Work Text:
Artemisia’s hand hesitated before the canvas, charcoal smudging on her fingers as she considered the first stroke. Sketching a composition was not typically the most difficult step in her artworks, and it was really quite annoying that she just did not know where to start. What only added to this irritation was the knowledge that this piece was one of the few occasions she was neither chained by the whims of a commissioner nor undertaking a study with the Academy. Artemisia had found a rare moment where she had time enough to wander the grand buildings of Florence to find personal inspiration in the many great works around her.
She had been thrilled when the Grand Duke had granted her access to the Laurentian Medici Library, the lofty hallways and sprawling shelves meeting her with the fanfare of a queen returning to her castle. Artemisia had discovered a home here amongst the works of the masters of old.
She had found a certain sense of irony in her namesake being the archaic goddess of the wilds, yet she had never felt more comfortable than while within this icon of civilization, ostensibly her solar twin Apollo’s domain. The piece she was attempting to sketch had indirectly been prompted by this irony. Artemisia had grown curious if the old goddess of the hunt was the only one for whom she had been named and had gone searching through the pages of memory kept in the library for any others. To her surprise she discovered two others remembered by history. The pair of them Queens of the ancient city of Halicarnassus, yet setting aside their name and birthplace Artemisia thought the two could not be more different.
And yet she could not help but feel a kinship with both.
Artemisia the First of Halicarnassus was a betrayer, a deceiver to those whom she had sworn to fight beside in the great war between the ancient city states of Greece and the Empire of Persia. Yet, she was also a Cassandra, a prophet who lacked those with ears to listen to her visions of doom. She predicted the failure of the sea battle at Salamis, yet her emperor proceeded with the attack disregarding her words of warning. And when she was proven right, as the battle fell apart around her, she betrayed her allies and sank the ship of Damasithymos, a man under her command, a man who had previously violated her orders. Her betrayal and the deaths that followed were praised by her emperor as an act of which only a man could have been capable.
The images of this long dead woman swirled in her mind, the once hazy outline becoming solid as Artemisia’s hand began to glide across the canvas, the charcoal in her grip tracing a map of her thoughts as she moved. She tried to not think of herself standing across the courtroom floor against Agostino Tassi, tried not to notice the many rings she had given Artemisia the first which mirrored the sibille knots tied around her fingers the day she stood there, her words meaningless till her bloody hands made an impression upon the court bench. This man who had first violated her body, then his own word, and yet was believed till her father had stepped in.
Her hand kept moving, marking out the winding forms of the ocean weaving its way across the canvas, the roiling lines intertwining and morphing into a serpent climbing towards the heavens before twisting back around to the ear of her subject.
Artemisia the Second of Halicarnassus was the perfect wife, so loyal to her husband Mausolus that her most recorded accomplishment was building his tomb, a tomb so monumental his name was given to all overland tombs that followed. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the old world, an act of devotion so great her name is only recorded in texts dedicated to discussing the grand memorial’s creation. Her name and essence were so entangled with Mausolus and his tomb that the only other story that remained about her was the way she mixed his ashes into her drink to remain close to him.
Artemisia’s hand moved to the bottom of the canvas, flowing down towards the easel that held it. She knew her art would always draw comparisons to that of her father, and more so his great friend Caravaggio. She was well aware of the similarities, she admired his command of chiaroscuro and had sought to emulate it as she had learnt, to the point her favorite subject - Judith’s beheading of Holofernes - was inspired directly by his painting of the very same. And yet, she could not help but fear she would be doomed to lie in the shadow of this man from whom she had learned for the rest of history. Doomed to have her name forever tied to another.
The far greater fear that her name would forever solely be paired with Tassi and his sins was pushed from her mind with a violent slash of charcoal on canvas. The line it made was jagged, the edges raw and stark against the flowing curves that covered the rest of the image. She found the end of the stroke and joined it with another, smoother and more controlled, to form the ornate cap of a pillar in the great mausoleum.
The canvas grew steadily darker as her hand roamed across it, her fingers blackened by the smudging and blending of the pigment across the piece. Her mind was awash with a tumultuous storm of thoughts, the two Artemisias of old and what they had come to represent doing fierce battle for domination of the canvas.
Were those truly the only options? Could a woman only be remembered as either Circe or Penelope? A witch who lies and cheats to prey on men unlucky enough to cross paths with her, or a wife so devoted her name cannot be uttered unless her husband’s is in the same breath.
Artemisia took a step back, for the first time truly taking in the canvas her hand had been smearing charcoal over. The scene before her was a storm of conflicting ideas. Artemisia the First at the prow of her ship, ornate rings encrusting the fingers that held her bow and the head of Damasithymos beneath her boot, wine-dark waves crashing against the hull till they coiled into a serpentine form raising up beside her ear. The ocean then spilled down the canvas to wash over Artemisia the Second hidden behind a pillar of her great mausoleum, the urn of her husband held above her head collecting and mixing with any remnants of the sea that dripped past her grand tomb.
The contrast between the two figures was perhaps over-pronounced, and the composition was messy, the frame busier than it had the space to be. She supposed this is what happened when not painting for another, no commissioner to please or specific technique to display for the Academy, simply sketching purely from the musings of her own heart- she had almost forgotten the strange freedom in being messy.
Picking up the canvas she carried it over to the western window of her studio, the candlelight that had replaced the sun on the east not sufficient to understand what she found irritating about the composition. There it would sit for the next weeks as she worked her paints onto the full piece, the deep hues of the sea playing against the radiant light of the setting sun behind the two figures upon the canvas. The colour breathing life into the tempestuous juxtaposition of the piece.
She ran her brush over the final stroke of the sea upon the canvas, the roiling tides of time simultaneously eroding the pillar and rotting the hull of the ship within the image. The sea, the great awe inspiring landscape that held the life of countless creatures. The sea, the great unforgiving mass that claimed so much and distorted anything it left behind. She was afraid of being taken by the unrelenting ocean of history, afraid of her name being lost, being warped, being chained to something else beyond her control.
Were the two upon the canvas who held her name also afraid? What would they think about the echoes of themselves that had made it to her, these silhouettes that had been burned into the pages of history. Artemisia hoped they would like the way she had rendered them, she hoped they would appreciate having both their triumphs and flaws celebrated by one who, perhaps, understood a little of what it was like to bear the name of a goddess and all the weight of what that represented.
She hoped that by putting them onto one canvas together with her signature next to them that she just might build a new raft against the tides of time for others like them in the years to come, a different way to be remembered, something more than betrayal or devotion.