Maniera Devota/Mano Donnesca: Women, Virtue, and Visual Imagery during the Counter-
Reformation in the Papal States, 1575-1675
Introduction
The history of women’s participation in religious movements during the Early Modern
period in Europe has long been less commented upon in modern scholarship than that of their male
counterparts. This project will enlarge our understanding of the participation of women in the visual
program of the Counter-Reformation in the Papal State of Bologna. The study focuses on Bologna
since the city had an unprecedented large group of active women artists as well as being a crucial
site of Catholic reform. Knowledge of Bologna’s women is still incomplete; therefore this
dissertation is structured as a series of interlinked case studies, some of which rescue forgotten
artists, while others add a new dimension to better-known figures. This research thus takes a
necessarily broad approach, combining aspects of iconography, patronage, gender studies, and
reception studies; it also integrates media neglected in previous studies such as prints and
embroidery. The goal is to insert these artists into the larger philosophical and theoretical context
of the city’s intellectual history, first by investigating the links between religion, science, and
naturalism; and second, by unpacking critical terms from the historiography of style that came to
bear on their work. Lastly, the project explores the city’s concern with women’s virtue, as it is a
constant thread woven into visual imagery of all media from the sixteenth into the seventeenth
century. The synthesis of all this material will produce a wider view of the still understudied and
ill-documented relationship between women, religion and the visual arts in the complex period of
the Counter-Reformation.
Framing my argument is the dialectic between two critical terms: the maniera devota and
the mano donnesca. Maniera devota was originally used to describe the style of Flemish art,
especially that of Memling, as well as the work of some Italian artists of the fifteenth century, such
as that of Perugino, which was considered naturalistic, pious, and inspiring of devotion in the
viewer. Although this style was in decline by the mid-sixteenth century, I posit that, following the
Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Counter-Reformation brought a renewed interest in the maniera
devota, and that the women of Bologna were actively involved in its creation and reception. Mano
donnesca derives from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art criticism regarding the gendered
hand of the artist’s style.3 Mano donnesca has traditionally been used in a negative sense,
representing a style that was too labored, especially regarding minute surface detail, and thus
appropriate to female artists who, in the gendered hierarchy of genres, were usually relegated to
portraiture. However, this project problematizes such a reading of the term and seeks instead to
show that the city’s archbishop Gabriele Paleotti (1522-1597) encouraged women to take an active
role in Christian reform. Paleotti’s approach created a dialogue between the maniera devota and
the mano donnesca, in which gender both influenced the production of sacred visual culture and
was, in turn, affected by it.
Early modern Bologna was unique in having several prodigious female artists, some of
whom were lost to modern art criticism until very recently, despite the fame attained during their
lifetimes. Lavinia Fontana’s (1552-1614; Fig. 1) career marks the emergence of women artists
during a complex period that is often misguidedly subsumed under the title of Mannerism by
traditional scholarship. Her successor Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665; Fig. 2) produced over 200
paintings, drawings, engravings, and etchings, and organized the first school for women artists.
One of Sirani’s many students, the engraver Veronica Fontana (1651-1694), is still largely unknown
but was responsible for the illustrations in a diverse selection of books, from scientific tracts to
religious manuals. The eighteenth-century biographer Luigi Crespi records 28 women painters,
sculptors and graphic artists working in Bologna, but with few of their works extant or published,
an accurate compendium of what remains is needed in order to assess further connections between
the maestra and her students; this is included as appendix 1. Several factors contributed to the city’s
unique confluence of women with art, science, and religion, chief among them a flourishing
university community and an archbishop whose goal as both patron and theorist was to reform
visual imagery. University scholars such as the naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605)
contributed to the intellectual vibrancy of the city, and at the same time, the need for scientific
illustration fostered the well-known style of precise naturalism distinctive to Bologna in the
sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Aldrovandi kept one of the largest known collections of
naturalia open to artists such as Lavinia Fontana for study, and he had the entire corpus illustrated.
