Milano’s Palazzo Reale is hosting an exhibition dedicated to the 17th Century painter Artemisia Gentileschi.  Until recently Gentileschi was better-known for her life story than as a prolific and talented painter.  The daughter of the painter Orazio Gentileschi, Artemisia was raped by a colleague of her father’s and later went through a humiliating rape trial.  The show gathers together 52 of her paintings, many of them graphic and bloody depictions of biblical and mythological scenes.  The show also focuses on this painter’s life:  included are documents pertaining to the trial and a collection of eloquent, if ungrammatical, love letters that Artemisia wrote to a Florentine nobleman.  These biographical elements humanize the painter and put her work into context.