San Procolo di Pozzuoli e sua madre Santa Nicea

Artemisia Gentileschi painted this around 1636 in Naples, which was then ruled from Spain, and it was a kind of job she did not often get: a public commission for a church. The bishop of nearby Pozzuoli, a Spaniard named Martin de Leon y Cardenas, was rebuilding his cathedral and ordered three large canvases from her for the choir. This one shows two saints the town had honoured for centuries, Proculus, a deacon, and Nicea, his mother, both said to have been put to death for their faith back in Roman times and buried in that very cathedral. For Artemisia it meant painting the patrons of the place for the people who still prayed to them. She was by then running one of the busiest workshops in Naples, a woman with her own name over a trade that assumed you were a man. The painting still hangs in Pozzuoli. It came home in 2014, after roughly 50 years away being restored.