Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria

Artemisia Gentileschi painted this in Florence, a few years after moving there in 1613. She was in her early twenties and rebuilding a life. The saint is Catherine of Alexandria, a woman condemned to die on a spiked breaking wheel, a broken fragment of which she rests her hand on here, since the wheel shattered before it could kill her. The face is Gentileschi's own. She used herself as the model, something she did more than once, partly because a woman painter had ready access to one sitter above all others. In Florence she became the first woman admitted to the city's academy of drawing and won the notice of the Medici court. The National Gallery in London bought this picture in 2018, its first painting by her.