Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque (review)

Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque (review) Sally Quin Parergon, Volume 25, Number 1, 2008, pp. 217-219 (Review) Published by Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Inc.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.0.0048 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/252302 Access provided by University of Western Australia (15 Nov 2018 04:24 GMT) Reviews 217 Ford’s biography brings into view the complexity of Ussher’s position in both England and Ireland and achieves a far richer portrait of this bishop than the customary acknowledgment he usually receives for having dated the beginning of the world. Marcus Harmes History Discipline University of Queensland Fortunati, Vera, Jordana Pomeroy, and Claudio Strinati, Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque, Milan, Skira, 2007; hardback; pp. 270; 89 colour and 39 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$65.00; ISBN 9788876249198. Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque is the catalogue accompanying the recent exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, curated by Vera Fortunati, Jordana Pomeroy and Claudio Strinati. The sizeable and well-illustrated text offers a comprehensive overview of the major female artists working in Italy during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the wake of recent scholarship which has concentrated on monographs, exhibitions, journal articles and collections of essays on individual artists, the catalogue offers a significant opportunity for comparative analysis, and discussion of the broader patterns and circumstances that underlie the achievements of female artists in the Early Modern era. Though more discrete in terms of the historical period it attempts to cover, the text is ambitious in scope, and bears a relationship to Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin’s seminal exhibition and catalogue, Women Artists, 1550-1950, produced some thirty years earlier. The catalogue is comprised of eight essays followed by detailed entries on art works. The essays seek to set the activities of women artists within convincing cultural formations, with particular emphasis upon those factors which allowed women to negotiate their positions within the patriarchal order. Pomeroy notes that the exhibition ‘re-creates the world that not only embraced women artists but also enabled their names and reputations to survive – a remarkable occurrence given that women had virtually no independence, either socially or legally’ (p. 20). Caroline P. Murphy deftly investigates the central issue of economics, often in the context of what men sought to gain from the activities of women artists. She studies the significant monetary contribution made by Plautilla Nelli and fellow nuns to their convent of Santa Caterina da Siena in Florence and the financial status of artists Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Elisabetta Sirani and Parergon 25.1 (2008) 218 Reviews Artemisia Gentileschi. Female artistic agency and the particularity of the female viewing position in the patronage and creation of works of art is also dealt with in a variety of ways. Sheila Ffolliott examines women as patrons and connoisseurs in public, domestic and convent environs, emphasising the social circumstances that allowed women to act as consumers and arbiters of taste. Carole Collier Frick contributes fascinating information regarding the female artist’s use of costume to convey ideas of status, decorum, and allegiance to imperial power. She considers the way in which female artists employed classicising and fantastical dress in the depiction of biblical and ancient heroines to provide empowering alternatives to conventional depictions of women. Fortunati brings to light important new scholarship on Caterina Vigri, Lavinia Fontana and Elisabetta Sirani. In regard to Vigri she discusses the cult of Christ’s face and the veil of Saint Veronica, a relic which relied specifically on female witness. Vigri’s images of Christ in the illuminated miniatures of her Breviary (1452) are understood in relation to the Veronica cult, the paintings of Jan Van Eyck and descriptions of Christ’s physical appearance in religious literature of the time. Fortunati discusses Fontana’s little-studied erotic portraiture and the artist’s knowledge of the most up-to-date conventions of the genre. Rather than isolating female achievements, Fontana’s art is seen to be the product of a set of influences not completely removed from those experienced by her male colleagues. In another essay, Strinati records Giovanni Baglione’s 1642 description of female artist Ippolita Parmigiano, wife of sixteenth-century landscape painter Fabrizio. Baglione notes that Ippolita’s work was of such high quality that it was impossible to tell between the works of husband and wife. Such examples alert the reader to a certain flexibility in relation to the framing of the female artist in art historical writing during this period. Ann Sutherland Harris offers a very useful overview of scholarship since her groundbreaking exhibition of 1976 and Alexandra Lapierre considers the phenomena of female artists as subject matter for novels, biographies, plays and film. The collaboration of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, with Italian scholars Fortunati and Strinati ensured a rich selection of work for the exhibition. Many of the images reproduced in the catalogue will be familiar to scholars in the field, and, perhaps, to a broader audience. These include Sofonisba Anguissola’s The Chess Game (1555), Lavinia Fontana’s Self-portrait at the Spinet with her Maidservant (1577), Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1612-13) and the still-life paintings of Giovanna Garzoni. Other works have been less frequently reproduced, such as the engravings of Diana Scultori, a recently Parergon 25.1 (2008) Reviews 219 restored altarpiece by Plautilla Nelli, pages from Caterina Vigri’s Breviary, and paintings by Chiara Varotari. Illustrations of the recently attributed Portrait of a Man (Nunzio Galizia?) by Fede Galizia and the newly discovered Apollo and the Muses (Parnassus) (c. 1598-1600) by Lavinia Fontana are very welcome surprises. In the catalogue, works of large dimension such as Nelli’s alterpiece and Artemisia’s explosive Judith Slaying Holofernes are seen in the context of the delicate pattern book illustrations of Elisabetta Catanea Parasole and the painstakingly detailed cherry and peach-stone sculptures by Properzia de’ Rossi. These combinations make spectacularly clear the fact that Early Modern women were involved in producing a wide variety of art for extremely diverse contexts. Perhaps the only obvious omission in the list of works is an example of Properzia de’ Rossi’s marble sculpture, namely Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (1525-26). As the only female sculptor working in marble and for a major public commission (the portal reliefs of San Petronio in Bologna) in Italy during the sixteenth century, such a piece would have extended key themes. Also, it is unfortunate that an exhibition of such importance did not travel, its only venue being Washington. The catalogue, however, will remain a fundamental source for those working in the field, offering a timely summary of literature to date, significant new scholarship, and signalling a wealth of new directions for the future. Of particular importance is the text’s demonstration of the complex sets of circumstances which allowed for female success in the Early Modern period. Sally Quin Field Studies Program in Art History Syracuse University in Florence Gaspar, G. E. M. and H. Kohlenberger, eds, Anselm and Abelard: Investigations and Juxtapositions (Papers in Mediaeval Studies, 19), Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2006; paperback; pp. viii, 256; 1 b/w illustration; R.R.P. C$54.95; ISBN 0888448198. The sixteen papers in this volume (five of which are in German, two in French, and the rest in English) arise from a conference held in 2004 in Stuttgart on the thought and career of both Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and Peter Abelard (c.1079-1142) and the wider aspects of intellectual change from the early eleventh century onwards. Comparisons by medievalists between these two figures are rare, no doubt because of the contrast in their method and legacy. Anselm’s works arose from the inward reflection fostered by the solitude of the cloister. Abelard’s Parergon 25.1 (2008)