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.