Sainte Cécile

Around 1620 Artemisia Gentileschi was one of the very few women running her own painting workshop, taking commissions in Rome and Florence when that profession was almost entirely closed to women. Here she paints Saint Cecilia, the early Christian martyr who became the patron saint of music, shown as a richly dressed woman glancing upward from a lute. The deep shadow and the single strong light falling across her hands speak the language of Caravaggio, among whose followers Artemisia had grown up. The absorbed player has often been read as the artist partly picturing herself. A cleaning in the 1980s recovered a small pipe organ half-lost in the dark behind her, the instrument most traditionally tied to Cecilia.