Artemisia Gentileschi
(Rome, 1593 – Naples, 1652)
Madonna and Child
Oil on canvas, 117×87 cm
This highly original and famous painting depicts, in an unprecedented way, a slightly drowsy Virgin Mary suckling the Child: her head slightly tilted, her eyes half-closed, her left hand abandoned, tell us of the sweetness but also of the fatigue of motherhood, in a new vision of art directly inspired by the truth, without losing its dense spiritual references.
It was the very young Artemisia Gentileschi, daughter of the painter Orazio, who conceived this intimate scene, in which the blonde Child Jesus seems to awaken his mother with a gentle caress; from her father’s art, the painter derived the extreme precision of the colours, brilliant, shaded in a series of luminous and iridescent passages of pearly pink, which owe much to the Tuscan tradition. The painting, dated around 1610, can be admired alongside one of Orazio Gentileschi’s absolute masterpieces, David with the Head of Goliath, and together with Artemisia’s other painting in the Galleria Spada, Saint Cecilia Playing the Lute, it forms one of the most remarkable Gentileschi collections in a public museum.
