The new graphic biography I Know What I Am by Gina Siciliano is a visual biography of Artemisia Gentileschi for our times, and a moving tribute from one female artist to another ... It should be noted that Siciliano spent seven years writing I Know What I Am; the book is timely, but not trendy. It is thoroughly researched, and includes 40 pages of notes and an extensive bibliography at the end. Siciliano documents the minutiae of her process, as if to challenge anyone who might question the accuracy of her account ... Siciliano incorporates translations of primary sources into the dialogue, and reading the exact words of recently discovered letters written records from the trial is an especially powerful experience ... The most compelling drawings are Siciliano’s copies of Artemisia’s paintings, which are truly stunning ... Siciliano, in living alongside Artemisia and producing this rich, honest biography of her life, offers a deep, enduring homage to a brilliant painter and a remarkable woman.
Siciliano ...presents a passionate portrait of Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi...in this painstakingly researched new biography ... Siciliano’s exquisite craftsmanship is clear on every page of this occasionally dense but consistently engrossing volume, which portrays the artist’s plight with affection and urgency, convincingly arguing that Gentileschi’s accomplishments are deserved of recognition given her male counterparts.
In the hands of artist Gina Siciliano, the story of Artemisia Gentileschi is more than a history of the most prominent female painter of the Renaissance, whose interpretations of the myth of Judith slaying Holofernes empower women. It is a densely layered tale of sociopolitical changes in 17th-century Italy, Spain, and England, of a mother and sexual assault survivor, and of a woman passionately committed to a life in art ... the most powerful spreads convey the internal struggles of a strong woman, eventually a mother of two daughters, determined to protect them from her own fate ... Without falling prey to the trope of artistic achievement through trauma, this intensely detailed visual biography does justice to a still undervalued artist.
There's something intellectually delicious about a graphic narrative about an artist ... a formidable work of comics scholarship, including 50 pages devoted to detailed notes and bibliographic sources. The notoriously research-obsessed comics writer Alan Moore may have a rival ... Of course instead of blended oil paints, Siciliano combines the tiniest of pencil marks into areas of near blackness, suggesting an exceptionally meticulous process. But there's something else, some difficult-to-name difference in the slightly less detailed faces, how the unmarked areas of the page bring out an emotional nuance, the teetering difference between indifferent triumph and triumphant indifference ... The two artists seemingly work together across centuries to construct, image by recreated image, fact by researched fact, a moving biography and cultural history of early 1600s Rome.
...a painstakingly well-researched graphic biography of the Baroque artist and rape survivor ... Siciliano’s ballpoint versions of classical paintings breathe of thousands of hours of hand-cramping work to recreate the originals. While her meticulously penned panels, often featuring a scowling Gentileschi, are a bit crowded by dense hand-written expository, they carry thoughtful historical context, and emotional urgency. This impressive debut is the detailed, passionate scholarly portrait that Gentileschi deserves.
