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Pointon (1981) has convincingly argued that there is an allusion to childbirth in the iconography of Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith Decapitating Holofernes [See Fig. 1]; i.e., Judith and her maidservant, in the act of murdering Holofernes, seem to be delivering a child. Once pointed out, this inference seems inescapable. In particular, the nurse's posture and action in pressing down on the ‘abdomen’ do not seem to be susceptible of any other explanation. Further, Pointon and most other modern scholars see a relationship between the painting and Artemisia's rape by Agostino Tassi, an artist employed by her father to teach Artemisia perspective. Pointon acknowledges that there is not enough primary evidence for a fully satisfactory explanation of the relationship between Artemisia's rape and her art. Yet there are scraps of biographical data and another of Artemisia's paintings, Susanna and the Elders [See Fig. 2], has been studied by Garrard (1982) with considerable psychological perception. It may be worthwhile to gather this material, to draw what conclusions, however tentative, one may, and to raise questions for possible future resolution.
Orazio Gentileschi, a major figure of the Caravaggesque school, had been grooming his teen-age daughter to be a professional artist at the time of the rape. Until recently, scholars had assumed that Artemisia was born in 1597, on the basis of the records of Tassi's trial. Bissell (1968) uncovered documentary evidence which shows that Artemisia was born four years earlier, in July of 1593. The rape occurred in 1611. There is a presumption that Orazio falsified