The jewel of Sotheby’s forthcoming OId Grasp night public sale on 2 July is one probably the most vital discoveries made within the class over the previous decade.
David with the Head of Goliath (1620s-30s) by Artemisia Gentileschi, estimated for between £1m to £2m, has been available on the market simply twice earlier than: in 1975 it was listed as by Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri; then, in 2018 it was initially listed by Munich public sale home Hampel as ‘College of Caravaggio’ earlier than being modified to Artemisia just a few days earlier than its €104,000 sale.
The definitive attribution got here in 2020 when, after in depth restoration and evaluation, Simon Gillespie Studio discovered not solely stylistic proof for Artemisia’s hand however her signature, operating down the blade from the hilt of David’s sword: “ARTEMISIA […] / FE[C]I[T] 16[…]”.
The boldness of this gesture, putting her identify on the just-wielded weapon of the surprising hero, is true to type for the artist who famously proclaimed, “I’ll present you what a girl can do”. It’s certainly one of a number of situations the place she used her signature as a type of creative self-fashioning. In her portrait of Clio, the Muse of Historical past (1632), Artemisia positioned her signature within the papers beside Clio, thereby writing herself into the pages of historical past.
Much more bravura is her depiction of Jael and Sisera: the heroine holds a chisel to the ear of the tyrant in her left hand, whereas her proper lifts a hammer, getting ready to drive it into his cranium. The hammer’s deal with factors the viewer’s gaze in direction of Artemisia’s signature carved right into a pillar: the instrument that inscribed Artemisia’s identify will now vanquish the enemy warrior.
These moments of biblical violence are discovered all through Artemisia’s oeuvre. A number of canvases of Judith and Holofernes—some graphic depictions of the slaughter, others atmospheric renderings of the moments instantly after—have cemented her status as one of the crucial vital artists of her technology. The story of David and Goliath, in some ways an Previous Testomony companion piece to Judith, is one other she revisited all through her profession.
With the canvas standing at over two metres, the Caravaggesque boy, David, appears to tower over the viewer. In contrast to different extant variations by Artemisia’s hand, the place he brandishes the enormous’s head for the viewer, right here the attention takes a second to search out it, rising from the darkness on the backside of the canvas.
Some consultants have raised the chance that it was painted throughout her temporary London interval of the late 1630s, which might make it solely the third attribution from these years (alongside Self-Portrait because the Allegory of Portray, 1638–39, and Susannah and the Elders, 1638-40, each discovered within the Royal Assortment). However the work may additionally date from the time she spent in Rome a decade earlier.
The problem of courting the portray is attribute of one of the crucial the distinctive options of Artemisia’s work: her stylistic versatility, as she shifted, tailored, and re-adopted totally different compositions for brand new commissions and patrons. It is without doubt one of the issues that makes her such an exciting artist, in addition to one thing of an enigma.
