How Did Artemisia Gentileschi Use Hipstrokes In Baroque Art?

Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter working in the first half of the 17th century. She is one of the more known female Baroque painters of today, though for a while her work was attributed to that of her father, Orazio Gentileschi. While she had trained under her father, she far surpassed his skills (Simons). Artemisia Gentileschi took advantage of her position as a woman to paint other women, something many of the male artists of the time would not have had access to (Simons). This included painting scenes such as herself as the allegory of painting, Pictura, and also popular bible scenes, such as the story of Judith.
Painted around 1625, Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes depicts a scene from the Old Testament of the Bible, …show more content…
This treatment is most obvious on places like the darker sleeve of Judith. Looking up close, this area is a series of lines and blocks of lighter color placed near each other, and it is only in backing away that one can see that they are indeed the folds of her sleeve. These sorts of brushstrokes, also referred to as abbozzare, can be viewed with an X-ray of the image (Christainsen, 108). Another interesting way in which Gentileschi treats her paint is in the transparency in the fabric on the shoulder of Judith as well as the chest of her maidservant. While this could also be attributed to time as the pigments of the pain have became less potent, it still gives an interesting effect to look at. The paint seems to have bene extremely thin as it was brushed over other parts of the canvas previously painted. Skin can be seen beneath the wispy strokes of the fabric on the maidservant’s chest, as well as the folds beneath the shoulder on Judith herself. These details add another layer of interest to this painting by playing with those