October 2019
Inside ADVANCING WOMEN ARTISTS
Plautilla Nelli. Before and after
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visible In 2008, AWA’s founder Jane Fortune launched her groundbreaking book, Invisible Women, which immediately proved a resource for scholars and travelers around the world. Unseen treasures by female artists needed to be rediscovered, salvaged and, ultimately, exhibited. Exactly a decade has passed since the book’s launch and, in Jane’s memory, AWA presents another publication with The Florentine Press, our historic partners. Its title fills us with joy: VISIBLE. To arrive at this moment has been our heart’s desire since Nelli’s Last Supper first took up residence in conservator Rossella Lari’s Oltrarno studio in October 2015. To quote the publication’s back cover: “A four-year journey of restoration and research, this quest is a bridge across time and the contemporary answer to Nelli’s appeal, ‘Pray for the Paintress’, where the past and present meet and make history, in Florence, today.”
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Welcome October 2019
Inside
A utumn 2019
A
utumn 2019 is the moment we have all been waiting for: Plautilla Nelli’s monumental Last Supper returns to the
ADVANCING WOMEN ARTISTS
Plautilla Nelli. Before and after
waiting public at the Santa Maria Novella Museum with the presentation of the restored painting in the awe-inspiring adjacent basilica. The month of October would not be complete without the publication
of our newest conservation catalog Visible which contains the project’s precious research, uncovered in the studio and gleaned from the On the road with a Baroque star Michelangelo’s bride
PHOTO: DUART CASTLE, SWEN STROOP
archives. Some of Nelli’s ‘best pics’ can be found within its pages. As you enter into the world of Inside AWA, we invite you to enjoy this issue’s
ART BY WOMEN: FROM STORAGE TO SPOTLIGHT
features on women artists in Florence and further afield, as Margaret MacKinnon follows the footsteps of Artemisia, Chaplin, Fontana and Kauffman to celebrate their art (seen and unseen). As this issue goes to press, we await the arrival of AWA’s Sojourners and Last Supper patrons. May they and all our friends and supporters feel warmly ‘welcomed home’ to Florence, right along with the city’s first female painter. Heartfelt gratitude for your support.
Linda Falcone AWA Director
Inside AWA Magazine Editors: Linda Falcone, Fiona Richards Copy editor & contributor: Margaret MacKinnon Cover photo: Detail of Saint Catherine de’ Ricci, Transporting the body of Christ by A. Allori and G.M. Butteri at SMN, Fototeca dei Musei Civici Fiorentini Photographers: Fototeca dei Musei Civici Fiorentini, Francesco Cacchiani, ICVBC-CNR, Gianfranco Gori, Byron Hurst, Swietlan N. Kraczyna, Rossella Lari, Giuseppe Moscato, National Gallery, London, Rabatti & Domingie, Justine Trickett. Design: FPE Media Ltd Follow us: F: Facebook.com/advancingwomenartists W: www.advancingwomenartists.org I: awa_foundation Advancing Women Artists Via Magenta 31 Florence, 50123
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Contents
20 Michaelangelo's bride
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Walls of Nelli
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The elements of art
54 See and Say: Lola Costa
66 Inspiration across generations
A serendipitous encounter
6 Before and after: Nelli unveiled 4
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A utumn 2019
Mud Angels
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Double vision
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On the road with a Baroque star
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Bending the rules: Eleonora de Toledo
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Lavinia Fontana
18 Nelli's donors 5
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NELLI UNVEILING
R. Lari admires the 'finished' Last Supper
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BEFORE AND AFTER One picture is worth a thousand words, especially for the masterwork that has sparked four years of dialog in the conservation studio—Plautilla Nelli’s Last Supper. The largest work by an early woman artist in the world, and AWA’s ‘biggest baby’ to date, is now restored and has been returned to the world, at Florence’s Santa Maria Novella Museum. The series of images here speak for themselves. They will take you back to Nelli’s past and tempt you to dream about Nelli’s future— her future starts with the exhibition this month. Florentine restorer Rossella Lari gives a glimpse of the conservation process and its striking end results.
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Finding the facts
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Layers of color had begun to detach from the pictorial surface, especially on the lower half of the artwork where the canvas had become loose. Dust, which had naturally deposited on the canvas, emphasized irregular deformation resulting from inadequate canvas tension and accentuated material deposits wedged between the canvas and the frame. The painting was covered with a greasy substance that had formed and solidified due to the accumulation of atmospheric particles where the painting was stored, The painting’s surface was affected by small patches of color loss and its weakened frame wedges were rendered fragile due to an extreme attack by xylophagous insects. During initial observation, wax used for early color binding was detected, as were previous pictorial restorations which had been affected by successive alterations applied on top of previously added paint.”
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Minding the gaps
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To reconstruct several anatomical parts, such as the Apostles’ feet, or patches of the third Apostle’s face—from the left—we used drawings of comparable body parts from other portions of the painting and reintegrated the image by tracing their outlines in the missing areas. To better harmonize the composition as a whole, color glazes were applied over old repainted areas.”
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The primary reason for conducting ph was to gather data on the painting an which previous retouching and repainti layer had impacted its overall state o helped define Plautilla Nelli’s p
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nducting photographic investigation painting and ascertain the extent to nd repainting of the original pictorial erall state of repair. These analyses lla Nelli’s painterly technique.
Facing the challenge
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We found dozens of small color fragments stuck to the pictorial surface which had detached during the relining process; a scalpel was used for their removal. Eliminating layers of repainting revealed different types of fillings from the recent or previous restorations. Numerous colors had degraded as a result of the canvas having been rolled up, clearly without a support roller, causing its weight to crush the paint, which inevitably impacted the integrity of the color scheme. Some deficiencies were due to color exfoliation, a phenomenon that causes pigments to degrade.”
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“Public debut aside, it would be misleading to suggest that Nelli’s painting was truly unveiled in a single day. In truth, we unveiled her painting for many years—and with the help of hundreds. The Last Supper’s ‘unveiling’ started as soon as Rossella Lari scrubbed that first layer of grime from its darkened over-painting or as soon as her scalpel revealed the closest she would come to Nelli’s stripped-down original paint. As the first photos began to circulate, in hand and via web, as art professors in universities worldwide began to invite students to dedicate their theses to Plautilla’s masterwork, as art scholars became inspired by news of the painting’s restoration, as journalists accessed that ‘inner circle’ which is the atelier, Nelli’s artwork travelled its thousand-step journey—towards becoming part of the collective consciousness.” Linda Falcone
Seeing with new eyes
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Each Apostle expresses a different psychological reaction in response to the words Christ must have just spoken and their outward gestures allude to ‘the rousing of the soul’. This is visible in the positioning of the figures’ hands and the pronounced anatomical detailing of their forehead wrinkles, which became very pronounced after cleaning, emphasized by Nelli’s dynamic chiaroscuro technique. Plautilla set the long dinner table in the foreground, with the figure of Christ in the center. His head reclines and his eyes are half-closed, as he sits rueful and motionless amidst a wave of agitation, as the Apostles are shown reacting to the fateful truth he has just pronounced. His face is the sharpest, most focused and most feminine of all the figures and his expression of quiet resignation emerged once rescued from under a layer of repainting that had long distorted it.” Rossella Lari
The authors of Nelli’s new conservation catalog entitled Visible comment on her masterwork and what they learned through restoration and research.
A ‘collective artwork’
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Evidence denoting a range of artistic skills can be found throughout the painting, and have become even more obvious post conservation. There is huge disparity between the higher quality of the visible parts of the body, such as in the hands and faces, compared to the construction of the rest of the Apostles’ bodies. This may be due to the type and/or level of training that an artist received or be rooted in moral reasons as well. Some of these faces display a more decisive quality, as with the second and fourth Apostles from the right, which may even be portraits.” Andrea Muzzi
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Signs of her times
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The carefully set table that Plautilla Nelli portrays in her depiction of the Last Supper—with its fine glass vessels, salt cellars and cutlery—reflects refined taste, but is also a historic ‘snapshot’ providing further evidence of the best Chinese porcelain available in Florence in the mid-sixteenth century.” Francesco Morena
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Afterthoughts and investigation
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The primary reason for conducting photographic investigation was to gather data on the painting and ascertain the extent to which previous retouching and repainting of the original pictorial layer had impacted its overall state of repair. These analyses helped define Plautilla Nelli’s painterly technique as well as spotlight her preparatory underdrawing and focus on the artist’s numerous pentimenti while drafting the picture.” Susanna Bracci and Donata Magrini
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Heartfelt Thanks to all our Last Supper donors
THE ADOPT AN APOSTLE PROGRAM Jane Fortune (Saint Matthew for Robert Hesse). Donna Malin (Jesus Christ for John and Sophie Lalas). Cay Fortune and John Shimer (Saint John for Jane Fortune). Bill Fortune (Saint Peter). Pamela Fortune (Saint Philip). David and Nancy Galliher (Saint James the Younger). Joe Blakley (Saint Peter). Ted Lilly and Deborah Wood Lilly (Saint Andrew). Margaret MacKinnon and Wayne McArdle (Saint Judas Thaddeus for Beverley McLachlin and Saint Simon for Jacqueline Anne Côté). Bill and Nancy Hunt (Saint Bartholomew). Betty and Dave Schneider (Saint Thomas). Alice Vogler (Saint James the Elder for Lynne Wisneski).