His collection was bequeathed to the city of Bologna and later combined with that of Ferdinando
Cospi (1606-1683; Fig. 3), the Medici art agent, who continued this tradition for his own collection
by creating a catalogue titled the Museo Cospiano, illustrated by Veronica Fontana. Figures such
as Aldrovandi have not received much attention from art historians, but they are critical, since the
Counter-Reformation’s desired devout manner of painting could not be accomplished without
naturalism.10 Paleotti wrote the definitive work on the reformation of images, the Discorso intorno
alle imagini sacre e profane, published in 1582. The Discorso was a mandate for the artist to create
clear visual imagery with a didactic purpose, promoting naturalism in reaction to mannerist
excesses. Paleotti also called for women’s participation in religious reform, thus endowing women
in Bologna with greater agency than elsewhere and producing opportunities for the first successful
group of women artists. This attitude was in marked contrast to cities such as Florence, the majority
of whose visual imagery in the late sixteenth century bears the stamp of a more male-dominated
ducal iconography. Paleotti’s farreaching reforms also included promoting charitable institutions
for the religious education and reform of young girls and wayward women. In turn, these
institutions required new religious images with specific iconography tailored to the site, its
functions, and its audience, such as the embroidered copies of altarpieces by Fontana and Sirani
created by the girls in these reform houses.
Although women were producers, patrons, and consumers of a wide range of imagery in
varied media, little work has been done on women and print media in Italy, including book
illustration. This project seeks to fill this gap by using resources that include printed bandi (a type
of poster put up by the authorities to inform the citizens of new or modified laws), festival
ephemera, scientific tracts, and popular prints in order to map women’s participation in sites where
secular politics, civic pride, artistic display, and communal devotion all combined in the
performance of the theater of religion.
State of Research
In the 1970s, historian Joan Kelly Gadol first posed the question of whether women had a
Renaissance, and Linda Nochlin asked, “Why have there been no great women artists?” Since that
time, scholars have labored to answer them with considerable, but as yet incomplete, success. The
National Museum of Women in the Arts presented a groundbreaking exhibit in 2007 of Renaissance
and Baroque women artists, but the catalogue merely lists them in alphabetical order, as opposed
to a more thematic approach. More specific to this project, feminist scholars have known since
Laura Ragg’s 1907 study that Bologna was unique in having so many women artists; however, they
have not fully answered the question, “Why Bologna?”
Modern scholars have expanded the canon for other artists as, for example, Mary Garrard
did in her seminal iconographical study of the Roman painter Artemisia Gentileschi, and writers
such as Griselda Pollock have added new dimensions to feminist scholarship by asking different
questions. However, the current literature on the Bolognese remains fragmented and
methodologically limited. Scholarship on Lavinia Fontana has focused mainly on secular paintings
and patronage; a small exhibit in 1998 opened the subject of religious discourse in this artist’s
work, but more remains to be done. Sirani has been the subject of only one monograph and a few
articles, and there is hardly anything on her students.
This project builds on the existing scholarship by integrating iconography with social and
intellectual history, as opposed to psychoanalysis, for example, which although useful in
Gentileschi’s case, would be much less productive for my inquiry. Women’s production from this
period needs to be considered in relation to the religious and stylistic discourses of the day, just as
has been done for male artists, using a combination of iconographical, patronage, and reception
studies. This analysis is still lacking for much of Lavinia Fontana’s and Sirani’s oeuvre, and
Veronica Fontana’s prints remain uncatalogued. In addition, the work of the prolific engraver
Giuseppe Maria Mitelli has yet to receive much scholarly attention outside of Italy.
Mitelli was a colleague and collaborator of both Sirani and Fontana; his work in popular prints
invoked similar themes of women’s virtue in concert with the maniera devota of the city.
Outline of Discussion
This study is divided into separate case studies in five chapters that traverse different centuries
and media, yet are all connected by the thread of women, virtue, and visual imagery. Chapter one,
“Bologna as Exemplary Counter-Reformation City: The Intellectual History of the
City and Its Scholars,” sets the stage by describing the social and historical background of Bologna
during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It outlines the contribution of the
university to the Paleotti’s formation. The archbishop’s intellectual training was influenced by his
close contact with individuals such as Aldrovandi, whom he consulted about his Discorso, and the
impact of the scientific method on visual imagery to help form a devout style.
The second chapter, “Tridentine Visual Reform in Paleotti’s Discorso: The Modes of the
Artefice Cristiano in both Theory and Practice,” introduces the reader to the key issues that recur
throughout the study. This chapter gives a detailed iconographical analysis of a selection of
Fontana’s religious paintings in light of a close reading of the Discorso itself. Certain elements
emerge as dominant themes in her approach to sacred painting, which is aimed at creating a devout
manner: the icon, the sacred narrative, and the religious historiated portrait. These modes which
often intersect with science, are then correlated with themes found in Paleotti’s writings, such as
the “artefice cristiano” and a certain Christian humanism, further made manifest by his interest in
Early Christian archaeology. This chapter also explores the links between women and icons.
