Italian Art History

WONDER WOMEN: SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA, LAVINIA FONTANA AND ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE SELF-PORTRAIT PAINTING BY FEMALE ARTISTS

by Rosa Lena Reed Robinson

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts in Art History at
Studio Art Centers International
Florence, Italy

2017


This  thesis is focused on the self-portrait painting practice by three female artists from the Renaissance and the Baroque periods: Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Artemisia Gentileschi. Chapter I introduces the self-portrait as it developed specific to the Renaissance and in relation to a Greco-Roman classical ideal. The chapter focuses on Renaissance concepts of art and the very role of the artist. Chapter II studies the numerous self-portraits of Sofonisba Anguissola, the first great Renaissance female artist to have an international career. The artist’s self-portraits both became a foundation for those of later female artists and self-consciously expressed the new elite status achieved by this Lombard artist of noble lineage who worked as court portraitist for the Spanish monarchy. Chapter III examines the self-portraits and innovative identity self-portraiture of Lavinia Fontana of Bologna. It is demonstrated how her two early self-portraits built on the precedent established by Sofonisba, and yet, are of somewhat greater iconographic complexity. While in her maturity the artist developed self-portraiture into the identity self-portrait through the subject of Judith and Holofernes. Within her treatments of the theme in some examples she put herself into the figure of Judith and in others into Judith’s maid Abra. Lavinia Fontana’s final masterpiece, the improbable painting Minerva Dressing done at the end of her extensive career was likewise arguably an identity self-portrait. Minerva Dressing constitutes the first female fully nude figure painted by a female artist. Chapter IV focuses on Artemisia Gentileschi. This thesis designates the artist’s Pommersfelden Susanna and the Elders as both Artemisia’s first exact self-portrait and the first female full-length nude self-portrait painted by a female artist. The work is also an identity self-portrait. This chapter continues with a discussion of both versions of Artemisia’s infamous Judith and Holofernes (Capodimonte/Uffizi). Both works are arguably exact self-portrait paintings and identity self-portraits. Artemisia’s Allegory of Painting in London, often referred to as a self-portrait in scholarship, is suggested a perhaps better understood as an ideal identity self-portrait rather than a literal self-representation. The Allegory of Painting is considered together with other attributed self-portraits and portraits of the artist. A major theme in Chapter IV is the transition from literal self-representation to allegorical and ideal portrayal of the self. This thesis suggests that, as the artist’s career advanced, Artemisia Gentileschi did continue to paint both the exact and the ideal self-portrait. Finally, in the Conclusion, the legacy of the self-portraits of the Wonder Women, to adopt a phrase from Giorgio Vasari, is considered in reference to future female artists such as Elisabetta Sirani, Angelica Kauffmann, Elisabeth Vigée Le-Brun and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

This is the full text and map book (image document separate from and attached to the end of the text) of my undergraduate Bachelor's thesis completed and defended in May 2010. I received high honors and the Alumni Award in the History of Art for this project.

The art market defines as "Neapolitan school" all those artistic experiences that in the southern nineteenth century were able to manifest themselves in the shadow of Vesuvius. These changing expressions of creativity established their own peculiar identity, and which at times tended, detaching themselves from the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, to assume under the noun "School" a typical character in which different visions were experienced from the academisms in vogue. Thus were born, as if they were cultural centers, before the "School of Posillipo" [...]. But other southern artists of different regional origins were added to the Neapolitan by birth, often arriving in Naples at a mature age and carrying their own cultural heritage on their shoulders (they were different in their territory of origin and experience). One of these, undoubtedly among the greatest of the Italian nineteenth century, is the Salentine Gioacchino Toma (Galatina, LE, 1836 - Naples, 1891), author of a real pictorial current that was born thanks to his work, artistic and social commitment, during the 35 years of stay in Naples.

"In this symposium I will compare the historiographic methodologies that appeared in Italy at the beginning of the eighties with the opposite postmodernists theories sustained by critics like Benjamin Buchloch.
The so-called “Return to painting” in Italy, including labels like “Transavanguardia”, tried to rehabilitate figures usually linked with anti-avantgardism and reactionarism, like Giorgio De Chirico after his disengagement with Surrealists, or Mario Sironi, who influenced Fascist style.
Italian critics associated with neo-figurative tendencies rejected as outdated any ideological judgement regarding realistic painting and its claims to a national style, particularly those derived from the historicistic interpretation adopted by Giulio Carlo Argan, the most influential contemporary art historian in Italy after 1945.
The exhibitions held after 1979, like “La Pittura Metafisica” or “Anni Venti”, proposed a new vision to re-evaluate Metafisica’s role, in opposition to Futurism’s supremacy based on an avanguardistic progression.
This effort to revise the political reactionary engagement of figures like Sironi or De Chirico, was preceded by the ex-Communist historian Renzo De Felice’s broadly reconciliatory approach toward Fascism in his lengthy biography of Mussolini.
At the same time, Communist Party, leaded by Enrico Berlinguer, began a renovating political strategy to emancipate itself from totalitarian policy of U.S.S.R. This change had a correspondent approach among art critics and historians close to the Party that culminated in the “Biennale del Dissenso” (1977) where artists persecuted by the sovietic regime can exposed their banished works.
The Revisionist tendency -and its art-historical version- deeply influenced Jean Clair, who was, during the seventies, close to italian critics like Luigi Carluccio and who organized Les Réalismes (1981), the most fervent attempt to eliminate the “avant-garde” category in historical methodology.
From the opposite side, Buchloch accused Clair of being a “new reactionary anti-modernist” and promoting an approach to the arts “outside the historical and political context”.
Buchloch’s Postmodern thought aimed primarily to revise Greenberg’s Modernism while, at the same time, reaffirming some of its aspects (such as the distinction between the avant-garde and kitsch) thus contradicting Clair’s theory.
In placing Greenberg’s theory at the center of Postmodernism’s change, Buchloh didn’t consider the possibility of other historical legacies in different political contexts such as Italy or France."