MAJOR DONORS Connie and Doug Clark Victoria Slichter Mark Gordon Smith (for Helen Dehnke Smith)
THE ART DEFENSE FUND FOR JUDAS ISCARIOT Nicholas Davidson, Sarah Dunant, Ingrid and Michael Furtado, Monica Martin, Susan Mazza, Beverley McLachlin, Elizabeth Negrey, Brenda Schneider, Jennifer Schneider, Mark Gordon Smith. 18
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NELLI DONORS THE FIRSTLAST Adelina Modesti, Advancing Women Artists, Alessandra Barucchieri, Amanda Mefford, Alessandro Mammoli, Alessandro Masetti, Alex Baikov, Alexandra Korey, Alexis Masters, Alice M. Vogler, Allie Terry-Fritsch, Alwayswickedart, Alyssa Cordero, Amber Matthews, Amber McDougall, Amelia O’Mahony Brady, Amy MacLennan, Andrea Loren Davis, Andrew Korey, Andrina Lever, Angela Gavazzi, Angela Rosalie LaRocco Sopranzi, Angela Serra, Ann McCollum, Ann Piper, Anna Bensted, Anne Farrell, Anne-Marie Frew, Annmarie Kent-Willette, Antonia Monson, Antoniette M. Ricatti, Ashley Gardini, Associazione Culturale Il Palmerino, Atlhea Greenan, Audrey Korey, Bettina Urlichs, Betty Daniels, Betty Schneider, Bill Fortune, B.J. Barron, Bob Brooks, Bobette Buster, Boyd Dallos, Brent B. Nall, Bronwen Wilson, Bruno Fabietti, Bucka Bestma, Camelia Boban, Candace Wilkinson, Carl Mario Nudi, Carlotta del Bianco, Carmalee Kanter, Carmen Marucci, Carol Curtis, Carol Faenzi, Carola Lengkeek-Ollier, Carol Mahar, Carol Marshall Allen, Carol Schultz, Carole Rotblatt, Carolina Milone, Caroline Hillard, Caroline Pierson, Caron Cadle, Caterina Franciosi, Catherine Hensiek, Catie Costa, Catherine Turrill, Cheryl Dean, Cheryl Payne, Chiara Falcone, Chiara Montpetit, Christine Thum Schlesser, Claire Eskander, Claire Foster, Claire Kilpatric, Cole Masse, Cristiano Brizzi, Cristina Del Sesto, Cynde Barnes, Danielle Covatta, Daria Dmitrieva, Dario Nardella, David Galliher, Dave Schneider, Davide Castagnetti, Debra Alikakos, Debra Avis Wilson, Deborah Bettazzi, Deborah Green, Deborah Margolin, Deborah O’Mullane, Di Hall, Diana Hiller, Diane Wilson, Dianne Hales, Diana Haler, Dolores Davidson, Donatela Baldini, Donato Mas, Donna Malin, Dorene Zerbarth, Dorothee Volpini Maestri, Early Masters, Edgar Rust, Edmund Radmacher, Eija Tanninen-Komulainen, Elaine Miller, Elena Fulceri, Elisa Paolini, Elisa Tozzi Piccini, Elisabetta Marchi, Elissa Cullman, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Wicks, Ellen Burchenal, Ellen Dutton, Emily Byrne Curtis, Emily Mayer, Emily Schiavone, Eric Catalano, Eric Wells, Erik Bruchez, Eva Lean, Eva-Maria Prilisauer, Fabrizio Mollisi, Eric Wells, Erik Bruchez, Federica Parretti, Fiona Baskett, Fiona Richards, Fiore A. Masse, Flavia Fichera, Franca M. Barchiesi, Francesco Cacchiani, Francis W. Moran, Freda Adams, Friends of Florence, Gabriele Sodo Natiello Colosimo, Garry Fredericksen, Gayle Reynolds, Georgette Jupe, Geraldine Asciolla Durso, Giacomo Badiani, Ginette Pierson, Ginny Nicholas, Giovanni Giusti, Giuseppe Arone, Giuseppe Carrieri, Gloria Rosati, Grace Kennedy, Heather Wadia, Helen Farrell, Helen Petrie, Ida Merlini, Ioana Nicoleta Penescu, Irene Bellucci, Irene Dale, Irene F. Sullivan, Irl Marshall, Jack Ferraro, Jane Emma Adams, Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Jane Lear, James C.A. McClennen, James Taylor, Jane Fortune, Janell M. Wolfe, Jennifer Medveckis, Jen Harshbarger, Jenna Francisco, Jennifer Kittle, Jessica Spiegel, Jill Harrison, Joan Lavin, Jo Breen Verging, Joan A. McClure, Joann Mannino, Jocelyn Fitzgerald, Joe Blakley, Joerg Fricke, John Boumenot, John Medveckis, John T. Trigonis, Jonathan D. Frisch, Josephine Porciatti, Julia Biggs, Julie Rainey, Karen Bloor, Karen Chase, Karen Morikawa, Karen Wentzel, Kari Thyne, Karin Haanappel, Karin Urlichs, Kate Farrell,
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Katherine White, Kathryn Hunter, Kathryn Nesselbeck, Kathryn Rakich, Kathy Rogan, Katia Martinez, Keight Maclean, Kelly Puma, Kelly Shea Travels, Sue Kelvin Bridge, Kirby Chown, Konstancja Satalecka, Kristin Gary, Kuriko Tatai, LaShanda Maze, Laura DeLaforgue, Laura Macaluso, Leah Targon, Lee Laurino, Lena S. Keslin, Leo Cardini, Lesley Gamble, Leslie Ann Buskirk, Leslie Jmaeff, Lester Callif, Louise Fredericksen, Liesbeth Hogerbrugge, Linda Falcone, Linda Martinez, Lisa Menzies, Lisa Unger Baskin, LJ Murdoch, Lorena Wolfe, Lorenzo Bojola, Lori Buckoll, Lori Shorin, Loriana Avitabile Hoffman, Louise (Missy) Huggins, Louise Di Nallo, Lucia Bucciarelli, Lucia Falcone, Lucia Mannini, Lyall F. Harris, Lynne Rutter, Madeleine Mansvelt Beck, Margaret MacKinnon, Mara Laura Perbellini, Marcia Masse, Marco Badiani, Margo Dallos, Maria Bosco Owens, Maria Melanson, Marianne Ferraro, Marie Gabrielle, Marielle Lassche, Marilyn Shoemaker, Marta Bellucci, Martha Serafin, Mary D. Garrard, Mary G. Pankonin, Mary Jane Jacques, Mary Padgett, Massimo Becattini, Maurene K. Viele, Maya Liliana Ungar, Megan Lorraine, Melissa Robinson, Michele D. Bilodeau, Michelle Bien, Michelle N. Jones, Michelle Tarnopolsky, Miranda Lintermans, Miriam Smith, Mitzi Morgan, Molly Bourne, Molly McIlwrath, Morgan SchmidtFeng, Moufid El Rayes, Susan Madocks, Robyn Smith, Myles Meyers, Myrtha Steiner, Nancy Archer, Nancy Bergen Hunt, Nancy Galliher, Nancy Partovi, Nancy Rica Schiff, Nathalie Salas, Nerdi Orafi Firenze, Nicole Padoan, Nina Olsson, Nita Tucker, Noreen M. Ackerman, Pam Conrad, Pamela Heilman, Pamela Klodzinski, Pamela Rector, Paola Vojnovic, Patricia Geremia, Patricia Likos Ricci, Patrizia Marion Trabalzini, Penny Herlihy, Penny Howard, Peter Jmaeff, Peyton Wilson, Pietro Polsinelli, Poiret Masse, Rachel V. Hanna, Rea Stavropoulos, Rita Kungel, Robbin Everson, Robert Falcone, Robert F. Ferrone, Robert Heilman, Ron Antonio, Ron Rifkin, Roseann Milano, Rosemary Wilmot, Ross King, Rossella Lari, Rowena Saura, Ruth Goldsmith, Stephanie Honrado, Sachi Ediriweera, Sally Carrocino, Salomè Philips, Sandi Prentis, Sandra Panerai, Sandra Lorant-Lecanne, Sandra Kurlis, Sandra Perrone, Santo Diano, Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, Sara Papini, Sarah Delaney, Sarah Magni, Sarah Morrison, Saskia Balmaekers, Sarah Dunant, Sasha Perugini, Sebastiano Padoan, Seth Varnhagen, Sheila C. Barker, Sheila ffolliott, Shelley Thomas, Sheryl E. Reiss, Silvana M. Schuster, Silvia Mascalchi, Silvia Selleri, Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda, Sophia Khan, Sophie Paaslang, Stacy Y. China, Stefani Francisco, Stefano Vinceri, Stefania Vivoli, Stephanie Souroujon, Stephen Masse, Steve Dutton, Sue Sinclair, Susan Duca, Susan B. McCreight, Susan Corsetti London, Susan Guill, Susan Masse, Susan Mazza, Susan Tintori Marciano, Susan Vanderlip, Susanna Duffy, Suzanne El Rayess, Suzanne Hinman, Sven Steinmo, Sylvia Hetzel, Tanya Lervik, Ted Givens, Terri White, Thierry Hogan, Thomas Daniels, Thomas Madden, Tim Forsyth, Tina Carrari, Tommaso Olivieri, Torie Gray, Urte Ehlers, Valentina Dainelli, Valentina Galli, Valentina Grossi Orzalesi, Vera Niemeyer, Veronica Sorace, Victoria Baylin, Victoria Davies, Victoria Koursaros, Victoria Slichter, Viola Parretti, Viva Knight, Wayne McArdle, William Bergenthal, William Vogler, Yue Huang.
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Michaelangelo’s bride
Michelangelo’s ‘new wife’ meets Plautilla Nelli
S
anta Maria Novella. Its square is one of the largest in Florence and it has hosted feasts and public festivals since medieval times. Amidst palios and parades, Dante is thought to have recited his first poetry here. Its basilica is a Renaissance high point: Romanesque and Gothic styles make geometric harmony in green and white marble. Michelangelo was so taken with its beauty that he called the church his ‘bride’. For a rare privilege and a moment of joy, the 20
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Basilica of Santa Maria Novella opens its doors for the presentation of Plautilla Nelli’s restored masterwork. Although the artist’s aficionados will only have eyes for the Last Supper on October 17, after long years in the restoration studio, AWA invites its supporters to get a real sense of this sacred space by shining a light on the revolutionary works that tell us all we need to know as patrons in Nelli’s native city.
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MICHAELANGELO’S BRIDE
A new way of seeing Santa Maria Novella, art and patrons together
A city of patronage and perspective Giorgio Vasari called Tommaso Cassai, ‘Masaccio’ or ‘Sloppy Tom’, for his indifference to worldly fanfare, but the painter’s Trinity stands supreme in Santa Maria Novella. Masaccio would die at the age of 27, poisoned by an envious rival, Vasari says, and this would be his final work—the first known example of linear perspective. Masaccio was a master at providing the illusion of space—turning a flat wall into a three-dimensional chapel, and his INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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skill brought crowds of Florentines to the painting’s unveiling in 1428 to marvel at the artist’s achievement. The fresco’s spiritual message was equally striking for the Humanists: God the Father was not hidden among billowy clouds of spirituality; instead, He supports the Cross with his whole body, standing behind Christ, feet firmly planted. This is the painting’s first message—the divine and the human cannot be separated. Gone was the flat, idealized 21
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art of eras past. Giotto’s Crucifix (which hangs suspended inside this very basilica) had started a naturalistic trend. Masaccio followed it and achieved a realistic style that would be a benchmark for his cutting-edge contemporaries and generations of Florentine painters that followed. Posterity can thank Vasari for saving The Trinity in 1568, when ordered by Cosimo I to plaster over the Basilica’s old frescos to make space for new artwork. The false wall
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Vasari built would safeguard the hidden work for three more centuries, until 1860 renovations ‘unearthed’ the fresco, which was subsequently detached and transferred to canvas, before being repositioned. Modern-day art patrons will be interested to look for the former fresco’s sponsors, kneeling on either side of the scene. For the first time ever, life-size ‘profane’ subjects were painted alongside sacred figures. This Renaissance concept of combining the human
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and the divine would please many a patron! Florence had become a city of realism and… real life. Ghirlandaio’s frescos (1485-1490) in the Tornabuoni Chapel is a later example of this trend. The 14-year-old Michelangelo likely fulfilled his apprenticeship whilst working on Ghirlandaio’s scenes. The most successful workshop in Florence would ultimately produce frescos of Saint John and the Virgin Mary that were teeming with then-contemporary Florentines, who
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became ‘actors’ on the biblical stage thanks to Ghirlandaio’s mastery. Their costumes speak of central Florence, not the Holy Land. History buffs ‘in the know’ will spot the artist and his patrons, members of the Tornabuoni family, inside the artworks themselves. Here’s to honoring patrons of the arts! Upholding a time-honored art tradition in Florence, AWA offers special thanks to all our Last Supper patrons.
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The walls of Nelli’s world Views of convent life in the artist’s time
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S scholar Mary D. Garrard, one of the forerunners of feminist art theory, produced a ground breaking study on Plautilla Nelli and the environment in which she lived. Published in Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal (2016), Garrard’s article “The Cloister and the Square: Gender Dynamics in Renaissance Florence” provides a fascinating look at convent life in Florence. Here are a few quotes from the study that spotlight the social and cultural trends influencing Dominican women.
AT NELLI’S CONVENT…
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Since its founding in 1496 by a female disciple of the powerful Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola, the convent of Santa Caterina da Siena had been a major center of Savonarola’s spiritual legacy, one facet of which was the importance of art. […] Nuns enjoyed substantial control of their environments, and were often both the producers and consumers of convent art. Although their sphere of social agency was circumscribed, they exercised power in the spiritual realm, which they believed to be superior to the material world.”
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Nuns enjoyed substantial control of their environments, and were often both the producers and consumers of convent art.
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SAVONAROLA’S DOMINICAN WOMEN…
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Gender tensions surrounded Savonarola: there was open anxiety that he would give women too much power, following his proposal in 1496 that women be given an unprecedented voice in religious reform. Feeding this anxiety was the growing number of female Savonarolans. Inspired by the friar’s sermons, women entered religious life in such numbers that temporary shelters had to be found and convents enlarged to house them — a phenomenon indirectly reflected in
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woodcuts illustrating the friar’s preachings. Under criticism, Savonarola retracted his proposal, which led to stricter reforms; and male Savonarolan leaders, particularly the Dominicans of San Marco, doubled down on their efforts to modify women’s behavior (what was meant here by “reform”) and control the convents. But some of the nuns, inspired by Savonarola’s earlier call to activism, sought a more independent role for women, envisioning themselves as his spiritual successors.”
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WALLS OF NELLI
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In the fourteenth century, Florence had twice as many male religious as female; by the mid-sixteenth century, females outnumbered males nearly five to one.
THE RISE OF THE HABIT…
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Nuns were an increasingly visible presence in the city from the mid-fifteenth through sixteenth centuries. In 1500, Florence had about 2000 nuns, a fourfold increase from the fourteenth century. Four new convents were founded in Florence between 1500 and 1520, to accommodate the burgeoning demand. Convent growth was exponential due to social pressures that governed females but not males, and consequently, monasticism “changed sex,” as Richard Trexler put it. In the fourteenth century, Florence had twice as many male religious as female; by the mid-sixteenth century, females outnumbered males nearly five to one […] Nuns were not an entirely different category of womanhood in Renaissance Florence, for there was considerable female interaction and cultural continuity within and outside convents.”
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A SISTER’S WORK IS NEVER DONE…
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Spiritual intercession was an official role of nuns, who, as holy virgins who had failed to do their duty as intercessors, were sometimes blamed for military defeats. And the striking concentration of convents near city gates may have had a talismanic purpose, to support divine protection of the city (an annual Florentine ritual was the exorcising of demons from each city gate).
By 1500, convents were the predominant institutional buildings in Italian cities, taking up great amounts of space. In Florence, these large and numerous peripheral structures provided a semiotic foil to the central Piazza della Signoria, complementing the public sphere with the spiritual one, opposing a visually open space uninviting to women with a closed space inaccessible to men.”
The Large Cloister at Santa Maria Novella
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Glimpes of Dominican life at Santa Maria Novella, Large Cloister
WHEN NELLI’S CONVENT WAS CLOISTERED…
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Escalating efforts by church authorities to enforce the enclosure of nuns, which began in 1500, culminated in the strict clausura adopted by the Council of Trent at mid-century. In Florence, under both Medicean and Tridentine supervision, convent walls were built higher, windows sealed up and veiled, well-latticed iron grates replaced more permeable wooden ones in convent parlors, to separate nuns more fully from the outside world.”
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AGENTS OF POWER AND PROTEST…
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Religious women — the architecture and art they produced, and the political agency they exercised — presented a distinctly gendered counter-culture in Florence. In the tumultuous 1490s and the decades beyond, many different political and social factors were at play in Florentine history. But, in Renaissance Florence, no kind of difference had so deep an imprint on the human psyche as gender and no category of women raised so audible an oppositional voice, as did nuns.”
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But, in Renaissance Florence, no kind of difference had so deep an imprint on the human psyche as gender and no category of women raised so audible an oppositional voice, as did nuns.
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ELEONORA
A noblewoman who (also)
bent the rules Eleonora de Toledo, duchess in Nelli’s Florence
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he second duchess of Florence (15221562), Eleonora de Toledo, would often act as regent when her Medici husband, Cosimo I de’ Medici was away in battle. History best remembers Eleonora as an art patron and trendsetter, supporting artists such as Benvenuto Cellini, Giorgio Vasari and Agnolo Bronzino, whose famous portrait of Eleonora and her sons is displayed in the Uffizi Gallery today. The Spanish noblewoman’s dowry provided the money to purchase the Pitti Palace and Eleonora, who considered the Medici wings in the Palazzo Vecchio ‘unhealthy’, was instrumental in the creation and development of the Boboli gardens. Her purchase of Palazzo Pitti transformed the Oltrarno neighborhood into Florence’s artisan district, as Renaissance talents with workshops there were entrusted with fitting the Palace with the impressive craftsmanship visitors still marvel at today.
the Dominicans allowed the large Spanish community that came to Florence in support of Eleonora to attend services there. Nelli’s Last Supper will return to Santa Maria Novella in a way that pays homage to the devotional nature of her painting; its arrival will be celebrated with a mass for major donors held in the Spanish Chapel, which Duchess Eleonora de Toledo used as her private religious venue.
Meanwhile, on this side of the Arno… The chapter house of the Dominican Monastery of Santa Maria Novella was built in 1350 and became known as the ‘Spanish Chapel’ some two hundred years later, when INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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In Florence, in love
The couple who ruled in Nelli’s time Authors Caroline Murphy and Eric Cochrane provide interesting insight on the ruling couple in the sixteenth-century city: Eleonora de Toledo and Cosimo de’ Medici. Their vignettes suggest that Nelli was not the only one ‘bending the rules’ of gender expectation in Florence. “In Eleonora de Toledo Cosimo acquired his closest and most constant companion, one who equalled him in physical energy and almost equalled him in spiritual energy; who went hunting with him and travelling with him even in the advanced stages of pregnancy; whose passion for gambling and whose disconcerting changes of mind he gladly put up with. Eleonora turned out to
be well worth the huge dowry his fatherin-law had forced Cosimo to put up for her. She provided him with domestic happiness almost unheard of in the age of exclusively arranged marriages. ‘The duke and the duchess are deeply in love,’ reported one wellinformed observer in 1541, ‘and one is never apart from the other.’ Better yet, she provided him with children—the first just nine months and thirteen days after her arrival in Florence, the second just ten months later, the third the fall of 1543, and so on and on until it became almost routine to congratulate ‘the most happy and fecund duchess… who from single has been made double of body. And that God will that it come out male!’” Eric Cochrane, Florence in the forgotten centuries (1527-1800).
Bronzino's portrait of Cosimo I at the Uffizi Gallery
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The Spanish Chapel at the Santa Maria Novella Complex
“But Cosimo de’ Medici both loved and liked the opposite sex. He had grown up fatherless, with the dominant force in his life being his mother, Maria Salviati, who was described as ‘utterly wise… she would never let herself be won over by praise as is usual at court’. He played the role of gallant lover for the first time at the age of fourteen with a woman he referred to as ‘my lady’ and for whom he bought fine handkerchiefs; at sixteen, he fathered an illegitimate daughter, Bia, whom he adored. At the age of nineteen, when the time came for him to choose a bride, he selected the Spaniard Eleonora not purely on INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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the grounds of political expediency, as would have been normal for a man of his position, but because he had made specific enquiries to determine that she beautiful. He was a young man who was perfectly prepared to welcome more females into his family, and he did not perceive a daughter as little better than a consolation prize if a son was not produced. It is appropriate then, that Cosimo can be seen as a new man because in many ways he was a new Medici. Indeed, he saw himself that way…” Caroline P. Murphy, Isabella de’ Medici 33
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Inspiration across generations 17-year-old Australian student takes to the canvas
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INSPIRED BY JANE
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n March 2018, AWA organized a world-wide event called ‘AWA around the world’, which saw the participation of universities, schools and museums across the globe, including Italy, the US, England, Ireland, Korea, the Netherlands, Malta… and Australia. Participants were invited to watch an AWA documentary and use it as a springboard for discussion on how to support art by women in their own work and lives. 17-year-old Jasmine Salvato, a student at De La Salle Catholic College in Australia, took the invitation to heart, producing a moving portrait paying tribute to two women who have inspired us all across generations: Florentine painter Plautilla Nelli and AWA founder Jane Fortune. We are happy to share Salvato’s painting, along with the letter she sent to us.
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Dear AWA, As a student of Art, I was aware of the Guerrilla Girls and other women artists who have highlighted the gender imbalance of representation in galleries and museums. This is something I always thought of as unfair. When my teacher, Mr Hurst, told me about Plautilla Nelli and loaned me the book to look at, I became quite interested in her story and based my research work around her and her work. This led me to become interested in the work of the AWA and Jane Fortune. Funnily enough, it was looking at a Nelli book which apparently started Jane Fortune’s mission. Participating in “AWA Around the World” and having the chance to discuss Invisible Women, reinforced my intention to make an oil painting of Jane Fortune. I completed a study in watercolours using Nelli’s Last Supper as the background. I then discovered Nelli’s Annunciation and saw the potential to re-contextualize the Angel Annunciate as an ‘Art Angel’ to create a tribute to Jane Fortune. I loved the uniqueness of Nelli’s ‘bubble clouds’ so I borrowed them from her Lamentation, as they seemed a fitting parallel with which to lament the passing of such an inspirational woman as Jane Fortune. Lastly, my school has an informal partnership with Illinois State University and the Associate Professor of Art Education, Judith Briggs was visiting with a group of undergraduate and postgraduate Art Teachers. We worked together with them focusing on how the work of Advancing Women Artists can be used in the classroom. I did a presentation to the visitors on my intentions for the work and received a great deal of encouragement and positive feedback. The rest is art history! Yours Sincerely, Jasmine Salvato
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Mud and the art of healing FSU students rediscover ‘their roots’ with Violante Ferroni
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MUD ANGELS
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n 1966, the Florence flood hit and the Arno’s muddy waters engulfed the unsuspecting city in 600,000 tons of muck and rubble. Students from all over the world travelled to Florence to help dig the city and its art out from under the deluge. Their influx was so intense that the then-mayor Piero Bargellini would find it a challenge to respond. “What am I going to do with all of these children?” he worried. He arranged for them to sleep in train box cars at the railway station—the only place with running water— which had been transformed into a makeshift rescue base for damaged treasures. The students of Florida State University were already in town; 1966 was the program’s first year and rather than return Stateside when disaster struck, they joined the relief effort in the historic center’s ravaged libraries and churches. Months later, the FSU group would be thanked by Pope Paul VI and receive a certificate from officials in Italy’s capital. That’s when a savvy journalist first coined the phrase ‘mud angels’. Fast forward fifty-two years. AWA’s ‘Art Angel’ program strikes a chord with
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Frank Nero and Lucia Cossari, respectively, FSU in Florence Director and Vice Director. Why not have a second generation of ‘mud angels’ (the students in the program today) team up with Advancing Women Artists to rediscover ‘their roots’ by supporting our restoration efforts? FSU’s Social Media and Marketing classes quickly got on board and, through workshopstyle partnering, students are now working with AWA’s outreach program to ‘earn their wings’ in addition to launching their own fundraising efforts for our next ‘hopeful’ by selling program T-shirts. What will their Art Angel efforts ultimately support? …our next project of course! Violante Ferroni’s large-scale oval from San Giovanni di Dio is scheduled for the restoration studio this October. This eighteenth-century artist and her forgotten work are at the heart of AWA’s mission—to rediscover the ‘invisible’ women who, though successful in their time, have been forgotten by history. Once restored, in spring 2020, Ferroni’s painting entitled Saint John of God heals plague victims will return to its home which is soon to become a regional center for health care. This is apropos, considering the venue in the Ognissanti district was originally the home of the Vespucci family and transformed into a hospital in the 1300s. The Violante project spotlights an issue close to our hearts— art accessibility, in museums and out of them, as Artemisia Gentileschi’s travelling painting at the UK’s National Gallery so effectively illustrates. Here’s to wings and all other forms of travel!
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On the road with a
r a t s e u q o r Ba
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ARTEMISIA
Artemisia Gentilschi’s newly-restored Self portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria goes on tour around the UK
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rtemisia Gentileschi, the celebrated seventeenth-century artist and follower of Caravaggio, was a groundbreaker throughout her life. Overcoming early hardships, not least of which was aspiring to be an artist despite her gender, she built a reputation and a body of work that have made her the best known female Baroque artist. The first woman painter to be enrolled in Florence’s Academy of Art and Drawing, she received commissions from Medici princes and European nobles; she worked in London, Rome and Naples; she supported her family and maintained her independence from her father and her husband. And now, with the recent restoration of her Self portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, painted 400 years ago, Artemisia has broken new ground once again. Having acquired the work in 2017, the UK’s National Gallery undertook its painstaking restoration, a process which art lovers were able to follow on the Gallery’s website and on social media. The painting enjoyed a brief exhibition in the Gallery’s Central Hall; Director Gabriele Finaldi then made the unusual decision to
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send this brand new star on tour across the UK. Even more surprising was the choice of venues that made up Artemisia’s time on the road. The purpose of the tour was to make Artemisia as accessible as possible and, in particular, to reach people who had perhaps never before walked into a museum or gallery. The first stop for Artemisia’s self portrait was the Glasgow Women’s Library in Scotland, timed to coincide with International Women’s Day. As the only Accredited Museum in the UK dedicated to women’s lives, histories and achievements, GWL was an apt choice for the painting’s debut. Unlike the National Gallery, a grand domed building dominating Trafalgar Square in central London, the Glasgow Women’s Library is a relatively modest building located
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near a public housing estate – just part of the neighborhood – rather than a world-famous tourist destination. The Library’s visitors were quick to appreciate how the strength and resilience that make Artemisia an inspirational female role model were evident in the direct gaze that the painted Saint Catherine bestows upon her audience. Travelling southeast, the self portrait’s next exhibition space was the waiting room of a group medical practice in Pocklington, Yorkshire. This location met the curators’ desire for the painting to be seen in ‘places where people are already going’. Coming across this beautifully executed portrait unexpectedly can only have been a boost for the patients, bringing a sense of calm, comfort and reassurance to what might otherwise have
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ARTEMISIA
been a stressful (or at best mundane) visit to the doctor. On leaving the doctors’ office, one patient reported that seeing the painting had left him with a genuine feeling of well-being. This venue shone a spotlight on the significant connection between art and healing, a link that has been recognized for centuries. The importance of art in Florence’s hospitals is central to AWA’s next project entitled ‘The Art of Healing’ which you can read more about on pages 36-37. Artemisia also made a big impression at the Sacred Heart High School for girls in Newcastle. Teachers were delighted that the painting highlighted the importance of art in the school curriculum. They encouraged the girls to consider how Artemisia’s example might reflect on their own lives, and used the visit to invite the students to create drawings on the theme of ‘identity’. And while they compared Artemisia to a ‘modern-day feminist’ whose courage and confidence were empowering, the students also expressed their awareness that there is ‘so much further INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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to go with women in art’. It is striking that the photos from the various exhibition spaces show just how accessible the painting was to its viewers. Saint Catherine was not encased in glass or bordered by ropes or motion-sensitive alarms. On the contrary, her admirers were able to get within inches of the canvas to examine the finer points of the work and to study Artemisia’s technique at close range. The tour’s focus on ‘art for all’ was nowhere more in evidence than on its visit to Her Majesty’s Prison Send in Surrey. This was the first time a major gallery had allowed a work of art to be exhibited in a prison and the presence of the self portrait had an uplifting effect on staff and inmates alike. The women found inspiration in Artemisia’s personal history as well as in her painting. Confessing that she was ‘in awe’ of the image, one participant reacted to the power in Artemisia’s stare. “It’s as if she’s saying, ‘Look at me’. I’ve formed a bond with her now. She’s me mate.”
All images © National Gallery
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INTERVIEW
Sarah Pickstone puts final touches to Belvedere
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A closer look at
the ‘elements of art’ by Margaret MacKinnon Photos: Justine Trickett
Angelica Kauffman’s Design and Colour are given a contemporary interpretation by British artist Sarah Pickstone
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t AWA, we are always delighted to encounter connections between historic women artists and their contemporary counterparts. One such connection was made when British artist Sarah Pickstone was commissioned to create two works inspired by the Swiss-born painter Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) who was one of only two female founding members of the UK’s Royal Academy of Art (the other being Mary Moser). In 1778, Kauffman was commissioned to
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create four roundels to decorate the ceiling of the Council Chamber in Somerset House, the Royal Academy’s first home. Based on Sir Joshua Reynolds theory of art, the four elements of painting were said to be Composition, Design, Invention and Colour; Kauffman represented each of these with an allegorical female figure. The paintings were later moved to the entrance of the RA’s current location in Burlington House, Piccadilly.
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Above: Kauffman’s Colour, Design, Composition and Invention
As part of the RA’s 250th anniversary celebrations and the renovation of the Academy’s schools, Kauffman’s ‘Elements of Art’ were removed from the ceiling of the grand entrance hall to be restored and kept safe during the building works. To celebrate the return of the newlyrestored works, Pickstone’s tributes to Kauffman were prominently displayed in the gallery. Belvedere, a take on Kauffman’s Design graced the ceiling of the entrance hall while Design itself was temporarily
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exhibited in the Academy’s Collection Gallery. Pickstone’s The Rainbow, a six-metre-wide homage to Kauffman’s Colour occupied a wall along the much-travelled corridor leading to the RA’s cafe. AWA was fortunate to catch up with Pickstone recently to find out about her connection with Kauffman and how she became involved in paying tribute to the eighteenth-century painter.
