Retrato de una monja

Artemisia Gentileschi is remembered now for fierce biblical heroines, women wielding swords in the dark, but in her own time she was also prized simply as a portrait painter, and this quiet picture shows that side of her. A young nun turns to meet your eyes directly, her habit worked almost entirely in blacks, whites, and grays. Artemisia gave herself no easy color to fall back on and built the whole face out of light instead. She painted it in her twenties, around 1615, when she was making her own way as a professional artist in Florence, a rare thing for a woman then, after a childhood in her father's Roman workshop. The sitter's name has been lost, and the picture stays in private hands.