Santa Catarina de Alexandria

Artemisia Gentileschi built her fame on women in violent action, Judith sawing through a general's neck, heroines caught mid-struggle. This is the quieter side of her. Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the learned young noblewoman of legend who out-argued the emperor's philosophers, leans on a book, the sign of her scholarship. Artemisia probably painted it in Naples in the mid 1630s, where she ran one of the busiest workshops in the city and stood among the very few women of her time with an international reputation. She returned to Catherine more than once, sometimes lending the saint her own features. Stockholm's national museum acquired this one only recently, filling a gap where women painters of the period had simply been absent.