Artemisia, celebrated daughter of the great artist Orazio Gentileschi, contributed to the decoration of the Galleria by painting a panel with a personification of Inclination. The canvas is one of the allegories accompanying the episodes from the life of Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of this room. Gentileschi had come to Florence from Rome in 1613, at a time when the sensation caused by the violence to which she had been subjected by the painter Agostino Tassi and his subsequent trial for rape (1612) had not yet died down. Artemisia 's painting was one of the first in the room to be commissioned, and the painter had received an advance payment of some size as early as 1615. Michelangelo the Younger had a particular fondness for Artemisia, whose work was paid at more than three times the rate of the others in the series. His generosity was probably due to the precarious financial state of the painter, now married to Pietro Antonio Stiattesi and at an advanced stage of pregnancy. In a letter conserved in the Archivio Buonarroti, Artemisia addresses her client as "compare, " a term that can mean godfather, best man or just old friend and whose significance has yet to be clarified. There are records of several small loans made to the artist by Michelangelo the Younger and in fact he included her in his list of debtors. The female figure, which has recently been aptly described as a "luminous and carnal nude" (Cropper), is holding a compass, while a star shining in the blue sky seems to be acting as her guide. The work, painted after the intense years spent in the Rome of Caravaggio, stands out from the other canvases in the series for its naturalism: the beautiful woman, a seductive allegory whose serene gaze passes over the heads of visitors, had been painted completely naked. According to the Descrizione buonarrotiana, two small pulleys, no longer visible today, used to be set at the young woman's feet. A few decades later, a descendent of Michelangelo the Younger had the figure covered with moralistic drapery by Volterrano.

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