Naples – It was the summer of 1630 when Artemisia moved to Naples: at 37, after an adventurous existence and a successful career, she found a new home in the capital of the Spanish viceroyalty. Second European metropolis by population after Paris, Naples offered a rather lively cultural life: the memory of Caravaggio was still fresh, while masters such as Josè de Ribera and Massimo Stanzione were busy embellishing the city with valuable works. The painter did not lack patrons – from Don Antonio Ruffo of Sicily to King Philip IV of Spain – or exchanges with the best artists present on the square. For the first time Artemisia found herself painting three canvases for the same church, the Cathedral of Pozzuoli in the Rione Terra, and she showed that she was able to renew her art by responding to the transformations of taste with new subjects.

The lady of seventeenth-century painting found the Bourbon capital so congenial to her spirit that, except for a brief stay in England, she decided to stay there forever. A story that so far no exhibition has ever told and that in December will finally be staged in the heart of Naples, at the Gallerie d’Italia in via Toledo. Made in special collaboration with the National Gallery of London, the project sees the director of the British museum Gabriele Finaldi in the role of specialist advisor and is curated by Antonio Ernesto Denunzio and Giuseppe Porzio, while other valuable collaborations come from the Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte and from the State Archives of Naples.

From 3 December to 20 March 2023 Artemisia Gentileschi in Naples will present a careful selection of works from Italian and international public and private collections, with a special space reserved for the most recent research. Themes and subjects dear to the painter in the last twenty years of her life will chase each other along the path of the exhibition, which will explore the enormous success met by Artemisia in the city and reconstruct the vibrant context of her work in Naples.

Following the thread of the paintings chosen by the curators, we can imagine the artist in his flourishing workshop, working with renowned masters in the city such as Stanzione, Onofrio Palumbo, Bernardo Cavallino. And we will discover how her iconographies and her subjects soon became popular with the Neapolitan public: from Cleopatra to Giuditta, the female heroines loved by Artemisia were taken with countless variations and successfully placed on the market, highlighting the painter’s influence on the environment. artistic Neapolitan. Here some of the most interesting ideas of the project are born, which we will discover thanks to a vast research campaign conducted for the occasion.

Read also:
• Found in Austria the Roman Caritas by Artemisia Gentileschi