An Artemisia Gentileschi attributed painting appears in the Rouillac catalog: the painting will be auctioned on June 7, 2026 at Château de Villandry, with an estimate between 200 and 300 thousand euros.
Why did the painting immediately attract attention?
The French auction house presents a Saint Dorothea that emerged from a private French collection and was restored before the sale. The work, an oil on canvas measuring 74 x 62 centimeters, is placed in the artist’s Neapolitan years, between 1630 and 1654.
However, the attribution remains a decisive step. Rouillac claims that confirmation came from Keith Christiansen, a scholar of early 17th-century art, with particular attention to Caravaggio and his circle.
The painting thus fits into the corpus of one of the most studied figures of the European 17th century. Moreover, the discovery has strengthened the interest of the market for works rarely documented and subjected to specialist verification.
How did the work resurface?
The discovery stems from a family story. The owner, great-granddaughter of the French Marine engineer general Georges Raclot, still kept the manuscript of the speech delivered at her grandfather’s funeral in 1957.
Those pages recalled the man’s pleasure in living in Burgundy, surrounded by the works he loved most. Among those canvases was also the one today associated with Artemisia Gentileschi.
At the end of summer 2024, the current owner contacted Aymeric Rouillac after seeing his video on Instagram. The request initiated a new phase of study and comparison.
What elements support the attribution?
Rouillac involved Turquin & Associés and art historian Stéphane Pinta. According to initial observations, doubts were few from the start.
In particular, Pinta points to the treatment of the white fabric, slightly folded and creased, as a sort of visual signature. Additionally, he notes a very sophisticated chromatic construction, transitioning from cold white to light gray veils.
From there, warmer tones emerge, up to the purple and wine-red folds of the drapery. The brushstroke, the critic observes, is soft and almost frothy, while the saint’s face takes on coppery hues.
Overall, these elements reinforce the reading proposed by the auction house. However, the painting’s conservation history also shows significant changes over time.
What did the restoration reveal?
The recovery was overseen by Laurence Baron-Callegari. The restoration showed that the composition was significantly altered during execution.
Originally, the architrave at the top of the painting was decorated with a series of petals that were later erased. Some fragments of the original paint layers still make them visible.
According to Baron-Callegari, these details refer to a different symbolism, almost close to the theme of vanitas. Additionally, the palm of martyrdom present today appears problematic and poorly defined, likely added at a later stage.
The restorer also notes that the palm was made with a lacquer varnish, which today complicates its readability. The 19th-century and early 20th-century campaigns had already encountered pentimenti and pictorial variations.
That said, they did not know how to handle them and ended up covering some traces of the original composition. The latest intervention, however, removed numerous overpaintings to restore readability to the authentic surface.
Saint Rosalia or Saint Dorothea?
The reading of the iconography is not yet resolved. Today the work is presented as Saint Dorothea, but scholars oscillate between different figures of the Christian tradition.
An initial hypothesis proposed Saint Rosalia, a figure deeply felt in the Neapolitan context of the 17th century. After the plague of Palermo in 1624, the discovery of the relics on Monte Pellegrino favored its rapid spread in the Kingdom of Naples.
Some elements, such as the gaze directed towards the sky and the presence of flowers, seem to go in this direction. However, the comparison with the famous Saint Rosalia by Antoon van Dyck, kept at the Prado Museum in Madrid, could mislead the interpretation.
No artist of the time would have placed a palm of martyrdom in the foreground to represent Rosalia, who was never a martyr. For this reason, the proposal is considered less convincing today.
Why does the Dorothea track appear stronger?
The presence of the palm pushes towards another identification, considered today the most plausible: Saint Dorothea, martyred under Diocletian in 311. According to hagiographic tradition, Dorothea sent roses and fruit from heaven to the pagan Theophilus, who had mocked her before execution.
The flowers present in the painting could thus allude to this episode. However, some anomalies remain.
The cult of Dorothea belonged mainly to the Spanish tradition and was relatively rare in the Neapolitan environment, where it did not have strong local roots. In contrast to other subjects of the period, her presence appears less common.
Caution, however, is necessary. Many works by Artemisia Gentileschi escape a univocal identification precisely due to the absence of attributes codified in a clear way.
Who might have posed for the Neapolitan paintings?
The new research has also reopened the debate on the model for the artist’s Neapolitan paintings. Some scholars have hypothesized that the face of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, acquired by the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm in 2020, could be identified with Adriana Basile.
She was a Neapolitan singer and musician born around 1586 and sister of the writer Giambattista Basile. Adriana Basile was a central figure between Venice and Naples in the early decades of the 17th century.
After the Venetian stay in 1623, during which a collection of poetry was dedicated to her, she moved to Naples and came into contact with the Accademia degli Oziosi.
According to Rouillac, even without documents certifying the presence of Artemisia Gentileschi in Venice in the same years, a meeting between the two women remains plausible. The shared environments could have facilitated it.
Baron-Callegari proposes another interpretation: the artist might have used herself as a model. The restorer invites us to observe the profile of the nose, the design of the cheeks, and especially the intensity of the gaze, described as penetrating and almost judging.
In this way, the painting would return to the artist’s personal universe, up to her own self-representation. The discussion, however, remains open.
As expert in digital marketing, Amelia began working in the fintech sector in 2014 after writing her thesis on Bitcoin technology. Previously author for several international crypto-related magazines and CMO at Eidoo. She is now the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Cryptonomist and Econique.
She is also a marketing teacher at Digital Coach in Milan and she published a book about NFTs for the Italian publishing house Mondadori, while she is also helping artists and company to entering in the sector. As advisor, Amelia is also involved in metaverse-related project such as The Nemesis and OVER.
