Artemisia Gentileschi’s work discovered in Italy. It is a canvas depicting the Magdalene in ecstasy. – Carlo Franza’s blog

After careful scientific studies it was A new autograph work by Artemisia Gentileschi has been discovered: it’s about there Magdalene in ecstasy. The painting, belonging to a private Italian collection, was purchased by the current …

Artemisia Gentileschi's work discovered in Italy. It is a canvas depicting the Magdalene in ecstasy. – Carlo Franza's blog

After careful scientific studies it was A new autograph work by Artemisia Gentileschi has been discovered: it’s about there Magdalene in ecstasy.

The painting, belonging to a private Italian collection, was purchased by the current owners from a noble family from Turin, where it was inventoried under the generic heading of a seventeenth-century work. The canvas, in fact, has been the subject of in-depth iconographic, philological and stylistic criticism, supported by detailed scientific studies through which it was attributed to the famous painter.

The work is a replica of the Magdalene in ecstasy currently exhibited at the Doge’s Palace in Venice and universally attributed to Artemisia. In the seventeenth century, when a collector requested a replica from an artist, he was attesting to the value and success of the iconographic invention. Making replicas of one’s own works was a common practice both in Orazio Gentileschi’s workshop and in Artemisia’s. What distinguishes the daughter’s technique from that of her father is that Artemisia never replicates the various canvases in a slavish way, but makes changes to the proportions, details and colour combinations, as is also evident in the discovered work.

The substantial difference between the Magdalene in ecstasy currently exhibited at the Doge’s Palace in Venice and the Magdalene in ecstasy that was found is in the color of clothes, a solution that the Roman dyer used several times in her pictorial production. In both works, Magdalene is barely bent to the size of the canvas that seems to imprison her, a sense of compression pervades the space and creates the optical effect of enlarging the figure, giving the saint a powerful hypnotic power.

The rediscovered canvas can be dated to the first Neapolitan period, as is also revealed by the presence of the yellow of Naples. With a wise balance of light and darkness, which distinguishes the pictorial language of Gentileschi, the artist brings out all the emotional and spiritual charge of this contradictory figure of Christianity, divided between the shadow of sin and the light of mystical heights.

The historical-scientific investigations, entrusted to the art historian Delia Somma and now available to the community, have highlighted all the peculiarities attributable to the language of Artemisia Gentileschi. From his studies it emerged that the work, in addition to being a replica of the Magdalene in ecstasywas painted on a recycled canvas; in fact, underneath the pictorial film, it features the face of a cherub painted with light brush strokes that were intended to fit into a composition of figures much larger than the size of the current canvas.

All the results of the research conducted on the Magdalene in ecstasy are published in the book “TheEcstasy of Artemisia Gentileschi, historical-scientific investigation of an unpublished work”, written by art historian Delia Somma and published by Tab.

Carlo Franza