Getty Publications has released two new titles in the Lives of the Artists series, which offers illuminating accounts of major artists as viewed by their contemporaries.
Lives of Artemisia Gentileschi presents a fascinating look at the famous Baroque artist and one of the most celebrated painters of 17th-century Italy. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–after 1654) was known for the naturalism with which she depicted the female body and for her use of rich colors and chiaroscuro. Born in Rome, she was trained by her father, the painter Orazio Gentileschi, and was working professionally by the time she was a teenager. In a period when women artists very rarely achieved success in their field, she was commissioned by royalty across Europe and was the first woman to become a member of Florence’s prestigious Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, later becoming an educator in the arts.
Providing further insight into the extraordinary life of this trailblazing artist, this volume presents an absorbing collection of letters, biographies, and court testimonies, several of which are published here in English for the first time. The vivid illustrations include three works that have only recently been attributed to Gentileschi, as well as Lucretia (about 1627), which was recently acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum.
An introduction by Sheila Barker, founding director of the Jane Fortune Research Program on Women Artists in the Age of the Medici, contextualizes these texts and discusses Gentileschi’s legacy.
Lives of Gainsborough provides an overview of the life and work of the English painter Thomas Gainsborough. Gainsborough (1727–1788) was a leading English landscape and portrait painter, draftsman, and printmaker who is now considered to be one of the most important British artists of the eighteenth century. This volume illuminates his life, career, personality, and passions through the perspectives of three individuals close to the artist. We hear from Philip Thicknesse, a British adventurer, writer, businessman, and soldier; William Jackson; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, an English portrait painter and the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts. An obituary published shortly after Gainsborough’s death lends insight into the artist’s impact. An introduction by Anthony Mould, a British art dealer and independent scholar, offers a comprehensive and detailed overview of Gainsborough’s life and career.
Previously published volumes in this series include: Lives of Rembrandt, Lives of Giovanni Bellini, A Memoir of Vincent van Gogh, Looking at Manet, Recollections of Henri Rousseau, Auguste Rodin, The Life of Michelangelo, The Life of Raphael, Julia Margaret Cameron, Lives of Velázquez, Lives of Tintoretto, Lives of Titian, Memories of Degas, Lives of Leonardo da Vinci, Lives of Caravaggio, Lives of Rubens, Anecdotes of William Hogarth, A Memoir of Samuel Palmer, and Lives of William Blake.