Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, also known as Autoritratto in veste di Pittura or simply La Pittura, was painted by Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi. The artwork was most likely produced during Gentileschi’s stay in England between 1638 and 1639. The scene depicts Gentileschi painting herself, who is in turn personified as the “Allegory of Painting” illustrated by Cesare Ripa. The oil-on-canvas work stands today at 96.5 x 73.7 cm at the Royal Collection in London.
Iconologia
Self-Portrait was also largely influenced by the works of Cesare Ripa, most notably his Iconologia, in which he depicts virtues and abstract concepts with human qualities and appearances. “Painting” is described as, “A beautiful woman, with full black hair, disheveled, and twisted in various ways, with arched eyebrows that show imaginative thought, the mouth covered with a cloth tied behind her ears, with a chain of gold at her throat from which hangs a mask, and has written in front "imitation." She holds in her hand a brush, and in the other the palette, with clothes of evanescently covered drapery." Other than the cloth tied around the mouth, Gentileschi envisions this description in her Self-Portrait accurately.
See also
- Metapainting
- Artemisia Gentileschi
- Oil painting
- Baroque
- Cesare Ripa
- Judith Slaying Holofernes (Artemisia Gentileschi)
