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Rape by Agostino Tassi

In 1611, Orazio was working with Agostino Tassi to decorate the vaults of Casino delle Muse inside the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome. One day in May, Tassi visited the Gentileschi household and, when alone with Artemisia, raped her. Another man, Cosimo Quorli, played a part in the rape. A female friend of Gentileschi, Tuzia, was present during the rape, but refused to help her.

With the expectation that they would marry in order to restore her virtue and secure her future, Artemisia started to have sexual relations with Tassi, but he reneged on his promise to marry her. Nine months after the rape, when he learned that Artemisia and Tassi were not going to be married, her father Orazio pressed charges against Tassi. The major issue of the trial was the fact that Tassi had violated the Gentileschi family's honor, and charges were not pressed for violating Artemisia.

During the ensuing seven-month trial, it was discovered that Tassi had planned to murder his wife, had engaged in adultery with his sister-in-law, and planned to steal some of Orazio's paintings. At the end of the trial, Tassi was exiled from Rome, although the sentence was never carried out. During the trial, Artemisia was tortured with thumbscrews for the purpose of verifying her testimony.

After her mother died, Artemisia had been surrounded mainly by males. When she was 17, Orazio rented the upstairs apartment of their home to a female tenant, Tuzia. Artemisia befriended Tuzia; however, Tuzia allowed Agostino Tassi and Cosimo Quorli to visit Artemisia in Artemisia's home on multiple occasions. The day the rape occurred, Artemisia cried out to Tuzia for help, but Tuzia simply ignored Artemisia and pretended she knew nothing of what happened. Art historian Jeanne Morgan Zarucchi compared Tuzia's betrayal and role in facilitating the rape to the role of a procuress who is complicit in the sexual exploitation of a prostitute.

A painting entitled Mother and Child, discovered in Crow's Nest, Australia in 1976, may or may not have been painted by Gentileschi. On the presumption that it is her work, the baby has been interpreted as an indirect reference to Agostino Tassi, her rapist, as it dates to 1614, just two years after the rape. It depicts a strong and suffering woman and casts light on her anguish and expressive artistic capability.