The artist’s intention was, likely, an attempt to express her feeling through the painter’s medium, that of her impotence and he powerlessness in the face of a society where violence against a woman was the norm; that had the power, and had used it, to treat her with intolerance and disrespect. This, in the face of the mild six month jail sentence the courts inflicted on Agostino Tassi. ↑ Pollock Differencing the Canon: Routledge 1999 ↑ Camille Paglia (1994).