by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on September 6, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Allegory of Inclination by Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi's Allegory of Inclination, known in Italian as L'Inclinazione, is one of the most revealing paintings from her Florentine years. It was made for Casa Buonarroti, the family palace dedicated to the memory and glory of Michelangelo, and it still belongs to that setting. The painting is not a conventional narrative scene. It is an allegory: a female figure representing Michelangelo's natural inclination toward artistic creation, placed within a programme celebrating his life, virtues and fame. [1][2]
The work matters because it brings several Artemisia stories together at once. It shows her working for an important Florentine patron, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger. It places her inside a decorative programme devoted to the greatest artistic ancestor of the Buonarroti family. It belongs to the years when Artemisia was building status in Florence, supported by elite networks and admitted to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno. And, unusually, its modern restoration has made the painting's later history almost as important as its original commission. [2][3]
The figure Artemisia painted was originally nude, reclining among clouds and holding a compass. Around 1680, Baldassarre Franceschini, known as Volterrano, was commissioned to add drapery and veils over the body, apparently to satisfy a later idea of decorum. The painting we see today therefore carries two histories: Artemisia's original allegory and a later act of covering. Its recent conservation and diagnostic study help readers understand both. [2][3]
Image reference: Casa Buonarroti.
At a Glance
- ArtistArtemisia Gentileschi
- TitleL'Inclinazione / Allegory of Inclination
- Datecirca 1615-1616. [1]
- Mediumcanvas. [1]
- Dimensions152 x 61 cm. [1]
- Inventory241. [1]
- Collection/locationCasa Buonarroti, Florence. [1][2]
- Original settingthe ceiling of the Galleria Buonarrotiana in the Buonarroti family palace. [2][3]
- CommissionerMichelangelo Buonarroti the Younger. [2][3]
- Subjecta personification of Michelangelo's natural inclination toward artistic creation. [2]
- Original figurea nude female figure on clouds, holding a compass. [2][4]
- Later interventionblue drapery and veils added around 1680 by Baldassarre Franceschini, called Volterrano, on behalf of a later Buonarroti descendant. [2][4]
- Modern restoration projectArtemisia UpClose / Artemisia Unveiled, with diagnostic imaging and public-facing restoration work in 2022-2023. [2][3]
- Main themesallegory, patronage, Florentine ambition, Michelangelo's legacy, decorum, censorship, conservation and recovery
Contents
- What Is an Allegory of Inclination?
- Casa Buonarroti and the Gallery
- Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger
- Artemisia in Florence
- The Figure, Compass and Star
- The Later Drapery by Volterrano
- Restoration and Diagnostic Study
- What the Restoration Changes for Readers
- Comparison with La Pittura and Saint Catherine
- Biography Without Simplifying the Work
What Is an Allegory of Inclination?
An allegory turns an idea into a figure. In this case, Inclination does not mean casual preference. It means an inborn leaning or natural disposition, especially the instinct that draws a person toward a particular calling. In the Casa Buonarroti programme, the figure represented Michelangelo's natural predisposition toward artistic creation. [2]
That makes the subject unusually fitting for Artemisia. She was not painting Michelangelo himself, nor an episode from his life. She was asked to personify the inner force that made Michelangelo an artist. For the Buonarroti family, this was a celebration of genius as inheritance, destiny and virtue. For Artemisia, it was a commission that required her to paint a learned idea in bodily form.
The figure holds a compass, an attribute that connects artistic creation with measure, design, geometry and intellect. Casa Buonarroti's object entry also notes a star in the blue sky guiding the figure, while older description mentioned small pulleys at her feet that are no longer visible. [1] These details place the allegory between inspiration and design: a body drawn upward, guided by the heavens, and equipped with an instrument of making.
This is why the painting should not be treated as a simple decorative nude. It is a philosophical and artistic image, made for a room whose entire purpose was to glorify Michelangelo through scenes from his life and personifications of his qualities.