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INTERVIEW
Sarah Pickstone’s Belvedere
AWA: How did the commission for Belvedere and the much larger work The Rainbow, which together make up An allegory of painting, come about? SP: I had been a student at the Royal Academy Schools – and am known for working with women’s history, as a painter. The RA asked me to make a work as an homage to Kauffman for their 250th anniversary in 2018. Kauffman was a founding member of the RA in 1768. Aware of their poor history on the representation of women artists, particularly pre-20th century, the RA were keen to show that Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman were there at the beginning. AWA: How much did you know about Kauffman and her work before you received this commission? SP: I had done some reading – for my work INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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in general – and was drawing from the works whilst they were in storage. I ended up doing a lot of research, including travelling to Austria to her father’s village. Writers like Marina Warner were very helpful. AWA: You have said that ‘drawing is a way of looking at a painting’. Can you expand on what you mean by that? SP: I often draw from paintings that interest me; it’s a useful tool. Drawing from the National Gallery for instance – I might look to see what sort of picture space I am drawn to on that day. Sometimes it’s Veronese or Tintoretto but more often Pisanello or Duccio. When you draw from other people’s paintings you can resolve your own problems with studio work. I like the hand gestures in narrative painting and the intimacy and connections between figures. In the case of Kauffman, it helped me understand how she 45
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constructed the paintings – helped me to look at her mark making, her gesture. This is the heartbeat of all painting. AWA: You called your work Belvedere. What was the inspiration for this? SP: The ceiling piece is called Belvedere as a playful nod to both the name of the classical torso being drawn by Kauffman’s artist, and the Italian translation – beautiful view – as it was on the ceiling. Mostly, it was named Belvedere as it is a painting about the female gaze, I felt that Kauffman had shifted the controlling viewpoint to that of the woman artist here. AWA: In Johann Zoffany’s famous painting, the Royal Academy’s male founders are portrayed attending a life drawing class, while the two founding female members, Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman, are represented by portraits on the wall of the drawing room. What was your reaction when you first came across this painting?
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SP: I have only seen the much-reproduced image of the painting. The thing that is most irksome is the painter Richard Cosway, pictured front right, has his stick resting aggressively on a prostrate female nude sculpture. I assume the painting was made to entertain. The men in the painting look ridiculous and conceited – I think Kauffman and Moser were well out of it... Kauffman did extraordinarily well as a famous painter in London at that time and earned a good deal of money. The fact that women weren’t allowed in the life room is annoying, but not surprising, given the history of the time. That said, the ‘Enlightenment’ RA of the late 1700s and early 1800s was very interesting and perhaps less conservative than the following century, where the Royal Academicians did not appoint a single female member. Of course, it goes without saying that if women don’t get the chance to study properly – in the life room for example – they never have the chance to improve and compete.
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INTERVIEW
Portraits of Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman in the Academy’s drawing room
AWA: Which female artists have most influenced your work? SP: It’s very difficult to say. I am a mass of contradiction and plurality! I always responded to Prunella Clough’s paintings — she taught a little at the RA. But my first conscious encounter with the work of female artists that changed the way I looked would have been Cindy Sherman and then Louise Bourgeois a bit later. I found female authors like Ali Smith, who write in a new form very inspiring and Woolf, Mansfield and Eliot. But the Italian Quattrocento and Modernist Paris are my big loves. AWA: As an art student, did you learn very much about the lives of early women artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman or Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun? SP: I didn’t, no. I studied art history as part INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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of my course at University and did not learn about them as far as I can remember. Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions though… AWA: Do you think art history courses should make a point of including more women artists and the challenges they faced in pursuing their careers? What are the challenges that women artists face today? SP: Yes I do. Who gets to write the history down? Courses are much better now – and there’s been so much great feminist art history written over the past thirty years. Challenges are huge. Latest research does show that women are still underrepresented by dealers. And their work therefore sells for less. But things are improving. For example, Hauser & Wirth in Bruton, Somerset, has a show at the moment of Ursula Hauser’s fantastic collection of women’s art from the 1960s to the 1980s. She is an exemplary dealer. 47
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Sarah Pickstone’s The Rainbow
As more women collectors come on the scene and as more women have economic clout, they buy more women’s art and male dealers follow. And female artworks have more agency and become more relevant in the cultural landscape. AWA: The Royal Academy’s 2020 programme includes exhibitions of four women artists: Angelica Kauffman; performance artist Marina Abramovic; contemporary New Zealand artist Rita Angus; and Royal Academician Tracey Emin. Have you noticed a trend in other galleries, in the UK and elsewhere, to feature more women artists? SP: Yes, there is definitely a trend to show more women artists. Female artists are finding a form that everybody across the board wants to see.
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The Royal Academy will host a major exhibition of works by Angelica Kauffman from 28 June - 20 September, 2020, ‘tracing her trajectory from child prodigy to one of the most sought-after painters of her time’. Sarah Pickstone studied at the Royal Academy Schools and was awarded the John Moores painting prize – at the time, only the second woman to receive this honor in its long history. Her work has been exhibited widely and features in international public and private collections. She is also the author of Park Notes: Writing and Painting from the Heart of London.
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Angelica Kauffman in Florence unseen A
ngelica Kauffman (1741–1807) was living in Rome in 1762, the year she was admitted to Florence’s Accademia dell’Arte del Disegno, to which she gained admission with her portrait of US history painter Benjamin West, now in storage at the Uffizi. One year later, while still in Italy, Kauffman produced an in-studio self portrait for the Medici self portrait collection at the Uffizi. Angelica paints herself with realism: her attire is simple and her features plain—the most telling detail is the open paint box beside her. She would perhaps be happy to know it is currently in storage, as she later considered the work too modest for an artist of her stature. This explains why she would create another painting for the Vasari Corridor twenty-five years later, in 1788. In this second idealized self-rendition, Kauffman is a lyrical Greek beauty dressed in white; she has not aged a single day. The artist believed this representation far more fitting for an artist who was so successful she could purchase a Titian for her own private collection. Though she had painted for popes and princes
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since the age of 13, Kauffman’s economic success was partly thanks to the fact that her art became an inspiration for mass-produced dinnerware and trinkets. Kauffman’s works in storage include seven drawings at the Uffizi’s Prints and Drawings Department, among which are Socrates reading a book to a disciple, Uncertain Roman subject and Bacchanal subject. Her Portrait of Fortunata Sulgher Fantastici is a 3-quarter-length idealistic rendition of the poet; it is an important testimony to Kauffman’s ability to paint ‘diplomatically’—she did not reserve idealism for her self-portrait alone. In the Cerretto Guidi Museum, once a Medici villa, visitors will find her Portrait of Stanislaw Augusto Poniatowski, the last elected king of Poland. To AWA’s knowledge, this last work is Kauffman’s only Florentine painting that is on public view on a regular basis. We have high hopes this will soon change as the awareness about the public’s interest in viewing art by women continues to grow in the city and further afield. 49
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A Cinquecento success story
revisited
Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, c.1600. © National Gallery of Ireland
Lavinia Fontana reclaims the spotlight in Dublin and Madrid
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LAVINIA FONTANA
The National Gallery of Ireland
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nother historic woman artist – in addition to Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelica Kauffman – who is ‘having a moment’ is the sixteenth-century Bolognese artist Lavinia Fontana. Her monumental historic painting Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon is currently undergoing restoration at the National Gallery of Ireland. She is also the subject of a joint exhibition with Sofonisba Anguissola at the Museo del Prado in Madrid which is to open in October this year. Both Fontana and Anguissola are examples of women artists who were hugely
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successful during their lifetimes but who subsequently faded into obscurity over the ensuing centuries. Initially trained by her father, Prospero, Fontana was also a student of Ludovico Carracci whose Venetian-tinged style is evident in her work. Fontana herself identified Anguissola as having been a major influence, claiming that she was inspired to learn how to paint having seen one of her older contemporary’s paintings. Fontana was remarkable in many respects. Because she made a living from
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Lavinia Fontana Self-Portrait in a Tondo
her commissions – and supported not only herself but also her husband and eleven children – she is considered to be the first professional female painter. Unusually for women painters at that time, marriage did not hinder or, even worse, bring an end to Fontana’s artistic pursuits. Instead, her husband Gian Paolo Zappi, a former pupil of Prospero Fontana, became her agent and looked after the household and the couple’s many offspring. Female artists did not always fare so well when it came to husbands. For example, no signed works can be found by the highly regarded Dutch Golden Age artist Judith Leyster following her marriage to a fellow painter; and Angelica Kauffman’s reputation suffered a significant blow when it transpired that her first husband, ‘Count’ Frederick de Horn was both an imposter and a bigamist. Fontana was fortunate that Zappi not only recognised her superior artistic talent (his own was reputedly scant) but even moved in to her father’s house in Bologna, allowing Fontana to continue to benefit from Prospero’s tuition. 52
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Fontana became known as an accomplished portrait painter who was eagerly sought after by the noble families and upper-class women of Bologna. She formed close relationships with her female sitters, some of whom later became namesakes or godmothers for her children. Her self portraits were also in high demand; in one of these, painted at the request of Spanish Dominican scholar Alonso Chacon, Fontana surrounded herself with casts and bronzes – as if to claim to be the equal of her male counterparts who would have studied casts of classical statues in learning to draw the human figure. Her status was further confirmed by the fact that Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici was known to collect Fontana’s drawings which later passed into the collection of Cosimo III. In the 1759 official guide to the Uffizi Gallery, the ‘Chamber of the Self portraits’ created by Cosimo included self portraits by Anguissola and Fontana and was the first stop on the Gallery tour. Fontana’s small rendering of Noli me Tangere can also be found in the Uffizi Gallery collection.
