When we think of art of the Italian Baroque – which paintings and artists come to mind? Caravaggio’s boundary-pushing chiaroscuro lighting? Tiepolo’s Rococo glow or Annibale Caracci?
Most of what makes the Italian Baroque in our viewing habits and popular imagination is by male artists. Among these, Artemisia Gentilesci and Rosalba Carriera sit as two grand dames amidst the
fraternity of art historical scholarship. Yet Gentilesci and Carriera, while considered particularly great even in their day, are by no means two anomalies in the era. There were many female
painters of the Italian Baroque era and they are being gradually rediscovered though shifting focus in scholarship and restoration funding. Here I present a selection of lesser known women
artists of the late 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
Camilla Guerrieri (1628 – after 1693)
The earlier artists have the misfortune of often thin historical documentation and so Camilla Guerrier’s life and oevre are somewhat shrouded in mystery. Hailing from Fossombrone, she learned her
craft from her artist father Giovan Francesco Guerrieri. In connection with Vittoria della Rovere’s move to Florence and marriage to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Camilla also transferred to
Florence as her painter for many years. She worked at the Medici court before being granted a stipend, after which she returned to Pesaro and opened her own studio there.
In her self-portrait in the Uffizi Gallery Camilla Guerrieri depicts herself as a young woman robed in a tunic and clasped chiton which forms a contrast to her sitter, Vittoria della Rovere,
besides her in typical Baroque upper-class dress. The painting of the sitter, placed on an easel, is already taking shape. Guerrieri looks out of the painting with a firm, direct gaze. As if
interrupted at work she holds her palette and brush ready for the next stroke. About a century later, Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun would utilise antique revival dress to portray herself as a student of
the ancient arts amidst the Antiquarian interest of the later 1700s. Guerrieri’s dress is interesting, being much earlier and at a time when full-blown revival dressing was not as en vogue in
society. Guerrieri lived amidst the neoclassical movement of the Baroque, so portraying herself in antique-style dress fits the overall artistic scene of her day. Furthermore, she references the
depiction of antique muses and deities, showing herself to be a personification of painting beyond time and space next to her sitter in mid-1600s robes and hair.
Giovanna Fratellini (1666 – 1731)
Giovanna, born Marrmocchini Cortesi, was a member of upper class of her hometown Florence. She became a lady-in-waiting to Vittoria della Rovere, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany and thus was
well-connected among those who bought art and who had patronage. This likely gave a boost to her success, besides the talent which she amply possessed. When she married, she became Giovanna
Fratellini.
Giovanna received a wide variety of training in music and art. She studied with Flemish painter Livio Mehus and Italian artist Pietro Dandini, learning oil and pastel painting. From monk and
artist Ippolito Galantini she learned the techniques of miniature painting. Giovanna went on to paint many portraits of Florentine nobles and their family, especially of the ladies at court which
the Grand Duchess commissioned her to do. Besides that, Giovanna produced historical and mythological works in pastel and travelled frequently to Rome. She was engaged by the claimants of the
house of Stuart, exiled in Europe, to paint portraits of them. In 1706, she was accepted into Florence's prestigious Accademia del disegno. Several of her works are housed at the Medici mansion
Villa Petraia in the hills over Florence.
Giulia Elisabetta Lama, alias Lisalba Arcadia (1681 – 1747)
Giulia was born in Venice. As so many artists of her time, her training took place chiefly at home under the tuition of her artist father. Later, she studied at the Scuola di Antonio Molinari in
Venice together with her childhood friend Giambattista Piazzetta (1682–1754), another artist.
She was one of the first female artists to study the male figure nude, as drawings attest. This was rare, positively scandalous. The study of a live nude male for artistic training was considered
unsuitable for women. At the same time, learning to draw and arrange scenes from the knowledge of anatomy was considered vital for the painting of history subjects, from which women were
consequentially usually excluded. Giulia would not have that, though.
