Betsabá

By the time she painted this around 1637, Artemisia Gentileschi had been running a busy studio in Naples for several years, and she worked the way the city worked, as a collaboration. The bathing figure of Bathsheba and her maids are hers. The crisp palace architecture at the upper left was added by a specialist in painted buildings, Viviano Codazzi, and the run of landscape by yet another hand, Domenico Gargiulo. Sharing a large canvas out among experts was ordinary Neapolitan practice. The subject is the uncomfortable one from the Book of Samuel, King David watching a married woman bathe from his roof, and Artemisia returned to it at least seven times over her career. Here Bathsheba seems lost in being combed and dressed, unaware of the small figure of the king high above.