Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana was an Italian Mannerist painter active in Bologna and Rome. She is best known for her successful portraiture, but also worked in the genres of mythology and religious painting. She was trained by her father, Prospero Fontana. She is regarded as the first female career artist in Western Europe, as she relied on commissions for her income. Her family relied on her career as a painter, and her husband served as her agent and raised their 11 children. She was perhaps the first female artist to paint female nudes, but this is a topic of controversy among art historians.

Biography
Education and career in Bologna
Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna in 1552 to Antonia de' Bonardis and Prospero Fontana. She was baptized on 24 August 1552, at the cathedral of San Pietro. Her elder sister Emilia died in 1568 when Lavinia was sixteen. Prospero was a prominent painter of the School of Bologna and served as her teacher. Caroline P. Murphy suspects that financial issues may have prompted Prospero to train Lavinia as a painter. She later studied under the Netherlandish artist Denis Calvaert, who had once been a pupil of Prospero and who ran an influential painting school in Bologna.

Her earliest known work, Child of the Monkey, was painted in 1575 at the age of 23. Though this work is now lost, another early painting, Christ with the Symbols of the Passion, painted in 1576, is now in the El Paso Museum of Art.

Being the daughter of a painter allowed Fontana to become an artist in a time where female artists were not widely accepted, and Bolognese society at large was supportive of Fontana's artistic career, providing opportunities and connections that were not available to women in other locales. She began her commercial practice by painting small devotional paintings on copper, which had popular appeal as papal and diplomatic gifts, given the value and lustre of the metal.

Fontana married the Count of Imola, Gian Paolo Zappi, (alternate spellings include Giovan and Fappi), one of her father's pupils, in June 1577. Unusual for the time, their marriage contract specified that she would continue her career and would not be responsible for housekeeping. Instead of offering a dowry as would have been widely accepted in this time, Fontana painted to earn an income. The couple moved into Prospero's house in Bologna and Lavinia added Zappi to her signature. She gave birth to 11 children, though only 3 outlived her: Flaminio, Orazio, and Prospero. Zappi took care of the household and served as an agent and painting assistant to his wife, including painting minor elements of paintings such as draperies. Fontana attended classes at the University of Bologna, and was listed as one of the city's Donne addottrinate (women with doctorates) in 1580.

In the 1580s, she gained renown as a portraitist of Bolognese noblewomen, who competed for her services. The high demand for portraits painted by Fontana was reflected in the large sums of money she earned during this period. Her relationships with female clients were often unusually warm; multiple women who sat for portraits, such as the Duchess of Sora Constanza Sforza Boncompagni, later served as namesakes or godmothers for Fontana's children.

Roman period (1603-14)
Fontana and her family moved to Rome in 1604 at the invitation of Pope Clement VIII. She gained the patronage of the Buoncompagni, of which Pope Gregory XIII was a member. She was subsequently appointed as Portraitist in Ordinary at the Vatican. Fontana thrived in Rome as she had in Bologna and Pope Paul V was among her sitters.

Along with portraits, Fontana created a substantial number of extensive altar pieces, and it is believed that she may be one of the first female painters to have done this. Fontana followed Paleotti's Counter-Reformation principles in art theory. In 1593, Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti commissioned the Assumption of the Virgin, created by Fontana for the chapel altarpiece of the church of San Pietro in Bologna. Fontana painted another Assumption of the Virgin in 1593 at the church of San Francesco Oltre Reno at Pieve di Cento, which was commissioned by the Bentivoglio family and placed in the family chapel. Fontana was also commissioned for works by two popes, Gregory XIII and Clement VIII.

Fontana also produced paintings on mythological allegorical themes, sometimes "highly sensuous paintings with female nude figures-an unheard-of and risky venture which to date no female artist had permitted herself to attempt. Her last painting, Minerva Dressing (1613), was a true masterpiece."

She was the first female elected into the Accademia di San Luca of Rome, and was the recipient of numerous honors, including a bronze portrait medallion cast in 1611 by sculptor and architect Felice Antonio Casoni. According to Jean Owens Schaefer, the reverse side of the medal depicts Pittura, an allegorical figure representing painting. He also posits that this is the first visual rendition of Cesare Ripa's 1603 description of Pittura.

She died in the city of Rome on 11 August 1614, at the age of 61, and was buried at Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2025