Student Spotlight
Artemisia Gentileschi, Venus and Cupid, ca. 1625-30. Oil on canvas, 96.52 cm x 143.83 cm. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2001.225. Photo: Troy Wilkinson. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
PhD candidate Rachel Kline recently published her article “Bravura in Blue: Ultramarine in the Works of Artemisia Gentileschi” in Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The article grew out of Rachel’s MA paper of the same name and adopts materiality as an interpretive lens to explore the gendered resonances of ultramarine in the works of Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Rachel argues that Artemisia’s conspicuous use of ultramarine indicates her strategy to build upon the embedded meanings of the pigment and imbue her work with the value of both skill and material as she sought recognition for her artifice. Rachel’s article contributes to a recent surge of interest in the scholarship of early modern female artists. Read more here.