining examples of works from her time in Venice include the The Sleeping Venus, today in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, and her Esther before Ahasuerus now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, are testimony to her assimilation of the cultural and artistic lessons learnt in Venice. To Locker, the Esther painting reflects both the painterly and musical influence of Venice. Locker mentions "the picture's compositional borrowing, the costumes of the protagonists, and ... subject matter which mirrors contemporary debates about nature of men, women, and queenship". Meanwhile Elizabeth Cropper references the Venetian composer Claudio Monterverdi and calls the painting "replete with focused Monteverdian expression.

Florentine period (1614–1620)


A month after the trial, Orazio arranged for his daughter to marry Pierantonio Stiattesi, a modest artist from Florence. Shortly afterward the couple moved to Florence. The six years spent in Florence would be decisive for both family life and professional career. She became a successful court painter, enjoying the patronage of the House of Medici, and playing a significant role in courtly culture of the city. She would have five children, although by the time she left Florence in 1620, only two were still alive. And she would also embark on a passionate relationship with the Florentine nobleman Francesco Maria Maringhi.

As an artist, Artemisia enjoyed significant success in Florence. She was the first woman accepted into the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (Academy of the Arts of Drawing). She maintained good relations with the most respected artists of her time, such as Cristofano Allori, and was able to garner the favour and the protection of influential people, beginning with Cosimo II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and especially of the Grand Duchess, Christina of Lorraine. Her acquaintance with Galileo Galilei, evident from a letter she wrote to the scientist in 1635, appears to stem from her Florentine years; indeed it may have stimulated her depiction of the compass in the Allegory of Inclination.

Her involvement in the the courtly culture in Florence not only provided access to patrons, but it widened her education and exposure to the arts. She learned to read and write and would become familiar with musical and theatrical performances. Such artistic spectacles helped Artemisia's approach to depicting lavish clothing in her paintings: "Artemisia understood that the representation of biblical or mythological figures in contemporary dress ... was an essential feature of the spectacle fo courtly life."

In 1615, she received the attention of Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger (younger relative of Michelangelo). Busy with the construction of the Casa Buonarroti to celebrate his noted great uncle, he asked Artemisia—along with other Florentine artists, including Agostino Ciampelli, Sigismondo Coccapani, Giovan Battista Guidoni, and Zanobi Rosi—to contribute a painting for the ceiling. Artemisia was then in an advanced state of pregnancy. Each artist was commissioned to present an allegory of a virtue associated with Michelangelo, and Artemisia was assigned the Allegory of Inclination. Artemisia painted this in the form of a nude young woman holding a compass. Located on the Galleria ceiling on the second floor, It is believed that the subject bears a resemblance to Artemisia. Indeed, in several of her paintings, Artemisia's energetic heroines resemble her self-portraits. In this particular instance, Artemisia was paid three times more than any other artist participating in the series.

Other significant works from this period include La Conversione della Maddalena (The Conversion of the Magdalene), Self-Portrait as a Lute Player (in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art) and Giuditta con la sua ancella (Judith and her Maidservant), now in the Palazzo Pitti. Artemisia painted a second version of Judith beheading Holofernes, which now is housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence. The first, smaller Judith Beheading Holofernes (1612–13) is displayed in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. There are six variations on the subject of Judith Beheading Holofernes.

While in Florence, Artemisia and Pierantonio had five children. Giovanni Battista, Agnola and Lisabella did not survive for more than a year. The second son, Cristofano, died at the age of five after Artemisia had returned to Rome. Only Prudentia (who was also known as Palmira, which has led some scholars to conclude erroneously that Artemisia had an extra child) survived into adulthood. Prudentia was named after Artemisia's mother, who died when Artemisia was 12. It is known that her daughter was a painter, trained by her mother, although nothing is known of her work.

In 2011, Francesco Solinas discovered a collection of thirty-six letters, dating from about 1616 to 1620, that add startling context to Gentileschi's personal and financial life in Florence. They show that she had a passionate love affair with a wealthy Florentine nobleman named Francesco Maria Maringhi. Her husband, Pierantonio Stiattesi, was well aware of their relationship, and maintained a correspondence with Maringhi on the back of Artemisia's love letters. Nevertheless, he tolerated it, presumably because Maringhi was a powerful ally who provided the couple financial support. However, by 1620, rumours of the affair had begun to spread in the Florentine court, and this fact, combined with ongoing legal and financial problems, led them to resettle in Rome.

