Annunciation

Artemisia Gentileschi signed and dated this in 1630, the year she reached Naples. She had been working in Venice and left in a hurry to escape a savage outbreak of plague, arriving in a new city at 37 where almost no one knew her as more than a name. This large altarpiece was likely her first major commission there. Gabriel sweeps in from the left and Mary turns from her prayer book, both figures lifted out of a dark ground by the hard Caravaggio-style light she had grown up around in Rome. Down in the lower right corner, on a small painted scrap of paper lying on the floor, she wrote her name and the year, the kind of signature meant to be found only by someone who looks closely.