Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana
Self-Portrait in the Studio, 1579
Born	Bologna, Papal States
Baptised	24 August 1552
Died	11 August 1614 (aged 61) Rome, Papal States
Resting place	Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome
Education	Prospero Fontana Denis Calvaert Ludovico Carracci
Alma mater	University of Bologna
Style	Mannerist
Spouse	Gian Paolo Zappi ​ (m. 1577)​
Children	11
Parent	Prospero Fontana (father)
Elected	Accademia di San Luca
Patron(s)	Pope Gregory XIII Pope Clement VII Pope Paul V

Lavinia Fontana (24 August 1552–11 August 1614) was an Italian Mannerist painter. She was active in Bologna and Rome. Today, people remember her mostly for the portraits that she painted. She also had other themes that she painted. She also did mythological and religious painting. Her father, Prospero Fontana trained her. Some people see her as the first career artist in Europe. This is because she relied on commissions for her income. In the context of art, this means that people asked her to create paintings with certain themes or styles, and paid for this.

Her family relied on her career as a painter, and her husband served as her agent and raised their eleven children. She was perhaps the first female artist to paint female nudes, but this is a topic of controversy among art historians.

Her nude paintings

Minerva Dressing, 1613, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Fontana also pained nudes. Today, art historians do not agree on the ways and means she used for this. She had studied her father's collection of sculptures and plaster casts. The problem is that during Fontana's lifetime, it was socially unaceptable for women to be exposed to nudity. If it was discovered that Fontana used live nude models, this would harm her reputation. Liana De Girolami Cheney argues the figures look very natural. According to her, this might indicate that Fontana used live nude models. Caroline P. Murphy says that much like with her Fontana's father's paintings, the body parts are well-rendered, but overall, the figure re disproportionate. Murphy suggests that, like Sofonisba Anguissola, Fontana had family members model for her. Linda Nochlin writes that art academies barred women from viewing any nude body, despite this being a crucial part of an artist's training.

Gallery

• 
  Mystic marriage of Saint Catherine, 1574–1577, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
• 
  Christ appears to Mary Magdalen. Noli me tangere, 1581, Uffizi, Florence
• 
  Assumption of the Virgin with Saints Peter Chrysologus and Cassian, 1584, Palazzo Comunale, Imola
• 
  Portrait of Costanza Alidosi, c. 1595, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
• 
  Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, unknown date, private collection
• 
  Judith and Holofernes, unknown date, private collection
• 
  Portrait of Bianca Lucia Aliprandi, 1602, private collection
• 
  Wedding Feast at Cana, c. 1575–1580, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

References

• Chadwick, Whitney (1990). Women, Art, and Society. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 9780500202418.
• Cheney, Liana (Spring-Summer 1984). "Lavinia Fontana, Boston 'Holy Family'". Woman's Art Journal. 5 (1).
• Cheney, Liana De Girolami; Faxon, Alicia Craig; Russo, Kathleen Lucey (2000). Self-Portraits by Women Painters. Singapore: Ashgate. ISBN 978-1-85928-424-7.
• Findlen, Paula (8 November 2002). The Italian Renaissance. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-631-22283-5.
• Fortunati, Vera (1998). Lavinia Fontana of Bologna (1552–1614). Milan: Electa. ISBN 978-8843563944.
• Gaze, Delia. Concise Dictionary of Women Artists.
• Hansen, Morten Steen; Spicer, Joaneath, eds. (2005). Masterpieces of Italian Painting, The Walters Art Museum. Baltimore and London. ISBN 978-1904832140.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Harris, Anne Sutherland; Nochlin, Linda (1976). Women Artists: 1550-1950. New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
• Murphy, Caroline P. (1996). "Lavinia Fontana and 'Le Dame della Citta': understanding female artistic patronage in late sixteenth-century Bologna." Renaissance Studies. 10 (2). pp. 190–208. JSTOR.
• Murphy, Caroline P. (1997). "Lavinia Fontana". Dictionary of Women Artists. Vol 1. Delia Gaze, ed. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. pp. 534–7. ISBN 1-884964-21-4.
• Murphy, Caroline P. (2003). Lavinia Fontana: A Painter and Her Patrons in Sixteenth-century Bologna. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09913-3.
• Rocco, Patricia. The Devout Hand: Women, Virtue, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Italy. McGill-Queens University Press, 2017.
• Smyth, Francis P.; O'Neill, John P. (1986). The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the 16th and 17th Centuries. Washington DC: National Gallery of Art. pp. 132–136.

Other websites

• Media related to Paintings by Lavinia Fontana at Wikimedia Commons
• Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, a fully digitized exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on Lavinia Fontana (see index)