Artemisia Gentileschi, widely regarded as important woman artist before the modern period, was a major Italian Baroque painter of the seventeenth century and the only female follower of Caravaggio. This work shows that her original treatments of mythic-heroic female subjects depart radically from traditional interpretations of the same themes. "If you read only one art history book this year, it should be Mary D. Garrard's Artemisia Gentileschi."---Raymond B. Waddington, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900