Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome 1593-Naples after 1654) is today a name of great appeal, and there have been very numerous, especially in the last two decades, monographic exhibitions dedicated to her all over the world, from Florence (1991) to Rome , New York and Saint-Louis (2001) and from Milan (2011), Paris (2012) and Rome (2016) to London (2020).

It is difficult to discern how much of this growing success is due to her compelling human and biographical story, to her rare figure as a female painter, to the well-known story of the rape suffered by the other painter Agostino Tassi, to the feminist myth of a "strong woman" and to the interpretation of his crude versions of the subject of Judith cutting off Holofernes' head as projections of her desire for revenge and revenge, and how much we owe instead to the effective and by now recognized greatness of her art. What is certain is that Artemisia, daughter of the famous Pisan artist Orazio Lomi Gentileschi, already in 1610 provided Rome with the first proofs of her talent, her fidelity and her peculiar interpretation of the naturalism of Caravaggio and of her own father Orazio. What is certain is that his many Judiths, starting with the early one in the Neapolitan Museum of Capodimonte up to those in the Palatine Gallery and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, perhaps represent the most effective, original and violent translation of the subject chosen at least twice by Caravaggio , and that is that of the very moment in which the Jewish heroine sinks her sword into the neck of the enemy leader, making his blood gush out in streams. What is certain is that both in Rome, in Florence and in Naples - the places where she found herself working the longest - her strong, naturalistic, but at the same time precious and refined painting met with great success, both with collectors and with the major painters of the time who found themselves talking and collaborating with her. It is certain that this fame must have accompanied her also outside Italy, leading her in 1638 to accept the invitation of the king of England and to join her father in London.

Despite the importance and the number of years spent in the city between 1630 and 1654, Naples - in recent months between 2022 and 2023, moreover, is the site of an important exhibition dedicated to the Neapolitan stay of the painter and her relationship with southern artists – however, it has never hosted a monographic exhibition dedicated to his life and career or an in-depth study dedicated to his training, his relationship with the work of his father Orazio or with Caravaggio's lesson. The exhibition now organized at the Diocesan Museum of Naples, aims to try to make up for this gap, linking the Neapolitan activity to the training and the Florentine and Roman stages of Artemisia's career, and thus to present to the Neapolitans and to a wider public - thanks to the important loans of works sometimes very well known and sometimes still little known or completely unknown obtained from the Uffizi and Pitti Galleries, from the Capodimonte Museum, from other museums and foundations and from some private collectors - the origins and the path of life and art of this extraordinary figure of woman and painter, who played such a large part in the formation of the language of southern artists of the "golden age".