Women artists, their patrons, and their publics in early modern Bologna

Abstract

"This groundbreaking book seeks to explain why women artists were far more numerous, diverse, and successful in early modern Bologna than elsewhere in Italy. Drawing on extensive archival research, Babette Bohn investigates an extraordinary sixty-eight women artists, including Elisabetta Sirani and Lavinia Fontana. She identifies and explores the factors that facilitated their success, including local biographers who celebrated women artists in new ways, an unusually diverse system of artistic patronage that included citizens from all classes, the impact of Bologna's venerable university, an abundance of women writers, and the number of self-portraits and signed paintings by many women artists. Featuring original methodological models, innovative and historically grounded insights, and new documentation, this book will be a crucial resource for art historians, historians, and women's studies scholars and students"--

Contents

Early writers -- Beginnings -- Elisabetta Sirani -- Sirani's successors -- Patronage and collecting -- Signatures and self-fashioning -- Drawings and prints.