Artemisia Gentileschi Masterpiece Goes To Auction-Without Its Face

2026-04-08 11:04:28

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Damaged Artemisia Gentileschi Fragment Heads to Dorotheum With $170,000 Estimate

A rare autograph replica by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653) is heading to auction in Vienna, and its most striking feature is the absence at its center. Dorotheum will offer St. Mary Magdalen (ca. 1620) on April 28, with an estimate of $120,000 to $170,000, despite the fact that the saint's face was cut out at some point in the work's history.

The painting surfaced in 2011 from the cellar of a private German collection, where it had been rolled up and forgotten. According to the lot, no one knows who removed the face or why. Dorotheum has suggested the damage may have occurred amid the chaos and looting of postwar Berlin, though the exact circumstances remain unknown.

The attribution has gained support from leading specialists. Art historian Roberto Contini first identified the fragment as a Gentileschi and included it in the 2011 exhibition Artemisia Gentileschi, the Story of a Passion, which he curated with Francesco Solinas at the Royal Palace of Milan. Riccardo Lattuada has since endorsed that reading and dated the work to Gentileschi's formative years in Florence, when she was in her early 20s.

Infrared examinations have also been cited as evidence for the attribution, with the pigments and the painting's evolution pointing to the artist's hand. The fragment differs in several details from the complete version in Florence's Palazzo Pitti: the fabric is more elaborate, the mirror Mary pushes away is positioned differently, and the Latin inscription and skull are gone. Gentileschi also shifted the jar of ointment from the foreground to the background.

Dorotheum has leaned into the work's altered state rather than treating it as a liability. Marc MacDowell, the house's Old Master specialist, has said the damage lends the image a disquieting power, making the portrait feel unexpectedly contemporary. That tension between loss and authorship is likely to shape how bidders read the lot when it comes under the hammer in Vienna.

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