Casa Buonarroti and the Gallery
Casa Buonarroti is not just a museum that later acquired the painting. It is the work's original context. The Gallery, or Galleria, formed part of a larger decorative programme devised by Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger. The room celebrated Michelangelo through images of his life, family memory and Florentine glory. [2][5]
The Gallery was arranged as an artistic biography and tribute. Wall canvases represented moments in which Michelangelo came into contact with popes and rulers; ceiling canvases and allegories surrounded scenes of his death and apotheosis; other elements referred to virtues associated with him. [5] Artemisia's Inclination belonged to this intellectual and celebratory structure.
That setting matters because it changes how we read the painting. The figure is not simply an isolated allegorical woman. She participates in a family project of memory. Michelangelo the Younger used the palace to shape the public image of his ancestor, and Artemisia contributed one of the allegorical keys to that image.
For a woman painter in Florence, this was a significant commission. It meant entering a programme built around the name of Michelangelo, in a city deeply conscious of artistic prestige, family honour and learned invention.
Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger
Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger was the great-nephew of Michelangelo and the driving force behind the decorative programme. He was a literary and cultural figure as well as a family heir, and his palace project made art into a form of family history.
Casa Buonarroti's materials show that Artemisia's relationship with him was not merely anonymous workshop labour. The object entry records that her canvas was among the first commissioned for the room and that by 1615 she had already received a substantial advance. It also notes that Michelangelo the Younger showed special sympathy toward her, that her work was paid at more than three times the rate of others in the series, and that documents record loans or debts involving Artemisia. [1]
The exhibition page adds that the second section of Artemisia UpClose focused on her relationship with the commissioner, including autograph documents in the Buonarroti Archive and payment of 34 florins for the painting. [3]
These details are valuable because they bring the commission down from abstraction into professional life. Artemisia was not only producing a figure for a ceiling. She was negotiating payment, patronage, debt and status within a powerful Florentine network. The allegory of artistic inclination was also a real job by a real artist.
Artemisia in Florence
Artemisia arrived in Florence from Rome in 1613. The Casa Buonarroti object entry connects the period with the aftermath of the Agostino Tassi trial, but the Florentine years should not be reduced to that background. In Florence she built a professional life, found patrons, worked for elite clients and became the first woman admitted to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno on 19 July 1616. [1][3]
That date is important because it overlaps the world of Allegory of Inclination. The painting belongs to the same Florentine moment in which Artemisia was becoming visible as more than Orazio Gentileschi's daughter or a Roman courtroom figure. She was an artist able to work in the language of allegory, courtly decoration and learned patronage.
Casa Buonarroti's exhibition page places the restored Inclination within a section dedicated to Artemisia's Florentine fame, protected by Grand Duke Cosimo II de' Medici and accepted into the Accademia. [3] That framing makes the painting part of a larger career turning point. Artemisia was being seen, commissioned and paid in a city where artistic honour mattered intensely.
The painting's subject therefore has a subtle resonance. A woman artist was commissioned to paint the inclination toward artistic creation for a room glorifying Michelangelo. That situation should not be turned into a simple self-portrait claim. But the situation itself is powerful: Artemisia, in Florence, painted the very idea of artistic calling.
The Figure, Compass and Star
The object entry describes Artemisia's female figure holding a compass, with a star shining in the blue sky. [1] The restoration page adds that the original figure reclined on clouds. [2] These details give the allegory its structure.
The compass matters because it links inspiration to measure. It is an instrument of geometry and design, and therefore appropriate to Michelangelo's creative intelligence. The star suggests guidance, destiny or a celestial prompt. Clouds lift the figure out of ordinary space. Together, they make inclination feel both natural and elevated: a force that rises from within the artist but also seems guided from above.
Artemisia's naturalism made the allegory especially striking among the surrounding works. Casa Buonarroti notes that, after her years in Rome in the world of Caravaggio, the painting stood out for its naturalism within the series. [1] That naturalism is important. The idea is abstract, but Artemisia gives it flesh, weight and presence.
