Orazio Gentileschi

Orazio Gentileschi was one of the closest of Caravaggio's followers, trained his daughter because no academy would take her, and prosecuted the man who raped her. He was born Orazio Lomi in Pisa, worked in Rome from his teens, and knew Caravaggio personally - the two were co-defendants in a libel case in 1603. What he took from him was the hard light and the ordinary bodies; what he did not take was the violence, and his own manner is cooler, with clear colour and a Tuscan precision in the fabric. Judith and her Maidservant exists in several versions. He taught Artemisia in his own workshop from childhood, and in 1611 hired Agostino Tassi to teach her perspective; when Tassi raped her, Orazio petitioned the pope directly and brought the prosecution, which is not what most fathers of the period did. He worked afterwards in Genoa, then for Marie de Medici in Paris, and from 1626 for Charles I in London as court painter with a house and a pension - the ceiling he painted for the Queen's House at Greenwich is now at Marlborough House. Artemisia came to London near the end of his life and they worked together again. He died there in 1639. His Lot and his Daughters and The Rest on the Flight into Egypt exist in multiple autograph versions, which was normal practice for a painter supplying several courts. Anthony van Dyck drew him in London and the print after that drawing is the standard likeness. He is buried in the Queen s Chapel at Somerset House. His reputation was for a long time absorbed into his daughter s, and the 2001 exhibition that showed them together in Rome and New York was the first attempt to separate the two hands systematically.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history