our centuries is a long time to wait for justice, but Artemisia Gentileschi hasn’t got it yet. What a cruel joke that, after being assaulted and dishonoured in her lifetime, forgotten for centuries, then slighted by art snobs who affect to prefer her father Orazio, the greatest, most revolutionary woman artist before modern times has now become a cultural victim of the coronavirus. The National Gallery in London has postponed its exhibition Artemisia. It had no choice, with works due to come from locked-down Italy and loans from America facing global air paralysis. This is a tragedy for anyone who likes to see a wrong righted. Artemisia should be a household name – and this exhibition promised to make her just that. As long ago as last summer, I met with its visionary curator Letizia Treves to find out what she planned to include. I was thrilled. Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1610. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A painted nightmare … Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1610. Photograph: GL Archive/Alamy Stock Photo It was to include her prodigious teenage masterpiece Susanna and the Elders, which she signed and dated in 1610, age 17. It is astonishingly accomplished – her father boasted accurately that she could already outdo the leading male professionals – yet it is a painted nightmare. The two elders don’t just spy from a distance on the naked Susanna in this brightly lit scene that has the unreality of De Chirico. They creep right up to her. They don’t give her any breathing space. It eerily mirrors the artist’s own experience of being abused by two men. In 1612, Orazio Gentileschi brought a charge against the painter Agostino Tassi of raping his daughter. There was a court case in which Artemisia had her name blackened by Tassi and his defence witnesses, and underwent torture. The National Gallery planned to include the original handwritten transcript from Rome’s archives. My own interpretation of the document for a new biography of Artemisia Gentileschi shocked me. Tassi claimed to be her art teacher, but the truth was far worse. In an uncannily similar situation to the one she shows in Susanna and the Elders, Tassi and a papal official called Cosimo Quorli harassed and pressured her for months. This was a conspiracy against a young woman hatched at the heart of the Rome of the popes. The National Gallery exhibition was to lay it all bare. It was to show the painting I believe she created in the heat of these events and gave to Tassi as a carnival present. Judith Beheading Holofernes was due to be loaned by the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. In it, the dishonoured Artemisia paints a plan for a murder. Two young women are attacking a man. But how can they do it? Teamwork. One of them has climbed on his bed to pin him down. Meanwhile, the other – Judith, or, rather, Artemisia – is hacking his head off. He’s conscious but he can’t do anything. His blood pours down the side of the bed. Judith Beheading Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi, c1612. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Teamwork … Judith Beheading Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi, c1612. Photograph: Artemisia Gentileschi/© Gabinetto fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi Advertisement But how does she stand up as an artist? Was she a one- or two-hit wonder? I think everyone would have agreed on her brilliance after seeing this show. It was due to include her lovely and moving Judith and Her Maidservant from the Pitti Palace, Florence, in which the assassin duo look vigilantly into the night, her subversively real nude Cleopatra, her recently identified self-portraits, and the great Allegory of Painting from the Royal Collection. Talk about a cursed artist. Artemisia Gentileschi had to fight tooth and nail for recognition in her lifetime. She survived rape and public shaming. Her extraordinary letters to a lover, found in 2011 and due to be shown in this exhibition, reveal that she also endured an unemployable husband, the deaths of her children, debt and falling out with her father. She was dogged by bad luck – no sooner did she secure a place at the English court than her patron King Charles I went to war with parliament and got his head chopped off. Decapitation wherever she looked. Fleeing to Naples, she sailed smack into another bloody revolution. She died there, probably in 1654. Her grave is lost. Like Caravaggio, whom she probably met when she was a child and whose intense dark and light inspired hers, she was forgotten in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were both rediscovered by the 20th-century Italian art historian Roberto Longhi. His wife Anna Banti wrote a novel called Artemisia that’s a classic of neorealism. But while Caravaggio’s fame grew, Artemisia’s has, until recently, stuttered. Then along came Treves. The exhibition she put together was boldly thought through. It was the show Artemisia has been awaiting – the one to establish once and for all that she’s Caravaggio’s heir and a revolutionary whose art speaks clearly to our time. Let’s hope she doesn’t have to wait too much longer. Artemisia Gentileschi by Jonathan Jones is published by Laurence King, £12.99.