The body was originally nude. That fact should be treated carefully. In seventeenth-century allegory, nudity could carry meanings of truth, ideal beauty, vulnerability or intellectual purity depending on context. Here, it also became the point of later discomfort. The same body that made the allegory vivid eventually became the body that a later generation wanted to cover.
The Later Drapery by Volterrano
Around 1680, the painting was altered. Casa Buonarroti explains that a descendant of Michelangelo the Younger, probably Leonardo Buonarroti, commissioned Baldassarre Franceschini, known as Volterrano, to paint blue drapery and veils over the figure. The purpose was to conceal the nudity and make the image fit a stricter later idea of decorum. [2][4]
This intervention is not a minor footnote. It changed how generations saw Artemisia's painting. The covering did not destroy the work, but it placed another artist's moral and visual decision on top of hers. The canvas became a layered object: Artemisia's allegory underneath, Volterrano's drapery over it, and later viewers trying to understand both.
It is easy to call the later drapery simply censorship, and the term is understandable. A more precise explanation is stronger. The drapery tells us that the meaning of a body in art can change over time. What one patron accepted as a personification of artistic inclination, a later household found troubling enough to veil.
The altered painting therefore reveals not only Artemisia's work but also the changing moral climate around it. The history of the image includes admiration, discomfort, concealment and recovery.
Restoration and Diagnostic Study
The recent restoration has made Allegory of Inclination newly legible. Casa Buonarroti's restoration project began preliminary operations at the end of September 2022, with restoration work planned from October 2022 to April 2023. The work took place inside the museum, where visitors could observe the process. [2]
The project, known as Artemisia UpClose and Artemisia Unveiled, was supported by Calliope Arts and Christian Levett. It involved conservation work and a wide diagnostic campaign, including diffuse and raking light, ultraviolet and infrared investigation, multispectral imaging, X-ray and high-resolution reflectography. [2][4]
Those technologies matter because they changed the painting from a fixed image into an object under investigation. The aim was not simply to clean a surface. It was to understand the technical and material information that would guide conservation and to reconstruct, at least virtually, the appearance of Artemisia's original figure. [2]
Casa Buonarroti's exhibition page states that the restoration and diagnostic investigations revealed original intentions, preparatory drawing and original painting later partly veiled by Volterrano. [3] That is a crucial point for reading the painting. The restoration does not merely make the picture look better. It helps recover the sequence of decisions that shaped the work.
What the Restoration Changes for Readers
For readers, the restoration changes the question. Instead of asking only what the painting shows, we can ask how the painting became what it is. Artemisia's original figure, Volterrano's covering, the later museum setting and the modern diagnostic project all become part of the work's story.
This is especially useful because many paintings with later alterations are discussed as if the original and altered states are separate moral categories: authentic versus false, free versus censored, original versus damaged. Allegory of Inclination is more interesting than that. The later drapery is not Artemisia's original idea, but it is part of the painting's history. The restoration helps us see the difference without pretending the difference never existed.
It also helps restore Artemisia's authorship. For centuries, viewers encountered a body partly shaped by another artist's intervention. The modern project allows Casa Buonarroti and its visitors to understand how Artemisia first conceived the figure, how later decorum altered it and how current conservation can make those layers visible.
That is why the restoration story should be central to any serious reading of the painting. It is not a specialist aside. It is the reason the painting now speaks so clearly about gender, allegory, patronage, authorship and the changing treatment of women's bodies in art.
Comparison with La Pittura and Saint Catherine
Allegory of Inclination belongs naturally beside Artemisia's self-fashioning works, but the comparison must be careful. Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting turns the artist herself into the personification of Painting, or La Pittura. Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria presents Artemisia through a saintly role and a martyr's iconography. Allegory of Inclination is different: it personifies Michelangelo's creative disposition for a Buonarroti family programme.
