GENTILESCHI FAMILY. - ORAZIO LOMI, called il G., painter, b. in Pisa in 1562 (?), d. in London in 1647 (or 1638). He was a pupil in Tuscany of his half-brother Aurelio Lomi and of other mannerists.
The G. turned this Mannerist and Florentine education of his to account, coming at the age of 17 to Rome, where he worked in fresco in St. John Lateran, in St. Mary Major, and in the Library of Sixtus V in the Vatican. In Rome he then formed a style of his own, originally interpreting works from Caravaggio's youthful period, without violent contrasts of light and shadow, indeed exalting the precious quantity of color, through the luministic effect of silky draperies and translucent fabrics in a clear, draughtsmanlike vision of Tuscan descent. At the same time he concretely benefited from contacts with other Caravaggisti, such as Saraceni and Adam Elsheimer, but he also collaborated with Agostino Tassi. After 1615 the G. worked in the Marches, arriving at effects of movement and compositional complexity, sometimes cumbersome (the Madonna del Rosario, Fabriano, S. Domenico), sometimes plain and simple (the Virgin and St. Clare, Fabriano, Casa Rosei). In 1621 the G. was in Genoa, where he worked and met Van Dyck. He then passed into France (Rest on the Flight into Egypt, in the Louvre) in the service of Marie de' Medici; and finally (1626) into England at the court of Charles I (Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Hampton Court; Lot and His Daughters, Bilbao, Museum; Finding of Moses, Howard Castle). In the English period the chromatic variety diminishes, but the G.'s singular naturalism becomes more complex, merging in his works with accents of a restrained but concrete pathos. The G. had two painter children: FRANCESCO and ARTEMISIA. The latter, b. in Rome in 1597, d. in Naples after 1651, was an excellent painter. A pupil of her father and of Agostino Tassi, she then married a certain Pierantonio Schiattesi. Effects of plastic robustness, of emotional and naturalistic intensity, distinguish Artemisia G.'s works from her father's paintings. Very close to Orazio is the painting: Two Women at a Mirror (Berlin, Museum); but of Artemisia G. the following paintings should be remembered: Judith with the Head of Holofernes (Florence, Pitti Gallery); the Contrite Magdalene (ibid.); Judith Killing Holofernes (Florence, Uffizi).
Artemisia influenced the Neapolitan school, notably Stanzione.
Bibliography8 works
Luigi Grassi