Aurora

Aurora is the Roman goddess of the dawn, shown here with her arms opening as the first gold light rises behind the mountains at her back. Artemisia Gentileschi painted her around 1627, by which point she was something rare in Italy, a woman running her own workshop and taking commissions in her own name from Florence to Venice to Naples. The figure's twisting reach and the heavy fall of bronze cloth are the things she was known for, learned partly from her father Orazio and partly from the followers of Caravaggio she worked among. The canvas stayed in private hands for centuries, passing through the Arrighetti family before it reappeared on the Florence art market in 1974.