In “Artemisia,” the seventeenth-century Italian painter (Valentina Cervi) is introduced to us as a headstrong 17-year-old girl. Rambunctious, yet lovely, she intends to be a thorn in everyone’s side until she gets her way and she often succeeds, although not always to her own advantage.

Considered historically to be the first female painter to break into the art world, this rediscovery of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1651) clearly answers the question so often asked by hoary, crackly, misogynistic keepers of the record, “If women are equal to men, where are all the great female artistes?”

The answer is simple: in hiding. Women with a talent were either subverted by taboos and prejudices or if they ever did work their way to easels, the peniled historians and critics quickly slaughtered their gifts.

Why? Art historian Arlene Raven noted in her 1973 essay, “Woman’s Art: The Development of a Theoretical Perspective” that “animals which are traditionally referred to as female include the cow, sow, ***** and cat——all derogatory words in our language when they are applied to human beings. English does not use gender extensively, but its linguistic sexism is intact because sexism is intact.”

Moving to the Italy of 1610, Artemisia’s main enemy besides language and everyday prejudice was the Church. It was against the law and sinful for the fairer sex to paint a male nude or even attend art classes.

The daughter of Orazio (Michel Serrault), a well-known painter himself, Artemisia actually started doing portraits of her father’s clients and letting him sign them. No one would pay for a work by a female, let alone hang it up in his estate. Soon having learned all she could from her dad, she inveigled her way into becoming a pupil of the famous landscape painter Agostino Tassi (Miki Manojlovic).

The older man apparently smitten, soon seduced his new student, and the two carried on passionately until an incensed Orazio brought his former friend to trial for rape.
This is the scope of “Artemisia.” The story of a young woman’s obsessed journey to express her great talents and the discovery of her sexuality along the way. Of course, there was hell to pay.

There is apparently a battle going on right now among various internet groups about director Agnes Merlet’s take on the rape. She apparently believes Artemisia was in love with Tassi, and the charges brought about by the girl’s father were motivated more by a professional jealousy on his part and a shame that his daughter had lost her virginity in a premarital state- ego playing a bigger part here than any act of violence against a child.

Merlet argues her film is a “sensual melodrama and a passionate and violent story. Artemisia lets herself be guided by her emotional and sexual impulses. She gives herself completely--never having doubts or concerning herself with morality. She is not afraid to love in an era of arranged marriages. . . .

“Also the only traces of the trial are not the trial records, but the preliminary cross-examinations. We do not, therefore, have any certainty regarding the historical reality of the story. Several version have been given.”

But whatever your point of view on the matter, “Artemisia” is a fascinating, sensual and always perceptive look into the life of an artist only previously known to the most academic of us. Merlet brings the sixteen-hundreds alive with all its wantonness, blind sides, and engagingness. Well-acted and ravishingly realized, “Artemisia” is definitely a few brush strokes above any recent film bio we’ve seen.