WHEN, at the age of 17, Artemisia Gentileschi painted Susanna and the Elders she might have well been responding to the sexual harassment she had to put up with in the studio of her widowed father Orazio.

If so, Gentileschi’s alter ego Susanna shows determination and courage in refuting the Elders’s debauched advances. They are portrayed as leering, aggressive voyeurs — there is trepidation in this image and the threat of imminent rape.

In the canvas, Gentileschi borrows the chiaroscuro technique from her father’s influential friend Caravaggio, in which the luminous and courageous Susanna is accosted by her tormentors, whose shapes and contours stay in the penumbra.

The dynamic, off-centre composition accentuates Susanna’s spirited struggle and resolve.

A year later she was raped in her father’s studio by his collaborator and “close” friend Agostino Tassi with another man, Cosimo Quorli, also involved.

To add insult to injury, her treacherous chaperone Tuzia facilitated the attack, ignoring Gentileschi’s cries for help and later pretending ignorance of the whole affair.

During the subsequent trial of Tassi, Gentileschi was tortured with thumbscrews, a “legitimate” practice at the time for testing the veracity of testimonies. The charge of rape would only have stood if the woman was a virgin hence Tassi, an unsavoury character, was accused of deflowering Gentileschi. His subsequent sentence to exile was never served.

Gentileschi married and left for Florence where she had a daughter Prudentia. She rebuilt her career, associated with Galileo Galilei and Michelangelo Buonarroti, the great artist’s nephew, and the Medicis.

She had an international clientele and her stature was such that she was the first woman accepted into the Florence Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (Academy of the Arts of Drawing).

In 1620, now divorced, she returned to Rome and painted the iconic and unnerving Judith Slaying Holofernes. In the Old Testament, Holofernes, who lusted after and threatened Judean widow Judith, was an Assyrian commander sent by emperor Nebuchadrezzar to pacify the eastern Mediterranean.

The vividly realistic scene is as shocking as it is hypnotic. Gentileschi portrays Judith and her maidservant Abra as young and strong, focused in their determination and with a muscular grip.

Her identification with both women is evident. It might be construed as a “settling of accounts” with Tassi — reflected in the figure of Holofernes — with loyal Abra as the nemesis of the deceitful, conniving Tuzia.

Whatever the interpretation — an act of political retribution perhaps, or a tactical strike against the enemy — Gentileschi emphatically confronts the prevailing feudal stereotype of the subservient woman.

There's a repeat of  the dynamic off-centre composition of the canvas Susanna and the Elders, bringing a forceful clockwise motion into the scene — one that reflects the swift course of the dagger.

In the darkened tenebrist setting, an echo of Caravaggio, a rush light barely illuminates the two implacable and valiant women, adding depth and drama to the horrific scene.

Gentileschi’s models, another nod to Caravaggian revolution, are ordinary people whose faces and bodies offer familiarity and serve to democratise art.

This biblical parable has inspired painters from Mantegna to Klimt, Botticelli to Goya and Titian to Rubens but none could approximate the empathy, depth of understanding or solidarity offered by Gentileschi.

The Medicis hid the canvas in the Uffizi for over 300 years, perhaps fearing it’s inflammatory connotations.

In 1638, Gentileschi joined her father in London at the invitation of Charles I and they painted the allegorical Triumph of Peace and the Arts on the ceiling in the Queen’s House in Greenwich.

Orazio died suddenly in 1639 and is buried in the Queen's Chapel at Somerset House, while three years later Artemisia had left for Naples on the eve of the English civil war.

Predictably, the Renaissance did not extend to ingrained social prejudice and custom. Patriarchy fitted capitalism like a glove.

In the competitive world of painting, securing commissions and patronage from the nascent, wealthy bourgeoisie required not just astuteness but also artistic skill, imagination and innovation.

Gentileschi had it all in abundance and yet felt compelled to write poignantly to her Neapolitan patron in 1649: “I fear that before you saw the painting you must have thought me arrogant and presumptuous ... You think me pitiful because a woman’s name raises doubts until her work is seen.”

She was 56 and had only seven years left to live.