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Artemisia Gentileschi was a woman painter living at the beginning of the seventeenth century who was greatly influenced by Caravaggio, a friend of her father, Orazio Gentileschi.In 1612, Orazio, considering his reputation sullied, pressed rape charges against his daughter’s lover. Artemisia was nineteen years old at this time. The trial documents, which have been preserved, show the violence governing relations between the sexes at the time.Since the fifties, Artemisia has mobilised the interests of Italian and American feminists. There are biographies, articles, exhibitions, novels and a film about her.This article analyses three of Artemisia’s works. Judith and Holophernes, in which we can see how Artemisia defined her sexuality against the conventional models of the time; Yaël and Sissera, which can be seen as an indirect representation of her relationship to her father; and finally Lucretia, which might be regarded as a secret confided.