绘画的寓言

A woman lies on her side, asleep or lost in thought, surrounded by the tools of a painter: a palette, brushes, a drawing compass, and a mask. The mask is the giveaway that this is Painting itself, personified the way a popular handbook of images prescribed in the 17th century. In 1988 the canvas, now in Le Mans, was given to Artemisia Gentileschi, the most celebrated woman painter of her age. More recent study has pulled back from that, leaning instead toward an unnamed Neapolitan hand working around the middle of the century, in the city where Artemisia spent her last decades. The pose is unusual for the subject, which is normally shown upright and at work rather than reclining.