The mapping of women artists: the discovery of Roma Pittrice.
Emma Gaggiotti, The family Gaggiotti-Richards (detail), Museo di Roma.
Our starting point is a priest walking through the streets of his neighbourhood in Rome in an unspecified year of the 17th century. He enters the houses, gives the Easter blessing, sits down at a table and writes down the names of the inhabitants, the sacraments they have received, their professions, their possessions and their addresses in a large notebook. The priest draws up what is known as the status animarum (book of the state of souls), an ancient land register used to calculate the tithe, an annual tax that each family had to pay to the parish.
So we learn that in via del Corso, via Paolina (now via del Babuino) and via Margutta, the old artists' quarter, lived numerous painters, miniaturists and engravers, about whom we know very little. A map of the Eternal City before 1870, which opens the exhibition Roma Pittrice at Palazzo Braschi until 4 May 2025, tells the story. The exhibition was curated by Ilaria Miarelli Mariani (Direzione Musei Civici Sovrintendenza Capitolina) and Raffaella Morselli (Sapienza, University of Rome) in collaboration with Ilaria Arcangeli (doctoral student at the University of Chieti Gabriele D'Annunzio).
The exhibition's title says it all: it is about the city's role in women's education and professional development in the Roman art scene between the 16th and 19th centuries. It is fascinating to read in Pliny's Naturalis Historia that a woman called Corinthia began painting by drawing her lover's profile on the wall as he ran away.
One has the feeling - as I did - of being immersed in a figurative anthology of Spoon River, in which the one hundred and thirty works on display tell of the forgotten existences of fifty-six artists, just as E.L. Masters had described the inhabitants of an imaginary Missouri village (Spoon River) in his poetic epitaphs. They are the same characters, all men, that Fabrizio de André sang about in the famous album Non al denaro, non all'amore né al cielo. Perhaps that's why I remember the moment when the Genoese singer, in the song La collina (The Hill), describes the cemetery of the city and speaks of the women: "Where are Ella and Kate, both dead by mistake, one from an abortion, the other from love", or "Maggie, killed in a brothel by the caresses of an animal, and Edith, consumed by a strange disease", and again "Lizzie, who ran far behind life and was brought […]”.
For its part, the exhibition tells the story of a microcosm of mysterious personalities who, to use Ilaria Arcangeli's words, lived on the fringes, outside monasteries and marriages, and who managed to turn their artistic talent into a real profession, leading in many cases to brilliant careers. In contrast, others spent their lives in monasteries or the family workshop, alongside their fathers, brothers, and husbands, who were the only ones authorised to sign contracts and own property. Existences that have been resurrected from the oblivion of the centuries, thanks to a handwritten signature that comes to light during the restoration of a painting, the solution to a mystery that has long remained in the dark.
This is the case of Giustiniana Guidotti, of whom we know nothing, but who is represented in the exhibition by an allegory of painting and music, her only known work, which nevertheless shows a talent as great as that of Artemisia Gentileschi, the most famous Italian painter in the history of art. Or Anna Stanchi, a flower painter long mistaken for her brother Giovanni. We can admire her paintings alongside those of Laura Bernasconi, Mario de Fiori's most important pupil, and the author of breathtaking floral compositions often attributed to her master. Or Maddalena Corvini, a miniaturist whose clients included Pope Urban VIII, but whose catalogue raisonné has not yet been reconstructed. Girolama and Elisabetta Parasole were lost for a long time because Giovanni Baglione, a 17th-century biographer and art critic, confused the two sisters-in-law, the carver and the "engraver", with a single, imaginary Isabella Parasole. There is an interesting woodcut by Girolama of the Martyrdom of the Wheel, based on a drawing by Giovanni Guerra and bearing his initials. Finally, Maria Luigia Raggi, the first female landscape painter in Italian art, who was forced to live in a convent from the age of nine, was for a long time mistaken for a non-existent master of the Capricci di Prato.
Emma Gaggiotti, the nineteenth-century Roman painter and patriot, much admired at the English court of Queen Victoria and the German court of William I of Prussia, but virtually unknown in her own country, gives Roma Pittrice a face on the poster and catalogue cover through the perfect oval of her self-portrait. In The Family Gaggiotti Richards, the artist, three-quarters turned in front of an easel, palette in hand, shows herself with her family - a revelation and a symbol of the exhibition itself. She seems to take up a posture; she, with the tools of her trade, ensures the family household. In a way, her fate is reminiscent of that of Maria Felice Tibaldi, the wife of the painter Pierre Subleyras. At fourteen, Tibaldi was already supporting her family with the income from her work as an illuminator. She was the first living artist to have one of her works included in the Pinacoteca of the Capitoline Museums: A Last Supper in the House of the Pharisee, for which she was paid a thousand scudi—a fortune.
Despite the success and recognition, albeit partial, of these artists by their contemporaries, most of the works in the exhibition have never been exhibited publicly. To this day, these works are often found in collections of prestigious national and international museums or private collections offered for auction. For all these reasons, several of the paintings required restoration. The paintings are presented in glass cases that allow the back of the paintings to be seen - a tribute to the Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi, who invented this system in the 1950s for the São Paulo Art Museum in Brazil.
Lavinia Fontana, self-portrait, Accademia di San Luca.
The tour begins with the foundations, that is with Lavinia Fontana, author of the first public work ever painted by a woman: "The Vision of St. Hyacinth” in the Church of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill in Rome. The most famous female painter of the 16th century, born in Bologna and now a Roman by choice, marks an essential milestone in the emancipation of women in art, as she is also the author of the inventio, or iconography, of the saints. In doing so, she forever disproved the myth that women were incapable of creating original works of art, but were limited to more or less conscientious imitation of the ideas of others.
