Lavinia Fontana. Lavinia Fontana was a Bolognese Mannerist painter best known for her portraiture.
She was trained by her father Prospero Fontana and was active in Bologna and Rome. 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 eleven children. She was perhaps the first woman artist to paint female nudes, but this is a topic of controversy among art historians.
Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna in 1552 to Prospero Fontana and Antonia de' Bonardis. She was baptized on August 24, 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 at the time and served as her teacher. Caroline P. Murphy suspects that financial issues may have prompted Prospero to train Lavinia as a painter. 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. 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 pai
She was trained by her father Prospero Fontana and was active in Bologna and Rome. 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 eleven children. She was perhaps the first woman artist to paint female nudes, but this is a topic of controversy among art historians.
Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna in 1552 to Prospero Fontana and Antonia de' Bonardis. She was baptized on August 24, 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 at the time and served as her teacher. Caroline P. Murphy suspects that financial issues may have prompted Prospero to train Lavinia as a painter. 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. 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 pai
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