Orazio Gentileschi

Exhibited by Trinity Fine Art

Material Oil on canvas

Dimensions 127 x 112 cm

Place of Creation Italy

Status Vetted

About the Work

Seated in a barren, grotto-like setting, his upper torso bared, his gaze directed heavenwards, the great fourth-century translator of the Hebrew Bible into Latin is depicted as a penitent in the wilderness, reflecting on mortality and the vanity of worldly things. His vivid red cardinal’s robe hangs off his body in luxuriant folds, contrasting sharply with the exposed white flesh of his left shoulder and chest

Orazio Gentileschi was an ardent admirer and colleague of Caravaggio with whom he shared a close friendship and studio props, and he wholeheartedly embraced the great Lombard artist’s polemical practice of painting directly from a posed model. The objective of this was to achieve a compelling effect of physical immediacy and veracity, an approach that struck contemporaries as completely and astonishingly novel.

What makes the present picture so unique, as well as key to our understanding of what “dipingere dal naturale” (painting from life) entailed, is the fact that we can identify the person who posed for the picture and even hear his experience of doing so. He was a seventy-two-year-old pilgrim from Palermo named Giovanni Pietro Molli. Prior to August 1611, he had lived in Rome for a year and half, returning again on March 19, 1612, the same year in which he was called as a witness at the trial held at the Corte Savella in Rome in July and September-October of 1612 regarding the rape of Orazio’s daughter Artemisia by a former colleague, Agostino Tassi, in March of the preceding year.

“Signor Orazio Gentileschi, the painter, made use of me to portray a similar head in some paintings he was undertaking, and in a full-length St Jerome; He had me undress from the waist up to paint a Saint Jerome similar to me, and for this purpose he kept me at his house during the whole of that Lent, because three or four days a week I always had to go to his house and on some days that I went I stayed there from morning to evening and ate and drank in his house and he paid me for my days but to sleep I returned to my house...”

From the testimony of Giovanni Pietro Molli - 27 July 1612

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Provenance

Private Collection 1943
Carlo Orsi, Milan 2003
Koelliker Collection, Milan 2003
Private Collection 2019

Literature

R. Longhi, “Ultimi studi su Caravaggio e la sua cerchia”, in “Proporzioni”, I, 1943, p.22
A. Emiliani, “Orazio Gentileschi: nuove proposte per il viaggio marchigiano”, in “Paragone”, July 1958, p. 44
A. Moir, The Italian Followers of Caravaggio, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1967, I, pp. 70-71, II pp. 17, 77
L. Mallé. “Palazzo Madama in Torino”, Turin 1970, p. 72
R. Ward Bissel, “Orazio Gentileschi: Baroque without Rhetoric”, in “The Art Quarterly”, XXXIV, 3, 1971, p. 296, note 43
R. Ward Bissel, “Orazio Gentileschi and the Poetic Tradition in Caravaggesque Paintings”, London 1981, pp. 23-26, 151-152, 163, 172, 206, 230
Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, exhibition catalogue (Roma, Palazzo Venezia, New York, the Metropolitan Museum, Saint Louis, The Saint Louis Art Museum, October 2001-September 2002), curated by K. Christiansen & J. W. Mann, pp. 94, 96
Darkness and light: Caravaggio and his world, exhibition catalogue, Sydney, Art Gallery, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, November 2003 – Maggio 2004) Sydney 2003, n.27
Orazio Gentileschi. “San Gerolamo” exhibition catalogue (Milano, Carlo Orsi 2003), with contributions by K. Christiansen & M. Gregori, Milan 2003.
“Caravaggio y la pintura realista Europea”, exhibition catalogue (Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, October 2005-January 2006), Barcelona 2005, pp. 162-167.
R. Ward Bissel, “Horatius Gentilesc(us) florentinus Fecit”. Florentinism in the art of Orazio Gentileschi”, in “Luce e Ombra. Caravaggismo e naturalismo nella pittura toscana del Seicento”, exhibition catalogue (Pisa 2005) curated by P. Carofano, Pisa 2005, pp. 122, 127, note 17
“Orazio Gentileschi e Pietro Molli”, exhibition catalogue (Genoa, Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, July – September 2005) curated by F. Simonetti, Genoa 2005, pp. 26-29; 47-49; 51-55.
“La “schola” del Caravaggio. Dipinti della Collezione Koelliker”, exhibition catalogue (Ariccia, Palazzo Chigi, October 2006- February 2007), Milan 2006, pp. 120-123
“Omaggio a Capodimonte. Da Caravaggio a Picasso”, exhibition catalogue (Naples Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, October 2007- January 2008) curated by N. Spinosa, Naples 2007, pp. 76-77.