When at the age of seventeen Artemisia Gentileschi gave evidence at the trial of the artist Agostino Tassi, who was accused of raping her, she claimed to be illiterate. It has long been suspected that she simply wanted to avoid any suggestion that she had been engaged in illicit correspondence with Tassi, but even so it was a surprise for scholars to discover an exchange of sonnets between Artemisia and the Florentine writer and composer Pietro della Valle. An article in this month’s issue by Eric Bianchi and Sheila Barker publishes the poems in full and explains how they elucidate the way Artemisia negotiated the male world of courtly art and literature.
Also in this issue, MaryAnne Stevens discusses the motives for the major exhibition of modern Swedish art held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 1924, Justin Davies presents new findings about early copies after Van Dyck on panel and Alison Manges Nogueira analyses the complex meanings of a pair of double-sided early sixteenth-century Venetian portraits in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Among the reviews in this issue, Scott Nethersole discusses the exhibition of Botticelli’s drawings at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, and Elizabeth Cowling assesses one of the outstanding exhibitions of the Picasso anniversary year, on the artist’s time in Fontainebleau, in 1921.
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