Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia’s earliest clients were chiefly wealthy Bolgnese noblewomen, dressed in high fashion and accompanied playful lap dogs. She was especially adept at capturing the splendor of Bolognese fashions, its gold embroidery, rich brocades, intricate beading, and fine jewelry. Particularly lavish examples are the Portrait of a Noblewoman (ca. 1580) and the Portrait of Constanza Alidosi (1594, both National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington). Lavinia applied the same attention to detail to portrait miniatures, often executed on copper. Characteristically she also frequently painted children, either alone or as part of a family portrait.

While her female predecessors had produced small works for use in private devotions, Lavinia became the first woman to produce a large-scale altarpiece. Gabriele Paleotti, by then Archbishop of Bologna and a leader of the Counter-Reformation commissioned from Lavinia The Assumption of Ponte Santo (1584, Pinacoteca, Bologna).

In 1586 Lavinia travelled to Rome, where her works captured the attention of the Spanish Cardinal Francisco Pacheco; soon she was producing paintings for the King of Spain. She also began to create history paintings, often featuring heroic women. Her magnificent Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1600, Museo Davia Bargellini, Bologna) and the massive Queen of Sheba Meeting Solomon (c. 1600, by National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) were perhaps inspired by Torquato Tasso, whose book on heroic women had been published three years earlier. In this Jubilee year, the Dominican order, which had built a new chapel in honor of Saint Hyacinth of Poland (canonized in 1594), commissioned Lavinia to produce the altarpiece. Countless commissions for portraits and religious narratives including altarpieces abounded during her Roman period, both for local patrons and further afield; so intense was demand that she refused many commissions.

Lavinia’s versatility extended to classical mythologies for private clients, many erotic in nature—indeed, Lavinia was first woman in Italy to paint the female nude. In 1613, the year prior to her death, Lavinia painted Minerva Dressing for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the art collector extraordinaire.

Lavinia was buried in the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, built upon a temple at the time erroneously ascribed to the Greco-Roman goddess of wisdom, a rather fitting resting place for this extraordinary artist, who pushed the boundaries of her talents well beyond any woman painter who had come before her.