Retrato de um Gonfaloneiro

A gonfaloniere was a city's standard-bearer, a senior magistrate, and here one stands in full armour with his hand on his sword and a great white ruff at his throat. What makes the picture unusual is who painted it. Artemisia Gentileschi was a woman running her own workshop in the 1620s, when female painters rarely got portrait commissions at all, still less from powerful men who wanted to be shown as soldiers and officials. This is one of very few portraits by her that survive, and her only known full-length male one. Some scholars think the sitter may be a Genoese nobleman, Pietro Gentile; the green sash across his armour and the sword under his hand are the marks of his office, set down by a painter better known today for her fierce scenes of Judith and Holofernes.