‘By Her Hand’ exhibit at The Wadsworth glorifies Italy’s women artists from the 16th to 18th centuries

“By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy 1500-1800,” at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art brings together dozens of artists from a specific time and place, hundreds of years ago and thousands of miles away. But the exhibit, which is up through Jan. 9, asks timely, ever-current questions not just about art’s place in society but women’s place in the art world.

As the exhibit catalogue puts it, “These women shared a drive to succeed as artists when the art world was dominated by men.”

The piece that inspired this focused appreciation of the unique perspectives and struggles of female artists of this period was a painting in the Wadsworth’s own collection.

Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Self portrait as a lute player” was painted around 1615-17. It shows a confident, comfortable, serious yet softly smiling woman (the artist herself, costume) holding a large oud-like lute. She has inquiring eyes, the kind that people mean when they say “That portrait has eyes that follow you around the room.”

It is a riveting image, and it stands at the very center of “By Her Hand.” “Self portrait as a lute player” is now part of a triptych of Gentileschi self-portraits that greets you as you enter the exhibition. The other two other Gentileschi self portraits have the artist portraying the martyred 4th century icon St. Catherine of Alexandria.

“I thought the juxtaposition of these two portraits tells us so much about her — her quest for identity and her marketing acumen,” says Oliver Tostmann, the Wadsworth’s Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art, who co-curated the exhibit with Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, the curator of Italian and Spanish paintings at The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

“We only acquired the painting in 2014,” Tostmann says. “It has become much beloved by our visitors. I always wanted to do something with that.

“Then the National Gallery in London acquired its St. Catherine,” and Tostmann had his starting point.

“When it became about women artists,” Tostmann says. “We had to get Detroit involved.” The Detroit Institute of Art, where Straussman-Pflanzer was a curator before The National Galley, co-organized “By Her Hand” with the Wadsworth and will host it from February to May.

The National Gallery in London, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, the San Diego Museum of Arts, Yale University Art Gallery, Worcester Art Museum, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum and some private collections in Connecticut are among the more than 30 art institutions that have lent artworks for the exhibit.

The show is anchored by portraits and by some large dramatic paintings, but “By Her Hand” also displays engravings, woodcuts, drawings and even medals.

Most of the works are not just by women but of women. They also depict women as artists, as with Anna Bacherini Piattoli’s “Self Portrait at the Age of Fifty-Six.” It shows Piattoli at work, dressed in an unostentatious brown dress and gray bonnet, pausing to stare at the viewer. On her easel is an in-progress version of one of her actual miniatures paintings, “Madonna of the Sack.” The exhibit catalogue describes Piattoli’s “alert and unprepossessing countenance” and says the realistic, self-aware self-portrait “serves as a bookend to the exhibition.”

Even when painting classical figures from myths and religious texts, the women artists bring a vitality and humanity that loosens the formality and shiny grandeur that these images tend to have.

The examples of saints and heroines whom the artists have chosen to immortalize tend to be empowered and active, physically strong and muscular. There are two paintings, one by Fede Galizia and one by Gentileschi, of the biblical figure (depending on which bible you read) of Judith with the decapitated head of Holofernes. The beheading was a popular subject for Renaissance artists; these renditions show a sense of control rather than chaos, with the women (Judith and her maid) looking careful and thoughtful rather than fearful or crazed.

It’s a revelation to see a “Madonna and Child” painted by Elisabetta Sirani. It was done in 1663, when the artist was just 25, and two years before her death at the age of 27. So many “Madonna and Child” paintings give us a stoic, static, prematurely somber baby Jesus. Sirani’s acts like an actual baby, stretching and gurgling and grasping at a wreath of flowers. His mother, meanwhile, exudes patience, calm, and doting parental affection. “The women artists in our show, most were also mothers,” Tostmann says. “They look at the subject with a more sensitive eye than male artists.” He says Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), represented with “The Dead Christ and Symbols of the Passion” and some drawings, “gave birth to 11 children. She knew a lot about motherhood and babies.”

In another New Testament image from the exhibit, Gentileschi’s “Mary Magdalena in Ecstasy” shows the adult Jesus’ follower with her head thrown back, hands clasped at her knee. “Mary Magdalena had been a prostitute in an earlier life,” Tostmann says. “The moment when a sinner becomes a saint is particularly interesting to Italy in that era. Mary Magdalena is a female figure that female artists could identity with. As a viewer, you know that there is a fundamental transition going on. These are not traditional portraits that these women are painting. There is a lot of dynamic posturing. It’s all about the drama.”

If an exhibit of women artists from this time period had happened in its own time, or even just a few decades ago, it would likely largely consist of still lifes or paintings of animals. Female artists were not only dismissed or ignored, they had no access to tools or training that men had, including the opportunity to paint nude models. “It was not considered appropriate for women to be exposed to a male model,” Tostmann says.

There are indeed some artistic renderings of figs and a hedgehog in the exhibit, which the Wadsworth includes to make a point about the sorts of subjects women artists were relegated to painting.

Sexism and misogyny were major obstacles in these artists’ careers. Beyond asserting “an artistic identity, creating a career practice and marketing oneself,” Tostmann says, female artists could not catch a break from the male critics, who were “quite malevolent to women artists. They lashed out when they became too ambitious.”

“By Her Hand” puts Gentileschi in a new light. Tostmann speaks of her as having “filled a niche market with her sensuous works” of female nudes painted by a woman, and further asks “How does a female artist view herself?”

Another unexpected, and instructive element of “By Her Hand” is that it includes works by several male artists, including a couple who were married to female artists and used the women as their models. Maria Felice Tibaldi is pictured by her husband Pierre Subleyras in a bright red dress, holding in her hand a miniature painting — her specialty. By including this portrait, “Madame Subleyras, née Maria Felice Tibaldi,” in the exhibit, Tostmann says he hoped to demonstrate the “male gaze of spouses, who often didn’t depict these women as artists.”

The show is expertly arranged so that works with similar themes are loosely grouped together, but without being obvious or overbearing. The women in adjacent paintings may gaze in the same general direction, or wear similar clothing. It all adds to the immediacy of the exhibit and its message, invigorating these 300 to 500-year-old artworks and providing a new context in which to explore the struggles of women to fully express themselves through their art.

“It was definitely an adventure for me to explore these issues,” Tostmann says. “We know so much more about these artists now than just 10 or 20 years ago. We know more about their output. So many works have been discovered that came on the market only recently.”

“By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800″ is “really important for us at the Wadsworth,” its curator believes. “We have a solid track record with shows about women, but that is with contemporary art. We have a solid track record of purchasing works by women artists. But this is our first time doing a show about historical woman artists.”

A variety of programs accompany the exhibit. For more information, visit thewadsworth.org/explore/on-view/byherhand.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.