Commissioning and Preparatory Studies
In the 1620s, St Longinus was one of four statues commissioned for the niches under the crossing of St Peter's, along with statues of St Andrew, St Helen and St Veronica, all of whom has relics associated with them in the basilica. Small models were created by various artists, including one of St Andrew by Bernini. After various discussions with the committee selecting the works, Bernini was then appointed to create St Longinus.

It is likely that the early bozzetto - (a rough model made in terracotta), held in the Fogg Art Museum, and dated to around 1631 was done by Bernini as he continued to work through various concepts for the final statue. However, the design used in Harvard bozzetto was not the one used in the final statue; changes to the Baldacchino - the immense four pillared arch built in the centre of the crossing - influenced the Longinus design. "Instead of a figure of the Risen Christ," CD Dickerson writes, the Baldacchino was now to carry a simple globe and cross. Therefore, as Bernini grasped, it no longer made sense for the Longinus to be looking up at the Baldacchino in a worshipful pose."

A later terracotta sketch, held in the Museo di Roma, and rescued during excavation in the 1980s, is closer to the final design. Interesting, the Museo di Roma model has been cut up into various pieces; the places of the cuts (along the right arm, drapery and torso) are the same as the divisions in the marble block on the final sculpture. This indicates that Bernini used the model to calculate how the various blocks of marble could be brought to together to form a physically robust and seemingly complete whole.

Bernini and his assistants are likely to have produced many more different preparatory designs. The German artist Joachim von Sandrart counted 22 small models for St Longinus when he visited Bernini's studio in 1635. Additionally, there are further set of eight drawings in the Düsseldorf Museum Kunstpalast.

The Final Sculpture
Once the model has been agreed by the relevant parties, Bernini set to work on the sculpture, taking three years to produce the final design. By 1638, the sculpture was in place. Bernini was paid 3,300 Roman scudi for the work, the same as each of the other sculptors producing statues for the niche.

Iconography
Longinus was the Roman solider that poked Jesus in the side during the crucifixion. He was alleged to have converted to Christianity after the event, having realised that Jesus was the son of God. Bernini depicts him at the moment of divine communion with God, the holy lance thrust to the side, his arms opened wide to receive the divine light (that in practice would come through the windows of St Peter's). Longinus' armour and military apparatus lay behind him, a symbol of his revocation as a career as a Roman solider.

Critical Reception
Despite Bernini's reputation falling after his death, Apollo and Daphne continued to be praised. One French travelling in 1839 commented that the group is "astonishing both for mechanism of art and elaborateness, is full of charm in the ensemble and the details." The English sculptor John Flaxman reckoned it to be one of the very few Bernini sculptures worth praising. Others were less positive. One English travel book writer in 1830 noted Bernini's technical skill but added that the sculpture "bears all the want of judgment, taste, and knowledge of that age", going to criticise the appearance of Apollo for being too like a shepherd and not enough like a good.

The Aggrandisement of Rome
Seventeenth-century Rome had seen

The Towers of St Peter's and Temporary Disgrace
Under Urban VIII, Bernini has been appointed chief architect for the basilica of St Peter's. Work by Bernini included the aforementioned Baldacchio and also sculptures such as St Longinus. In 1637, Bernini attempted to embellish the facade of the basilica, originally designed by Carlo Maderno earlier in the century. Bernini's plan was to add two massive bell towers on each flank of the facade, making use of the foundations Maderno had supplied. But the once first tower was erected in 1641, cracks began to appear in the facade. Work was immediately stopped and the towers were pulled down a few years later. Although not necessarily Bernini's fault, his opponents within the Roman artistic world pinned the blame on Urban's artist, and Bernini suffered, both financially and in terms of his reputation. . Bernini's unfinished work of 1647, [Truth Unveiled by Time], is commonly taken to be his commentary on the events - where Time would show the actual Truth behind the story - that it was Maderno's insecure foundations that were the true root of the bell tower problem.

