A Conversão de Madalena

Artemisia Gentileschi painted this in Florence, and the timing matters. In 1616 she became the first woman admitted to the city's Accademia del Disegno, the drawing academy that ran the artistic life of Florence. This is the confident work of an artist who had just been let inside the door. The saint is shown at the instant of turning away from worldly life, one hand on her breast, eyes lifted, dressed in gleaming yellow satin and seated in a fine carved chair that gives her the air of a Florentine noblewoman rather than a penitent. That was likely deliberate. The picture was probably made for the Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena, wife of Cosimo II de' Medici, whose own name echoed the Magdalene's. On the back of the chair Artemisia signed herself in paint, ARTEMISIA LOMI, using the surname of her Tuscan relatives.