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Lot Essay
In her lifetime, Artemisia Gentileschi was the most celebrated female painter in Europe. Her career spanned more than forty years and during that time she worked in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples and London, winning widespread admiration and counting some of Europe’s leading rulers among her patrons. This imposing large-scale canvas is a previously unpublished altarpiece from her time in Naples, where Artemisia spent the last twenty-five years of her life (except for a brief sojourn in England in 1638⁄9-40). It is painted on a Neapolitan canvas, recognisable by its distinctively open-weave square pattern, and most likely dates from the 1630s. The Spanish-controlled city of Naples provided the artist with a range of commercial opportunities: not only did she work on large-scale public commissions, but she also produced pictures for the open market and for private patrons, both within Naples and beyond. Characteristic of Artemisia’s mature style is the painting’s strong narrative focus and stark lighting, chosen here for its dramatic purpose.
In a darkened room, a woman kneels with her young child at the feet of a bearded bishop saint, who, in turn, sits on an elaborate throne decorated with a gilded harpy. He wears a golden mitre on his head and holds an ornate crosier, his body visibly weighed down by the heavily embroidered cloak fastened at his chest with an ornate clasp. The bishop saint is Blaise, patron saint of wool combers, identifiable by the spiked wool comb in the lower left foreground. Saint Blaise was an early 4th-century doctor and healer, famous for having cured a young boy choking to death on a fish-bone: consequently, he also became the patron saint of sufferers from throat diseases. Here, the boy has just been miraculously healed: he wriggles in his mother’s embrace, his gaze and arms outstretched towards Blaise, whose right hand is raised in blessing. It is a pivotal moment in the story and the strong diagonal beam of light underscoring the saint’s gesture represents the miracle of divine intervention. In addition to the theatrical lighting, the naturalistic, life-size figures occupy a shallow space on a raised step, as if they are actors arranged upon a stage. The wool comb is seen in sharp foreshortening lower left from which one can assume the painting was intended to be viewed from below, as would have been natural for a large canvas placed above an altar.
It was in Naples that Artemisia received her first public altarpiece commissions, requiring her to work on a monumental scale. There appears to be no record of an altarpiece of this subject by Artemisia Gentileschi in early documents or sources, including Bernardo de Dominici’s Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani (1742-44). This is likely owing to the painting having been commissioned by a southern Italian patron who was resident outside of Naples. Interestingly, Saint Blaise is the patron saint of Maratea, in Basilicata: perhaps it was commissioned by someone in that region with a particular devotion to Saint Blaise; after all, the saint’s relics are housed in the Basilica di San Biagio at Maratea, on the mountain that bears his name (Monte Biagio).
The clarity of design, theatricality and colour palette of A Woman presenting her Child to Saint Blaise can be compared to Artemisia Gentileschi’s altarpieces for the Cathedral Basilica San Procolo at Pozzuoli, painted in circa 1635-37. In arranging her figures at different heights within the picture field – one seated, one kneeling – she finds a similar compositional solution to that in The Adoration of the Kings. The handling of Saint Blaise’s finely-pleated white linen tunic here is reminiscent of that worn by Saint Januarius in her signed painting of Saint Januarius in the Amphitheatre at Pozzuoli.
Artemisia’s predilection for metallic vessels and elaborate gilded furniture is something that permeates her work in the 1630s. The golden harpy and clawed foot of Saint Blaise’s throne is particularly reminiscent of the elaborate bedstead in Cleopatra (Private collection; R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art, University Park, Pennsylvania, 1999, pp. 244-245, no. 29, fig. 136, colour plate XIX). There, the Egyptian queen’s sumptuous bed-frame is decorated with a golden Cupid riding a dolphin, which surmounts a clawed foot and is painted in a very similar manner.
Naples was an extended and important chapter in Artemisia Gentileschi’s life. It was here that she made some of her boldest assertions to be considered equal to any male artist. In her letters to the Sicilian collector, Don Antonio Ruffo, in 1649, Artemisia wrote of possessing ‘the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman’ and famously proclaimed ‘I will show Your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do’. Through sheer determination and her business acumen, Artemisia’s career prospered in Naples. She ran a thriving workshop in which her daughter and only surviving child, Prudenzia Palmira, presumably trained. Coincidentally Blaise/Biagio was the name Prudenzia gave to her baby boy, Artemisia’s grandson, born in 1649. A recently discovered document, dated 9 February 1649, records Prudenzia’s marriage to the Neapolitan Antonio De Napoli, with whom she had been living for a long time (‘a multo tempore’): see R. Ruotolo, in A.E. Denunzio and G. Porzio eds, Artemisia Gentileschi a Napoli, exhibition catalogue, Naples, 2022, p. 74 (and for a discussion of the document see D. Antonio D’Alessandro and G. Porzio in ibid., p. 98). Their son, Biagio [‘Biasio’] was baptised on the same day, having been born the previous week (on 3 February): the document was signed and witnessed in their home due to Prudenzia having recently given birth ( ‘per causa dell’infermità’).