Chapter three, “Stitching for Virtue: Women’s Work in Embroidery for the Conservatori or
Christian Houses of Reform in Bologna,” serves as a bridge between the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and the artists Lavinia Fontana and Elisabetta Sirani, as well as connecting the different
media of painting and embroidery. The chapter examines commissions for institutions such as the
Conservatorio delle Putte di Santa Marta, a Christian home for wayward girls, in view of the
important Counter-Reformation topos of women’s lost honor regained. In addition, it sheds light
on an unexplored genre, the needlework pictures made by the girls of the reform institutions in
imitation of these paintings, which were understood as the work of devoted hands. This chapter
also explores the reception and use of these objects by their intended audience.
The fourth chapter, “Felsina Pittrice: Elisabetta Sirani, Her Students and Circle, and the
Maniera Devota,” focuses fully on the seventeenth century by exploring the participation of a later
generation of women artists in the church’s visual reform campaign. It analyzes the extant work by
Sirani’s colleagues and students in order to assess both Fontana and Sirani’s role as an inspiration
for later female artists, providing evidence for a continuation of the sixteenth-century modes of the
maniera devota into the seventeenth century. This chapter provides a basis for further research into
possible remains of other missing works by these women.
The final chapter, “Veronica Fontana and Giuseppe Maria Mitelli: Prints, Piety and Science
in the Work of Sirani’s Students and Colleagues,” carries the discussion to the topic of popular
prints and book illustration. This chapter provides the first complete list of Veronica Fontana’s
work. It analyzes her illustrations for religious books such as Epistole et Evangeli as well as for
Cospi’s printed catalog of his Wunderkammer (collection of curiosities), the Museo
Cospiano, in order to clarify attribution and to demonstrate the ongoing links in Bologna between
religion, science, and naturalism. It also examines the work of her important colleague, the male
artist Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634-1718), whose imagery engages the theme of women’s virtue
as seen through the lens of both church reform and popular prints. Mitelli’s didactic prints displayed
the continued emphasis on women’s lost honor and redemption into the eighteenth century.
Definition of Terms: maniera devota and mano donnesca
Before proceeding to further chapters, a clarification of key terms is necessary. The two
terms in the title of this work are intimately connected in the sixteenth-century discourses on style,
but even more specifically intertwined with gender and visual imagery. Maniera devota is a term
that came out of the artistic discourses of the 16th century when describing art of the 15th century,
more specifically early Netherlandish art. The history of this term is quite complex but we have
several recorded instances of its use. Our most important record remains the 16thcentury
conversation between Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo as reported by Francisco de Hollanda
years after he supposedly heard it. The discussion revolves around a description of Flemish
painting, which Colonna describes as “cosa devota” or devout thing, and states: “I much wish to
know … what Flemish painting may be, … for it seems to me more devout than that of the Italian
manner.” Michelangelo’s famous response agrees with Colonna: “Flemish painting … will …
please the devout better than any painting of Italy… It will appeal to women, … and also to monks
and nuns.” In other words, it is an art that may cause the viewer to weep, and it appeals to a type
of facile emotional sentimentality, as opposed to an art that is pious but also appeals to the intellect.
Certainly with this comment Michelangelo intended to elevate his own work.
Nonetheless, in the fifteenth century it was well known that Flemish paintings carried great
prestige and were found in some of the most important collections: for example, at the court of
Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino and in the collection of the Medici, which included Flemish
painting as well as Flemish tapestry. Alfonso IV of Naples owned both an Annunciation by van
Eyck and a Passion by Rogier van der Weyden, and in the sixteenth century, Marc Antonio Michiel
described seeing paintings by the Dutch painter Bosch in the collection of Cardinal Domenico
Grimani in Venice. Yet this prestige was also linked directly to the piety of the image.
