Ruins of time

The Imaginary Meeting of Anna Banti and Artemisia Gentileschi is inspired by the historiography on the Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) and the novel about her, written by Anna Banti in 1944, during the Second World War in a bombed and ruined Florence. The main characters are three: Anna Banti, Artemisia Gentileschi and a contemporary lecturer.

The fame of the Baroque painter is due to her ability to deal with an artistic career reserved only for men, managing to succeed despite many obstacles, including a trial for rape of which she was a victim at 17 years old. Artemisia led an adventurous, solitary and independent life, contemporary of Galileo and Caravaggio, and was one of the first autonomous female figures of the modern era. Anna Banti was at first an art critic and then became a writer of novels, perhaps because she was the wife of one of the most famous Italian art historians, Roberto Longhi.

In the performance three women meet amongst the ruins produced by time. Documents lose their value and become only objects found or lost forever. Dead or living women need the example of others' experience to understand their own and to find a place in history in a time that rushes by more and more rapidly. The text gathers fragments by Anna Banti, Artemisia Gentileschi, texts about art, and poems and essays by various authors.