Orazio Gentileschi

Orazio Gentileschi was a Tuscan painter who fell under the spell of Caravaggio in Rome around 1600, taking up that painter's stark shadows and harsh, truthful light. He knew Caravaggio personally, and the two once ended up as co-defendants in the same libel trial. Orazio's own versions are cooler and more refined, with clear colours and crisp draperies.

He is often remembered now through his daughter, Artemisia, whom he trained and who became a greater painter than he was. Her early life was marked by a rape trial against a colleague of his, after which father and daughter both largely left Rome.

Orazio kept moving in search of patrons, to Genoa, then Paris, and finally to London, where he became court painter to King Charles I. There he painted an allegorical ceiling for a royal house at Greenwich. He died in London in 1639, an Italian follower of Caravaggio who ended his days decorating English palaces.