An artwork museum in rural Denmark has acquired Artemisia Gentileschi‘s Susanna and the Elders (1644–48), a big work by the Italian Baroque artist.
The Nivaagaard Assortment stated Susanna and the Elders was “a very powerful addition made to the gathering since 1908,” when it was based by Johannes Hage. Situated about 40 minutes north of Copenhagen, the museum is now the primary Danish establishment to personal a piece by the artist.
The story of Susanna and the Elders was one Artemisia Gentileschi returned to repeatedly. She painted it when she was 17, in what is usually considered her earliest recognized work. She even returned to it within the final portray she made earlier than her demise in 1656.
The work acquired by the Nivaagaard Assortment comes from the artist’s later interval and incorporates a life-sized depiction of an virtually bare Susanna in a susceptible place.
Director Andrea Rygg Karberg was capable of beat dozens of worldwide galleries for the acquisition of the portray this summer season for an undisclosed quantity, regardless of the museum’s small assortment.
Susanna and the Elders beforehand belonged to a personal assortment and was bought by New York–primarily based Previous Masters seller Nicholas Corridor, who had visited the Nivaagaard in 2023 as a part of a trip.
“It made a profound impression,” Corridor advised the Sunday Instances of his go to, describing the Danish establishment as “a small museum however with a room of surprisingly spectacular European previous grasp work.”
The agricultural artwork gallery joins esteemed establishments just like the Getty, the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, the Uffizi, and London’s Nationwide Gallery in buying a piece by the well-known feminine artist, who was skilled as a painter by her father, Orazio Gentileschi.
Artemisia is notable for being overcoming skilled odds for a girl artist of her period. She was raped as a younger girl after which compelled to offer proof below torture via a subsequent trial; the proceedings didn’t tarnish her profession. Prospects of her work included the Medici household in Florence and King Charles I of England.
The artist has develop into an icon for her putting and technically extremely achieved work of highly effective feminine figures, together with Judith Beheading Holofernes, Cleopatra, and Mary Magdalene.
Notably, information confirmed there was just one work by a feminine artist within the Nivaagaard Assortment till 2022, when one other portrait was recognized as performed by Europa Anguissola, sister of the extra well-known Sofonisba.
Earlier this 12 months, the Nivaagaard Assortment additionally acquired two works by Flemish artist Catharina Ykens II, relationship from ca. 1688.
The acquisition of Susanna and the Elders was aided by beneficiant donations from the New Carlsberg Basis and the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Basis.
