# Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria > Artemisia Gentileschi - c. 1615-17 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/artemisia-gentileschi/gentileschi-self-portrait-saint-catherine/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-28 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Artemisia Gentileschi - **Date:** c. 1615-17 - **Medium:** Oil on canvas - **Dimensions:** 71.4 x 69 cm (the National Gallery's published dimension for the object as it is now, after the 2018 conservation treatment fitted a strip of primed canvas to the irregular top edge and stopped counting an unfolded tacking edge at the right as part of the composition. The 2017 Drouot catalogue gave 71 x 71 cm, which is the same painting measured before that treatment.) - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Italian Baroque, seventeenth century - **Current location:** National Gallery, London - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary Artemisia Gentileschi painted herself in the guise of the martyred Saint Catherine of Alexandria around 1615-17, in her early twenties, not long after she had settled in Florence following the 1612 rape trial in Rome that made her, briefly, notorious. The picture disappeared from the historical record for roughly three centuries, surfacing only in a French family's ownership by the early 1940s, and was sold as a rediscovery at a regional Paris saleroom in December 2017 for an artist-record 1.85 million euros at the hammer. Dealers who bought it there resold it within months, by private treaty, to the National Gallery in London for a reported 3.6 million pounds - only the second painting by a woman the Gallery had acquired since 1991 and the first work by Gentileschi to enter its collection.The 2018 conservation campaign that followed did more than clean the picture. X-radiography and infrared imaging found that Gentileschi built the composition in stages, painting out an earlier shape beneath the broken wheel, repositioning the turban and drapery, and adding the pearl-topped crown and martyr's palm only in the final stages - evidence of a working artist revising her own image as she went, not copying a fixed design. A parallel scientific study of the Uffizi's closely related Saint Catherine of Alexandria then found, in 2019, that its underpainting traces onto the London picture to the millimetre: the two paintings share a cartoon, even though the Uffizi canvas was finished as a portrait of a Medici lady rather than as a self-portrait. They remain two separate objects, and this record describes only the one in London.The National Gallery has also placed the picture on its own published list of acquisitions with incomplete 1933-45 provenance, because it cannot document how the Boudeville family in the Vosges first came to own it, only that they held it across three generations before selling it. The Gallery states it is satisfied the picture was in family hands well before the war; the underlying gap remains open on the record. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1615-17** The artist, Artemisia Gentileschi, Florence `[documented]` (origin) Painted in Florence in the years immediately following Gentileschi's move there after the 1612 Roman trial. No commission or first owner is documented; the picture may have been painted speculatively rather than to order. - **c. 1617-early 1940s** Unknown, then Charles Marie Boudeville, Chatenois, Vosges, France `[unknown]` (gap, then documented family possession) No owner is documented for roughly three centuries. The picture is first documented in the possession of Charles Marie Boudeville by the time of his death in the early 1940s. The National Gallery has placed the acquisition on its own published list of works with incomplete 1933-45 provenance because how and when the Boudeville family acquired the picture cannot be established; the Gallery's stated position is that available evidence points to inheritance and to ownership predating 1933, but that evidence has not been published in full in the sources consulted. - **early 1940s-1984** Georges Boudeville (1930-1984), son of Charles Marie Boudeville `[documented]` (inheritance) Second documented generation of family ownership, per the National Gallery's own catalogue entry. - **1984-2017** Nicolas Boudeville (b. 1966), sole son of Georges Boudeville `[documented]` (inheritance) Third documented generation of family ownership; consigned the picture for sale in 2017. - **2017-2018** Marco Voena (Old and Modern Masters Ltd) and Fabrizio Moretti, jointly, trading via the London gallery Robilant + Voena `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Bought jointly at the Drouot sale of 19 December 2017 (hammer EUR 1.85m, EUR 2,360,600 with premium); the picture entered the stock of Robilant + Voena, London. - **2018-present** National Gallery, London (NG6671) `[documented]` (acquisition by private treaty) Bought from Robilant + Voena by private treaty (not at auction) in 2018 for a reported total of GBP 3.6 million, funded by the American Friends of the National Gallery, London (GBP 2.7m), the National Gallery Trust (GBP 380,000), the Art Fund via the Sir Denis Mahon legacy (GBP 250,000, including conservation), and gifts and legacies (GBP 280,000). The National Gallery's own 2024 catalogue entry does not itself state a price. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **2017-12-19** Christophe Joron-Derem, Hotel Drouot, Paris, Tableaux anciens, modernes et contemporains, bijoux et orfevrerie, sculptures, mobilier et objets d'art du XVIIeme siecle a nos jours, Hotel Drouot, 19 December 2017 (public exhibition in salle 9 from Saturday 16 December), lot 69, confirmed on the house's lot page ('Lot n. 69') - Estimate: EUR 300,000 - 400,000, as printed on the house's lot page - Hammer: EUR 1,850,000 (unchanged), now labelled DERIVED from the house total under the house's printed schedule: 'frais legaux : 23% H.T. (27,6% T.T.C.)'