It is the fear of female sexuality that may have led to the caricaturing of the powerful woman as a femme fatale, while it is clear with examples all around us that the evil that men are capable of is far more lethal
Italian Renaissance artist Artemisia Gentileschi s Susanna and the Elders (1610) is among her very first paintings, signed and dated when she was only 17 years old. While the Biblical story of the two old creeps trying to scare a bathing Susanna into sexual favors was a common theme during the Renaissance, Gentileschi s spin on the work is unique.
There s a real sense of intrusion in the work. Other artists of the time took the story as a way to depict a comely young woman, but Gentileschi was interested in the psychological element of the tale. Susanna looks genuinely horrified by the old men invading her privacy. Her body is twisted into an uncomfortable position, not fixed into any sort of eroticized position for the viewer to get horny over. We are meant to identify with