As early as 1449, Cyriac of Ancona recognized what the Counter-Reformation would later
require in religious imagery by the sixteenth century: Cyriac described one of the Flemish paintings
he saw in the collection belonging to the Este court in Ferrara as “a most devout image”
(pientissima agalma). Speaking of Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross, he described
the two elements that are linked within the maniera devota: naturalism and piety. Cyriac said that
Rogier’s figures “seemed to cry with great grief, and breathe as though they were alive,” and he
described the landscape as “not of human artifice, but of nature herself.” According to Nuttall, the
maniera devota was also a reaction to the humanism of fifteenthcentury Florence, when the fiery
preacher Savonarola delivered sermons calling for simple pious images (“simple and devout
without any vanity.”) By the mid-sixteenth century, when Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano wrote
about Michelangelo’s infractions in the Last Judgment, he once again called for images that are
true and modestly painted; these are the precursors to Paleotti’s requests in his Discorso of 1582.
The maniera devota was thus intrinsically related to the Flemish manner. The Flemish
manner can be described as a style that privileges realism by employing naturalistic details
achieved through the virtuoso use of oil technique. In addition, the pious expression of the Flemish
manner is what ties this style to the maniera devota; initially this was connected to Rogier van der
Weyden’s images, which contained tears depicted as if they were real, according to the primary
sources. However, an important distinction is that other Flemish artists such as Memling
propagated a more restrained version of the maniera devota, later imitated by artists such as
Perugino and Raphael. I posit that it is this later Flemish manner that most appealed to Paleotti due
to its combination of piety and decorum.
In Bologna, the attention to minute detail, luminous color and pious mood that Flemish
painting was known for would have appealed greatly to someone like Paleotti, seeking truth and
verisimilitude in the visual arts. The city had stylistic links to Flemish painting through local artists
such as Francesco Francia and Denys Calvaert, as well as via the influence of Perugino’s devout
style on the work of Raphael, creator of an important altarpiece in Bologna. Already in the fifteenth
century records tell us that Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi, who was court painter in Urbino, was
familiar with Flemish painters from that court and thought highly of their work. Santi wrote La
vita e le gesta di Federico di Montefeltro, Duca d’ Urbino, a poem in verse written at court, which
exalts the talented painters of the day, among whom he includes the Early Netherlandish painters
Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden: “A Brugia fu, fra gli altri piu lodati, el gran Jannes e
l’discepul Rugiero, cum tanti di excellentia chiar dotati ne la cui arte et alto magistero di colorir,
son stati si excellenti che han superati molte volte el vero.” Raphael had an important commission
in Bologna, the Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia (Fig. 4), painted for the chapel of Elena Duglioli dell’Olio
in 1515, in the Church of San Giovanni in Monte, which was seen as a model of devout and pious
painting. This model was then followed by Bolognese painters such as Francesco Francia (Fig. 5),
who created Madonnas with the same serene and sweet expression as Raphael’s Cecilia, with a
perfectly detailed, Flemish-style landscape in the background. Perugino, who was reputed to have
been Raphael’s teacher, was also heavily influenced by Flemish painting, as can be seen in his
Crucifixion (Galitzin Triptych, Fig. 6), due to its devout mood and meticulous manner; Perugino’s
Madonnas were equally as pious and sweet as Francia’s, but Michelangelo called him “goffo” in
art or “awkward,” due to the little variation in facial expression and gestures, and Vasari reports
the unlikely legend that Francia stopped painting after he saw the beauty of Raphael’s St. Cecilia,
since he despaired of ever competing with it.30 We know, moreover, that there were successful
Flemish artists such as Denys Calvaert painting in Bologna in Fontana’s day, and that his
landscapes were highly regarded, further indicating that Flemish work was valued.31 Fontana was
familiar with
Calvaert’s work in addition to the work of her father Prospero, who had worked with Calvaert.