This article is focused on the issue of geo-cultural identity in the group of Transavanguardia. Examining its Tuscan members and their participation at the Biennale di Venezia, this study trying to reframe the theory of "Genius loci" promoted by their mentor, Achille Bonito Oliva, into the wide context of global art at the beginning of the 1980s

Thanks to the contribution of Pentagram Stiftung, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini offers 1 six-month residential scholarship for the purpose of studying 20th-century glass-making art in Venice. The scholarship is worth 6,200 euros (gross sum) and accommodation free of charge for 6 months at the Vittore Branca Center Residence.

Part of the Stanze del Vetro project, the scholarship will be awarded to an Italian or foreign[1] undergraduate or graduate student (PhD or post-doctorate) wishing to spend six months doing research at the Glass Study Center / Institute of Art History in the period April–December 2018.

The Vittore Branca International Center for the Study of Italian Culture offers 9 residential scholarships to PhDs and post-doc students who must not be over 40 years old on 10 March 2018. Each scholarship is worth 3,100 euros (gross sum) and accommodation free of charge for 3 months at the Vittore Branca Center Residence in the period May 2018 – May 2019.

The scholarships are offered by Fondazione di Venezia.

The residential scholarships are offered to Italian and international scholars wishing to further their studies of Italian culture – especially that of the Veneto –  with an interdisciplinary approach in one of the following fields: art history, literature, music, drama, early printed books, Venetian history and comparative cultures and spiritualities.

Marginal sculpture in Puglia, 12th-15th centuries (Bari: San Nicola; Trani: cathedral; Bitonto: cathedral). The essays aims to show that representations of people belonging to foreign ethnic groups such as Arabic or Muslim people do not reflect obligatorily the real historic situation. More often they were meant to illustrate otherness in order to signal social difference.

Randskulptur - Apulien - 12.-15. Jahrhundert - Bari, San Nicola; Trani, Bitonto

The Vittore Branca International Center for the Study of Italian Culture offers 7 residential scholarships to PhDs and post-doc students who must not be over 40 years old on March 10, 2020.

The scholarships are sponsored by Fondazione di Venezia.The residential scholarships are offered, within the interdisciplinary context that characterizes the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, to Italian and international scholars wishing to further their studies of Italian culture – especially that of the Veneto – in one of the following fields: art history, Venetian history, literature, music, drama, early printed books and comparative cultures and spiritualities.

Italian art from Etruscan and Roman times to 20th century, including. Leonardo Da Vinci, Giotto, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo and more. Look and understand the meaning behind masterpieces by Italian painters, sculptors and architects.
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Italiensk kunst fra romertiden til det 20. århundrede, inklusive Leonardo Da Vinci, Giotto, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo og flere. Se og forstå meningen bag mesterværker af italienske malere, skulptører og arkitekter.

Author: Sheila McTighe
Series: Visual & Material Culture, 1300-1700
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

In drawing or painting from live models and real landscapes, more was at stake for artists in early modern Italy than achieving greater naturalism. To work with the model in front of your eyes, and to retain their identity in the finished work of art, had an impact on concepts of artistry and authorship, the authority of the image as a source of knowledge, the boundaries between repetition and invention, and even the relation of images to words. This book focuses on artists who worked in Italy, both native Italians and migrants from northern Europe. The practice of depicting from life became a self-conscious departure from the norms of Italian arts. In the context of court culture in Rome and Florence, works by artists ranging from Caravaggio to Claude Lorrain, Pieter van Laer to Jacques Callot, reveal new aspects of their artistic practice and its critical implications.

Download the table of contents and introduction here: https://assets.ctfassets.net/4wrp2um278k7/Vtonts3vTHIZLmErAqXnA/d61c8bd94befb4dbb5ed7911dba6eb5a/9789048533268_ToC_Intro.pdf

In memory of Olivo and Vilma Andreazza, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini has created two 3-month residential scholarships to enable “second and third generation” Italians (i.e. children and grandchildren of Italians who emigrated to work abroad) to come to Italy for a study period at the Vittore Branca International Center for the Study of Italian Culture.

Each scholarship is worth 3,100 euros (gross sum) and 3 month accommodation free of charge in the Vittore Branca Center Residence.

The scholarships is offered to PhD or post-doc scholars interested in studying Italian culture – especially that of the Veneto –  with an interdisciplinary approach in one of the following fields: art history, literature, music, drama, early printed books, Venetian history and comparative cultures and spiritualities.

Castel del Monte is a famous medieval castel built in Puglia (Southern Italy) by emperor Federico II in XIII century. It is a masterpiece for its octogonal structure. Th castel was built by Italian architects in collaboration with German and French architects