Corisca and the Satyr

In this painting, we see a young woman fleeing a satyr seated upon the ground. Gentileschi highlights Corisca's movement through the figure's spatial dominance of the picture plane and her billowing garments with highly articulated drapery. Her figure leans diagonally away from the satyr, who parallels her motion, leaning forward to reach for her. Corisca's bright white, gold, purple and green clothes draw the viewer’s eye and position her as the protagonist of the scene through their contrast with the dark, monotonous landscape. The satyr recedes into the background, the lower half of his body barely distinguishable from the dark ground. With his body mainly cast in shadow, the light on his forehead and left shoulder draw attention to his enlarged, pointed ear which marks him as Other. Further creating contrast between the two figures are the exposed expanses of their skin: the satyr's muscular brown torso and arms, and Corisca's bared arms, chest, and front foot, lit by an unidentified source. The differences in their coloring may have been used as tropes of light and dark to communicate their information about the characters' virtue to an early modern audience.

         Artemisia Gentileschi collaborated with fellow painter Massimo Stanzione to create this image – their individual contributions may be identified through the differing brushstrokes used to depict the figures and the background. While Corisca and the satyr are painted with seamless, virtuosic strokes, the tree, hills and sky behind them are more painterly, that is, the brushstrokes themselves are more visible. This contrast was likely intentional as the narrative depicted belongs to a play: the realistic figures could be understood as interacting in an artificial setting as actors on a stage.

         In the early 1630s when this painting is believed to have been produced, Artemisia Gentileschi was working for the Duke of Alcala, the Spanish Viceroy of Naples. Prior to Naples, Artemisia had spent four years in Venice, though no known work from this period has survived [1]. It was likely in Venice that she encountered Battista Guarini's play Il Pastor Fido, which became extremely popular throughout Europe and was reprinted multiple times after 1585 [2]. In the scene depicted, the nymph Corisca tricks the satyr by wearing a wig, enabling her to escape his sexual advances while he is left grasping at the wig, surprised to have lost his prey. In early modern Italy this narrative was often understood as a moralizing message for men to beware the wiles of women. Mary Garrard has reinforced the narrative’s connection to Venetian literary circles and reads it as a political statement of an active woman capable of outsmarting a man [3].

[1] Jesse Locker, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 4, 85.

[2] Jesse Locker, “Artemisia Gentileschi: The Literary Formation of an Unlearned Artist,” in Artemisia Gentileschi in a Changing Light, ed. Sheila Barker (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2017), 97.

[3] Mary D. Garrard, “Identifying Artemisia: The Archive and the Eye,” in Artemisia Gentileschi in a Changing Light, ed. Sheila Barker (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2017), 31.

• Garrard, Mary D. “Identifying Artemisia: The Archive and the Eye.” In Artemisia Gentileschi in a Changing Light, edited by Sheila Barker, 11-40. Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2017.
• Locker, Jesse. Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.
• Locker, Jesse. “Artemisia Gentileschi: The Literary Formation of an Unlearned Artist.” In Artemisia Gentileschi in a Changing Light, edited by Sheila Barker, 89-102. Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2017.
  
  Image Source: Art Tribune, January 2012. http://www.artribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/ART_24_bassa_1.jpg