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• 1 2020-10-14T21:48:19+00:00 Lavinia Fontana: Nobil Donna 9 By Samantha Castillo image_header 2020-10-18T22:57:53+00:00

  Lavinia Fontana was one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. Although the name could sound unfamiliar. Her accomplishments, works of art, and credible experiences compares to that much of Caravaggio, a male comparison also with complex artistic skill. She worked within the same sphere as her male counterparts, being known as the first professional woman artist. Trained and encouraged by her father, Prospero Fontana, she worked under him as minor painter at the school of Bologna. He taught his daughter Mannerist style, a style that tends to be more artificial and less naturalistic. The Mannerist era, also known as the Late Renaissance, was Fontana’s specialty, giving note to her extraordinary attention to the detail of her subject’s clothing and jewelry. Women artists during the Renaissance, Lavinia Fontana especially, were accumulating a spiritual awakening when it came to the conditions of their place in society. Fontana refused those social limitations through her art and created a separate artistic identity than that of her acclaimed father. Responsible for the family workshop that she inherited, as well as her husband and eleven children, she ran the workshop in a competitive atmosphere. Commissions came to those who worked extremely hard for it and nothing less. This edge set Fontana apart from other women artists and defined her career similarly to that of a male artist’s career. She was a mother, daughter, wife, and professional artist all at once, which was the most abundance a woman could experience during this time. 

  Fontana often painted self-portraits commissioned by nobility and the papacy such as George XIII and Clement VIII. Like that of Renaissance painters, her influence caused by classical antiquity remains apparent in her self portraits. Lavinia Fontana’s Self Portrait in the Studiolo, 1579, is a small portrait commissioned by the Spanish-Dominican humanist and scholar, Alfonso Caiconio, who asked her to make “a small portrait of herself in order to make a life-sized painting to accompany that of Sofonisba Anguissola,”. A portrait of a woman artist offered the collector an object of double beauty by giving them the woman herself, and the painting. However, in this portrait of herself, she gives an assertive symbol of her profession. She is shown looking at the viewer, pen in hand, as if to draw us onto her page. By demonstrating herself in the act of drawing, she was commenting on not only the controversial paragon of her time, the superiority of painting versus sculpture, but also giving the audience a shameless declaration of her professional endeavors. Women artists were allowed this in discretion but Fontana gives the audience this with easy realization. Fontana believed the art of drawing is the foundation for both painting and sculpture, this opinion revealed clearly in her portrait. Fontana’s background is of cabinets filled with antique casts and bronze figurines assumed to be Venus and Mercury, goddess of beauty and god of intellect. She used these as objects of study rather than studying live models because these were refused to women in the pursuit of becoming professional artists. These antique casts were copies of classical sculpture which Renaissance artists studied in academic settings. Classical antiquity and live models were paramount in the study of being a professional artist and being capable of making great art. However, because these were not afforded to women, Fontana used her own collection of antique casts to signature her ability to become great based off the talent and excellent artistic judgement she inhabited herself. This cast a symbol of her not only being an upcoming artist but also a collector of classical art, which was usually reserved for elite that sought out artifacts as an indication of cultural intelligence and knowledge. She curated this piece to be the display of her wealth in that knowledge, of the arts, and to challenge those who would discredit her as a professional artist. 

  Lavinia Fontana’s Self Portrait At The Spinet, 1577, is an exemplary model of the virtuosity and appeal Fontana had not just as a woman, but as an individual. She was cultured, intelligent, inhabited character and skill, which can only be used to her advantage in this portrait. Her decision in glamorous dress composition paired with the demonstration of a musical skill; she is deliberately showcasing an active knowledge in a new ideal of beauty uncommon to this era. Beauty was more than the looks and aesthetic of a woman, but truly her virtue and talents, which Fontana conveys. It was to be believed that this was made as a way of advertisement and self-promotion, a gift to her husband and father-in-law before announcing their engagement. Through this portraiture, Fontana is subtly demanding for a new vision of women, one that may permit them to seek beyond their exterior pampering. 

  Art and music were heightening forms during the sixteenth century. Artists and musicians alike were concerned with elevating their reputation in the social ladder. Although Fontana was known for no actual musical accomplishment, she chooses to be depicted playing music in Self Portrait at the Spinet. Fontana’s awareness for the growing popularity of artists demanding to be seen as an individual inhabiting a set of skills to that of a musician, writer, or philosopher, makes this portraiture all the more vivid in her adamant attempts to be realized as a professional. It set her apart from more than just a practitioner of a craft, but as a professional of a skill. She conveys serious creative intelligence and achievement that was not typically depicted in other images of women in this century. She is making her audience known that she is aware of their presence by looking directly at them, leaving no moment for them to doubt that she is anything less of a nobil donna, a woman of nobility. With her empty easel in the back, just waiting for the beckon of another commission, Fontana gives a display of her multitalented facets. 

