Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting

Artemisia Gentileschi’s self-portrait presents the artist as La Pittura, the allegorical personification of painting, her arm raised with brush in hand and her gaze fixed on the viewer. Painted during her years in London at the court of Charles I, it is one of the earliest self-portraits by a woman artist to depict the act of creation itself, and it doubles as a manifesto of female artistic ambition in the Baroque era.