Still, the works share important questions. How can a female figure carry an abstract idea? How does an artist use a body to represent intellect, talent, sanctity or profession? What happens when a woman painter works inside a visual language that often made female bodies symbolic objects?
In Allegory of Inclination, the female body represents Michelangelo's artistic calling. In La Pittura, the female figure represents Painting itself. In Saint Catherine, the body becomes a saintly and possibly self-referential image. Together, the works show Artemisia's fluency in identities that are not simply portraits and not simply narratives.
This is one reason the Casa Buonarroti painting matters beyond its restoration. It shows Artemisia's command of allegorical thought at a high level, in the very years when she was establishing her Florentine reputation.
Biography Without Simplifying the Work
Artemisia's life is essential context, but it should not swallow the painting. Casa Buonarroti's object entry notes her arrival in Florence after the Rome trial and the continuing financial pressure in her life, including marriage, pregnancy, loans and debts. [1] Those facts help explain the professional stakes of the commission.
But Allegory of Inclination is not a biographical confession. It is a commissioned allegory within a specific programme. Artemisia was responding to Michelangelo the Younger's decorative plan, the intellectual culture of Casa Buonarroti and the need to represent Michelangelo's creative gift.
The strongest reading keeps those levels together. The painting belongs to Artemisia's Florentine rise, but it also belongs to the Buonarroti family's programme of memory. It represents an abstract idea, but it also records a concrete payment and patron relationship. It was painted by Artemisia, then partly covered by Volterrano, then studied by modern conservators.
That layered history is more interesting than any single explanation. The painting is about inclination, but it is also about how artistic meanings are made, altered and recovered over time.
How to Read the Painting Today
Begin with the setting. This painting was made for Casa Buonarroti, for a room devoted to Michelangelo's glory. It is not a detached gallery picture, even when viewed in reproduction. Its meaning begins in the ceiling programme of the Galleria.
Then look at the allegory. The female figure on clouds, with compass and guiding star, represents the inward force that draws an artist toward creation. Artemisia gives that idea a body, a pose and a presence.
Next, remember the later drapery. The figure viewers see has been shaped by a seventeenth-century intervention made decades after Artemisia. The blue cloth and veils are part of the painting's history, but they are not the same as Artemisia's original conception.
Finally, think about restoration as interpretation. The modern Artemisia UpClose project did not merely repair an old canvas. It asked what could be known about the work beneath the surface and how that knowledge should be shared with the public.
That is why Allegory of Inclination is such a valuable Artemisia work. It joins the artist's Florentine ambition, Michelangelo's family memory, allegory, censorship, conservation and modern recovery in one object. Few paintings make the life of an artwork itself so visible.
Related Pages
- Artemisia Gentileschi
- Artemisia Gentileschi Biography
- Artemisia Gentileschi Paintings
- Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting
- Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria
- Self-Portrait as a Lute Player
- Esther before Ahasuerus
- Baroque Artists
Frequently Asked Questions
Discussion
What should readers notice when looking closely at Artemisia Gentileschi's Allegory of Inclination?
Reader Insights
How does Artemisia turn an abstract idea about Michelangelo's artistic nature into a convincing bodily presence?
What changes when the painting is read as part of Casa Buonarroti's programme of family memory?
How does the later drapery change your sense of authorship, decorum and the life of the object?
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References
- Casa Buonarroti, L'Inclinazione. Credit line for reproduction: Artemisia Gentileschi, L'Inclinazione, circa 1615-1616, canvas, 152 x 61 cm, inv. 241, Casa Buonarroti, Florence.
- Casa Buonarroti, The restoration of Artemisia Gentileschi's Inclination in Casa Buonarroti.
- Casa Buonarroti, Artemisia UpClose - Artemisia in the Museum of Michelangelo.
- Casa Buonarroti, Presentation of the volume Artemisia Gentileschi L'Inclinazione per Michelangelo Buonarroti il Giovane.
- Casa Buonarroti, Galleria.
 Artemisia Gentileschi.jpg)
 Artemisia Gentileschi.jpg)
