Orazio Gentileschi - France and England

France and England

In the summer or autumn of 1624 Gentileschi left Genoa for Paris, and the court of the Queen Mother, Marie de Medici. He stayed for two years, but only one picture from his time there has been identified, an allegorical figure of Public Felicity, painted for the Palais du Luxembourg, and now in the collection of the Louvre.

In 1626 Gentileschi, accompanied by his three sons, left France for England, where he become part of the household of the King's first minister, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham,1st Duke of Buckingham]]. He was to remain in England for the rest of his life. One of his first major works there was a large ceiling painting (since destroyed) of Apollo and the Muses for Buckingham's newly rebuilt London home, York House, in the Strand. He had already received a certain degree of royal patronage by the time of Buckingham's murder in April 1628, and all his commissions after this event came from the royal family. He was a favourite artist of Queen Henrietta Maria, for whom he carried out the ceiling paintings at Queen's House, Greenwich, (later transferred to Marlborough House, London). The paintings of his English period are more elegant, artificial and restrained than his previous works. They include two versions of The Finding of Moses, (1633)) one of which was sent to Philip IV of Spain; previously assumed to have been a gift from Charles I, it is now known to have been sent on Gentileschi's own initiative.

In England van Dyck made a drawing of Gentileschi for inclusion in his Iconographia a series of portraits of the leading artists, statesmen, collectors and scholars of the time, which he intended to publish as a set of engravings.

Gentileschi died in London in February 1639, and was buried in the Queen's Chapel at Somerset House.