Fontana was the official portraitist of the family of Pope Paul V. So, on the upper floor of the Borghese Gallery in Rome, we can finally admire, among the greats, her seductive Minerva dressing, only recently rescued from oblivion in storage. We can admire some of her portraits of unknown figures in the room dedicated to her. Still, above all, we can admire her famous self-portrait on copper at the spinet, which is reproduced in oil in all the major publications on women's art. Fontana appears here as a young woman, confident of herself and her talent, looking the viewer straight in the eye as she plays. In the background are painting tools, a symbol of identity and profession. This portrait of a young aristocrat, painted in oil on lapis lazuli, is of rare value and was probably intended to persuade a gentleman of the time to take the girl as his wife.
Lavinia Fontana, Minerva dressing, Galleria Borghese.
On the other hand, Rome did not bring much luck to Artemisia Gentileschi, the daughter of the Caravaggist Orazio. The turning point in her life was the rape at the age of 19 by the perspective painter Agostino Tassi, a colleague and friend of her father. During the trial, Gentileschi was tortured to ensure she was telling the truth. Despite her brilliant career, which took her to Florence, Naples, and even England, the painter remained obsessed throughout her life with the theme of Judith and Holofernes, the terrible revenge of a woman on a man, which Artemisia, inspired by her father's Caravaggism, always painted in dramatic and bloody colours. The exhibition includes one of her reinterpretations of a painting by Horace, in which Judith and her maid look around surreptitiously after the murder, holding the dead man's massive head in their laps. Also reminiscent of Caravaggio is Aurora, in which Gentileschi explores the study of the nude, a practice forbidden to women. They got round the problem by looking at ancient statues and studying their bodies. One example is Cleopatra, for which Artemisia seems to have used herself as a model.
Another must-see masterpiece in the Flower Room is a parchment-bound album of miniatures of flowers, plants, and insects, reminiscent of medieval herbals. The motifs are rendered with the finest lines and glazes of azurite, malachite, lapis lazuli, cinnabar, yellow lead, and white lead - all precious and expensive colours. The work is by Giovanna Garzoni, a naturalist and painter associated with the Accademia dei Lincei, the first Italian Academy of Sciences. Due to its fragility, the album is almost never shown to the public. To admire it, here is an exceptional opportunity to rediscover the taste for rare plants and exotic insects that came to Europe from the New World and the farthest corners of the earth, thanks to the travels of missionaries and intrepid travellers. Women were considered particularly suitable for scientific illustrations, which became popular in the 17th century, as they were believed to possess the qualities of "femminil patientia" (female patience), i.e., diligence, meticulousness, and mimetic precision, which were essential for this type of illustration.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Aurora, private collection.
Garzoni, a friend of Artemisia Gentileschi, a calligrapher, miniaturist, and naturalist who worked in Venice, Turin, Florence, Naples, and Rome, is buried in the church of SS. Luca e Martina, next to where she lived. Inside the building, on the opposite façade, is her tomb - a rarity for a female artist - financed by the Accademia di San Luca, perhaps because the miniaturist bequeathed all her possessions to the institution, including two magnificent parchment-bound albums, one of which is on display here. The room also contains a self-portrait from the General Secretariat of the Republic in the Quirinal Palace. Garzoni presents herself not as a talented young woman, but in the guise of Apollo, the god of art.
The most significant recognition went to the Swiss artist Angelika Kauffmann, described by her contemporaries as 'the Raphael of our time'. She was the first woman painter to be recognised as an equal by her male colleagues and to try her hand at history painting, which was also forbidden to women. She was also the first woman to be included in the list of virtuosos of the Pantheon with a marble bust alongside famous artists. In the 18th century, her studio was a compulsory stop for travellers on the Grand Tour. Kauffmann is represented here by several portraits, including Hope, probably a self-portrait, with which she was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca.
In summary, for decades, if not centuries, art criticism (especially Italian) has reduced women artists of the past to a marginal phenomenon, associated at best with intellectual curiosity. The only exceptions we could find were Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelika Kauffmann. For several years now, institutions have been trying to overcome this culpable and persistent silence by organising events on the subject throughout Italy. The exhibition on Plautilla Bricci, "Painter and Architect", which took place at the Galleria Corsini in Rome in 2022, should also be mentioned in this context.
It was a valuable experience for me to visit the exhibition in the company of Ilaria Arcangeli, a brilliant woman in her thirties who, among other things, curated the Roma Pittrice sections on 16th and 17th century women's art, and who can quote from memory the exact pages from the archives of the Accademia di San Luca. Listening to Arcangeli, I had the impression for a moment that something had changed since I graduated and that the institutions had begun to open up to young, educated women.
“It is a great thing that all those virtues and all those exercises in which, at some time, women have wanted to interfere with some study have always turned out to be most excellent and more than famous, as with an infinity of examples can easily be demonstrated to those who perhaps do not believe it. […] Nor have they been ashamed, almost to take away from us the boast of superiority, of putting their tender and very white hands into mechanical things and among the roughness of marble and the harshness of iron.” With these words, Giorgio Vasari described female artists in his biographies, hinting at things we know nothing about and are desperate to discover.
Original version of the Italian online magazine Weltlit:
Mappare le artiste: alla scoperta di Roma Pittrice - WeltLit
German version:
Künstlerinnen kartografieren: die Entdeckung von Roma Pittrice.
