Orazio Gentileschi Madonna and sleeping Christ Child ca. 1610 oil on canvas Harvard Art Museums |
Orazio Gentileschi Christ crowned with Thorns ca. 1610-15 oil on canvas Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig |
Orazio Gentileschi Young Woman playing a Violin ca. 1612 oil on canvas Detroit Institute of Arts |
Orazio Gentileschi Lute Player ca. 1612-20 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
"The interest in subtly varying a single formal design, so remarkably documented in a technical analysis of Orazio's paintings, is perhaps the distinguishing trait of his art – an art that can seem strangely out of step with its time even when it responds to those artist who so strongly shaped it. We have constantly to remind ourselves that Orazio was five years older than the Cavaliere d'Arpino, under whom he worked at San Giovanni in Laterano, and eight years older than Caravaggio. He belonged to the generation of Annibale Carracci, Cigoli, and Passignano – the generation of the reformers of Italian art. His fellow Caravaggisti, Orazio Borgianni and Carlo Saraceni, were younger by eleven and sixteen years, respectively; Reni, Domenichino, Adam Elsheimer, and Rubens all belonged to the next generation. Although Rome was the seat of the Counter-Reformation, there was no reform movement in the arts comparable to those in Florence and Bologna that, in the 1580s, redirected artists to the study of nature and to the great masters of the High Renaissance. Orazio's training was in every respect conservative. Watered-down Raphael was the currency of the day. His fascination with the purely formal elements of composition no less than the decorously pure sentiment of his religious paintings are the result of this training, while the modern guise in which they are presented has to do with his association with Caravaggio and his awareness of the most progressive trends in European painting."
– Keith Christiansen, from his essay in the exhibition catalogue, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi (Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2001)
Orazio Gentileschi Executioner with the Head of John the Baptist 1612 oil on panel Museo del Prado, Madrid |
Orazio Gentileschi Penitent Magdalen 1615 oil on canvas Cattedrale di San Venanzio, Fabriano |
Orazio Gentileschi Rest on the Flight into Egypt ca. 1615-20 oil on canvas Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (Great Britain) |
Orazio Gentileschi Cupid and Psyche ca. 1616-19 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
Orazio Gentileschi St Cecilia with an Angel ca. 1617-18 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Orazio Gentileschi Martha reproving her sister Mary 1620 oil on canvas Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
Orazio Gentileschi Vision of St Francesca Romana 1620 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale della Marche, Urbino |
Orazio Gentileschi Madonna and sleeping Christ Child in a Landscape ca. 1621-24 oil on canvas Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa |
Orazio Gentileschi Danaë and the Shower of Gold ca. 1621-23 oil on canvas Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Orazio Gentileschi Judith and Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes ca. 1621-24 oil on canvas Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |