Illuminating Women Artists – serie

This book serves to establish Clara Peeters, one of the most talented and creative among the early practitioners of still-life painting in Europe in the early 17th century, as a leader in her field. The book not only discusses the artist’s biography but also examines the historical and cultural context of Peeters’ art, her artistry and the material culture reflected in her paintings. Part of the first generation of European artists to specialise in still-life painting, Peeters was in fact the only Flemish woman known to have focussed on this genre of painting in the early 17th century. She was also one of the few women to dedicate her professional life to painting in early modern Europe.This timely book sheds light on the limitations that Clara Peeters encountered because of her gender and how she responded to them in her art, while also assessing her importance as a painter of still-life.

This beautifully illustrated monograph presents the first overview in English of the life and work of Luisa Roldán (1652–1706), a prolific and celebrated sculptor of the Spanish Golden Age. The daughter of Pedro Roldán, a well-known sculptor from Seville, she developed her talent in her father’s workshop. Early in her career she produced large polychromed wooden sculptures for churches in Seville, Cádiz, and surrounding towns. She spent the second half of her career in Madrid, where she worked in both polychromed wood and polychromed terracotta, developing new products for a domestic, devotional market. In recognition of her talent, she was awarded the title of Sculptor to the Royal Chambers of two kings of Spain, Charles II and Philip V. This book places Roldán within a wider historical and social context, exploring what life would have been like for her as a woman sculptor in early modern Spain. It considers her work alongside that of other artists of the Baroque period, including Velázquez, Murillo, and Zurbarán. Reflecting on the opportunities available to her during this time, as well as the challenges she faced, Catherine Hall-van den Elsen weaves the narrative of Roldán's story with analysis, revealing the complexities of her oeuvre. Every year, newly discovered sculptures in wood and in terracotta enter into Roldán’s oeuvre. As her artistic output begins to attract greater attention from scholars and art lovers, Luisa Roldán provides invaluable insights into her artistic achievements.

Examined through the lens of cutting-edge scholarship, Artemisia Gentileschi clears a pathway for non-specialist audiences to appreciate the artist's pictorial intelligence, as well as her achievement of a remarkably lucrative and high-profile career. Bringing to light recent archival discoveries and newly attributed paintings, this book highlights Gentileschi's enterprising and original engagement with emerging feminist notions of the value and dignity of womanhood. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Artemisia Gentileschi brings to life the extraordinary story of this Italian artist, placing her within a socio-historical context. Sheila Barker weaves the story with in-depth discussions of key artworks, examining them in terms of their iconographies and technical characteristics in order to portray the developments in Gentileschi’s approach to her craft and the gradual evolution of her expressive goals and techniques.

The first monograph on the artist to be published in English, this book provides a long-overdue introduction to the life and work of Portuguese painter Josefa de Ayala, known as Josefa de Óbidos (1630-1684). One of the best known and most celebrated artists of the Portuguese baroque, she is the only early modern female artist to be credited with representing the art of a whole period and a geographical area. Her paintings encompass a diversity of religious and secular subjects in a variety of formats, from portraits to still lifes; small oils on copper to large church altarpieces; seemingly ‘feminine’ themes revolving around the Virgin Mary and female saints to gruesome portrayals of the Passion of Christ. Her oeuvre also includes engravings.Josefa de Óbidos enjoyed a level of artistic and personal autonomy that was extraordinary for a woman of her day. She never married, and kept her own workshop after attaining the legal title of 'donzela emancipada' (emancipated maiden), which allowed for her independence. In addition to working as an artist, she was a successful businesswoman and landowner. Documentation at the time of her death indicates that she owned, in addition to her personal residence, a remarkable number of country houses, vineyards, and orchards, as well as yields from wheat and barley.This timely study situates the artist within the context of the Iberian and broader European artistic milieux of her time, the careers and experiences of other early modern women artists, and the material culture of Portugal’s global territories, bringing Josefa de Óbidos’ artistic achievement and transnational character to light.

Sofonisba Anguissola (c.1532–1625), an Italian Renaissance painter born in Cremona to a noble family, was one of the first women artists of Europe to establish an international reputation during her lifetime. This book explores the evolution of Sofonisba Anguissola’s art from her training in Cremona, through her service at the court of Philip II in Madrid, to her later years as a married woman in Sicily and Genoa.It was at the Spanish court that Sofonisba Anguissola secured her reputation as a painter of international renown. Therefore, the volume places special emphasis on the social, political and cultural preconditions surrounding her role and status at the Spanish court, where she became a lady-in-waiting and painting instructor to Queen Elizabeth of Valois. In order to interrogate the circumstances of her service and her painting practice in Spain, and thus to better explain her later artistic career in Italy, the book focuses on her education, her noble status, her family ties, and her connections with noble courts in Spain and Italy. It draws on recent discoveries made by the author, as well as archival documentation, to reinterpret Anguissola and her artistic legacy.

