Rolled Up in a Cellar for Decades, This Artemisia Gentileschi Painting Is Now Up for Auction. Why Is Mary Magdalene’s Face Missing From the Portrait?

Found in Berlin, the artwork was probably damaged in the chaotic aftermath of World War II. Despite the gaping hole in the canvas, it could sell for upwards of $180,000 later this month

Meilan Solly | Senior Associate Digital Editor, History

April 13, 2026

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Earlier this year, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. acquired an unusual portrait by the Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi.

Titled Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, the painting depicts the saint in a “deeply and unmistakably eroticized” fashion—a distinct shift from likenesses that tend to characterize her as a penitent sinner, Kameryn Alexa Carter wrote for the Cleveland Review of Books in 2023. In the scene, Mary closes her eyes as she tilts her head back in rapture, seemingly unbothered by or unaware of the viewer’s presence.

Now, a second Gentileschi portrait of Mary is making headlines. Painted in a more traditional style, with the saint pushing away a mirror in rejection of her earlier vanity, the artwork is missing some key elements: namely, Mary’s head and chest. Despite the gaping rectangular cutout in the canvas, the portrait is expected to go under the hammer this month for an estimated $120,000 to $180,000.

Experts aren’t exactly sure how the artwork—which dates to between 1615 and 1618, when Gentileschi was in Florence, Italy—ended up in its present state. “It probably occurred during the violent upheavals in Berlin in the aftermath of World War II,” notes Dorotheum, the Central European auction house behind the April 28 sale, in a statement. “The painting subsequently lay rolled up in a cellar before its quality was recognized and it was restored. Despite the void, this painting retains the technical quality and psychological depth of Artemisia’s authorship.”

According to the lot listing, the painting is a slightly different version of a circa 1620 portrait housed at the Pitti Palace in Florence. Both works show Mary seated in a chair while clasping her hand to her breast. Objects widely associated with the saint, including a mirror and a jar of ointment used to anoint Jesus’s body after his crucifixion, also appear in the scene.

Art historian Roberto Contini attributed the portrait to Gentileschi in 2011, including it in an exhibition at the Royal Palace of Milan that same year. Compared with the Pitti version, the faceless portrait features a “more dynamic and painterly rendering” of the drapery in Mary’s yellow skirt and the sleeves of her white blouse, as well as subtle variations in the positioning of her left hand, the ointment jar and the chair in which the saint sits, per the lot listing.

Interestingly, the Pitti portrait shows a skull peeking out from behind the mirror—a common motif in likenesses of Mary, which sometimes include the two objects as an allusion to “the transience of life,” notes the National Gallery on its website. No such skull appears in the version currently up for auction.

These changes offer a “glimpse [of] Artemisia’s working method,” the listing says, demonstrating that the differences in her depictions of the same subject weren’t “necessarily dictated solely by commercial considerations.” Instead, they may reflect various artistic influences, such as Venetian painters featured in the collections of the Medici family, or simply a desire to experiment with new techniques and compositions.

The National Gallery’s recently acquired portrait of Mary dates to circa 1625, and it represents a stark departure from Gentileschi’s earlier paintings of the saint, including the faceless one. In it, she is removed of virtually all context, with a few leafy branches against a dark background offering the only clue to her surroundings. The scene, which depicts her conversion from “worldly life to a devout and chaste follower of Christianity,” is seemingly patterned after a now-lost painting by Caravaggio, as the museum writes on its website. But it confronts the viewer “even more directly,” leaving them with “nowhere to look but at her, absorbed in this intimate spiritual moment.”

In the auction house’s statement, Mark MacDonnell, an old master expert at Dorotheum, connects the damaged yet evocative painting of Mary to Gentileschi’s own experiences. “It is the embodiment of survival against the odds,” he says, “reminiscent of the life story of the artist herself.”

Artemisia Gentileschi in 8 paintings | National Gallery

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Born in Rome in 1593, Gentileschi was the daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, a Baroque painter who trained her to follow in his footsteps. When she was still a teenager, an artist in her father’s workshop sexually assaulted her, prompting Orazio to take the man to court on his daughter’s behalf.

Over the course of a seven-month trial, Gentileschi endured torture and grueling interrogation, but she never wavered from her account of the abuse. “I have told the truth and I always will, because it is true and I am here to confirm it wherever necessary,” she testified as ropes were wrapped around her fingers and tightened. Although the court found Gentileschi’s rapist guilty, he was never imprisoned and faced no serious consequences for his actions.

After the 1612 trial, Gentileschi and her new husband moved to Florence, where she established herself as a prominent artist whose patrons included the Medici family and Michelangelo’s grand-nephew. More often than not, Gentileschi opted to paint women engaged in unexpected activities: Judith Beheading Holofernes (circa 1620), for example, finds the biblical heroine sawing off the head of an Assyrian general as blood gushes from the wound, her expression steely eyed with determination. A later self-portrait, meanwhile, emphasizes Gentileschi’s success in a conventionally male-dominated field: painting.

“In her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting … she depicts herself as a muscular, dynamic, forceful character, like the women who hold down Holofernes,” art critic Jonathan Jones wrote for the Guardian in 2016. “Instead of a sword, she’s armed with a brush. Centuries before feminism, Gentileschi moves through space with extraordinary fluency, the maker of her own image, the hero of her own life.”

Meilan Solly | Read More

Meilan Solly is a senior associate digital editor at Smithsonian magazine, where she oversees the online history section. Solly's specialties are Tudor England, medieval Europe and World War II.