From 2 March 2021 Palazzo Reale in Milan is hosting the first major exhibition devoted to ‘The Ladies of Art’, extraordinarily talented women artists active between the 16th and 17th century, who can finally be seen in all their splendour

Over 130 works by 34 artists, including #artemisiagentileschi, #sofonisbaanguissola, #laviniafontana, #elisabettasirani, #giovannagarzoni and many others,
which tell the incredible stories of talented, “modern” women.

PRESS RELEASE

From 2 March to 25 July 2021, the rooms of Palazzo Reale in Milan are hosting a unique exhibition devoted to the iconic women artists who lived between the 16th and 17th century: Artemisia Gentileschi, #sofonisbaanguissola, #laviniafontana, #elisabettasirani, Fede Galizia, #giovannagarzoni are just a few of them.

Promoted by Milan City Council–Culture and produced by Palazzo Reale and Arthemisia, with the support of Fondazione Bracco, the exhibition is part of the programme I talenti delle donne (Women’s Talents) organized by the Department of Culture of the Milan City Council. The programme is dedicated to the feminine universe, focusing throughout 2020 and until April 2021 on their works, their priorities and their skills.

The show ‘Le Signore dell’Arte. Storie di donne tra ’500 e ’600’ (The Ladies of Art. Stories of women between the 16th and 17th century), rediscovers the art and the extraordinary lives of 34 different women artists through over 130 works. Testimonies of intense, lively all-female creativity, in a unique exhibition that tells the inspiring stories of women who were already “modern”.

They include celebrated artists, others less familiar to the general public, and new discoveries, like the Roman noblewoman Claudia del Bufalo, who is making her debut in this story of female art. There are works on show for the first time, such as the Madonna dell’Itria Altarpiece by #sofonisbaanguissola, executed in Paternò, Sicily, in 1578, which has never left the island before; the Immaculate Madonna and St Francesco Borgia altarpiece of 1663 by Rosalia Novelli, the only work attributed with certainty to the artist, which is leaving the church of Gesù di Casa Professa in Palermo for the first time, and the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine of 1576, by Lucrezia Quistelli, from the parish church of Silvano Pietra in the province of Pavia.

The works selected for the exhibition, under the curatorship of Anna Maria Bava, Gioia Mori and Alain Tapié, come from no less than 67 different lenders, including many Italian museums, namely the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Museo di Capodimonte, Pinacoteca di Brera, Castello Sforzesco, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Galleria Borghese, Musei Reali in Turin, the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, and international institutions such as the Musée des Beaux Arts in Marseille and Muzeum Narodowe in Poznan, Poland.

The most famous of the heroines showcased at Palazzo Reale is Artemisia Gentileschi: daughter of the painter Orazio, icon of female awareness and rebellion, artist and businesswoman. Artemisia’s art rivalled that of her male counterparts and success enabled the artist to rise above her female social status. Indeed, she exemplified the struggle against the authority and artistic power of her father, against the restrictions imposed on women.

Originally from Cremona, Sofonisba Anguissola resided at the court of Philip II in Madrid, then moved to Sicily –where Van Dyck came to visit her in 1624 – after marrying the nobleman Fabrizio Moncada, and later to Genoa where she was married a second time, to Orazio Lomellini. On display are her paintings The Chess Game of 1555 (lent by the Muzeum Narodowe in Poznan, Poland) and the above- mentioned Madonna dell’Itria Altarpiece (1578), which has undergone major restoration, carried out with the #collaboration of the Museo Civico Ala Ponzone in Cremona.

Lavinia Fontana was from Bologna and the daughter of the Mannerist painter Prospero Fontana. At the age of 25 she married the artist Giovan Paolo Zappi from Imola, on condition that she could continue to paint, actually making her husband her assistant. She has no less than 14 works on display in the show, including Self-portrait in the Studio (1579) from the Uffizi, the Consecration to the Virgin (1599) from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, and various paintings of mythological subjects which possess a rare sensuality.

Elisabetta Sirani was another Bolognese painter. The exhibition features her powerful canvases depicting female courage and rebellion against male violence, namely Portia Wounding Her Thigh (1664) and Thymoclea Kills the Captain of Alexander the Great (1659) from the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. Ginevra Cantofoli is present with Young Woman in Oriental Dress (2nd half of 17th century); Fede Galizia, with the iconic Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1596); and Giovanna Garzoni, another extremely modern woman who lived between Venice, Naples, Paris and Rome, with her rare and precious works on parchment.

