In 2011, Francesco Solinas discovered a collection of thirty-six letters, dating from about 1616 to 1620, that add startling context to personal and financial life of the Gentileschi family in Florence. They show that Artemisia had a passionate love affair with a wealthy Florentine nobleman, named Francesco Maria Maringhi. Her husband, Pierantonio Stiattesi, was well aware of their relationship and he maintained a correspondence with Maringhi on the back of Artemisia’s love letters. He tolerated it, presumably because Maringhi was a powerful ally who provided the couple financial support. However, by 1620, rumours of the affair had begun to spread in the Florentine court and this, combined with ongoing legal and financial problems, led them to relocate to Rome.

Her ‘David with the Head of Goliath’, rediscovered in London in 2020, has been attributed by art historian Gianni Papi to Artemisia’s London period, in an article published in The Burlington Magazine.