. 2,360,600 / 1.276 = 1,850,000, a round bidding figure. The Art Newspaper report the record already cites gives the same hammer; the house itself prints only the total. - With premium: EUR 2,360,600 premium-inclusive, printed on the house's lot page as 'Resultat : 2 360 600 EUR' and on the house's results notice headed 'Vente le 19 decembre 2017 - 2 360 600 EUR'. NOTE the lot page's template heading over that figure reads 'Resultats sans frais'; the arithmetic against the page's own 27.6 per cent shows the figure is WITH fees. Carried as premium-inclusive. - House lot page and results notice read 2026-09-16 at rung 1, HTTP 200, in full. Catalogued as: Artemisia GENTILESCHI (Rome 1593-Naples 1652), Sainte Catherine d'Alexandrie, huile sur toile, 71 x 71 cm, '(Restaurations anciennes, petites dechirures et petits manques). Sans cadre.' Expert for Old Master paintings in the sale: Cabinet Turquin. The house's catalogue note relates the picture to the Uffizi Saint Catherine (inv. 8032, c. 1614-16, 76 x 62 cm) and lists the variants: turban here against the jewelled crown in Florence, the palm higher and uncut, the wheel behind the saint rather than under her hand, the veil from the right shoulder rather than the left; it also names the Autoportrait en martyre (private collection, 31.5 x 24.5 cm) and the Hartford lute-player self-portrait as comparanda, and says the specialists regard those as self-portraits, 'ce qui semble aussi le cas de cette toile'. No provenance block is printed on the house page. The 2018 National Gallery purchase is a private-treaty transaction and stays where the record has it. ## Open questions - How and when did the picture leave Italy and enter French private ownership? No source consulted documents its whereabouts between its execution in Florence, c. 1615-17, and its presence in the Boudeville family by the early 1940s. - Can the Boudeville family's ownership be documented back across the 1933-45 period with primary evidence, rather than inference? The National Gallery states it is satisfied on this point but has not published the underlying evidence in the sources consulted for this record. - Who was the underbidder at the Drouot sale of 19 December 2017, and how close did the bidding run past the low estimate? Not named in the sources consulted. - Was the underlying shape beneath the wheel, tentatively read by the National Gallery's own technical report as possibly a book or tablet, ever more precisely identified? The 2019 published technical study describes it as unresolved. - Does documentary evidence exist (a commission, a payment, a contemporary description) for who first owned the picture, or was it commissioned at all, as opposed to painted speculatively? None has been found. ## Sources - [1] National Gallery, London, catalogue entry NG6671, 'Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria', National Gallery Catalogues: Online Entries for Individual Paintings (2024), incorporating L. Keith et al., technical investigation of Artemisia's Florence self-portraits (2019). - [2] The Art Newspaper, 'Newly discovered Artemisia Gentileschi painting sells for EUR 2.4m at auction in Paris' (19 December 2017). - [3] Antiques Trade Gazette, 'National Gallery acquires record-setting self-portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi for GBP 3.6m from London gallery' (2018). - [4] Getty Conservation Institute / Getty Publications, 'Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria', Conserving Canvas case study 22. - [5] The Art Newspaper, 'X-ray of Uffizi's Artemisia Gentileschi reveals a tantalising underpainting' (11 April 2019), reporting the Opificio delle Pietre Dure study led by Cecilia Frosinini. - [6] Wikipedia, 'Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria', consolidating the Boudeville provenance chain and the Drouot sale record. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the primary auction catalogue and National Gallery archive file. - [7] Artnet News, 'The National Gallery's New Artemisia Gentileschi Should Be a Triumph-But Clouds Are Forming Over Its Ownership During WWII'. - [8] National Gallery, London, press release, 'The National Gallery acquires Artemisia Gentileschi Self Portrait' (2018). - [9] National Gallery, London, artist page, 'Artemisia Gentileschi'. - [10] Royal Collection Trust, 'Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura)'. - [11] National Gallery, London, 'Artemisia in her own words', exhibition supplement quoting the Ruffo correspondence of 1649. - [12] Wikipedia, 'Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Artemisia Gentileschi, Florence)', for the Uffizi picture's dimensions and 1683/1890 provenance notices. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the Uffizi's own catalogue and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure report. - [13] Smithsonian Magazine, 'X-Ray Analysis Reveals Self-Portrait Hidden Under Artemisia Gentileschi Painting', corroborating the Uffizi underpainting findings. - [14] The Conversation, 'National Gallery at 200: in praise of Artemisia Gentileschi's Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria', for the scholarly reading of the self-portrait against La Pittura and Gentileschi's self-fashioning. - [15] Hyperallergic, 'The National Gallery Acquires Its First Painting by a Woman Since 1991'. - [16] Christophe Joron-Derem, 'Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome 1593-Naples 1652), Sainte Catherine d'Alexandrie - Lot 69, 19 December 2017'. Lot 69, estimate EUR 300,000-400,000, result EUR 2,360,600, dimensions and condition line, the catalogue note and the 23 per cent HT / 27.6 per cent TTC fee schedule. Accessed 2026-09-16. - [17] Christophe Joron-Derem, 'Artemisia Gentileschi, Sainte Catherine d'Alexandrie - Vente le 19 decembre 2017 - 2 360 600 EUR'. The house's own results notice repeating the EUR 2,360,600 figure. Accessed 2026-09-16. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.