Queen's House is a former royal residence built between 1616 and 1635. It was built near the now demolished Greenwich Palace, a few miles downriver from the City of London and is now in the London borough of Greenwich. It presently forms a central focus of what is now the Old Royal Naval College with a grand vista leading to the River Thames. The Queen's House architect, Inigo Jones, was commissioned by Queen Anne of Denmark in 1616 and again to finish the house in 1635 by Queen Henrietta Maria. The Queen's House was commissioned by both Anne and Henrietta as a place to display artworks they had accumulated and commissioned; This includes a ceiling of the Great Hall that features a work by Orazio Gentileschi titled Allegory of Peace and the Arts.
Artemisia Lomi or Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter. Gentileschi is considered among the most accomplished seventeenth-century artists, initially working in the style of Caravaggio. She was producing professional work by the age of 15. In an era when women had few opportunities to pursue artistic training or work as professional artists, Gentileschi was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence and she had an international clientele.
Orazio Lomi Gentileschi (1563–1639) was an Italian painter. Born in Tuscany, he began his career in Rome, painting in a Mannerist style, much of his work consisting of painting the figures within the decorative schemes of other artists.
Agostino Tassi was an Italian landscape and seascape painter, and was convicted of raping Artemisia Gentileschi in 1612.
Venus and Cupid (Sleeping Venus) is a circa 1626 painting by Artemisia Gentileschi in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Venus and Cupid is a depiction of a sleeping Venus, who reclines on a blue bed covering and rich crimson and gold tasseled pillow. She wears nothing except a thin wisp of transparent linen around her thigh. Her son Cupid fans her with richly colored peacock feathers as she drifts to sleep. He is gazing at her with an adored, raptured expression. In the background, there is a window looking out onto a moonlight landscape where a temple to the goddess lies. Venus's face has full cheeks, heavy lids, a prominent nose, and small protruding chin—all features of Gentileschi's own face. The body movements are natural: Venus's hand rests lightly on her side, her legs are gently laid together. The work blends together realism and classicism through its iconography and the artist's style.
Susanna and the Elders is a 1610 painting by the Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi and is her earliest-known signed and dated work. It was one of Gentileschi's signature works. She painted several variations of the scene in her career. It currently hangs at Schloss Weißenstein in Pommersfelden, Germany. The work shows an uncomfortable Susanna with two men lurking above her while she is in the bath. The subject matter comes from the deuterocanonical Book of Susanna in the Additions to Daniel. This was a popular scene to paint during the Baroque period.
Santa Cecilia is an early painting, from c. 1620, by the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, a painter described as "a grand exception in the history of art - a successful woman painter in an era in which art was dominated by men."
The Portrait of a Nun is a painting from the 1610s, attributed to the Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi. It is currently in a private collection
The Allegory of Painting is an painting from around the 1640s attributed in 1988 to the Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, although more recent research suggests it was painted by an anonymous Neapolitan painter in the mid-XVIIth century. It is now in the Musee de Tesse, Le Mans, France.
Penitent Magdalene is a painting by the Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi. It hangs in Seville Cathedral. It has probably been in the cathedral since the late 17th century. She returned to the subject later in the 1620s in Mary Magdalene as Melancholy.
Virgin and Child with a Rosary is one of the last known paintings by the Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi. Small in size and painted with oil on copper, it was completed in 1651. It was part of the Spanish royal collection and currently hangs in the El Escorial collection, in Spain.
Susanna and the Elders is one of several paintings on this theme executed by the Italian baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi. This version, painted in 1649, hangs in the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic. It is signed with Gentileschi's signature and the date on the balustrade on the right.
The Birth of Saint John the Baptist, by Artemisia Gentileschi, was part of a six-painting portrayal of Saint John's life, with four of the paintings by Massimo Stanzione and one by Paolo Finoglia, for the Hermitage of San Juan Bautista on the grounds of Buen Rierto in Madrid, under orders from the Viceroy of Naples, the Conde de Monterrey. Although a date has not been agreed upon by scholars, Artemesia most likely painted The Birth of Saint John the Baptist between 1633 and 1635. It is one of the most renowned works from Artemisia's Naples period, especially due to its detailed rendering of fabrics and floor tiles.
Cleopatra is a 1611-1612 oil on canvas painting of Cleopatra by Artemisia Gentileschi, now in the private Etro collection in Milan.
The Finding of Moses is an early 1630s painting by Orazio Gentileschi. There are two versions, the prime version is in The National Gallery in London and the second is in Museo del Prado in Madrid.
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife may refer to a number of pictures based on the story told in Book of Genesis chapter 39:
Danaë was a 1600-1605 oil on canvas painting by Annibale Carraci, destroyed during World War II. An autograph preparatory study survives in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. Prints but no painted copies of it are known.
Bathsheba is a 1636-37 painting by the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, with contributions by Viviano Codazzi and Domenico Gargiulo. It shows the Hittite woman Bathsheba being washed and tended to by her servants. At the top left of the painting, King David sees her from his palace. It was one of seven versions from the story of Bathsheba that Gentileschi painted.
Keith Christiansen is an American art historian, curator, and author. He is the chairman of the department of European paintings at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