  Lavinia Fontana’s last complete painting before death, Minerva Dressing, 1613, derives significant cultural history. She was the first female artist of her century to work with live female nude and paint the nude female form. Commissioned by Roman Cardinal Borghese, a friend and godfather to her son, it was controversial for such a distinguished individual of society to commission such a work. During this time, columns were printed about the female nude belonging with sacred and profane images. Fontana rebukes this discourse by painting the nude Minerva, Roman goddess of War, Peace, Wisdom, and of the Arts, as well as the traditional associated characters of a Minerva image such as an olive tree, an owl, a helmet, a shield, and a regal garment. The owl symbolizing wisdom but also prudence, the olive branches symbolizing peace. Fontana depicts a different kind of Minerva, not the agile goddess of War, but Minerva Pacifica, Minerva of Peace and Prudence or Modest Minerva. With what is believed to be Cupid or Eros, God of Passion and Love, he is seen in the background distracted with Minerva’s martial weapons. Fontana is directly giving the audience a moral lesson by placing Cupid in Minerva’s submission, in other words, passion in submission to prudence. This is a portraiture of morality even in her nude form. Fontana’s familiarity with mythological depictions in her paintings were common, but with this piece, she is allegorically displaying sensuality and desire, ironically yet purposefully with the Goddess who vowed chastity. Although it is a nude depiction of Minerva, it suggests modesty in the way she is positioned, not fully exposing her frontal body. The way she looks at the audience over her shoulder, coy and alluring, suggests her awareness of the audience’s presence and the audience’s knowledge of her nudity and yet still prefers to her own chastity. Fontana is rebuking the passionate connotations with nudity and harmonizing them with all the attributes of Minerva’s chastity, prudence, and reason. Fontana’s Minerva Dressing is a further statement that two different things can coexist. Women can exist in the professional realm of art originally dominated by men and nudity and prudence can exist at the same time. Although Fontana was a remarkable artist, she was still a female painter, and with this painting, she reiterates her status yet again as an esteemed professional regardless of her gender. 

  Fontana was influenced by the works of Sofonisba Anguissola and paved the way for further artists like Artemisia Gentileschi. She was one of the first women artists to be commissioned for portraits when women during this time were not encouraged to paint more than still life. She was the first woman to produce a commissioned altarpiece by the Church which was an opportunity typically given to men. Fontana was the first woman to invade Rome’s men-exclusive circles and forever leave her pieces in one of the oldest churches of Italy. She was the first woman to attend Academia di San Luca, an honor that even Caravaggio himself was not offered. She died the year 1614, buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, a temple dedicated to the wisdom of women. She was the first woman artist to have fame, family, and faith which surpassed more than what other women during the Renaissance were permitted to have. Lavinia Fontana rightfully is revered as a great woman artist, giving many contributions to proto-feminism and women’s art history. 

• 1 2020-10-14T21:53:20+00:00 Lavinia Fontana and Her Subliminal Self-Portrait 8 by Zoe Wilber image_header 2020-10-19T16:35:28+00:00

  In her landmark essay, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Linda Nochlin argues that various circumstances and obstacles point to how the social structures in place have actively held women back from being great and well-renowned artists. Historically, women were not encouraged to be great artists simply because art made by women has been characterized as distinctly feminine (or, by an extension, feminist), which implies that the art is intrinsically tied to the gender of its creator which, upon analyzing art made by people of all genders, appears to be false. Secondly, there was "complete unavailability to aspiring women artists of any nude models at all", so female artists could hardly practice and improve at their craft. Additionally, "women were not accepted as professional painters" until the nineteenth century, and even then, they fought to be recognized as artists who could be defined by more than their gender expression. For centuries, women were barred from entrance into universities, and this included schools of the arts from which many renowned male painters studied. Women were not encouraged to enter into apprenticeships with other painters or sculptors, nor were they accepted into social circles where they could network and conduct business because those spaces were reserved for and dominated by men. With that in mind, yet another reason there have been no great female artists is that when women were encouraged to make art, it was never for a great purpose but rather as something frivolous and decorative that could occupy them for a short period of time. In this sense, not only were women discouraged from pursuing a career as an artist, but generations of women were made to believe that their work could never go beyond what they were taught and assigned. Furthermore, "women were warned against the snare of trying too hard to excel in any one thing". An excellent example of this being The Family Monitor and Domestic Guide, a book published and widely read in the US and England before the middle of the 19th century, which encourages women to expand their skills in order to fulfill the various yet God-given roles designed for them as a wife, mother and homemaker. 

  One thing that certainly stands out in Nochlin's essay is the assertion that "for a woman to opt for a career at all, much less for a career in art, has required a certain unconventionality, both in the past and a present". Such a woman was Lavinia Fontana, a Baroque-period artist who had both the fortune and wit to fashion a career for herself as a painter. Lavina Fontana's last known painting was Minerva Dressing, dating 1613. The oil canvas painting depicts the Roman goddess Minerva "who has just cast off her weapons to put on a dress, which was unusual for her. In perspective in the background are a spear, an olive tree, and an owl, the usual attributes of the warrior goddess". A cherub, signaling the presence of a Divine, is also depicted in the background, and perhaps most distinctly featured is Minerva's exposed buttocks and relaxed facial expression. While this painting was inspired by the myth and figure Minerva, the similarities between the goddess and the painter herself suggest that perhaps Fontana painted Minerva as her last piece with herself and her legacy in mind.

