Art by Artemisia Gentileschi

Gentileschi was one of the very few women to build a major painting career in 17th-century Italy, and she did it while carrying a public trauma most of her male peers never had to survive: at 17 she was raped by her father's colleague Agostino Tassi, and the resulting trial, during which she was subjected to thumbscrews to test her testimony, is documented in surviving court transcripts. Her paintings after that, especially Judith Slaying Holofernes, with its unflinching physical violence, are often read against that history, sometimes too literally, but the technical control and psychological intensity are entirely her own. She became the first woman admitted to Florence's Accademia delle Arti del Disegno.