July 12 2018 | By Jesse Locker for Hyperallergic
The National Gallery Acquires Its First Painting By A Woman Since 1991
Above: Artemisia Gentileschi, “Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria” on easel (image courtesy of the National Gallery London)
The National Gallery in London made headlines last week with its acquisition of a rare self-portrait of 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi as St. Catherine. The painting was offered for sale in December 2017 by the French antiquary Christophe Joron-Derem and was snatched up by the prominent London-based picture dealers Marco Voena and Fabrizio Moretti for €2,360,600 ($2,772,675). They then sold it at auction this past spring to a buyer — now known to have been the National Gallery — for $3.6 million, setting a new record for the artist. Before getting too excited about glass ceilings being broken, however, keep in mind that the Getty bought her father Orazio Gentileschi’s admittedly splendid “Danaë” (c. 1623) for $30.49 million. Moreover, the picture is one of a mere 20 works by women owned by the National Gallery, and the BBC reported that it was the museum’s first acquisition of a work by a woman artist since 1991.
A modest 28 x 28 inches in size, and in what appears to be excellent condition, it portrays what is unmistakably the likeness of the artist. With her brown curls, arched eyebrows, prominent brow, and rounded chin and slender neck, the sitter is recognizable, for example, from Gentileschi’s “Self-Portrait as a Lute Player” (1616–18) in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. She holds the attributes of St. Catherine: a palm of martyrdom in one hand and a spiked wheel in the other, and wears a curious crown-turban-halo hybrid. The tight brushwork, relatively high finish, and compositional parallels indicate that it must have been painted when the artist was in Florence, and 1615–19 seem the most likely dates. The painting has a particularly close resemblance to the artist’s “St. Catherine of Alexandria” (1615–17) in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, but in the London painting she looks directly out at the viewer, a telltale sign of self-portraiture.
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