Women Artists and Artisans in Venice and the Veneto, 1400-1750

Tracy E. Cooper is Professor of Art History at Temple University and on the Board of Directors of Save Venice, Inc., where she is director of the Women Artists in Venice research program. She is best known for Palladio’s Venice: Architecture and Society in a Renaissance Republic (Yale, 2006), winner of the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize from the Renaissance Society of America.

“…marks a pioneering contribution to our understanding of early modern Venetian women visual artists … A sumptuous feast of scholarly perspectives and case studies that weave the lives and work of female artists into the multi-textured fabric of the Serenissima, this groundbreaking volume is the first to bring Venetian women artists to the table, placing them in dialogue with one another as well as with the female members of the wider intellectual and creative circles to which they belonged; with the women and men of the collecting elite for whom they worked; with their male artist peers; and with the richness of the arts of Venice.”-April Oettinger, Woman's Art Journal, April 1, 2025

• List of Illustrations Introduction - Tracy E. Cooper, Temple University 1. La Serenissima in Context: Women Artists in Venice and Beyond - Babette Bohn, Texas Christian University 2. The Taiapiera in Fourteenth-Century Venice: What's in a Name? - Louise Bourdua, University of Warwick 3. In Search of Marietta Tintoretta - Robert Echols, Independent Scholar, and Frederick Ilchman, Museum of Fine Arts Boston 4. The “Vite” of Women Artists in Venice (Sixteenth to Eighteeth Century) - Antonis Digalakis, University of Crete 5. Artists and Artisans in the Account Books of Marino Grimani, Patrician and Doge of Venice (Late Sixteenth–Early Seventeenth Centuries) - Maria Adank, Università degli Studi di Verona 6. Chiara Varotari (1584/1585–after 1663) - Diana Gisolfi, Pratt Institute 7. Artemisia Gentileschi in Venice: Facts and Suppositions - Davide Gasparotto, J Paul Getty Museum 8. Giovanna Garzoni and Venetian Witchcraft: Still Lifes as Natural Enchantments - Sheila Barker, Medici Archive Project and University of Pennsylvania 9. Caterina Tarabotti Unveiled - Georgios E. Markou, University of Cambridge 10. Shining a Light on Giulia Lama's Painting Practice in the San Marziale Four Evangelists - Cleo Nisse, Columbia University 11. Rosalba Carriera Unframed - Xavier F. Salomon, The Frick Collection General Bibliography Archival Abbreviations Works Cited Index