"The National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, has acquired a painting by Italian Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi, a historic first for the institution's collections."
""In this period, Artemisia Gentileschi offers the viewer her most confident pictures, including our newly acquired 'Mary Magdalene,' where the figures, male or female, are fully realized, sentient human beings," she said."
"The composition evokes Caravaggio's earlier rendition - stripped of the skull, cross, and ointment jar that usually accompanied the disciple in favor of depicting her cave-dwelling life in solitude after the ascension of Christ."
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC acquired Artemisia Gentileschi's 'Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy' (c.1625), the first work by the artist to enter the collection. The painting re-emerged from a French private collection in 2011 after being thought lost for centuries and was sold at Sotheby's in 2014. The work made its United States debut in the 2021–22 exhibition By Her Hand and was reunited with other masterpieces at the Wadsworth Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Art. Gentileschi created the painting around 1625 upon her return to Rome, producing one of her most confident early-1620s works. The composition references Caravaggio while omitting traditional Magdalen attributes, portraying a solitary, contemplative figure within a dark cavern.
Read at Hyperallergic
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