Although known today for her numerous self-portraits, often in the guise of allegorical figures, Artemisia Gentileschi was celebrated by her contemporaries as a painter of portraits.¹ Only a few of these have survived, however, and this stately depiction of an elegant and beautiful young woman must rank amongst her very best examples in the genre. Stylistically, it should date to early 1620, just after the artist’s return from Florence to Rome, where she would remain until 1627. Indeed, during her seven year stay in the papal capital, Artemisia seems to have been particularly sought after for her likenesses; Filippo Baldinucci noted that once back in Rome, the artist “si diede prima a far ritratti de’quali fece moltissimi in Roma.”²

This Portrait of a Seated Lady bears close comparison to two other important examples from the early 1620s: a Portrait of a Lady with a Fan (Sovereign Order of Malta) and Artemisia’s most ambitious portrait of the Roman period, the full length Portrait of a Gonfaloniere (fig. 1). The latter can be firmly dated; there is a period inscription on the reverse (perhaps by the artist herself) with the date of 1622. The Gonfaloniere is a grand image, depicting a man in full armor, standing in an interior, his hand resting on a draped table. A papal banner (gonfalone) that gives the painting its title hangs in the background. It was for many years the only portrait securely attributed to Artemisia. The Maltese Portrait of a Lady with a Fan reappeared only in 2003. It is of similar dimensions to the present canvas, and depicts a slightly older woman, standing against a dark background. Since its rediscovery, numerous scholars have noted that it is likely a picture recorded in the inventories of the Balbi family of Genoa—it has been correctly observed that the pose of the sitter and general treatment of the subject shows clear influence of Flemish portraiture then popular there. It has been hypothesized that this might have been Artemisia’s intent. While we do not know if she traveled to Genoa (where her father Orazio had moved in 1621), it seems likely that a portrait like this, perhaps destined for a Genoese collects ion, was her attempt to appeal to local taste and even to test the waters for a possible visit.

The present Portrait of a Seated Lady represents a different approach to portraiture from these two other works. The sitter, who appears to be in her late 20s or early 30s, is resplendently dressed in a black, somewhat conservatively styled, dress, which has nevertheless been elaborately embroidered with gold thread. She is seated in a large chair and turns three quarters to her right—her beautiful profile and head reflected in the shimmer of the gold finial that adorns the top of her chair (fig. 2). The tone of the picture is more formal, likely representing the prevailing taste of Artemisia’s Roman aristocratic audience. Francesco Solinas has noted compositional similarities to the portraits of Lavinia Fontana, who spent her final years in Rome painting for a similar clientele.³

A compelling clue as to the sitter in this portrait is provided by the correspondence of the artist, discovered and translated by Francesco Solinas in 2011. In a letter of 5^th of March, 1620, Artemisia Gentileschi, having arrived in Rome from Florence only a few weeks before, wrote to Francesco Maria Maringhi, her lover and confidant, that she was already busy at work painting a portrait of the “Principessa di Albano” and tasked him with sending her some galanterie that might please her sitter and her sisters. Solinas has since hypothesized that this stately portrait of a beautiful young woman may be identified with that reference. In 1620, the “Principessa di Albano” would almost certainly refer to Caterina, wife of Paolo Savelli, Principe di Albano, who at the t.mes of the sitting would have been 31 years of age. In addition, her dress which is influenced by Spanish court fashion has been dated by Aileen Ribeiro to probably right around 1620, again fitting well with the date of Savelli’s sitting.⁴ Without the lack of corroborating documentary evidence this identification must remain tentative, although it seems very apt, both based on the likely dating of the painting itself and the age of Caterina when she would have sat to Artemisia.

Although appearing at auction in the mid-20^th century with attributions to Justus Suttermans, an annotation on a Witt photo mount made by Hermann Voss (1884-1969), one of the pioneering scholars of the Italian Baroque, was the first t.mes the painting was attributed to Artemisia Gentileschi, who at the t.mes would have been still a little known figure. The painting was exhibited as by Artemisia when it was shown at the Trafalgar Gallery in 1983, after which it entered the Johnson Foundation collects ion and was not widely available for study. Its reappearance at auction in 1999 allowed a new generation of scholars to examine the painting. In his catalogue raisonné which appeared the same year, Ward Bissell dated the painting to possibly the 1630s, suggesting that it might be identifiable with a portrait of a “duchessa” that Artemisia mentioned in a letter to Cassiano del Pozzo in December 1630, when she had moved to Naples. As the small corpus of Artemisia’s portraiture has expanded, however, this Portrait of a Seated Lady has been generally dated to a decade earlier by scholars.

Old Master Paintings

Artemisia Gentileschi: In the Details

_{1. Numerous early sources note her pre-eminence as a portrait painting: Baldinucci, Sandrart, de Dominici, and as late as Horace Walpole in 1765, who observed “Artemisia Gentileschi was also in England, was reckoned not inferior to her father in history, and excelled him in portraits [Anecdotes of Painting in England, 1786, reprinted 1871, p. 136).”}

_{2. “She focused primarily on painting portraits, of which she made a lot in Rome,” F. Baldinucci, Notizie…1812 edition, vol X, p. 251.}

_{3. Solinas 2011, p. 86.}

_{4. Trafalgar Galleries at the Royal Academy III, exhibition catalogue, 1983, and recently again in a private communication.}