Prospero Fontana’s work was a combination of naturalistic details with a more intimate
30 Dempsey, 388-89; For Vasari’s claim regarding Francia’s death see Vasari, III, 545-7. For Michelangelo’s
comment regarding Perugino as “goffo”(awkward or clumsy), see Vasari, III, 585. For more on Perugino and his
devout style see Wood, 7, 16; Lane, Memling, 230; David Alan Brown, Raphael and America, (exhibition catalog,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, January 9th – May 8th, 1983), 111; see also Gretchen Hirschauer,
“Meditations on a Theme: Plants in Perugino’s ‘Crucifixion’,” in The Flowering of Florence: Botanical Art for the
Medici, exh. cat., edited by Lucia T. Thomas and Gretchen A. Hirschauer (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art,
2002), 108-17. Hirschauer discusses the flower symbolism in the crucifixion as related to the type of religious
symbolism found in Flemish painting; see Vasari, III, 574, where he describes Perguino’s style as a ”minuta
maniera”; for more on the Galitzin Triptych; see also Sylvia Ferino, “A Master-painter and his Pupils: Pietro
Perugino and his Umbrian Workshop,” Oxford Art Journal 3, (1979): 9-14. Ferino discusses Perugino’s oil technique
as related to Flemish painters on p. 11. For more on the controversy of Raphael’s training, see Lane, Memling, 230,
236; Tom Henry and Carol Plazzotta, “Raphael: From Urbino to Rome,” in Raphael from Urbino to Rome. National
Gallery, London, from 20 October 2004 to 16 January 2005, edited by Hugo Chapman, Tom Henry, and Carol
Plazzotta with contributions from Arnold Nesselroth and Nicholas Penny (London, 2004), 14-65. See especially 16-
18, 26, where the authors mention that Santi was influential in Raphael’s training, but as more of a role model for a
courtier; Luisa Becherucci, “Raphael and Painting,” in The Complete Works of Raphael (New York: Harrison House,
1969), 9-196. Becherucci is of the opinion that he studied with Perugino, but in Florence; see also Vasari, III, 590,
who describes Perugino as Raphael’s “maestro”. Vasari actually writes in his preface to the third section of the lives
that both Francia and Perugino had a “new beauty” that had been missing in earlier artists: “una dolcezza ne’colori
uniti, che la comincio ad usare il Francia Bolognese e Pietro Perugino, questa bellezza nuova e piu viva” (“a
sweetness of color unity, that began to be used by Francia from Bologna and Pietro Perugino, this new beauty and
more alive”), Vasari, IV, 11. See also Previtali, 16-21. Vasari describes the St. Cecilia by Raphael as “una Sta.
Cecilia e si vede nella sua testa (viso) quella astrazione che si vede nel vivo di color che sono in estasi” (“a St.
Cecilia and one could see on her face the abstraction (expression) of those who are in ecstasy”), Vasari, IV, 349-350.
31 Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, I, 196.
knowledge of, or interest in, the mannerist forms of his colleague Vasari, with whom he worked on
several projects such as the casino for Pope Pius.
In addition to being so proficient at representing the visible world, Flemish painting had a
further value for the church: the ability to represent intangible things as truthful, such as visions
from virtual pilgrimage and meditation. Since the medieval period, the apologia for painted images
had been that they were meant to assist in reaching a more heavenly vision. Yet for the faithful
viewer, even in these images they saw the holy person actually appear in their midst, as a result of
their pious prayers. Thus the holy figures were represented almost in flesh and blood via panel and
paint, with a remarkable attention to detail, to increase the illusion that they were actually present.
For example, in Memling’s Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove and Jan van Eyck’s Madonna of
Chancellor Rolin (Figs. 7a and 7b), the two faithful patrons, van Nieuwenhove and Chancellor
Rolin, take part in a private meeting with the divine, a live encounter with the Madonna, as a reward
for their fervent prayers and belief.
However, scholars write that by the beginning of the sixteenth century there was a “reversal
of tastes”35 regarding the importance of Flemish painting in Italy, and that the maniera fiammingha
is no longer emulated. According to Nuttall, Michelangelo’s work signaled a new approach to
Netherlandish models, where “beauty overcame the details of Flemish painting.” It was not until
the third quarter of the sixteenth century that the simple and devout qualities of the maniera devota
as expressed by Perugino and Memling were revived by Paleotti in Bologna, where the prestige of
the devout style remained the ideal. These qualities were an echo of the words of Savonarola, and
a contrast to the excess beauty of Michelangelo’s figures, which would eventually contribute to the
style of Mannerism. Therefore, by the late-sixteenth century, the maniera devota had traveled from
the Netherlands to the Papal State of Bologna, from the brush of Memling, Perugino, and Francia
to the mani donnesche of Lavinia Fontana and her successors.
