Work by women artists was often absorbed into that of their fathers, brothers, and teachers, or it was neglected altogether, especially if unsigned or collective, like that of embroiderers, sculptor/stone cutters, and laborers on architectural construction sites. This volume is an act of recuperation, not only of women artists and their oeuvres, but also, through conservation, of their works of art. It results from a Save Venice, Inc. program, “Women Artists of Venice” (directed by Tracy Cooper, Professor, Temple University) working in conjunction with a conservation program led by Melissa Conn (Director, Venice Office, Save Venice Inc.). Some of the artists treated in the volume are a well-established part of Venetian history, including Marietta Robusti (Tintoretto’s daughter, ca. 1554/60-ca. 1590) and Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757), while others, such as Artemesia Gentileschi (1593-ca. 1654), are associated with other locales, but here treated for their connection with Venice. For all these artists, the act of recuperation remains difficult until the eighteenth century, as very few female artists before that time signed their work or had works assigned to them in biographical accounts. This volume offers both a first sounding of the subject for Venice as well as short, focused studies of women artists, their training, and their works of visual art based on new archival research, innovative attributions, or new examinations of artworks in the course of conservation.
The first essay in the collection by Babette Bohn helpfully sets out what is known about female artists in the Italian peninsula from the sixteenth to eighteenth century. Florence led the way with numerous nuns, embroiderers, and sculptors. Some Milanese embroiders are still known by name (from inventories); however, their works are mostly unknown. Only Bologna celebrated female artists as a component of its distinctive identity as a center of the fine arts. Vasari’s first biography of a female artist was the Bolognese sculptor Properzia de’ Rossi (ca. 1590/91-ca. 1530). In comparison, Venice had many fewer identifiable women artists, especially in the fifteenth century, and, although by the seventeenth century, twenty-nine female artists were working in Venice, practically no artworks can be attributed to them. At the same time, however, the agency of women in other spheres seems greater than in other cities: for example, elite Venetian women were able to control financial resources to an unusual degree, eventually leaving more wills than men. Moreover, Venice produced women writers in the sixteenth century, such as poets Veronica Franco (1546-1591) and Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554) and writers Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653), Moderata Fonte (1555-1592), and Isabella Andreini (1562-1604), among whom two--Marinella and Fonte--argued in 1600 for the equality, even superiority, of women.
The main hindrance to identifying female artists and their works lies in the fact that information about their life and work for the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries is derived from local (male-authored) biographies of artists (also treated in the volume by Antonis Digalakis). While these works often include a token female artist or two, their focus is more on female virtue and physical features than on the artists’ training or works of art. For example, Venetian writers, such as Carlo Ridolfi, the first artists’ biographer for Venice (published 1648), extolled Marietta Robusti and Irene di Spilimbergo (1538-1559) but mentioned none of their works of art. Thus, most early modern women artists remain “artists without works.” Given this mediated view of women artists, it remains an open question as to the historical reality on the ground: did the number of female artists really differ so much between these cities, or does it reflect, as Bohn notes, “biographical approaches to recording women artists in different Italian cities, the proclivity of some women to sign their works, local workshop traditions, and varied possibilities for the artistic education of women” (36)?
Other authors in the collection attempt to answer this question creatively by expanding the categories of “art” and “artist.” Louis Bourdua examines the patronym “tagliapietra” (stonecarver), which could refer to an occupation or a family name. In the records of the Venetian Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista in 1318-27, Bourdua finds at least 312 female members, although their profession is noted in only 14 cases and mostly in relation to their husbands, with only a few women clearly working (independently?) in a profession, including one carver (“entaiaressa”) (45). Although no female stonecarvers are identified as such, there is no question that Venetian women of the fourteenth century with that name held important roles in the business, including as financial and legal representatives. What Bourdua’s fascinating investigation of women in the business reveals is how little we know about the actual process of producing works of carved stone. Her approach thus demonstrates the promise of a more expansive category of “artist” for making clear who actually did the work (including the enslaved) and, indeed, the entire organization of the business that brought all artworks into being.
Similarly, in another chapter, instead of focusing on the individual artist, Maria Adank examines the account books of a Venetian art client and commissioner (and eventually Doge), Marino Grimani (1595-1605) and his wife Morosina Morosini (1545-1614), to reveal a wide network of male and female artists and craftsmen, with many women artisans (including nuns) commissioned for luxury needlework. Even in these records, however, women are occluded as an unmentioned part of the artisan family household and workshop. Nevertheless, Adank’s examination of these abundant archival records signals the potential for understanding much more about how the artworks and the luxurious material creations necessitated by the theater of rule came into being through political figures like Grimani and Morosini.
Just over half the volume’s contributors offer new assessments of relatively well-known individual artists, providing, for example, a reconceptualized oeuvre for Marietta Robusti (Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman), a re-examination of Chiara Varotari’s (1584/1585-post 1663) works in relation to the oeuvres of her brother and father (Diana Gisolfi), while Davide Gasparotto considers Artemesia Gentileschi’s short stay in Venice, and Sheila Barker contributes a standout essay on Giovanna Garzoni’s (ca. 1600-1670) animated (and animistic) still lifes, which Barker argues derived from Garzoni’s start in Venice, where she was trained in art, music, and calligraphy between about 1610 to 1630. Cleo Nisse’s study of works by Giulia Lama (1681-1747), who remarkably produced independent works for Venetian churches as well as history paintings, demonstrates how much examination through conservation can reveal about the oeuvre and training of a female artist in the eighteenth century. In the same vein, Xavier F. Salomon’s study of Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757), the most celebrated woman artist in eighteenth-century Venice, argues that the unframing of Carriera’s fragile pastel drawings during conservation provides valuable information on her working practice and technique.
The volume gives a fuller picture of the artistic milieu of Venice, showcases new archival finds and new ways of conceptualizing research in order to access information about female artists, and demonstrates how examination of artworks during conservation allows insights into technique and training which can help identify the works of female artists in the past. These promising leads for future research will be useful to art historians, conservators, and all historians who seek to overcome our lopsided perspective on the past.