  Fontana was born in Bologna, Italy, in 1552 and died in Rome in 1614. She was the first-known female Italian female artist and the daughter of Prospero Fontana (1512 – 1597), a renowned Bolognese-Italian painter and teacher who, against the conventional attitudes toward women at the time, invested in teaching his daughter how to paint. By the time she was 25, Fontana had married a nobleman and painter by the name of Giano Paolo Zappi (a definitively socially-advantageous marriage) and, by the end of her life, had outlived 3 of her 11 children. Fortunately, Fontana was supported in her career not only by her father but also by her husband, who "formed a working partnership that supported her career, allowing her to accept a growing number of commissions for baroque portraits, small paintings, and religious art...Zappi abandoned his career, kept Fontana's accounts, and tended the couple's 11 children". While Fontana was not readily accepted as a painter due to the constraints placed on her gender, she became the most desired portraiture among Bolognese noblewomen and also invested in painting portraits of herself, eager to showcase her skill. Following her father's death, she moved her family to Rome in 1604: "There she became a portraitist at the court of Pope Paul V and was the recipient of numerous honors, including a bronze portrait medallion cast in 1611 by sculptor and architect Felice Antonio Casoni". Fontana was the first woman "to be commissioned for public paintings, [and] earned membership in the prestigious Roman Academy. [Tragically,] of her 135 works—the largest corpus of artwork by any woman from the Renaissance or before—only 32 are signed and dated". While she was one of the first women to be permitted to study art at the male-dominated Roman Academy, the loss of much of her artwork points to the difficulties female artists face in personally preserving and promoting their names and works throughout history when no one else wants to.

  In her self-portraits, Fontana chose to depict herself very specifically. Art historians and scholars who have analyzed her work note her apparent choice to depict herself modestly and as a traditional, wealthy woman. In truth, she was wealthy and had garnered respect as both a painter and social figure as she had 

  "a reputation for pose, detail, and the use of a delicate palette. Such qualities are reflected in Fontana's self-portrait that now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence. Therein she is elegantly dressed in lace and jewels and studying archeological finds on shelves and a table, likely as preparation for sketching them. Venturing beyond traditional still lifes and set poses into high drama, she painted mythic and biblical figures on a grand scale and used as models female and male nudes...Fontana excelled at the depiction of the female form".

  It would seem that by emphasizing her virginity before marriage and then her wealth and domesticity after marriage, she is communicating to her viewer that despite the fact that she is a painter and supports her husband and children, she is by no means less of a respectable noblewoman. 

  Upon examining Fontana's last known-work, there may be a poignant, if not cheeky (pun intended!) subliminal message she has chosen to communicate through her subject. By choosing to portray the goddess Minerva in the act of dressing (i.e., in the nude), Fontana not only defies gender expectations since female painters were not allowed access to nude models, but I argue that there is a symbolic message sent in the act of painting Minerva. According to Mythopedia, 

  "Minerva was a goddess of intelligence, philosophy, craftsmanship, art, and inspiration. From her position in the heavens, she oversaw all things that required forethought and calculation. In later incarnations, Minerva was also seen as a military figure, as well as the fount through which all strategic and tactical thought flowed...The wisest of all gods and goddesses, Minerva had a calculating mind that she used to achieve her aims...The chastest of Roman deities, Minerva spurned the advances of men and gods alike in order to retain her virginal purity".

  Based on the description, it is clear that parallel connections may be made between Minerva and Lavina Fontana. Both are intelligent, artful, inspiring, and crafting women who carefully calculate ways to achieve their goals and maintain power. Arguably, Minerva's military tact and wisdom, coupled with her chaste reputation, may be compared to Fontana's own tactfulness in how she portrayed herself throughout her career as a noblewoman, wife, and mother through her self-portraits and commissioned work (depicting other noblewomen and biblical images, both which were generally well-received by the public). 
  
  Despite the odds, Fontana managed to secure herself as a professional female painter not only in part due to the unconventional support of the male artists in her life but through her own determination, talent, and willingness to subvert the status quo by the means necessary to achieve recognition. One of the ways she did this was by painting nude female figures. Imagine how Fontana may have admired the goddess Minerva or looked to her for inspiration, and then chose to depict her in a most vulnerable state, perhaps as if to communicate the humanness of this female subject, or simply the beauty of this body paired with the other aspects of the painting. It must be noted that Minerva's expression does not look fear-filled or uncomfortable--she looks like she knows something and is proud of it. Imagine how Fontana must have found a similar likeness in Minerva, eager to showcase her mastery of depicting the naked female form, but also how she must have painted Minerva with her own female form in mind. Finally, imagine what the creation of the painting must have meant for female viewers who not only saw the female form depicted by another woman but saw a woman who was beautiful, strong and wise. Undoubtedly, this painting is one that captures the work of an inspiring female artist in the image of an inspiring female figure.