The Tamesis
A painting by Artemisia Gentileschi has been acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the first work by the artist to be collected.
The title of this painting is Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy (c. 1625), was thought lost until it resurfaced in a French private collection in 2011. In 2014, the painting was sold at Sotheby’s for $1.1 million, setting a new record for Gentileschi’s auction at the time.
In the 12 years since the Sotheby’s sale, Gentileschi has gained mainstream recognition, particularly in the wake of the #MeToo movement in the late 2010s, when her paintings became particularly poignant in their depictions of male sexual violence against women. A retrospective exhibition at London’s National Gallery in 2021 further raised her profile.
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Gentileschi remained a relatively unknown figure during the Baroque period until feminist art historians such as Mary Garrard returned attention to her art in the late 1980s. Over the centuries, many of her works have also been incorrectly attributed to her father, Orazio Gentileschi.
Gentileschi did depict biblical themes, as did her male contemporaries, but her work particularly sheds light on the gender power imbalance and the psychology of the women she represented. Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy It appropriately focuses on the inner workings of its subject, specifically removing the crosses and other religious symbols that usually accompanied Mary Magdalene during her conversion.
Only a handful of other American museums own important paintings by Gentileschi, including institutions such as the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.
The National Gallery’s announcement did not say who owned its newly acquired Gentileschi works from 2014 to the present. The painting will be on display in the museum’s permanent collection galleries starting in March. The museum’s collection of approximately 160,000 items spans from the Middle Ages to the present day.
“This is an important moment,” Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art, said in a statement. Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy Collection of the National Gallery as the first notable example of Artemisia Gentileschi’s outstanding work. This acquisition marks a significant addition to our historic collection and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to deepening the collection and thereby expanding public access to great works of art. We look forward to sharing this seminal painting with National Gallery visitors over the coming years as it enters a public collection for the first time. “
