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The Sleeping Christ Child
Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593 – after 1654)
1630-32
Medium/Technique
Oil on copper
Dimensions
12.4 × 17.5 cm (4 7/8 × 6 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
Charles Potter Kling Fund and Beth Munroe Fund—Bequest of Emma F. Munroe
Accession Number2022.102
ClassificationsPaintings
The MFA has purchased more European paintings by women in the last three years than in the preceding three decades. This very small picture on copper fills a large gap. Artemisia Gentileschi was one of the most important artists working in 17th-century Italy. The painting is signed, “Arte. GentilescA / fecit Napo,” emphasizing two aspects of the artist’s identity: her gender and her geographic location. Gentileschi must have painted it soon after moving in 1630 to Spanish-controlled Naples, where she spent most of the rest of her life. While the artist is well known for her large canvases depicting biblical or mythological heroines, cabinet pictures on expensive supports constitute an under-recognized facet of her production. Documents reveal that she made small works on copper throughout her career, but this is only the third to emerge. Prior to the painting’s appearance in a French estate sale in 2015, this sensitive portrayal of the sleeping baby Jesus was known only from early engravings that credited the composition to Gentileschi.
Inscriptionslower left, on the wall: Arte. GentilescA / fecit Napo
ProvenanceAbout 1631/1632, probably in a collection in France [see note 1]. Georges Lachaize (b. 1925 – d. 2012), Le Mans, France; May 30, 2015, anonymous (posthumous Lachaize) sale, Isabelle Aufauvre and Cabinet Turquin, Le Mans, lot 11, sold to a private collector, United States; 2021, consigned by this collector to Christie’s, New York; 2022, sold by Christie’s to the MFA. (Accession Date: April 20, 2022)
NOTES:
[1] This composition (with the addition of a skull) was engraved by Pieter de Jode II, probably about 1631-32, at which time he was working in Paris. Evidence suggests, however, that there was more than one version of this composition. The posthumous inventory of Anne-Marie de La Trémoille (1723), for example, records an Artemisia Gentileschi painting on copper measuring 9 x 6 once (about 11 x 17 cm.) representing “a little putto who sleeps with his head laid on a red cushion, and a white cloth that is wrapped around him.” The same painting had appeared in Flavio Orsini’s posthumous inventory in 1698 (as “a putto who sleeps”) and appears in a later inventory at the Palazzo Lante (1794). The cushion in the present painting is not red, but green.
NOTES:
[1] This composition (with the addition of a skull) was engraved by Pieter de Jode II, probably about 1631-32, at which time he was working in Paris. Evidence suggests, however, that there was more than one version of this composition. The posthumous inventory of Anne-Marie de La Trémoille (1723), for example, records an Artemisia Gentileschi painting on copper measuring 9 x 6 once (about 11 x 17 cm.) representing “a little putto who sleeps with his head laid on a red cushion, and a white cloth that is wrapped around him.” The same painting had appeared in Flavio Orsini’s posthumous inventory in 1698 (as “a putto who sleeps”) and appears in a later inventory at the Palazzo Lante (1794). The cushion in the present painting is not red, but green.