Gentileschi, Orazio

(1563-1639)

   Italian painter, born in Pisa to a Florentine goldsmith. Orazio's first known work he executed at the age of 30, a fresco in the nave of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, where he moved in c. 1576-1578. He painted in the Mannerist style until c. 1600 when he was exposed to the art of Caravaggio. His St. Francis Supported by the Angel (c. 1605; Madrid, Prado), Crowning of Thorns (c. 1610; Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum), and St. Cecilia and an Angel (c. 1610; Washington, National Gallery) show mundane figures, pushed so close to the foreground that they occupy most of the pictorial space, with dramatic chiaroscuro — all Caravaggist elements. By the 1620s, Caravaggio's popularity in Rome had waned, and the Bolognese painters had taken the forefront. As a result, Orazio changed his style to conform to the taste of his patrons. He relocated to Genoa where he painted his famed Annunciation (c. 1623; Turin, Galleria Sabauda) that takes place in a fully developed domestic interior and grants greater delicacy and elegance to the figures. In 1624, Orazio worked in the French court of Marie de' Medici and, in 1625, he went to England to serve as court painter to Charles I. There he created for Queen Henrietta Maria, Charles' consort, an Allegory of Peace on the ceiling of the Great Hall in the Queen's House at Greenwich (1638-1639). Gentileschi died in England in 1639.

   See also Gentileschi, Artemisia.