In 2020 a major exhibition on Artemisia Gentileschi in London. But there is already an advance

The National Gallery in London is planning a major exhibition on Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome, 1593 - Naples, 1654) to be held in 2020, between the months of April and July. It will be an exhibition that will go into detail about the life and career of the artist, daughter of the great painter Orazio Gentileschi and herself among the great names in seventeenth-century art, and will be also organized to provide a kind of framework for the National Gallery’s new acquisition (dating back to July this year), namely Artemisia’sSelf-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, which the public can already see in the museum as of December 19, 2018. The work passed at auction at Drouout in Paris in 2017, with an estimate between 300 and 400,000 euros, and was bought for 2,360,600 euros (a record for the artist) by antiquarians Marco Voena and Fabrizio Moretti. The painting was then sold shortly thereafter to the National Gallery for the sum of 3.6 million pounds.

“We are fortunate to have one of the largest collections of Italian Baroque painting in the world, with masterpieces by many of the greatest artists of the time,” reads a note from the British museum, “but there is still a paucity of paintings by women in the National Gallery’s collection. The acquisition of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait seeks to balance the balance, and it is the first female portrait, as well as the first self-portrait, in the seventeenth-century Italian collection.” The portrait will remain in London for a few months, then begin a “tour” (that’s the term used by the British museum) that will kick off in Glasgow in March 2019, on the occasion of Women’s Day.

In recent months the painting has undergone a restoration consisting of a cleaning of the entire surface and the repair of gaps. This is a painting in which Artemisia’s identity overlaps, as is often the case in her art, with that of the subjects she depicted: as for the time of its completion, the National Gallery portrait can be dated to the middle years of her Florentine sojourn (between 1612 and 1620), presumably around 1615-1617. During the years she spent in Florence, Artemisia painted several works with her features: through this medium, the artist also managed to “establish her reputation in cultured circles, transforming herself into one of the most sought-after artists of her generation.” There is another version of the work, preserved in the Uffizi, which is considered later.

Pictured: Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as St. Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1615-1617; oil on canvas, 71.4 x 69 cm; London, National Gallery)

In 2020 a major exhibition on Artemisia Gentileschi in London. But there is already an advance

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