Nevertheless, this affair did not mean that Bernini lost patronage. The new pope Innocent X, who took the Holy Seat in 1644, maintained Bernini is the roles given to him by Urban. Work continued on beautifying the massive nave of St Peters, with tiled flooring, polychromatic marble and pilasters being added to the then-barren surfaces of the basilica. He continued to work on Urban VIII's tomb. A few months after completing Urban's tomb, Bernini had won, in controversial circumstances, the commission for the Four Rivers Fountain on Piazza Navona.

Elsewhere, continued patronage from Rome's elite ensured that any repetitional damage caused by the removal of the St Peter's towers was only temporary.

Bernini in the age of Urban VIII
On the assumption of Maffeo Barberini to the role of Pope Urban VIII, and Bernini's subsequent patronage from the Barberini pope and his family, the artist's horizons broadened massively. Previously, his work had been private commissions, often sculptural busts, for elite cardinals. Urban VIII created a whole new environment for Bernini, whom he considered a personal acquaintance; indeed Bernini's biographers happily note that the artist would spend long evenings in conversation with the pope. Urban showered appointments on Bernini, such as curator of the papal art collection, commissioner of fountains in the Piazza Navona, and superintendent of other aqueduct systems, demonstrating that Bernini was being pushed far beyond being a sculptor but a much more rounded artist. His output through the Barberini era would now be for public works on a grand scale, fusing architecture and sculpture, and much more responsive to the Catholic sentiments of seventeenth-century Rome.

The St Peter's Baldacchino is the most obvious example of this. Creating the enormous structure over the tomb of St Peter would take nine years of Bernini's career, encompassing botgh

Despite this, Bernini was still able to produce a number of artworks that showed the gradual refinement of his sculptural technique. This included a number of marble portraits, such as several busts of Urban VIII himself, the family bust of Francesco Barberini or most notably, the Two Busts of Scipione Borghese - the second have been rapidly created by Bernini once a flaw had been found in the marble of the first.

One noted portrait is that of Costanza Bonarelli (executed around 1637), unusual in its more personal nature. Bernini had an affair with Costanza, who was the wife of one of Bernini's assistants. When Bernini suspected Costanza to be involved with his brother, he badly beat him and ordered a servant to slash her face with a razor. Pope Urban VIII intervened on his behalf and he was fined.

Bernini also gained royal commissions from outside Italy, for subjects such as Cardinal Richelieu, Francesco I d'Este, Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria. The last two were produced in Italy from portraits made by Van Dyck (now in the royal collection), though Bernini preferred to produce portraits from life – the bust of Charles was lost in the Whitehall Palace fire of 1698 and that of Henrietta Maria was not undertaken due to the outbreak of the English Civil War.

The Bust of Cardinal Giovanni Dolfin is a portrait by the Italian artist Gianlorenzo Bernini, which is part of a tomb for the Venetian Cardinal Giovanni Dolfin. The tomb as a whole was a joint work commissioned of Bernini and his father Pietro. While Gianlorenzo executed the portrait bust, Pietro carried out the surrounding figures, including two allegorical figures of Faith and Hope. The work was completed in late 1621, and sits in the church of San Michele in Isola. Lavin, p.239-240

Critical Reaction
More recent art historians have also been quick to praise the work. Rudolf Wittkower noted that "representations of such rape scenes depended on Bernini's new, dyanmic conception for the next hundred and fifty years.

The twisted contrapposto or figura serpentinata pose is reminiscent of Mannerism, and allows the simultaneous depiction of the abduction (as seen from the left, with Pluto striding to grasp her), the arrival in the underworld (as seen from the front, he appears triumphantly bearing his trophy in his arms) and her prayer to her mother Ceres to return to the real world 6 months a year (as seen from the right, with Proserpina's tears, the wind blowing her hair, and Cerberus barking). Pushing against Pluto's face Proserpina's hand creases his skin, while his fingers sink into the flesh of his victim. Proserpina’s lips are slightly opened, as if she were screaming and begging for help. Delicately crafted marble tears look as though they are dripping down her face.

Related Works
In 1811 the Russian sculptor Vasily Demut-Malinovsky created a sculpture also titled "The Rape of Proserpina". The statue currently resides in Saint-Petersburg.