Artemisia Gentileschi is one of the best known women artists of the Baroque, known for vivid depictions of female subjects. One of her most famous works, Samaritan Woman at The Well, currently preserved in Pisa’s Palazzo Blu, depicts the famous scene from John, which sees Jesus bringing the Samaritan woman at the well to faith in him. This month, art historians identified a fragment attributed to a second painting depicting this same scene, which is currently up for auction by auction house Capitolium in the city of Brescia.
Gentileschi, known for her dynamic compositions and use of vivid colors, has left a body of work that presents us with a radically different rendition of female subjects. In her paintings, women are not just “objects of beauty” but display complex emotions, have active inner lives, and take on active roles.
For Samaritan at the Well (1637) Gentileschi chose to depict a passage from John where Christ speaks to a Samaritan woman. In the passage, Jesus takes a step to bridge the divisions between these two groups (the Samaritans were descendants from the ancient Israelites but developed their own distinct religion) by initiating a conversation with the woman at a time when Jewish men were not supposed to address Samaritan women.
He asks the woman for a drink, and when the woman questions his request (how could a Jewish man ask a Samaritan woman for water?) Jesus replies that if she knew who he really was she could have asked him for a drink and he would have provided her with the kind of water that can quench spiritual thirst:
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,” Jesus says, “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
At that point the woman says that Samaritans and Jewish are different. The Samaritans, the woman explains, worship God at Mount Gerizim, while Jews worship in Jerusalem.
Jesus, anticipating the healing between these two communities, replies to her that a time is coming where true worshippers will worship “in spirit and truth,” not bound to a specific place. The woman then goes back to her village, spreading news about her encounter, becoming known as "the first evangelist."
Holy encounter
Gentileschi represents the nature of this holy encounter by highlighting the characters' emotions. We see the Samaritan woman looking absorbed in the holy encounter with a deep, pensive pose, while Jesus appears as the archetype of the prophet, conveying his message with his facial expressions and his body language, over and above words.
Gentileschi was active during the Baroque era, a period where artists sought to create dramatic, almost theatrical works, like in the style of the most famous Baroque master, Caravaggio. Here, the scene takes on an almost theatrical tone by featuring the two highly realistic characters against an idyllic backdrop that adds a holy aura to the scene.
While Gentileschi followed the artistic tone of her time when it came to colors and setting, she took on a different path when presenting the female subject of the painting. Here, Artemisia goes against the artistic convention of the epoch by presenting the Samaritan woman leading forward, towards Jesus, in an active listening pose, contrary to most representations of this scene that saw the woman as a passive recipient of a monologue.
The recently found fragment, an 85 x 109 oil on canvas depicting a half-length female figure, was recognized by two art historians, Riccardo Lattuada and Nicola Spinosa, as a certain autograph work by Artemisia Gentileschi. The experts noted how this rendition of the Samaritan woman stands out for an even more vivid use of color compared with the existing version of the work, a testament to the artist’s full maturity. The newly found artwork is currently up for sale at Capitolium Art auction house in Brescia, Italy.