Lavinia Fontana’s work fits into this schema because she worked for a patron who required
the utmost in biblical truth, decorum, and piety from his artists’ paintings, i.e., a true maniera
devota. Charles Dempsey is one of the few scholars to discuss this concept of maniera devota as
related to Italian painting in Bologna. More specifically, however, he relates it to Francesco
Francia, in a derogatory sense, and does not mention later artists such as Prospero or women artists
at all, even though we know there were several at work in Bologna at the time of the Carracci and
beyond. Federico Barocci is another candidate for the maniera devota and it is no mere coincidence
that Fontana was chosen to replace Barocci for the commission for the altarpiece in Paleotti’s own
chapel. Dempsey also does not mention the crucial link between the maniera devota and science,
i.e. the verisimilitude and naturalism made possible by the city’s strong ties with scientific research,
which will be discussed in chapter 1.
Like maniera devota, the term mano donnesca came out of the long history of style from
sixteenth-century art treatises and other writings. Thanks to the seminal article by Philip Sohm on
style and the pioneering work by Frederika Jacobs on women artists and art criticism, we know
that style was gendered in the sixteenth century. Artists’ activity was compared with the power of
creation and procreation, resulting in loaded terms. Vasari describes Sofonisba Anguissola’s talent
thus: “Ma se le donne si bene sanno fare gli uomini vivi, che maraviglia che quelle che vogliono
sappiano anco fargli si bene dipinti?” Although at times also ascribed to males, since it was
believed that males gave the active seed for procreation to the more passive female vessel, the
terms for creation still recalled the female and/or divine in terms of aesthetic criticism of the day.
One of the earliest direct instances of the use of the term mano donnesca is in the seventeenth-
century Florentine art critic Filippo Baldinucci’s comments regarding Lavinia Fontana’s painting
of St Hyacinth (to be discussed further in chapter 1):
un suo quadro in S. Sabina ... in esso avea rappresentato Maria Vergine con Gesu e S.
Iacinto... avea guadagnato a Lavinia gran credito, e parte per la Meraviglia che portavan con seco
le sue pitture... per uscire da mano donnesca, e parte per la stima che n’era fatta per lo gran parlare
della gente ....;
in addition, Vasari uses gendered terms with negative overtones when describing the life of the
Bolognese sculptor Properzia de’ Rossi: “mani si delicate,” hands so delicate, in other words, too
delicate to be doing such manly work as carving. Artists, both male and female, were described as
having a masculine/virile style or brush or, at times, a feminine style. Both Michelangelo and
Malvasia applied certain terms denoting a feminine style to Flemish painting: Michelangelo called
it “appropriate for women and old men” since its devoto aspect moved one to tears, and Malvasia
used the terms troppo finito, leccato, i.e. licked or slick, even affiamingato (“Flemishized”). These
latter terms were due to the fact that Flemish painting contained a wealth of minutia and detail and
often had a highly finished surface, never a rough finish, such as that found in Titian’s late work,
or Michelangelo’s virile style. Originally this aspect of the debate also came from the
Venetian/Florentine debate of colore versus disegno, in which disegno (drawing) is
masculine/Florentine, the solid foundation of all art and the domain of virile artists like
Michelangelo, and colore is feminine/Venetian, the style of Titian and his school, in which color
dominates the work.
For our purposes, the term mano donnesca denotes both the style and the hand of the artist,
the conflation of the term for maniera with mano, the gendered hand of the female artist. Some
male artists also participated in this maniera devota; Guido Reni, who was, ironically, the
sinner/saint gambling painter of the most pious Madonnas of the seventeenth century, was said to
have a woman’s style: “da donna, fiamingha, slavata, senza forza” (womanly, Flemish, washed-
out, without force). This style was appropriate to his sweet Madonnas, but too feminizing for his
male saints, who could then be criticized as too soft or unmanly. Yet it appears that the women
artists of Bologna were particularly active in this style, beginning with Lavinia and continuing on
to Elisabetta Sirani and her students as well. These artists were involved in a pious naturalism that
was formed from constant contact with the scientific community, for example, Veronica Fontana
and her illustrations of Cospi’s collection. The term mano donnesca becomes especially relevant
regarding embroidery, as we know that delicate hands were required for this delicate work – a
connection explored further in chapter 3. This research combines these two key words as they
became deeply intertwined in Counter-Reformation Bologna with the production of visual imagery
and church propaganda. It seems that the mano donnesca was especially proficient at, and was
especially selected to be put to use in, creating the maniera devota required by the Council of Trent,
thus creating unique opportunities for women artists in the Papal States.
