From an early Mannerist style, a brief Caravaggesque phase, to a courtly refinement in his maturity, Orazio Gentileschi’s career was marked by innovations and movement.
Indeed, few artists in history underwent such a dramatic change in artistic personality as his. In the first decade of the 1600s Orazio Gentileschi absorbed the naturalistic influence of the young Caravaggio, who he knew personally, but favored a soft luminous light instead of a harsh chiaroscuro. His paintings have a lyrical, stately quality, with pared down compositions, a rich blend of colors, and crisp contours faithful to his Tuscan origins. Active primarily in Rome, Orazio eventually travelled across Italy — the Marche, Genoa, Turin — and Europe, painting for the likes of the duke of Savoy, Marie de Médici, and ultimately King Charles I. In London, where he spent the last 12 years of his life, Orazio joined a constellation of international painters — Rubens, Van Dyck, Honthorst, Lievens — and produced highly finished, brightly colored and refined works much as Simon Vouet did in Paris at the time. His daughter, Artemisia Gentileschi, a formidable painter with whom he collaborated from time to time, is among the most celebrated female artists in history.
Taking his name ‘Gentileschi’ from a maternal uncle, Orazio was born into an artistic family in Pisa with a goldsmith as father, Giovanni Battista Lomi, and an older brother, Aurelio Lomi, also a painter. Little is known about his early works. Around 1576, Orazio moved to Rome, where he painted figures for frescoes in several churches, commissioned by Popes Sixtus V (r. 1585–90) and Clement VIII (r. 1592–1605). Arguably his finest early works are the small-scale works on marble and alabaster which hint at the pictorial refinement to come.
By the first decade of the 1600s Orazio Gentileschi had broken through to the upper tiers of patronage in Rome, dominated by the Borghese papacy and beyond. The young Caravaggio, who exchanged painting dramatically lit models in everyday clothes for the reigning idealistic tradition of Raphael, the Carracci and Guido Reni, emerged in Rome as its most ground-breaking painter. One of his closest and most gifted followers, Orazio absorbed the influence of Caravaggio’s naturalism, but kept his distinct identity, which was characterized by the sensitive modeling of light, and refined use of colors that creates simple and dramatic compositions. This can be seen in his monumental Circumcision of Christ painted for the high altar of the Gesù in Ancona in 1607.
In 1605 Orazio’s wife died and he took on the responsibility of caring for his daughter Artemisia who, like his sons, was encouraged to take up painting. In 1611 Artemisia and Orazio’s styles became extremely close and works are now given by some to father and others to daughter, such the Cleopatra in the Etro collection, Milan.
Orazio’s Roman period closes with some of his most poetic single figure compositions, such as the two paintings of David Contemplating the Head of Goliath (Galleria Spada, Rome and Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) painted on very different scales and supports, and The Lute Player (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.). Orazio’s Lute Player recalls Caravaggio’sPenitent Magdalene in the Doria Pamphilj collection in its Giorgionesque luminosity and attention to detail, but the atmospheric quality of the lighting in this work and all this group point the way to Gentileschi’s decisive move away from a Caravaggesque idiom.
In 1613, perhaps suffering from the fall-out from the trial which he had brought against his pupil Agostino Tassi, for ‘deflowering’ his 17-year-old daughter, Orazio Gentileschi left Rome, finding religious patronage in the Papal Marches. From the end of this decade come the two versions of St. Cecilia and an Angel (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. and Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia) dateable 1618–21. He was probably in Fabriano around 1619 where he painted one of his most sublime altarpieces, the Vision of St. Francesca Romana (Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino) which provided the source for the figures in the two paintings of St. Cecilia. The exquisite work on copper, St. Christopher (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), dated between 1615–20, was clearly influenced by Adam Elsheimer and Carlo Saraceni. Collectable works on copper, which were especially popular in seicento Rome, form an important component of Orazio’s oeuvre.
A pivotal moment in Orazio Gentileschi’s career came in 1621 when he was summoned to Genoa, the commercial center of the Hapsburg Empire, by the Genoese nobleman Giovanni Antonio Sauli. Orazio painted a series of large, explicitly sensual paintings: Danaë (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), Lot and His Daughters (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) and the Penitent Magdalene (Private collection) for his patron. From this period, he also produced the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham), which would be the most popular of all his compositions. While in Genoa, Orazio painted an Annunciation painted in 1623 for Carlo Emanuele I, Duke of Savoy (Galleria Sabauda, Turin), widely regarded as the pinnacle of his achievement.
After spending two years in France from 1624–26, working for the Queen of France, Marie de Médici, Orazio Gentileschi was invited in the autumn of 1626 by George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1592–1628) to London where he would become court painter to King Charles I. By this time there was so much demand from his expanding private clientele that each one his most famous compositions would inspire numerous autograph variants.
During his 12-year English sojourn Orazio Gentileschi painted around two dozen works. Gentileschi’s arrival in London was preceded by the reprisal of older compositions painted for the Duke of Buckingham, including a Penitent Magdalene(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) which was later replicated for King Charles (Private collection). For King Charles himself Orazio painted a Lot and His Daughters (Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao) notable for its emphasis on the rich silk fabrics and still life detail. While in England Orazio’s irascible nature boiled over into an ongoing feud with the influential art advisor Balthazar Gerbier, compensated for by a relationship with the catholic Queen Henrietta Maria whose new home, the ‘Queen’s House’ built by Inigo Jones, he helped decorate. Undoubtedly the finest work from Orazio’s English period is the monumental Finding of Moses (The National Gallery, London) painted for the House’s Great Hall. As befits an artist working in the Stuart court, the source here is not Caravaggio but Venetian and specifically Veronese, whereas the verdant landscape may be based on Orazio’s personal familiarity with the Thames valley. His last great achievement is a series of ceiling canvases for the Queen’s House, possibly painted in collaboration with Artemisia, completed in 1638. Held in high esteem until his death in in London in early 1639, Orazio was laid to rest in the Queen’s Chapel at Somerset House.
Selected artworks
Top 3 auction prices
2022
1995
2016
Details
Further reading
Christina Terzaghi, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, Between Paris and London, Rome, 2017.
Keith Christiansen and Judith W. Mann, eds., Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, exh. cat., New York, 2001.
Gabriele Rinaldi, Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I, exh. cat., London, 1999.
R Ward Bissell, Orazio Gentileschi and the Poetic Tradition in Caravaggesque Painting, University Park, 1981.
Notable exhibitions
Turin, Musei Reali Torino, Orazio Gentileschi, Un Pittore in Viaggio, 22 November 2025 – 3 May 2026. Curated by Anna Maria Brava and Gelsomina Spione.
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, Orazio Gentileschi in Genoa: Paintings for the Palazzo Sauli, 1 October 2002–12 January 2003
Rome, Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Venezia, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, 15 October – 6 October 2002; travelled to New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 14 February – 12 May 2002; travelled to St. Louis, Saint Louis Art Museum, 15 June – 15 September 2002. Curated by Keith Christiansen and Judith W. Mann.
London, National Gallery, Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I, 3 March – 23 May 1999; travelled to Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 7 June – 5 September 1999; travelled to Madrid, Museo del Prado, 20 September – 20 November 1999. Curated by Gabriele Finaldi.