User:Rmmiller364/Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria

Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria is a 1615–1617 painting by the Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, showing the artist in the guise of Catherine of Alexandria. It was painted during her time in Florence. and is similar to her Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c.1619), now in the Uffizi.

Provenance
The original owner of Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine is unknown and nothing is recorded of its whereabouts until the early 1940s when the painting was bequeathed by Charles Marie Boudeville to his son. The painting remained in the Boudeville private collection until it was sold at Hôtel Drouot in Paris on 19 December 2017 for €2.4m. The €1.9m high hammer price was well above the original estimate of €300,000-€400,000. It was purchased by London-based dealers Marco Voena and Fabrizio Moretti. The former price record for one of her paintings was made in 2014 with the sale of her Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy. In July 2018, the National Gallery in London announced that it had purchased the painting from the dealers for £3.6 million ($4.7 million). It is the first painting by a woman artist acquired by the National Gallery since 1991 when five paintings by Paula Rego were donated to the museum.

Debate over Provenance
Before the National Gallery purchased the painting, the trustees of the museum expressed concern that the ownership of the portrait could not be documented earlier than the 1940s. For this reason, the trustees decided to include the painting on a list of works in the museum that might have been "improperly acquired."

Similar Paintings in Gentileschi's Oeuvre
In April 2019, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence announced the results of a scientific investigation of Gentileschi's painting of St. Catherine of Alexandria in the collection of the Galleria degli Uffizi. Conservators Maria Luisa Reginella and Roberto Bellucci examined the underpainting of this work with ultraviolet, infrared, and x-ray techniques, revealing that Gentileschi had changed the composition after she had begun painting. The study concluded that the figure in the Uffizi St. Catherine originally wore a turban and had her head turned towards the viewer, in a manner that is identical to Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as St. Catherine of Alexandria. Based upon tracings of the London painting provided by the National Gallery, conservators concluded that Gentileschi had used the same cartoon or preparatory drawing for both of these paintings, but later changed the position of the saint's head in the Uffizi painting to be oriented upwards, towards heaven, and painted over the turban with a crown. Gentileschi also shifted the position of the saint's left hand and added a diaphanous veil at her neckline. The National Gallery also provided tracings to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, which owns a self-portrait of Gentileschi playing the lute. While the position of the arms in the London painting is identical to the final composition of the Uffizi St. Catherine, the head aligns with the painting in Hartford.





Scholarly Books and Articles

 * Locker, Jesse. Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.
 * Barker, Sheila, Artemisia Gentileschi in a Changing Light. Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2017
 * Bal, Meike, Mary Garrard, and Nanette Salomon. The Artemisia Files: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other Thinking People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006

Media

 * Javier Pes. "The National Gallery’s New Artemisia Gentileschi Should Be a Triumph—But Clouds Are Forming Over Its Ownership During WWII." Art News. 6 July 2018.
 * Jonathan Jones. "National Gallery buys Artemisia Gentileschi masterpiece for £3.6m." The Guardian. 6 July 2018.
 * Naomi Rea, "Newly Discovered Drawings Beneath a Work by Artemisia Gentileschi Suggest She Often Used Herself as a Model." Art News. 7 March 2019.
 * Nancy Kenny, "X-ray of Uffizi's Artemisia Gentileschi reveals a tantalising underpainting." Art Newspaper. 11 April 2019.