Corisca and the Satyr

The scene comes from a hugely popular play of the day, Guarini's Il Pastor Fido, a pastoral that audiences across Italy knew almost by heart. The nymph Corisca has accepted a satyr's gifts, and he takes that as licence to seize her. He grabs her by the hair to stop her running, and it comes away in his hand: it is a wig, and she is already gone, leaving him holding the false hairpiece. Artemisia painted this in Naples around 1630, where she ran one of the busiest workshops in the city. For a long time it was catalogued under other names, including the painter Massimo Stanzione, before scholars returned it to her. She gives Corisca the escape the story promises, mid-stride and already half out of the frame.