Clio, the enigmatic muse of Artemisia Gentileschi's story.

One of the few works by Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome, 1593 - Naples, c. 1656) to be found in Pisa, the city of origin of the painter’s family, Clio, muse of history, a work executed in 1632 in Naples and now housed in the Palazzo Blu in Pisa, is not, however, just a painting that links the artist to her homeland. It is a work whose ultimate meaning is still being questioned, since it has not yet been dissolved. Moreover, it has also been interpreted as a projection of the artist’s own ideas, a kind of alter ego of a painter who, at the time, was at the height of her success, the synthesis of a career that had been steadily rising until then: her work was attracting the attention of many important patrons, her status, undoubtedly exceptional for the time, as an independent and talented painter had not ceased to sustain her fortunes, and what is more, Artemisia had moved for a couple of years to Naples where she intended to explore further possibilities for success. It is in this context that the realization of her muse of history takes place.

The figure of Clio is recognizable because of her iconographic attributes: the garland crowning her head (a symbol of immortality), the trumpet (which alludes to the resonance that historical feats achieve over the centuries), and the open book (the medium on which history is written: in this case, the iconographic recommendations of the time prescribed that the book should be by Thucydides to make the figure even more recognizable). It is not difficult to distinguish her from a similar allegorical figure, that of fame, because the muse of the story, unlike fame, is wingless. Clio wears a rust-colored robe that allows a glimpse of a white blouse underneath, and she covers herself with a blue silk tunic fastened with two gold pins at shoulder level. The brooches, moreover, are not the only jewelry Clio wears: the movement of her neck in fact uncovers an elegant pearl earring. The woman assumes an ostentatiously confident pose, a proud, heroic pose, with her left arm bent at her side, her right hand holding the trumpet and her gaze that, instead of meeting that of the observer, looks far into the future, a further allusion to the eternal succession of historical events. The Caravaggesque light that comes from the left and illuminates her face, leaving the right side of her figure in semi-darkness, contributes to dramatically emphasizing the pose: it is quite evident that the light effects are studied, sought after, to give further dignity to the figure of the muse of history.

This exhibited pride is not limited only to the pose of the muse of history: in fact, Artemisia Gentileschi decides to sign the work, leaving her name and the year of execution of the painting on the very page of the book resting on the table. The inscription affixed by Artemisia also includes another name: “Rosiers.” Art historian Mary Garrard, who is credited with dispelling any doubts about the correct identification of the subject of this painting (in the past actually believed to be an allegory of fame), believed that the name referred to Antonie de Rosières II, lord of Euvesin, who had been the first maître d’hotel of the painting’s probable commissioner, Charles of Lorraine, fourth duke of Guise (Joinville, 1571 - Cuna, 1640), longtime governor of Provence. It is attested by a letter, sent by Artemisia to Galileo Galilei on October 9, 1635, that the artist had executed a painting that she was to deliver to the duke, although we do not know which work it was. We speculate then that the work is precisely the one preserved in the permanent collection of Palazzo Blu. Antoine de Rosières had passed away in 1631, a year before the date on the painting, so this could be a commemoration of a figure to whom the duke was particularly attached. Raymond Ward Bissell, on the other hand, thought that the gentleman in question must have been the French nobleman François de Rosières, archdeacon of Toul, who died in 1607 and was formerly an advisor to the duke. This reading, regardless of its degree of substantiation, is fascinating because it allows a plunge into the personal affairs of Charles of Guise.

The duke had recently arrived in Italy: his move was a consequence of the events of 1631, when, at the height of the clash between Cardinal Richelieu and Maria de’ Medici, Charles of Guise had sided with the latter. The daughter of Grand Duke Francis I de’ Medici, Maria (Florence, 1575 - Cologne, 1642) had married the king of France, Henry IV (Pau, 1553 - Paris, 1610), and until her husband’s death in 1610 had been queen consort, after which she assumed the role of regent on behalf of her son Louis XIII (Fontainebleau, 1601 - Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1643), who was only eight years old when the pare died. When Louis XIII reached the legal age to reign, Mary had a confrontation with him and was forced to retreat to the castle of Blois: later, mother and son were reconciled thanks in part to Cardinal Richelieu, who was introduced by Mary herself to Louis XIII in an attempt to regain that seat in the king’s council that she had lost. Richelieu, supported by Marie de’ Medici, helped the queen mother regain her political role, but disagreements over foreign policy led the two to a heated confrontation, culminating in 1630 in a plot against the cardinal. The conspiracy failed, however, and Mary was first arrested and then sent into exile in Brussels.The Duke of Guise, disgraced by the events on his political side, was forced to repair to Italy, in 1631. She settled in Florence, where she obtained the protection of the Medici: since Artemisia, in her Florentine sojourn, had long worked for the Medici, it is not difficult to imagine that she had been commissioned to paint Clio precisely because of her happy Tuscan background.

