Orazio biography

Orazio Gentileschi’s life and career spanned a period marked by significant artistic movements and innovations: from the late Mannerism of his early paintings to the revolutionary style of Caravaggio, which he adopted for a short time in Rome, and a courtly ‘international’ style, whose elegance and refinement characterise his mature works.

Despite having a ‘difficult, arrogant, and vindictive’ character, Orazio enjoyed an international career working across Italy – in Rome, Ancona, Fabriano, Genoa, and Turin – as well as in Paris and London.

He counted noblemen and monarchs among his patrons and spent the last twelve years of his life in England at the court of King Charles I, joining the ranks of other celebrated artist-diplomats who travelled to London, Anthony van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens.

Orazio was born in Pisa, into a family of artists – his father Giovanni Battista Lomi was a Florentine goldsmith and his older brother Aurelio was a painter.

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