The Inclination

The canvas is one of the allegories accompanying the episodes from the life of Michelangelo. Artemisia’s painting was one of the first in the room to be commissioned, and the painter was paid at more than three times the rate of the others in the series. The work, painted after the intense years spent in the Rome of Caravaggio, stands out from the other canvases for its naturalism: the beautiful woman, a seductive allegory whose serene gaze passes over the heads of visitors, had been painted completely naked. A few decade later the drapery was paintend.