The works of Bolognese Mannerist portraiture painter Lavinia Fontana (1552 - 1614). B&W Edition. Derived from the original full-color impression as an affordable quick-reference resource for inexpensive educational purposes.

This volume investigates emblematic and art-historical issues in Lavinia Fontana’s mythological paintings. Fontana is the first female painter of the sixteenth century in Italy to depict female nudes, as well as mythological and emblematic paintings associated with concepts of beauty and wisdom. Her paintings reveal an appropriation of the antique, a fusion between patronage and culture, and a humanistic pursuit of Mannerist conceits. Fontana’s secular imagery provides a challenging paragone with the male tradition of history painting during the sixteenth century and paves the way for new subjects to be depicted and interpreted by female painters of the seventeenth century.

"Bolognese painter Lavinia Fontana was the most significant and prolific woman artist of Renaissance Europe. Her large and renowned body of work encompasses several genres, including altarpieces, history paintings, and portraits. This extensively illustrated book is the first comprehensive study of Fontana in the English language. Art historian Caroline P. Murphy assesses the relation of Fontana's native city of Bologna to the artist's work and career, proposing that the unique attributes of the city, its religious and social climate and the citizens who became Fontana's patrons contributed importantly to her success as an artist." "Employing an especially varied set of source materials, from personal letters, baptismal records, property inventories, and wills to such contemporary printed sources as sermons, poems, and scientific treatises, the book opens a window on the little-known world of a professional woman of Renaissance Italy."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Drawing on some sixty works and for the first time, the Museo del Prado will jointly present the most important paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola (ca. 1535-1625) and Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614). The two artists achieved recognition and fame among their contemporaries for and despite their status as female painters. Both were able to break away from the prevailing stereotypes assigned to women in relation to artistic practice and the deep-rooted scepticism regarding women's creative and artistic abilities.The exhibition and accompanying catalogue will present the work of these two women, whose artistic personalities were to some extent obscured over the course of time but who in the last thirty years have once again aroused the interest of specialists and the general public.

"This is the second of six books in the series Art and its histories, which form the main texts of an Open University second-level course of the same name"--Preface.

Presents the story of a young girl of Bologna who worked in her father's all-male painting studio and came to enjoy more fame than any female artist before her.

A brand new look at the extraordinary accomplishments of early modern Italian women artists This generously illustrated volume surveys a sweeping range of early modern Italian women artists, exploring their practice and paths to success within the male-dominated art world of the period. New attention to archival documents and detailed technical analyses of the beautiful paintings featured here--ranging from historical subjects to portraits and still lifes--offer new insight into the ways these women worked and their accomplishments. Essays and catalogue entries by an international team of distinguished art historians examine the works of Artemisia Gentileschi, Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Fede Galizia, Elisabetta Sirani, Giovanna Garzoni, Rosalba Carriera, and other less known Italian women artists. Through these works of art in diverse media--from paintings to prints--the fascinating stories of early modern Italian women artists are revealed.