Fontana Self-Portrait at the Clavichord with a Servant
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LAVINIA FONTANA
”
Fontana became known as an accomplished portrait painter who was eagerly sought after by the noble families and upper-class women of Bologna.
Fontana’s Noli me Tangere
Because of the straight-forward narrative it portrays of the post-resurrection encounter between Mary Magdalene and Christ in the guise of a gardener, it is a good example of Fontana’s adherence to the dictates of Counter Reformation ideology. Adept at music—an early self-portrait portrays her sitting at a spinet--as well as at painting, Fontana received an academic education and learned to read Latin. No doubt this gave her the confidence to take on religious and mythological subjects which were then generally seen as the preserve of male artists. Because her mythological works sometimes featured nude female figures, it has been suggested that Fontana was the first woman artist to use live nude INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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Lavinia Fontana, cast medal, designed by Felice Antonio Casone (1611)
female models. However, this suggestion is highly controversial and has never been substantiated. To have done so would have risked scandal and would have been out of keeping with her image as a devout Catholic. In 1603, at the invitation of Pope Clement VIII, Fontana and her family moved to Rome where her career continued to thrive. As Portraitist in Ordinary at the Vatican, Pope Paul V himself was among her sitters. She was elected to the Accademia di San Luca of Rome and commemorated on a bronze portrait medallion cast by the sculptor Felice Antonio Casoni. Fontana deserves to reclaim the spotlight that was rightfully hers throughout her very prolific and successful career. 53
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See and say
Art and conversation for painter/poet Lola Costa
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he exhibition ‘Lola Costa: An artist of the pathway of the gods’ was inaugurated this September at the Mario Marri library in Monzuno, near Bologna. Organized by the Cultural Association Il Palmerino with the Municipality of Monzuno and AWA, it featured some 25 works by adoptive Florentine artist Lola Costa (1903 –2006), who had moved to Tuscany from her native England in the early 1920s. As its title suggests, the show represents a continuing
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dialog ‘along the Pathway of the gods’, the ancient Roman footpath in the Apennines leading from Florence to Bologna. AWA aficionados will remember our ‘sister exhibition’ at Il Palermino in the summer of 2018, featuring Monzuno native Lea Colliva. The two painters and poets did not know each other personally—yet their artistic fellowship is evident in the themes, genres and art movements they explore.
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SEE AND SAY
As our key word is always ‘response’, AWA was on site at the opening, asking guests to ‘react’ to Costa’s art on show. Here are a few comments from inside the exhibition: “I appreciate the artist’s sensibility. She is an artist who, over time, maintained her personality, yet she was not stagnant, proving capable of altering her style and being receptive to the movements of her time. Her rapid brush strokes recall De Pisis, but I also see an English aura in her painting that brings to mind the early works of Sutherland. Costa is an elegant painter, with finesse and an expert eye with nature.” Mario Cancelli, art critic “I don’t know whether saying that her works recall that of other artists is a good or bad thing. Still— Costa’s Norman landscape has something of Denis and her Leaves recall Gregorio Sciltian. What I can say is, though she seems to have absorbed from the past, as a painter, she proposed her own novelties as well.” Sandro Malossini, critic and curator “This eclectic painter knew how to tune into various aspects of life on different levels, both in painting and in poetry. The gaze of her sitters tells us something about how they saw the world, and perhaps, how we see it as well.” Wanda Carcello, psychologist INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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“Alive and quivering” Lola Costa along the Pathway of the gods by Linda Falcone
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he Pathway of the gods is one of art and inspiration. Painters Lola Costa (1903–2004) and Lea Colliva (1901–1975) lived on either end of this ancient Roman footpath and did not know each other, even by reputation. Yet, interesting parallels can be drawn between their lives and artistic experience which, in turn, reflect commonalities characterizing the lives of most early twentieth-century female painters in Italy. Thanks to two monographic exhibitions, the artists embark 56
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on a posthumous journey to each other’s ‘hometowns’, bridging a gap across the Apennines, from the first Florentine house, Il Palmerino, to the hillside heart of Monzuno. During an exhibition in summer 2018, a collection of Lea Colliva’s works debuted at the small fourteenth-century villa, former residence of Lola Costa. Built as a watchtower and used as a convent throughout its multicentury history, Il Palmerino is currently a center for art and literature by women, with a specific focus on early twentieth-century INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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studies and British author Vernon Lee, who made it her haunt and home, before Costa’s arrival in 1935. Now, in September 2019, Costa’s art visits Monzuno, where Colliva produced a lifetime’s worth of paintings and poetry, particularly in the summer season, when artists such as Corrado Corazza and Giacomo Manzù would come to stay with her family at Villa dell’Ospitale—intent on coaxing late-summer paradise into their painted world.
As with many historic female artists before the 1960s, Costa and Colliva’s creative endeavors were deeply influenced by their most significant male relationship. Costa’s husband, Federigo Angeli, was a highly respected painter and copyist whose careful hand could reproduce the Great Masters’ brushstrokes with exceptional accuracy, granting him access to prestigious homepalaces in Florence and abroad, to restore and recreate Renaissance splendor.
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Yet, no matter the period, the quiet in Costa’s paintings is always charged with a sense of anticipation Colliva’s male mentor, a former beau who would ultimately marry the artist’s sister, was Bolognese painter and art critic Nino Bertocchi. Later in life, Bertocchi would abandon his well-executed landscapes to become an art critic whose ‘sentencing’ would make or break emerging talent in the artworld of postwar Italy. History has remembered Costa and Colliva as the beneficiaries of their mentors’ training, but few art historians have focused on the progressive nature of each women’s painterly styles which would change as they did, especially in comparison to the less daring depictions of their more recognized but traditionalist male counterparts. The oeuvre of both artists is heavily reminiscent of the domestic environment in which they lived, making nature scenes and portraiture plentiful. As Colliva expert Beatrice Buscaroli writes: “Lea Colliva INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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thunders amidst figures, flowers and landscapes, meandering between Rembrandt and Soutine, in her restless expressionist quest.” Lola’s frequent plein-air paintings are equally autumn-like and her landscapes are intimate, not expansive. Whether depicting an unexpectedly somber marketplace in Florence or a path through a quintessential Parisian park, Costa’s landscapes are often without human ‘interference’, as if her brush was constantly poised to capture the occasional ‘lull’ that stills all human chatter. Even in Le voil sur le rocher (View from the rocks), her Normandy landscape from 1954, no crashing waves disturb the silence of its muted grays and greens—despite the painting’s stylistic jump towards German Expressionism and its significant departure from works produced a decade earlier. Yet, no matter the period, the quiet in Costa’s paintings 58
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is always charged with a sense of anticipation. Her 1988 oil-on-canvas hamlet of Maiano, near Fiesole, is painted Avant L’orage, or ‘before the storm’, as the title suggests, and is typical of Costa’s works—both early and late—where Tuscan scenes are frequent protagonist. No tempest awaits her Tuscany Farm House (1972), but the stone abode, which speaks of peace not rural selfsufficiency, is expectant as well—a keeper of secrets and giver of shade. The bulk of Costa’s works lack Colliva’s more experimental ‘thunder’, as the latter aspired toward more avant-garde trends, but for Federica Parretti, Costa’s granddaughter and Il Palmerino Association’s president, the artist’s pieces have a solidity derived from her main intention: “to immortalize moments of unassuming beauty.” Costa’s Leaves, exhibited at the XIV Mostra d’Arte at Florence’s Palazzo INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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LOLA COSTA
Strozzi in 1944, provides a poignant example. Set out with a few sparse berries, the leaves curl against the white linen—the last bit of life in them. The artist’s engraving ‘La Fine’ simulates embroidery: ‘The End’. “Lola was not keen on expressing the angst typical of the post-war era,” Parretti explains. “She never experimented with Abstractionism, but this did not mean she was indifferent to European trends. Her painting reflects their nuances. This said, there is nothing drastic in Lola’s art. It does not protest the status quo, it embraces it. In real life, change is inevitable but often gradual. So it was for her paintings. Capturing simplicity on canvas was quest enough… the purple of artichoke flowers or perfumed lavender in Provence-style ceramic. That is what made her restless.” The immediacy of Costa’s brush, her ability INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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to be reflective and even humorous rather than purely decorative or symbolic, is evident in her still-life works which appear ‘fleshly picked’, whether featuring fruit or flower. The playing cards in Still life with cards and tulips (1940) are “a mischievous wink to those who knew her,” Parretti explains. “She loved playing cards, especially Pinnacolo!” And Costa’s Study of a Fish, which is read today as a ‘contest’ between mother and daughter, the 14-year-old Fiorenza, whose precocious talents would, inevitably distract Angeli’s attention from that of his wife— according to family hearsay. In straight yellow lettering, Costa inscribed the words, “Era vivo e guizzava” on the cutting board upon which the fish rests: “It was alive and quivering”. There is something impish in this line— which rings like a verse of Futuristic poetry made visual—the reminder that, sometimes, 59
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”
For Federica Parretti, Costa’s granddaughter and Il Palmerino Association’s president, the artist’s pieces have a solidity derived from her main intention: “to immortalize moments of unassuming beauty.” “Ma le rondini non si vedono ancora;/ forse hanno perso il tragitto su mare,/ forse non si fidano,/ paura di Gheddafi.” “Yet the swallows are nowhere in sight;/ perhaps they have lost their way along the sea,/ Perhaps they are distrustful,/ fear of Gheddafi.”
