The August 2020 warehouse explosion at the port of Beirut killed more than 200 people, injured 7,000, and forced 300,000 residents from their homes. The blast destroyed thousands of buildings, including museums and galleries, and the 18th-century Sursock Palace was among the hardest hit. In the debris, however, a scholar made a remarkable discovery, recovering a previously unknown painting by Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi: the 1630 work “Hercules and Omphale.”
Now badly damaged by the explosion, “Hercules and Omphale” is being restored at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The painting is expected to be displayed at the Getty Center near the end of 2023 before it returns to Sursock Palace, which is still undergoing restoration.
Gregory Buchakjian, a Lebanese artist and art historian who wrote his Master’s thesis at the Sorbonne in Paris on the Sursock Palace collection, was the first to argue for the painting’s authenticity. His assessment was later supported by leading Gentileschi scholars, raising the total number of known surviving works by the artist to 61.
Gentileschi, one of the few women among the Baroque masters of 17th-century Italy, has become both an art-world and pop culture icon. Her dramatic depictions of mythological and historical subjects are often read through a feminist perspective. In “Hercules and Omphale,” she portrays the Greek myth in which Hercules is compelled to serve Omphale, Queen of Lydia, showing him holding a spindle of wool while Omphale and her maidens spin.
According to a Getty statement, Philip IV of Spain commissioned Gentileschi to paint the Ancient Greek figures in 1628, though that finished version was likely destroyed in a fire about a century later. Before that loss, Gentileschi created another version of “Hercules and Omphale” two years later, in 1630. The Beirut painting corresponds to one listed in a 1699 Naples inventory record.
Restoring the work may still be a formidable challenge. “The devastation this painting experienced is the most serious I have ever seen,” said the Getty’s senior conservator of paintings, Ulrich Birkmaier. He pointed to the “staggering” tearing and paint loss, while saying the oil on canvas would be “returned to its former splendor.”