There is scholarly consensus that this ambitious painting is a Neapolitan work by Artemisia Gentileschi. We are grateful to Sheila Barker, Patrizia Cavazzini and Maria Cristina Terzaghi for endorsing the attribution upon first-hand inspection, and to Riccardo Lattuada, Judith W. Mann, Christopher Marshall and Giuseppe Porzio for doing so on the basis of photographs.
In a darkened room, a woman kneels with her young child at the feet of a bearded bishop saint, who, in turn, sits on an elaborate throne decorated with a gilded harpy. He wears a golden mitre on his head and holds an ornate crosier, his body visibly weighed down by the heavily embroidered cloak fastened at his chest with an ornate clasp. The bishop saint is Blaise, patron saint of wool combers, identifiable by the spiked wool comb in the lower left foreground. Saint Blaise was an early 4th-century doctor and healer, famous for having cured a young boy choking to death on a fish-bone: consequently, he also became the patron saint of sufferers from throat diseases. Here, the boy has just been miraculously healed: he wriggles in his mother’s embrace, his gaze and arms outstretched towards Blaise, whose right hand is raised in blessing. It is a pivotal moment in the story and the strong diagonal beam of light underscoring the saint’s gesture represents the miracle of divine intervention. In addition to the theatrical lighting, the naturalistic, life-size figures occupy a shallow space on a raised step, as if they are actors arranged upon a stage. The wool comb is seen in sharp foreshortening lower left from which one can assume the painting was intended to be viewed from below, as would have been natural for a large canvas placed above an altar.
It was in Naples that Artemisia received her first public altarpiece commissions, requiring her to work on a monumental scale. There appears to be no record of an altarpiece of this subject by Artemisia Gentileschi in early documents or sources, including Bernardo de Dominici’s Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani (1742-44). This is likely owing to the painting having been commissioned by a southern Italian patron who was resident outside of Naples. Interestingly, Saint Blaise is the patron saint of Maratea, in Basilicata: perhaps it was commissioned by someone in that region with a particular devotion to Saint Blaise; after all, the saint’s relics are housed in the Basilica di San Biagio at Maratea, on the mountain that bears his name (Monte Biagio).
The clarity of design, theatricality and colour palette of A Woman presenting her Child to Saint Blaise can be compared to Artemisia Gentileschi’s altarpieces for the Cathedral Basilica San Procolo at Pozzuoli, painted in circa 1635-37. In arranging her figures at different heights within the picture field – one seated, one kneeling – she finds a similar compositional solution to that in The Adoration of the Kings. The handling of Saint Blaise’s finely-pleated white linen tunic here is reminiscent of that worn by Saint Januarius in her signed painting of Saint Januarius in the Amphitheatre at Pozzuoli.
Artemisia’s predilection for metallic vessels and elaborate gilded furniture is something that permeates her work in the 1630s. The golden harpy and clawed foot of Saint Blaise’s throne is particularly reminiscent of the elaborate bedstead in Cleopatra (Private collection; R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art, University Park, Pennsylvania, 1999, pp. 244-245, no. 29, fig. 136, colour plate XIX). There, the Egyptian queen’s sumptuous bed-frame is decorated with a golden Cupid riding a dolphin, which surmounts a clawed foot and is painted in a very similar manner.
Naples was an extended and important chapter in Artemisia Gentileschi’s life. It was here that she made some of her boldest assertions to be considered equal to any male artist. In her letters to the Sicilian collector, Don Antonio Ruffo, in 1649, Artemisia wrote of possessing ‘the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman’ and famously proclaimed ‘I will show Your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do’. Through sheer determination and her business acumen, Artemisia’s career prospered in Naples. She ran a thriving workshop in which her daughter and only surviving child, Prudenzia Palmira, presumably trained. Coincidentally Blaise/Biagio was the name Prudenzia gave to her baby boy, Artemisia’s grandson, born in 1649. A recently discovered document, dated 9 February 1649, records Prudenzia’s marriage to the Neapolitan Antonio De Napoli, with whom she had been living for a long time (‘a multo tempore’): see R. Ruotolo, in A.E. Denunzio and G. Porzio eds, Artemisia Gentileschi a Napoli, exhibition catalogue, Naples, 2022, p. 74 (and for a discussion of the document see D. Antonio D’Alessandro and G. Porzio in ibid., p. 98). Their son, Biagio [‘Biasio’] was baptised on the same day, having been born the previous week (on 3 February): the document was signed and witnessed in their home due to Prudenzia having recently given birth ( ‘per causa dell’infermità’).
There is scholarly consensus that this ambitious painting is a Neapolitan work by Artemisia Gentileschi. We are grateful to Sheila Barker, Patrizia Cavazzini and Maria Cristina Terzaghi for endorsing the attribution upon first-hand inspection, and to Riccardo Lattuada, Judith W. Mann, Christopher Marshall and Giuseppe Porzio for doing so on the basis of photographs.