Artemisia Gentileschi—A New Documented Chronology

Abstract

During a working career of more than forty years, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-ca. 1652) established herself as an extraordinary personality and the foremost woman painter of Italy. She practiced her adaptation of Caravaggio's style in Rome, Florence, Naples, London, and, most probably, in Genoa and Venice as well. Yet in spite of this prominence and notwithstanding the scholarship of the last fifty years, only a speculative chronology of her art has emerged.1 Furthermore, with the new documentation presented here and the consequent re-evaluations of known texts and of the autograph and attributed pictures, the present view of Artemisia's development must be considerably altered.