‘still life’ is not still at all. The joke is even more explicit in Italy, where the genre is called ‘Natura morta’, ‘dead nature’. Lola’s subtle English humor never left her, despite having left her native London in her early twenties, and it surfaces time and again, especially in her poetry. Costa draws on the purely English talent of being off-handed but pointed, while inserting modern references in otherwise timeless nature poetry. Therein lies the strength of it. In her springtime poem “Le Rondini” (The Swallows) from 1986, the lilacs bloom despite the absence of migrant birds, who are late in coming: 60
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“Costa’s poetry was reflective but not introspective,” says Parretti, “and the same is true of her painting. She was a spiritual person, in some ways, but her goal as a poet and painter was not one of self-discovery in the more classic sense.” Indeed, this may explain why there are no self-renditions among Lola’s numerous portraits—unlike Colliva who drew self portraits frequently, many of them dark and unflattering—a sketched battle between self-image and the subconscious, made public using India ink and parchment. Lola was not opposed to posing for her husband, but rather than wrestling with self-image she preferred to paint those for whom she harbored affection and did so with surprising rigor at the beginning of the 1940s. The Lemon Grower is elderly but ageless and her serious coming-of-age sitters, Matelda and Ornella are wise, not innocent. “Lola Costa sailed the solitary sea of art and words, especially after the death of her husband in 1952, seeking renewal with each season in life,” writes poet Stefano Vincieri. “With the same energy and curiosity that INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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would always characterize her, she would lay claim to new techniques, realizing that times and styles were changing, and she would reflect that in the people she portraited, be they her young grandchildren or the new kindred spirits that visited Il Palmerino.” A study of Lola’s later period, when portraiture became as common as her practice of giving her works away, confirms Vincieri’s musings. Two 1979 portraits Vincenzo and Veronique, two friends of Beatrice, the artist’s youngest daughter, are indeed representative of Lola’s willingness to ‘be contaminated’ by current movements. Her heavy brushstrokes filled with color make no apology to the Greats her husband emulated; reality could be represented in a variety of ways, not just though realism. Nearly ten years later, in 1988, Costa would produce Viola, an on oil-on-cardboard sketchlike portrait, sullen but hugely significant. “The painting feels unfinished, it’s chalky and INSIDE AWA · Autumn 2019
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lacking color. There is shadow in it,” says Viola Parretti, the artist’s third granddaughter. “There I was, uncertain, on the brink of adulthood. Life had not yet worn me down or polished me off. Though completed, Lola’s painting of me was as ‘unfinished’ as I was.” The portrait is honest, Viola admits and its only real light touches her cheek and lingers on her neck. It is the orange brushstroke of light that does it: the brooding painted girl is ‘alive and quivering’—like all of Lola’s art. Sometimes, her subject’s ‘movement’ on canvas is almost imperceptible, like the tautness of muscle before capture. That is how it is for artists capturing beauty that has not yet become aware of itself—in Lola’s painted world of gradual but certain change. This essay, originally published in the exhibition catalog ‘Lola Costa: An artist on the Pathway of the gods’, was used with permission. 61
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Double Vision Double Vision
Elisabeth Chaplin’s self portrait reveals the artist’s bold and confident style 62
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ELIZABETH CHAPLIN
F
rench painter Elisabeth Chaplin painted her remarkable Double self portrait in 1918 at the Villa Il Treppiede when she was 28 years old. It could be surmised that this painting was particularly special to her as it was one of the few works that were withheld from the donation she made to the Pitti’s Modern Art Museum in Florence of upwards of 700 works of art. This significant gift included her own works as well as those of her uncle, her nephew and her mother, sculptor Marguerite BavierChaufour. It is not clear to whom Double self portrait was entrusted in the years after her death in 1982. However, AWA has learned that Double self portrait (or Two nudes, as it is also known), was recently sold by a fine art dealer in Rome to a purchaser who has brought it ‘home’ to Florence.
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Chaplin has long been a favorite of AWA and its supporters. Her Three Sisters, which portrayed Elisabeth along with her sisters, Yvette and Nenette, was rescued from storage in the Palazzo Pitti and restored by AWA in 2014. Chaplin was also among the many women artists whose works featured in the Uffizi’s Vasari Corridor self-portrait collection, prior to its recent renovation. This early work, Self portrait with a green umbrella, authored when she was only 16, is a testament to Chaplin’s precocious talent. Some fifteen other works by Chaplin are on display in the Modern Art Museum. Proud to describe herself as having been self-taught, Chaplin nonetheless came into contact with a variety of artists and artistic movements throughout her long career.
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This is not the self-portrait of an artist who hesitated to make a statement or assert her indifference to prevailing fashions. Chaplin made art to please herself and, in doing so, created works that captivated art lovers... She followed in the tradition of artists who obtained permission to copy the Old Masters in the Uffizi Gallery, a practice which dates back to the museum’s opening to the public in 1769 and which – to its credit – was equally available to men and women. In Florence, she was acquainted with Macchiaoli painters Francesco Gioli and Giovanni Fattori. In France, she followed Maurice Denis, founder of the Nabis movement with which she is often identified. The Nabis were a group of French postimpressionist painters, admirers of Gauguin, whose work was characterized by flat patches of color and simplified drawing. Certainly, the influence of Gauguin is
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evident in the Double self portrait with its bright splashes of red and blue, its exotic air and strong chiaroscuro effects, as the light strikes the figures from below. It seems emblematic of its author – at once bold, sure of herself – but also mysterious and self-contained. This is not the self-portrait of an artist who hesitated to make a statement or assert her indifference to prevailing fashions. Chaplin made art to please herself and, in doing so, created works that captivate art lovers as much today as they did during her lifetime. It is heartening to know that this most personal of self-portraits remains part of Chaplin’s continuing legacy in Florence.
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A Serendipitous Encounter
M
usica Secreta’s new CD From Darkness Into Light might not have happened had it not been for AWA. In October 2018, AWA invited the group to perform at an event to mark the unveiling of the newly restored Crucifixion of Suor Plautilla Nelli. Musica Secreta’s co-director, Professor Laurie Stras, arrived in Florence a day early so that she could spend some time with an obscure manuscript in the Florence’s National Library. On that visit, she made one of Renaissance musicology’s most significant discoveries in the 21st century: the complete Lamentations for Good Friday by the Franco-Flemish composer Antoine Brumel, an astonishing and unique setting that dramatizes the Passion of Christ through the Old Testament texts. Musica Secreta recorded the work in May 2019, pairing it with a selection of beautiful Lenten and Marian motets from another manuscript by the same copyist, which was
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compiled for a Florentine nunnery in 1560. Laurie and her co-director Deborah Roberts felt that it would be entirely fitting to have Nelli’s Mater dolorosa as the CD’s cover, combining the iconography of the Crucifixion with an image of the Blessed Virgin, since it was Nelli who led them to Brumel’s masterwork.
From Darkness Into Light, released on 1 November on Obsidian Records.
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