ARTEMISIA

Curves, folds, and volumes, the human body is more than just limbs, it is passion, ecstasy, and carnal desire. Artemisia Gentileschi's (1593 - 1653) painting portrays Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty, and fertility, lying on a bed of blue fabrics with a large red cushion. A transparent cloth passes around the woman ' s naked body, from her thighs down her back and into her arms. Above her is Cupid, recognizable by his small wings, admiring Venus as he gently fans her with several peacock feathers.

The painting's colors are vivid, in particular the blue canvas, which was painted using more than one layer of the famous lapis lazuli dye, suggesting that it was commissioned by a wealthy client. Both the light and the darkness of the scene reveal the Caravaggist school, the Baroque essence, and the artist's palpable dramatism. Celebrated for being the first woman admitted to the Academy of Design in Florence, Gentileschi certainly had a long way to climb through the art world, even after her death, her work was only recognized well into the twentieth century.

Historical, religious, and heroic scenes are part of the most common themes painted by the artist, where the female figure stands out as the center of attention and protagonist, as in the paintings Judith beheading Holofernes (1614 - 1620), Judith and her maid (1618 - 1619), which is arguably the next scene of the beheading of Holofernes, located in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence or Mary Magdalene as The Melancholy (1622 - 1625) that can be visited at the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City.

Therefore, by reappropriating the female nude, it seems that Artemisia Gentileschi takes nudity as a weapon and encourages new meanings to be attributed to it. Both Cleopatra (c. 1633 - 1635) and the Venus we see on the cover are not just another couple of nudes, but rather women ' s bodies painted directly with woman ' s brushes.