The scene were Artemisia and Tassi first have sex is portrayed in a rather complex manner. is it a rape? Artemisia does say "No" to Tassi several times. But it turns out that "No" does not mean "No" in this case (another "No No" for feminists.) . And Tassi stops and after Artemisia pulls away and he discovers that he has broken her hymen. Still, the experience of losing her virginity is clearly enormously painful for Artemisia, who is in a state of shock. Contrast this scene with the far less realistic scene with Veronica Franco's totally painless loss of her virginity in Dangerous Beauty. Though Tassi is hardly a considerate lover in this scene, he is also excused somewhat by Artemisia's intimation to him in an earlier scene that she is not a virgin. The film does not portray Tassi as a rapist, but does link his desire and its satisfaction to aggressive, pain inducing error. Part of the strength of the film is that it does not fall into dramatizing a choice between sex negative and sex positive feminists, as does Dangerous Beauty (Marco's wife versus Franco). There is repetition with a difference in the film, but not necessarily smooth progress and total working through. At the end of the film, for example, the camera does not move through the velo, whereas it earlier had moved through grating to suggest transcendence. Sex is linked to shock and (t)error, Artemisia's as well as Tassi 's (error, not terror, in his case), or as Stephen Holden cleverly put it in his NY Times review of the film, to agony as well as ecstasy.
Note: the interpretation of the trial documents varies among art historians, both in terms of what really happened and int terms of the relation between the rape, if it happened, and Artemisia's paintings. Some have suggested that he rape didn't happen, while most say it did. Some critics say Artemisia loved Tassi, others that she never did. Given the indeterminacy of the trial transcripts, it is fair to say that Merlet's film offers a pyschologically and historically plausible version of what might really have happened with regard to Artemisia and Tassi sexually. The main problem for those who say Artemisia was violently raped (who take Artemisia's trial testimony at face value) is explaining why it took a year for Orazio to go to trial and why Artemisia had sex with Tassi after he raped her. Alexandre Lapierre maintains, in her incredibly well-researched historical novel, Artemisia: Duel for Immortaity, that Artemisia was raped and that she consented to sex with Tassi afterwards out of a sense of guilt and shame (see note 14, pp. 385-86). But this view, however much we may wish to adopt it because of Artemisia's testimony at the trial, has its problems as well. If Artemisia was turned into psychological mush by the rape(s), how was she able to become a heroic, feminist painter, what Germaine Greer calls the "maginificent exception?" Similarly, Mary Garrard maintains in Artemisia Gentilesschi both that the rape was a transformational experience because it was so deeply traumatic and yet that Artemisia was not a victim.
Elizabeth Cohen stops short of anlyzing the relation betwen the rape and the paintings in her article on the trial transcripts. In Artemisia Gentilesschi, Mary Garrard maintains that the paintings were progressively desexualized. She complains that male artists sexualized Judith, whereas Artemisia, in her view did not. R. Ward Bissell, however, argues that Artemisia's paintings became more and more sexualized, more and more oriented toward the tastes of her male patrons, toward the male gaze.
After the rape, Artemisia returns to her home and masturbates. The shots of her face and of her eyes repeat the shots of her face and eyes popping during the breaking of her hymen as well as echoes the opening shots her eye, with her iris enlarging and shrinking. The difference is that in the masturbation scene her face is shot right side up rather than upside down. (Artemisia comments on Holofernes' head being upside down in voice-over when finishing her "Judith Beheading Holofernes," and the painting at the trial is also held upside down to show the resemblance between Tassi and Holofernes). When she holds up her fingers and sees her blood on them, Tassi is also visible in blurred form in the image. The shot is half-realistic and half an indication of Artemisia's fantasy life. The ocean is heard on the soundtrack, as it is in the scene where she discovers, apparently for the first time, a couple having sex on a beach. Artemisia's examination by the two nuns to determine whether she is a virgin is shot in a manner very similar to the rape scene, with her face upside down; Artemisia makes similar sounds and has similarly wide open eyes in pain as one of the nuns (offscreen) sticks her fingers in Artemisia's vagina while the other holds a candle for illumination. The scene is reminiscent of the enema scene in The Devils. Note the red cloth on the bed in both rape and masturbation scenes as well as on Artemisia's dress and the guards' uniforms in the examination scene. Red cloth is also seen when Artemisia is tortured, and the blood on her fingers when she is tortured also appears in a closeup on Tassi's hands. The final shot of the film shows her bandaged fingers with blood on the bandages. The sex scene also has Artemisia with her eyes open after she poses Tassi and sits astride him. Clearly, there is no opposition between Artemisia's closed vision before Tassi and her open vision after Tassi's penetration or pricking, as Pollock would have it. Artemisia never has her eyes wide shut.
For commentary on the gaze in the film, click here.
1. The rape / breaking of Artemisia's hymen.
2. The masturbation scene. The ocean is heard on the soundtrack, which has associations in the film with sex and with art.
3. Sex scene--Artemisia on top
4. The examination scene. (Note the candles as well, recalling their use for artistic self-examination in the opening of the film and also in the orgy scene.)
