The Madonna and Child

This picture corresponds with the right-hand section of Gentileschi's celebrated composition, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt. The canvas in Birmingham is considered by Bissell (R. Ward Bissell, Orazio Gentileschi and the Poetic Tradition in Caravaggesque Painting, Pennsylvania and London, 1982, no. 38) to be the prime version. Other, complete, versions accepted as autograph by Bissell, are in Vienna, Paris and Malibu (ibid., nos. 57-9). The present picture was not known to Bissell at the time of his 1982 publication, but was subsequently accepted by him as autograph. Gentileschi is known to have employed assistants, including his daughter Artemisia, and as Keith Christiansen notes 'the dividing line between Gentileschi's autograph replicas and workshop replicas (in which he probably had a hand) is very difficult to make' (private communication, 14 September 2000); condition is a further factor that has to be taken into account in making this distinction.