Chapter 1
Bologna as Exemplary Counter-Reformation City: The Intellectual History of the City and Its
Scholars
From the sixteenth into the seventeenth centuries, Bologna was famous as a center of
Counter-Reformation zeal. This reputation was due to many factors, not least of which was the
reformatory zeal of its archbishop Gabriele Paleotti, appointed as such in 1582 when Bologna
became an archbishopric and author of a revolutionary post-Tridentine manual for artists, the
Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane (1582). At this time, Bologna became second only
to Rome as the most important city in the Papal States. Reasons for this increased status include
the prominence of its university and the community of scholars that surrounded it, such as the
naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi and the historian Carlo Sigonio (Fig. 8).49 In addition to being well
known for its faculties of law and theology, the university became one of the first to have a faculty
in history and was one of the most active in the sciences at the time. Furthermore, and most
interesting for the present research, the university apparently awarded degrees to female students
as early as the thirteenth century. These reasons all contributed to the great flowering of female
artists, as mentioned in the introduction, during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their
work will be the subject of later chapters. First, in order to understand the unique role that
Bolognese intellectual life played in the exceptional opportunities available for women there, we
must take a closer look at the university scholars and men of science who were an important part
of the archbishop’s circle. The final part of this chapter gives a brief introduction to Lavinia Fontana
and the possible influence of the city’s intellectual milieu on her style.
One scholar in particular, Ulisse Aldrovandi, best represented the university’s tireless quest
for scientific knowledge. He is shown here (Fig. 9) in an engraved portrait by Agostino Carracci
for the frontispiece of his Ornithologiae of 1599. Aldrovandi was a naturalist who maintained an
immense collection of naturalia for his own study and that of other scholars (Figs. 10-13). His
collection is rumored to have contained over 7,000 specimens of flowers and plants pasted into
books, as well as paintings and woodcuts. What is most significant about his collection, however,
and is often not remarked upon, is his insistence on having each and every sample illustrated as
accurately as possible. Aldrovandi believed that only with a combination of both text and image
could one arrive at a complete description of an object. This philosophy stems from his scientific
background rooted in empirical observation, as well as the Bolognese interest in emblems. The
combination of text and image was a popular pastime for the aristocracy, and represented a local
paradigm for the representation of knowledge in pictures. These patrons created compilations of
their emblems as a mark of their taste and education in Bologna: “The use of emblems and insignia
of noble origins was so diffuse in the social and cultural realm, that it must have held a particular
importance due to its all-pervasive presence.” One of the most popular books on emblems, the
Symbolicarum quaestionum, was published by a
Bolognese writer, Achille Bocchi, in 1555. In addition, it was illustrated with engravings by Giulio
Bonasone based on Prospero Fontana’s drawings. As proof of his interest, Aldrovandi himself had
an image on the wall in his studio of a particular emblem that referred to the myth of Narcissus.
The emblem consisted of a man looking at his reflection in the mirror, beneath which rested a harpy
and a chimera.53 The interpretation is meant to be a departure from the traditional concept of
“knowing oneself” through one’s own reflection, as Narcissus would. However, the harpy and
chimera represent the obstacles and pitfalls of Narcissus’s path. Aldrovandi preferred instead to be
known through his collection, the true representation of his wisdom, to which he attached his own
identity and prestige.54 In fact, his collection was also categorized with 37 emblems, all illustrated
on the walls of the three rooms of his studio.55
Thus when Paleotti decided to reform the city’s religious imagery by writing his Discorso,
he openly sought advice from both painters and scientists in addition to clerics. This might seem
controversial at first, since the church had often had a difficult time accepting the advance of a
science that would have questioned its dogmatic truths, truths that were meant to be taken solely
on faith, not empirical experiment. And yet, Paleotti was aware that the prestige of science was not
lost on the church; science was merely another branch of knowledge that the church could claim
as its own, or at least this is how the archbishop thought. We can deduce this attitude from Paleotti’s
overall support of scientists such as Aldrovandi, as well as controversial
also gives evidence of this in the fifth book of his Discorso, Chapter 16, 27, with a section on decorating the home and
the importance of emblems. See also Elisabeth See Watson, Achille Bocchi and the Emblem Book as Symbolic Form
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
53 Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994), 302; see also Lina Bolzoni, “Parole e immagini per il ritrato di un nuovo
Ulisse: l’‘invenzione’ dell’ Aldrovandi per la sua villa di campagna,” in Elisabeth Cropper, ed. Documentary
Culture: Florence and Rome from Grand Duke Ferdinando I to Pope Alexander VII, Villa Spelman Colloquia 3
(Bologna: La Nuova Alfa, 1992), 317-348.