Belonging to the wider circle of Calvinist exiles from Catholic Flanders working in the Saint-Germain des-Prés area of Paris, Moillon was the sole female practitioner of a group that included Sébastien Stosskopf, Jacques Linard, and Lubin Baugin. Louise Moillon reassesses the importance of this painter of still-life (and occasional genre) paintings through a consideration of the context in which she was working; the centrality of the genre of still life in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris in the earlier part of the seventeenth century; and provides close visual analyses of her works.Moillon offers a useful case study of a supremely talented artist whose relative posthumous invisibility may be explained by three key features: her gender; the genre of still life at which she excelled but which became increasingly overlooked after the foundation of the French Académie royale in 1648; and a change in her domestic role after her marriage, when she produced fewer works. This book questions some of the ways in which Moillon’s story has been represented since the beginnings of the revival of interest in her work in the early twentieth century. In particular, it draws on more recent scholarship which grants early modern women from Moillon’s social class greater agency than was previously assumed and grants her a rightful place alongside her male contemporaries.

Elisabetta Sirani of Bologna (1638-1665) was one of the most innovative and prolific artists of the Bolognese School. Not only a painter, she was also a printmaker and a teacher. Based on extensive archival documentation and primary sources — including inventories, sale catalogues and her work diary — Elisabetta Sirani provides an overview of the life, work, critical fortune and legacy of this successful Baroque artist. Placing her within the context of the post-Tridentine society that both inhibited and supported her, Modesti examines Sirani's influence on many of the artists studying at Bologna's school for professional women artists, as well as her significance in the professionalisation of women’s artistic practice in the seventeenth century.Beautifully illustrated throughout, Elisabetta Sirani focuses on women’s agency. More specifically, it explores Sirani’s identity as both a woman and an artist, including her professional ambition, self-fashioning and literary construction as Bologna’s pre-eminent cultural heroine.

This is an accessibly written, illustrated biography of Venetian painter Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757), one of the most famous women artists in 18th-century Europe. It presents an overview of her life and work, considering Carriera's miniatures alongside her better-known, larger-scale works.Focusing on interpretation of her paintings in the historical context of her life as a single woman in Venice, the book offers an easy guide through Carriera´s life, the people she met, her clients and her artistic approach. The author's new iconographic analysis of some of Carriera's works reveals that she was an erudite painter, drawing on antiquity as well as the work of Renaissance virtuosos such as Leonardo da Vinci and Paolo Veronese.

Gesina ter Borch (1631-1690) was a Dutch watercolourist and draughtswoman whose work survives primarily in the form of three albums of watercolours and calligraphy, now held at the Rijksmuseum. Despite the fact that her oeuvre is securely attributed and thoroughly catalogued, Ter Borch has surprisingly never been the subject of a dedicated monograph, until now. For the first time, this book highlights Ter Borch’s watercolours and calligraphy in their own right, as well as her work as an art teacher, an archivist, and an artist’s model, and questions a historiography of women’s art that frequently values oil painting over other media, and work for the market over 'amateur' production.Adam Eaker revisits Gesina ter Borch’s role in the genesis of Dutch 'high-life' genre painting and its construction of gender and social class, comparing her art with that of her brother Gerard, and in so doing allows for a more nuanced understanding of the ideologies and achievements of Dutch genre painting.

In 1679, the commentator Joachim von Sandrart described Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) as a painter who had perfected the art of the miniature and of flower painting, a high and deserved honour. Posthumously, however, it is Merian’s status as an entomologist or naturalist that has garnered the most attention; she has not received her due as an artist. This book remedies this situation and assists the reader in understanding Merian’s life as a woman and as an artist in the early modern Dutch Republic. Using Merian’s hundreds of extant watercolours and book illustrations as sources, in combination with her surviving correspondence and with contemporary art treatises, Catherine Powell-Warren recognizes the artistic contributions of Maria Sibylla Merian, and situates them in their socio-cultural and creative context.This book is the first to consider Merian's art and art-historical significance: her artistic range; her techniques; the rich visual rhetoric she deployed in her works; and her innovations. Merian may not have been a guild member, but she was for all intents and purposes the head of a for-profit business (a 'master'), seeing to the training of her daughters and managing a successful workshop, publishing her works, and networking to secure patrons and resources. Considering the impediments she faced as a woman, her achievements as an artist, as well as in other realms, can be considered noteworthy and perhaps even extraordinary.

This timely exploration of the skilful illuminated manuscripts of Sister Eufrasia Burlamacchi (1478–1548) demonstrates her artistry within this sometime neglected artistic medium. Within the convent walls of San Domenico in Lucca where she lived and worked, Burlamacchi attained high levels of artistic proficiency through her knowledge of drawing and colour technique, composition, treatment of space and proportions.This book highlights that Sister Eufrasia was aware of the progress illumination underwent in contact with the artists we now include in the High Renaissance. She quickly established a style which she then passed on to younger sisters to establish a convent workshop where mutual exchange was the norm. Here, for the first time, Eufrasia Burlamacchi is recognized and discussed as an influential and gifted artist in her own right.

Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744–1818) was one of just four female academicians admitted to the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in the late 18th century. She made her debut at the Paris Salon only a year after joining the academy with her outstanding still-lifes. Later, she secured Queen Marie Antoinette as a patron.This book, the first English-language publication in over 20 years dedicated to this artist, provides a fresh, feminist re-evaluation of her biography and artistic context. Exploring the wide range of objects, materials and textures which the artist depicted – from food and flowers to guns and game – this study offers a new, synaesthetic framework for experiencing the visceral qualities of Vallayer-Coster’s still-life paintings as they were understood in her own time.