Artemisia Gentileschi
Born: July 8, 1593

Artemisia Gentileschi didn’t just hold a paintbrush… she wielded it like a blade. In an age when women were expected to be muses, not masters, Artemisia seized the canvas and painted women not as passive saints or decorative nymphs, but as avengers. Her Judith doesn’t just behead Holofernes… she makes him bleed, as if every stroke of her brush was a strike against the men who underestimated her.

She was only seventeen when she was raped by a man her father trusted. The trial that followed was as cruel as the crime itself: public examination, torture to prove she was telling the truth, and humiliation designed to break her. But Artemisia refused to be destroyed. She turned trauma into triumph, turning every gallery wall into a battlefield where women rose victorious, blades in hand, gazes unflinching.

Her paintings dominate. Her Susanna resists the gaze. Her Judith executes justice. And Artemisia herself became the very thing the world told her she could never be… a master, a legend, a woman who dictated her own legend in oil and blood.

Centuries later, I still kneel before her. Because Artemisia Gentileschi didn’t just survive history. She conquered it.