A letter from 1728 about her survives which attests to some struggles in Giulia’s life: "The poor girl is persecuted by the painters, but her virtue triumphs over her enemies. It is true that she
is as ugly as she is witty but she speaks with grace and precision, so that one easily forgives her face." The writer also lists mathematics, poetry, lace making and embroidery as Giulia’s
skills. Indeed, it is possible that to support her training financially, she may have been a lace-maker and embroiderer on the side early on. Her interests in mathematics and lace-making
combined made her intrigued by technologies in the textile trade, particularly a lace-making apparatus. This is evident in another letter about her, in which the writer urges the recipient to get
in tough with Giulia as she is very keen to know about the apparatus. What became of this is unknown. Certainly, mechanical lace-making would only really take off a century in the 1800s around
the centre of the lace-making industries in the world in Nottingham.
Business-savvy enough to become financially independent, she never married and instead devoted her time to her career. She received out large-scale commissions such as many altar pieces, becoming
known chiefly for her skill at empathetic renditions of religious scenes, but also portraits. She probably died of the plague in October 1747, aged around 67.
Maria Felice Tibaldi-Subleyras (1707 – 1770)
Maria Felice Tibaldi together with her sisters Teresa and Isabela lived in Italy in the eighteenth century. They all became artists, painting portraits and historical scenes both in oil and
pastel. Maria Felice, possibly also her sisters, also worked as a miniature artist.
Historical scenes in particular were considered the reserve of men, as they required the study of the nude body for best expression. Maria Felice nonetheless engaged in painting historical
subjects, such as The Banquet at the House of Simon, and it did not harm her career. She was celebrated in her time, with Pope Benedict XIV placing a painting of she presented him with into the
collection of the Capitol and sending her a gift of one thousand scudi."
In 1739 Maria Felice married fellow artist Pierre Subleyras, who painted a portrait of her in white silks and holding a rose. Isabella married Pierre-Charles Trémolières, etcher and decorative
painter of interiors.
Violante Beatrice Siries Cerroti (1709 – 1783)
Violante Beatrice Siries was born in Florence, but travelled to Paris at 17 years old to study art. There, she received lessons from Hyacinthe Rigaud and François Boucher, two of the great
masters of Rococo painting. Rigaud painted the famous portrait of Louis XIV and Boucher the portrait of Madame de Pompadour in a green silk robe with pink ribbons, as well as the painting The
Swing. Violante chose portrait painting as her professional specialisation. After her marriage to Giuseppe Cerroti upon her return to Florence, she continued working as an artist. The Medici
family extended their patronage to her, as did later on the Gondi family. She executed a large family portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. Several of her self-portraits can still be seen in
the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Anna Piattoli Bacherini (1720 – 1788)
Anna lived in Florence and was a pastel painter, portraitist and and painter of religious scenes. She was an aquantance, and despite being older possibly a student, of artist Violante Beatrice
Siries. The Grand Dukes of Tuscany and the people in the court circles placed many commissions with her, as the diplomat and collector Niccolò Gabburri notes in his writings. Although little of
Anna Bacherini’s work is publicly displayed, a self-portrait is in the Uffizi Gallery collection. It shows her as a woman of middle age dressed in a fashionable silk Brunswick and cap and sitting
in front of a table with paint pots and a miniature painting on a small easel, looking out of the frame with a firm but kind expression. She portrays herself as a woman of style and some level of
wealth, displaying her professional success based on her artistic skill.
Luisa Grace Bartolini (1818 – 1865)
Luisa Grace was born into an Irish Catholic baronet’s family in Bristol. When she was ten years old, the family left the UK for France, where Luisa Grace received lessons in art and literature
throughout her youth. Her family being of Italian descent, she had learned the language and began writing poetry both in Italian and French. In the late 1830s, at around twenty years of age, she
moved to Italy and pursued her literary works by writing poetry and translation of contemporary literature. She went on to host a circle of intellectuals in her salon. Besides this, she continued
to produce artworks in oil, charcoal and water colours. In 1860, aged 42, she married an engineer but sadly died only five years later.
