Fede Galizia

Galizia learnt her craft by working in her father’s workshop, an artist in his own right. She displayed a particularly precocious artistic virtuosity, leading biographer Gian Paolo Lomazzo to single her out her at the age of twelve in his 1590 treatise Idea del tempio della pittura. Galizia’s father was an engraver, miniaturist and designer of ceremonial clothes, the impact of which is present throughout her work, for instance in her sumptuous and creative design for Judith’s dress in both versions of Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1596/1601). Her early talent for portrait painting is discernable in her penetrating likeness of the Jesuit historian, Paolo Morigia (ca. 1592/95) in which the Lombard naturalistic tradition of Moretto da Brescia (1498–1554), Giovanni Battista Moroni (1520–1578) and Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1557) resonates.

The 1590s inaugurated a period of great success for Galizia from both patrons and peers. Paolo Morigia celebrated her work in his census of great artists in the 1595 Nobiltà di Milano. Shortly afterwards Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526–1593) took a personal interest and had her work sent to Prague for Rudolph II. Galizia, painting still lifes from the beginning of her career,  influenced by Vincenzo Campi (1564–1631), who appropriated and popularized Dutch genre scenes in nearby Cremona. The similarity between her Peaches, Quinces, and a Grasshopper (ca. 1610) and Jan Brueghel’s (1568–1625) Vase of Flowers with Jewel, Coins and Shells (1608) suggests she also was inspired directly by Northern paintings owned by her patron, the Cardinal Federico Borromeo. A lesser known aspect of her œuvre are her copies of great masterpieces.