THE EXHIBITION.

Daughters, wives, sisters of male painters, and sometimes even nuns: the exhibition The Ladies of Art not only focuses on the extraordinary compositional talents of these women painters. It also recounts their individual stories by examining the role they were assigned in society at the time; the success some of them achieved at the grand international courts; their ability to interact, to emerge individually and establish themselves, even becoming businesswomen, and to question their ideals and their various lifestyles.

The female painters challenged the “male-dominated” art world, adopting standard compositional and iconographic canons but enlivening them with a new inventiveness and bold expressiveness.
This female “manner” was rendered not only through the portrait – the core of pictorial expression, which pares down the space and focuses the gaze on flesh, fabric and detail – but also through their religious, mythological and genre pieces, following human and stylistic paths that could not have been more wide- ranging.

Whether the works were portraits or symbolic compositions of fruit and flowers, the subjects depicted became powerful means for freedom of expression. Testimonies of the mysteries of the psyche caught between virtue and sombre, sorrowful pathos, which possess a heroic quality that can be spiritual or everyday, but sometimes moves into a theatrical dimension in which life and history are intertwined. Every single one of these women made painting her profession, independently of the masters’ workshops. They followed paths that led some of them to enter the academies of their day: #artemisiagentileschi was admitted to the Accademia del Disegno in Florence in 1616; #giovannagarzoni, Anna Maria Vaiani, Virginia Vezzi, Maddalena Corvina, Plautilla Bricci, #elisabettasirani, Diana Scultori and Maddalena Corvina were all inducted into the prestigious Accademia di San Luca in Rome.

The woman artist was already recognized in #contemporaryart history by Vasari. In both Italian editions of the Lives (1550 and 1568) he describes the activity of the Bolognese sculptor Properzia de’ Rossi, to

whom he devotes a whole biography, and also makes reference to other women who distinguished themselves in art.
Chiara Varotari and #elisabettasirani actually managed, respectively in Venice and Bologna, to open the first art schools exclusively for women.

More than just big names: the show also spotlights a group of young talents who, although their stories and lives differed, show how the role acquired by women during the 16th and 17th century was not only linked to sporadic or extraordinary individual episodes, but was a phenomenon which, albeit with different characteristics, extended to the whole of Italy.

So many stories are told: lives spent within convent walls, like that of the Florentine Plautilla Nelli, the Piedmontese Orsola Maddalena Caccia, and the Roman Lucrina Fetti. Stories about refined embroideresses from Lombardy, like Caterina Cantoni and Antonia Pellegrini; much sought after flower painters, such as Margherita Caffi, Francesca and Giovanna Vincenzina and Anna Stanchi; artists with great charm like Barbara Longhi from Ravenna and the Bolognese Ginevra Cantofoli; and Venetian painters of considerable fame but whose works are rare, like Marietta Robusti (Tintoretto’s daughter) and Chiara Varotari (sister of Il Padovanino). There is also Virginia Vezzi from Viterbo, wife and artistic partner of Simon Vouet; the famous Roman architettora (woman architect) Plautilla Bricci; the Sicilian Rosalia Novelli; the famous engravers Diana Ghisi and Anna Maria Vaiani. And, last but not least, artists who, according to studies to date, are still little more than names, for example Claudia Del Bufalo, Maddalena Corvina and Maddalena Natali.

Main Sponsor of the exhibition, Fondazione Bracco has always kept abreast of new developments in the world of art and science, showing a special interest in the feminine universe. The Fondazione has enthusiastically committed to this project, which is part of the programme I Talenti delle donne devised by the Milan City Council, of which Fondazione Bracco is the Main Partner. In addition the Fondazione has created, in #collaboration with various Milanese universities, a scientific project for the exhibition to shed new light on an important work on display through the use of diagnostic imaging, in which Bracco is a world leader. The work in question is the Portrait of Carlo Emanuele I Duke of Savoy, a tempera on parchment executed by the 17th-century miniaturist painter #giovannagarzoni from Ascoli Piceno and held by the Musei Reali in Turin. Science and research thus become important tools not only for ensuring individual well-being, but also for studying works of art. In fact, the aim of the Fondazione, founded on the legacy of values developed over the 90 years of the Gruppo Bracco’s history, is to create and spread expressions of culture, art and science as the means of improving the quality of life and social cohesion.

Special partner Ricola.
Event recommended by Sky Arte. Catalogue published by Skira.