This page is referenced by:

• 1 media/baroque desigb.jpg 2020-10-14T21:48:01+00:00 Elisabetta Sirani’s Portia Wounding Her Thigh 26 By Ella Allison plain 2020-10-23T19:53:28+00:00

  Virtuosa Elisabetta Sirani was a successful Baroque female artist in Bologna, Italy during the seventeenth century. Elisabetta Sirani painted Portia Wounding Her Thigh in 1664. Daughter of Giovanni Andrea Sirani, her father was a student of notable painter Guido Reni and was connected to many individuals in the artistic society of Bologna, Italy.  In her twenties, Italian art historian Carlo Cersare Malvasia took note of her adroitness, as she was compared to her father who could no longer draw or paint because the gout in his hands lamented his dexterity through his older age. As her father became more incapacitated, Elisabetta oversaw her family’s workshop and was the successor to her family through her art. Art historians speculate that Sirani’s father did not plan for his daughter to support her lifestyle through painting, however, the regression of his health influenced his decision to instruct her how to paint quickly. Despite her father's modest artistic career in comparison to Reni, Malvasia noticed Giovanni Andrea Sirani “also became a picture dealer, associated with intellectuals, and assembled a small library… [with] interest in allegory, history, and mythology.” Elisabetta benefitted from her father’s library, as the portrayal of heroines in her historical paintings extended beyond the trite, overrepresented subjects of Venus and Lucreita, as she sought to paint female figures that were represented few and far between in the Baroque period. As historians consider the biography of Elisabetta Sirani, scholars comprehend how her art was inspired to create her themes, choosing her subjects, convey her own personal experiences, and the hidden traits of her work. 
   

    The city of Bologna is associated with more women artists than anywhere else in Europe, during the Italian Baroque and Renaissance period. Ample opportunities provided to women artists in Bologna allowed women to flourish and pursue their crafts on a professional basis, outside of the home. Elisabetta Sirani’s artistic profile was lauded by art critics for her skills and technique, rather than the originality of the “selection and interpretation of her subjects than her father… reinforcing the notion that  technical skills were valued over iconographic invention by early connoisseurs.” At the time, Bologna was one of the largest cities in northern Italy and home to numerous noble families, who possessed great wealth to patronize the booming artistic sectors. The clientele of artists was not limited to nobles, as there was a diverse sphere of social classes that were eager to purchase and participate in the art world. Beginning in the thirteenth century, women were admitted into Bologna’s university. Women were allowed to teach , but only from behind a screen so as to not distract male students. Her precedent as “the first female artist in Bologna to specialize in history painting” sowed the seeds of a “path that was followed by most of the dozen or so women painters she trained.” Not all of the students in her school came from the families of painters. Sirani and her circle cultivated the female heroines empowered themselves by trying to associate themselves with qualities not usually associated with women at the time, such as strength and being a warrior. 
  

  Signore Simone Tassi, a silk merchant, commissioned Elisabetta Sirani to paint Portia Wounding Her Thigh to place on an overdoor in his private apartment. Tassi was a wealthy businessman in Bologna, who enjoyed the hobby of collecting art produced by Bolognese artists. Among his sixty-six pieces of art in his collection, five of the pictures were produced by Elisabetta Sirani. All five were history paintings, a common theme in Sirani’s work. She carefully incorporated themes of history, religion, allegories, and mythology in many of her paintings; themes that were likely inspired by the content of the Sirani family library. In Portia Wounding Her Own Thigh, Elisabetta Sirani chose to not depict Portia’s husband, Brutus. Historical paintings rarely placed women as the focal point in the painting and were often placed in the background. Behind Portia, there is a group of women spinning and gossipping together “betraying their sex by talk,” in the room behind her. Elisabetta Sirani was never married during her lifetime, which may indicate the composition of the painting, as Portia is removed from the women, indicating that the heroine does not align with the traditional characteristics and expected household responsibilities of the other women during the period. Following her father's health regressions, Elisabetta was likely discouraged from pursuing suitors, in order to maintain her family’s business through painting. Sirani conveyed her own personal experiences through the work by excluding Portia’s husband, in order to represent her life as an unmarried woman that is capable of proving her “virtue through individual acts of bravery” without a husband. Sirani’s interpretation of Portia forces her to the forefront, to show the viewer how assertive a woman can be, when she is determined to prove herself. Previous to the production of Portia, Sirani’s father was accused of claiming “her work as his own in order to exploit the publicity value of a female prodigy in the workshop.” According to art historians, her father never developed a distinctive style of his own” and “hardly ever let her leave the house,” as there is no evidence of Sirani ever leaving the city of Bologna. This gossip may have provoked Elisabetta to create pieces that are more unexpected and unique only to her style. 

  Elisabetta Sirani’s work titled Portia Wounding Her Own Thigh is placed in the genre regarded as a historical painting. This genre was intended to represent the moral tableaus of classical stories from the Bible or antiquity; women artists were dissuaded from painting in this genre because they were thought to be incapable of understanding complex ideas and histories. The patriarchal system tightly guarded the representation of women in historical art, in order to reinforce delineations male artists tried to place on women in society. Sirani implements the color red across the canvas in order to show the viewer that women are forced to pay for recognition by blood in the Patriarchal society. Around this time, Sirani was experiencing a decline in her health as she exhausted herself to produce a high volume of art, despite her growing depression and physical ailments. Her mental health may have determined to paint the dark subject matter. Despite her wound, Portia does not appear to be suffering. The female figure represented in Sirani’s painting is uniquely exhibited as a protagonist with emphasized virtues of strength and courageousness, as well as conscious autonomy over her body. Unlike previous representations of the history of Portia, Sirani “depicted Portia wounding her thigh to prove her courage to her husband” rather than the traditional portrayal of Portia’s suicide as an act of female weakness. During this period, women were regarded as untrustworthy because they were led by their emotions. Sirani’s hidden meaning behind the implementation of the color red may have been to convey the power women possess through their ability to create and end life, determined by their menstrual blood. In her Portia piece, “Sirani located the wound in Portia’s thigh, following the account of Plutarch, the only ancient writer to specify this location.” This representation was unorthodox and less accepted, in comparison to previous depictions of Portia. Portia’s portrayal as the heroine in Sirani’s work represents the challenges women rebelliously “characterized instead by virtues more commonly associated with men than women during the early modern period in Italy.” Her interpretations refused to follow the traditional portrayal of women as erotic sirens, inviting male attention. 
  
  

  The remarkable contributions of Elisabetta Sirani were influential to the precedence of women artists in Bologna. Unfortunately, her “early death has prevented a full evaluation of her career despite the evident fame she experienced during her life.” Despite this, Elisabetta used the supposed disadvantages and limitations of her gender as an asset as she invited skeptics to visit her studio and watch her paint, to prove to them that she herself created the work she signed. In her biography, Malvasia sardonically described how “she worked never like a woman and more like a man.” There is no doubt that she was held in high esteem by her contemporaries for the strong work ethic and impressive artistic style she possessed. To maintain the unique artistic culture of Bologna, Sirani understood the importance of paying  her success forward by establishing an art academy that would later be attended by her notable women artists, such as Veronica Fontana and Lucrezia Scarfaglia. Perhaps as a more egalitarian history of art emerges, scholars will appreciate more women artists such as Elisabetta Sirani and rightfully appreciate their contributions to Baroque art.