of the familiar subject matter was unexpected and original. Both she and her husband worked at the Academy of Design, and Gentileschi bacame an official member there in 1616. This was a remarkable honor for a woman of her day and was most likely made possible by the support of her Florentine patron, the Grand Duke Cosmo II of the powerful Medici family. During her years in Florence, he commisioned quite a few paintings from her, and Gentileschi left Florence to return to Rome upon his death in1621. From there, she probably moved to Genoa that same year, accompanying her father who was invited there by a Genovese nobleman. While there she painted her first "Lucretia" (1621) and her first "Cleopatra" (1621-1622). She also had assignments in nearby Venice during this period and met Anthony Van Dyck, a very successful painter of the era. She may have also met Sofonisba Anguissola who was a generation older than Gentileschi and one of the handful of women who worked as artists. Gentileschi later had another daughter, and both are known to have been painters, though neither their work nor any record of it has survived. During this stay in Rome, a French artist, Pierre Dumostier le Neveu, made a drawing of her hand holding a paint brush. He called it the drawing of the hand of the"excellent and wise noble woman of Rome, Artemesia." Her fame is also evident ina commemmorative medal bearing her portrait made sometime between 1625 and 1630 that calls her pitrix cellebris or celebrated "woman painter." Also at this time, Jerome David painted her portrait with the inscription calling her "the famous Roman painter"....
