The Women Artist of Bologna

by Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs, appearing in Volume 49

Seventeenth-century Bologna, despite having a smaller overall population, boasted more women artists than Venice, Florence, or Rome. “The Bolognese phenomenon,” in Germaine Greer’s phrase, has been studied piecemeal by feminists and art historians, but Women Artists, Their Patrons, and Their Publics in Early Modern Bologna, by Babette Bohn, is the first comprehensive study of all known women artists active in Bologna from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.

The lavishly produced book provides a broad selection of sketches, drawings, and finished paintings—many never-before published—as well as ample tables, graphs, and appendices of artists and inventories.

In an accessible style, Bohn, Professor of Art History and Affiliate Faculty in Women and Gender Studies at Texas Christian University, sets out not only to present her extensive research into women artists, but to interpret her subjects through a second-wave feminist hermeneutic. Both the introduction and the epilogue situate Bohn’s work in the tradition of Greer’s 1971 essay, “Why are There No Great Women Artists?”

After exploring how the Bolognese cultural tradition favored the flourishing of female artists, Bohn divides her work into a first part focused on a chronological study of the artists themselves, and a second part examining patterns of patronage and “self-fashioning.”

Among the early artists who established the Bolognese appreciation for gifted women was the extraordinary Saint Caterina Vigri (1413–1463), a Poor Clare nun, writer, musician, painter, miracle-worker, and visionary, whose incorrupt body awaits the General Resurrection on a throne in her convent chapel.

Although Giorgio Vasari celebrated the beauty and virtues of sculptor Properzia de’ Rossi (1490-1530), Bohn, in order to undermine the biographical trope of the coincidence of artistic and moral virtuosità in women artists, attempts to associate the sculptor with sordid criminal records.

No such records could be found to refashion Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), who depicts herself as a refined young lady at the pianoforte in a touching self-portrait given to her future father-in-law. Rather than a dowry, Fontana’s marriage contract included an agreement that she would continue to paint for her father’s workshop. She went on to become a renowned portraitist of women and children, to fulfill commissions for religious paintings, and to raise eleven children.

The extraordinary talent of Elisabetta Sirani (1638–1665) dominates Bohn’s treatment of the seventeenth century. Trained by her father, a follower of Guido Reni, Sirani painted her first altarpiece at seventeen and completed approximately 213 paintings before dying of stomach ulcers at twenty-seven. Her many extant works reveal a swift and graceful touch. Though Bohn resents that women were not permitted to study the male nude, to my eyes the inherent talent of a woman like Sirani appears largely to have circumvented this obstacle. Perhaps she drew upon knowledge derived from sculpture or from the observation of the dynamic anatomy of young children.

The patronage of Fontana and Sirani attests to a local society in which nobles and non-nobles alike commissioned primarily religious art for their homes and public spaces.

Bohn dedicates a chapter to her theory that Bolognese women signed their paintings at a higher rate and painted more self-portraits than their male counterparts out of a struggle for recognition. I find that the self-portraits themselves undercut the idea of women artists engaged in a struggle for power. One after another, they depict refined and honest visions of themselves calmly pursuing their chosen discipline.

The chapter on drawings and prints reveals again how a preparatory drawing can capture a spark extinguished in the finished painting. I particularly loved a delicate Fontana sketch of a friar whose humorous gaze and unruly hair immediately transport him to us from across five centuries.

Bohn’s capacity for understanding these artists and their milieus is hampered by an approach that unnaturally dislocates the artists’ production and sex from the women themselves and their values. In this process of feminist objectification, Bohn leaves unexplored such questions as how these women understood their vocations or their own work, or how they integrated artistic practice into the demands of family and religious life—questions of great value both for understanding the past and for women artists today. Nonetheless, we must be grateful to Bohn and her publisher for making these artists and their works more accessible.

Sirani, Fontana, and their peers are inspiring enough that I plan to keep my copy of Women Artists in my studio, ready to share with the many young women I meet who are considering following in their footsteps.