In Bissell’s opinion, the duke must have had good reason to celebrate his advisor: Rosières, in 1580, had published a book on the history of the dukes of Lorraine and Berry(Stemmata Lotharingiae ac Barri ducum), and yet he had purposely fabricated false documents to attest to an unlikely descent of Charles of Guise’s family from Charlemagne. The affair aroused the ire of Henry III of France, who considered that publication offensive. But it was not only a problem of prestige: it was a political problem, since if a filiation from Charlemagne turned out to be well-founded, the lineage of Charles of Guise could also make claims on the throne of France. Rosières was therefore arrested, and in 1583 a trial was held against him that ended with a death sentence against him, but in the end the archdeacon was saved because, through the intercession of Louise of Lorraine, queen consort of France, he was able to obtain a pardon. Evidently, wanting to force the reconstruction, Charles of Guise saw in his present affairs a kind of reflection of what had happened to his advisor: he too had in fact fallen out of favor with a powerful man, and he too had had to suffer the reverses of a political situation that had suddenly become unfavorable to him. In 1631, from Florence, he thus wrote to a friend: “If the oppression I suffer should be prolonged beyond my own life, posterity who will cherish the memory of my fathers will know how to make a sound judgment of mine, praising my constancy and fidelity and condemning those who persecute me; they will know how to say what is known to the honest: that my only crime was to become governor of Provence.”

In order to bring this reading back, Bissel proposed reading the apposition preceding the name “Rosiers” in the inscription in a very particular way: that title, which everyone before him had read (correctly) as an abbreviation of “lord” (“sing.re”), for Bissell was to be read “unprejudiced” as “sme.re” or “sme.ro,” that is, an abbreviation of “forgetful,” to be understood in the Dantean meaning of the term (namely, “forgotten”). The “forgetful” reading, after Bissell, was widely accepted: we also find it in the catalog note of the Christie’s sale of December 8, 2004, the date on which the Clio was sold by its former owner (the work totaled the sum of 251 thousand pounds, just under 300 thousand euros) to the Pisa Foundation. According to this reading, Charles of Guise thus wanted to remark how François de Rosières had been forgotten, and the duke would perpetuate his memory. This reading of the affix has since opened the field to paroxysmal over-readings (there have been those who, losing the Dantean nuance, have understood the term “forgetful” as we understand it today, that is, as a person prone to forget: in which case the inscription would almost become a gesture of mockery towards Rosières, which would, however, be inconceivable), but the reality is that those who took the “sme” transcription at face value did not notice the stem of the “g” of “sing.re,” somewhat faded but nevertheless still visible to the naked eye. There is no doubt, then, about the apposition accompanying Rosières’ name: Artemisia simply wanted to dedicate the work to the memory of “Mr. Rosières.”

Doubts, if anything, should be about the concept of historical truth that the work would like to bring out. Scholar Elizabeth Cropper, who has timely reconstructed the events of the painting as heretofore set forth, has written that Artemisia Gentileschi’s Clio is intended to express a sense of history “that appeals to posterity for truth to be revealed and authentic fame to be manifested.” The Duke of Guise could then count on an additional, subtle undercurrent: Artemisia Gentileschi, too, had herself been slandered, yet, the scholar writes, “she could now present herself, like the figure of Clio, in a bold, throbbing pose, her gaze turned to the future, determined to secure fame and immortality.” One would have to wonder for what reason the duke had wanted to remember, twenty-four years after his death, a counselor who, in order to force an offspring, had forged documents. Discarding the unlikely hypothesis of the round anniversary (the twenty-fifth), a custom that seems more peculiar to the twenty-first century than the seventeenth, there remains the alleged parallelism between the duke’s affair and that of François de Rosières. A parallelism that, however, at a deeper look, is difficult to sustain: the duke, in the 1631 letter, presented himself as a slanderer, while François de Rosières was a confessed offender, since in the trial he had admitted guilt of having produced false evidence to attest to a nonexistent genealogical line. On the other hand, it could be argued that the concept of history as a sequence of facts documented by reliable evidence, in the seventeenth century, was secondary to the idea of history as collective memory or the idea of history as a political tool useful to legitimize a power or dynasty. Consequently, the work in question is less about what Rosières did in his lifetime than, if anything, Cropper suggested, about “posterity and imperishable fame.” To extend the argument: it is difficult to imagine this work as the result of a solidarity between slanderers. It should, if anything, be read, should it be necessary to identify the “Rosiers” of the inscription in François de Rosières, in a vindication on the part of the duke: Charles of Guise, after being forced into exile, was trying to assert his own position in history, and he intended to do so also on the basis of the legitimization of the history of his own dynasty, written by Rosières (and in this sense it becomes secondary that the historiographical work of the archdeacon of Toul proposed an erroneous ancestry: it mattered that the lineage could boast a history).

In any case, today the subtext of this work has been lost (or rather: it mainly fascinates scholars), and it has in turn become a secondary aspect, partly because of the connection that the muse of history has with her author: that is, we tend to read every female figure in Artemisia Gentileschi’s production as if Artemisia’s convictions, ideas, and desires were reflected in those heroines. We cannot know, of course, what the author’s intentions were, and we do not know how well-founded is the assertion that “each image of an energetic woman she painted must in some way be traced back to the author” (thus Cropper, according to whom Artemisia identified herself as Clio because she had not only succeeded in her profession, but had also become famous). Of course: by presenting herself as the muse of the story, she would have sinned in conceit. But the idea is nonetheless well-founded that Artemisia wanted to be remembered as a talented painter, as a “virtuous woman,” as Filippo Baldinucci calls her in the Notizie dei professori del disegno. An artist comparable to a Lavinia Fontana or a Sofonisba Anguissola. This does not mean that whatever female figures appear in her production include autobiographical elements, but neither does it mean that Artemisia did not feel her condition. In Clio’s book, after all, her name has far greater prominence than the somewhat hidden “Mr. Rosières.”

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