Lavinia Fontana:
A Renaisance Artist Fairy Tale
In Bologna at the turn of the 17th century, long before the 20th century feminist movement, there lived the younger daughter of a moderately talented painter. Lavinia Fontana was a pious woman, devoted wife, and mother of eleven… but she also went on to become the first female painter to achieve professional success in her own city, leaving the largest legacy of painting of any woman before the 18th century.
It may sound like a fairy tale, but it’s true. Despite being a woman from a modest socio-economic background and living in a patriarchal society, Lavinia rose to international fame within her lifetime and garnered a salary comparable to the most successful male painters in Europe. Lavinia’s own hard work and talent combined with the support of her local community became the force that she rode to success.
Getting Started
Lavinia grew up under the tutelage of her father, Prospero, a painter in an age when painters were considered on par with saddlers and sword makers. Her career was kickstarted by a family crisis: the evaporation of Prospero’s retirement income resulting from the death of his eldest child. Consequently, he contrived a painting career for Lavinia—and a new retirement plan for himself.
Prospero’s to-do list was long:
Train Lavinia in painting.
Cultivate musical abilities and other genteel accomplishments to attract upper-class clients/husband.
Network for a husband.
Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614), Self-Portrait at the Clavichord with a Servant, 1577, oil on canvas, 27 x 24 cm, Rome, Accademia di San Luca.
The list of requirements for a potential husband was equally long: he must be of good moral repute and high social standing, willing to marry an artisan, content to live in his father-in-law’s house, and prepared to accept his future wife as primary breadwinner. No doubt, Prospero sent up a few prayers for this last item. Amazingly, Prospero found a perfect match for Lavinia: Gian Paolo Zappi, a minor nobleman from neighboring Imola.
Lavinia began her path to artistic success both for her family’s sake and by her family’s efforts. Armed with a social pass in the form of a husband and testimony of her dutifulness as a wife (in the form of eleven children), Lavinia’s freedom to engage in the art world increased. The presence of Lavinia’s parents in the home, who likely aided with childcare, enabled her to sustain her career. Thus, Lavinia became the first female artist to both operate within the social mores of her culture and to interact with the world at large. Unlike her female contemporaries, Lavinia’s world was not limited to the convent or the female court of a queen. Instead, she had a larger sphere of potential clients.
Local & Social Networking
Lavinia’s rise to international renown began at home with her father’s scholarly, ecclesiastical, and noble connections. These men wanted an artist to document their zoological and botanical collections and make visual representations of their Christian beliefs, and they also wanted to collect portraits of their friends. Acquaintances who met through correspondence became interested in seeing pictures of each other. To collect “friends,” the Bolognese turned to the best local social media outlet of the day: portraitist Lavinia Fontana. One gentleman amassed such a large collection of portraits that he had to build a villa to house it. This international social networking formed the basis of relationships that would ultimately lead to commissions from the Medici family and Spanish royalty for Lavinia.
Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of Girolamo Mercuriale, c 1588, oil on canvass, 119 x 88.9 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.
Lavinia’s propriety and social cultivation also enabled her to tap into the niche market of women’s portraiture. As a woman, she could readily transact business with other women, even widows who found themselves without husbands to guide them through the world. Women of all stages of life were able to admit Lavinia into their domestic spheres to paint them as well as their children without a chaperone. As such, Lavinia became popular among the female nobility, who competed for her attentions.
Encouragement & Finances from the Church
While Lavinia’s family and local community helped her get a solid foot in the art market, it was the Church that sealed her success. Bologna and the other Italian city-states benefited from Counter-Reformation artistic encouragement: Christian art should be made and should contain doctrinally correct images. Gabriele Paleotti, once a friend of Prospero and now Archbishop of Bologna, taught that Christian images could aid in the formation of faith by delighting, teaching, and moving the viewer. These ecclesiastic endorsements for art nearly doubled the demand for painters, including Lavinia, who experienced an increased demand for private devotional works and altarpieces. Beyond this, Paleotti gave Lavinia the commission to paint the central altarpiece in his chapel in Bologna’s St. Peter cathedral.
Lavinia Fontana, The Annunciation, c 1575, oil on copper, 36 x 27 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.
Lavinia continued to benefit from her scholarly, ecclesiastical, and noble connections, sending paintings as far as Florence, Rome, and Spain. Her more than 150 known works, prestigious salary, and reputation as a civic celebrity in her home town of Bologna attest to her reputation for both artistic quality and good character. Devoted daughter, wife, and mother, Lavinia’s visual legacy is a testimony not only to her talents but to the family and local community that buoyed her up above the economic and social stratifications of her age.
Much appreciation goes to Caroline Murphy and her scholarly work, Lavinia Fontana: A Painter and her Patrons in Sixteenth-century Bologna. Yale University Press, 2003.
Christa Issler is a member artist of the Anselm Art Guild. She received her MA in Medieval Art History and BA in Studio Art. Today she paints in watercolor, subjects her friends to snippets of art history, and can generally be found promoting the arts and their integration with the rest of the world.
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The modern romantic ideal of the artist is the eccentric genius; a loner, an outcast, different from everyone else. But no Christian exempted from the call to love his neighbor. This series explores the ingredients and avenues with which artist Christian can be a thriving part of the Body of Christ. View the whole series.
