This painting screams u better come get ur elders i think they got lost in my DMs right here in 1610
This absolute fuckin mood was painted by Artemisia Gentileschi and depicts the bible story of Susanna who was just minding her own business one day bathing in her garden when two of the village elders saw her and just walked right into her garden and started making demands of her or they would ruin her reputation. Unfortunately for Susanna the word of a woman against two village elders was no good cuz the whole damn system is wrong. In the story a young wandering jewish wise man visits the village and questions the elders separately and their stories are different when they aren’t in the same room which proved Susanna’s innocence
Susanna is painted in more light than the elders showing that actually she has the right of it telling these two creeps to gtfo, while the elders are in more shadow showing us their darker intentions. They are also backed by storm clouds hinting at the oncoming storm they are going to bring down upon Susanna for refusing them. She’s painted in biblically heroic style that a lot of religious paintings from this time were and while it might not seem a particularly heroic thing, anyone thats had to deal with creeps like this especially on a night out cuz fuck me does this look like that one meme of that poor lass having to deal with that drunk guy in her ear on a night out
This biblically heroic styling is important here cuz this scene has been painted loads & like mostly done for male patrons as high brow spank bank material but in this painting she’s not baing painted as a fantasy or as some demure hyper-femme so some rich bloke commisioning it can play out his fantasy of being one of the elders as i’m sure happened a lot. No, here Susanna is painted in a realistic way. In fact she is painted so realistic that a lot of ppl were shocked that Artemisia Gentileschi could paint such a realistic nude. They were convinced she must have learned how to paint women from her father cuz my god how else would a woman be able to know how to paint a woman’s nude body there is no way she could possibly know what a woman looks like naked cuz women are famous for never looking the fuck down at our own bodies 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
This is one of her earliest known paintings and is one of the ones she’s most known for - well this and one of a woman ripping a man’s head off so u can see the vibes she's going for here and the fact that ppl couldn’t believe she was this skilled at 17 bimini bon baffles me hens it really does cuz had she been a man no one would have questioned it and she’d have been shipped off to the royal academy of fuckboi artists before she could blink. That being said she was the first woman to be admitted to Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze but it still stinks of shit how she was treated in life and in death and fuck comparing her to caravaggio tbh cuz she’s clearly skilled enough to stand on her own without that reference just like any man