A Polite Parisian Exhibition Sanitizes Artemesia Gentileschi’s Proto-Feminist Rage

Artemisia Gentileschi’s empathic and heroic portrayals of women have made her a protofeminist icon. Her works—most famously Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1612)—do more than transform her passive objects into active subjects; they endow them with the power to enact righteous, even vengeful violence.Such scenes are inseparable from Artemisia’s own biography, according to Patrizia Cavazzini, co-curator of “Artemisia, Heroine of Art,” a major retrospective current