54 Findlen, 311. Findlen also connects the naturalist’s search for categorization with the Bolognese love of emblems.
55 Ibid., 302.
scholars such as Sigonio, whom he had asked to write a history of the church that was eventually
rejected by the papacy.
Aldrovandi was somewhat of an enigma, and he has been described as “one of the last
Renaissance philosophers and yet also one of the first modern scientists.” The scientist had
prestigious backers in the Medici dukes; however, although Aldrovandi’s relations with Francesco
I de’ Medici were very good, apparently after Francesco died, Ferdinand I was less amenable to
Aldrovandi’s work. Aldrovandi left behind over 300 manuscripts and a “data bank” of illustrations
of nature. When he returned to Florence from Rome in 1577, the scientist met the Veronese painter
Jacopo Ligozzi (Fig. 15). Aldrovandi created a visual theater of nature using Ligozzi as his favorite
artist, whose work he described as full of ”vaghezza e utilita.” One of the few works by Aldrovandi
published during his lifetime was the Ornithologiae in 1599 (Fig. 14). The frontispiece includes an
engraving of his portrait (Fig. 9), as well as the dedicatory page to Pope Clement VIII. In this center
illustration he presents his text to the pope and thus likens himself to Aristotle with Alexander the
Great or Pliny the Elder with Emperor Vespasian (both illustrated flanking Aldrovandi’s self-
portrait), inserting himself (literally) into this illustrious lineage of scholars and their patrons.
We are fortunate enough to have a record of Aldrovandi’s instructions to Paleotti regarding
the use of visual imagery to represent nature. One thing that is quite clear from this text is that
Aldrovandi advocated that a painter create imagery as close as possible to nature: “Bisogna che il
pittore molto bene conosca particolarmente tutte le cose sopra dette, o siano inanimate o
vegetabili, accio le possa dipingere con suoi appropriati colori, e non conoscendole, debba
consultare quelli che n’hanno cognizione.”61 In order to do this the painter would need to be
extremely knowledgeable about many areas, including science. This is perhaps an echo of
Leonardo’s advice to artists in both his treatise on painting and in his own practice: “You cannot
be a good painter unless you are a universal master capable of imitating with your art all the
qualities of the forms which nature produces,” “but it seems to me that those sciences are vain and
full of error which do not spring from experiment, the source of all certainty.” What Paleotti added
to this tradition in his Discorso is the idea of a naturalism combined with decorum, at the service
of the church as the bible of the illiterate. For Paleotti, the purpose of all painting is to illustrate the
sacred narratives in a truthful manner, to ammaestrare or teach, to delectare or delight, and to
movere or move, as indicated in the chapters of his Discorso: “Della dilettazione che apportano le
imagini cristiane”; “Che le imagini cristiane servono grandemente per ammaestrare il popolo al
ben vivere”; “Che le imagini cristiane servono molto a movere gli affeti delle persone.” Regarding
decorum, if nudity is not called for in a biblical story, then it should not be used. If, on the other
hand, a sacred history calls for nudity, for example, in a martyrdom scene, then the artist must
create a scene with verisimilitude and truth in order to tell the Christian story without anything
superfluous added. The artist must avoid mannerist artifice and seek instead the Christian content
to be not a poet, as in ut pictura poesis, but a Christian orator, ut pictura retorica divina, as Paleotti
writes: “dell’officio e fine del pittore Christiano a simultudine degli oratori.” Thus Paleotti
combined a scientific naturalism with his call for a maniera devota; his text will be analyzed in
further detail in chapter 2, while here the focus is on Aldrovandi.
Aldrovandi and Paleotti: “Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto”
Aldrovandi tried to classify all living plants and animals, as well as man-made curiosities.
He states however, that of all the natural things, man is the most difficult to represent:
L’ultima causa sara dell’uomo…; nel quale si affaticano tanto li pittori e
meritamente, ma pocchi riusciscono eccellentissimi pittori, essendo veramente
l’uomo un picciol mondo, nel quale il pittore ha d’avere infinite considerazioni,
essendo cosa veramente degna di grandissima maraviglia....
These thoughts on representation are reminiscent of Michelangelo’s words in the sonnet he
had written, “Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto”: “Not even the best of artists has any
conception that a single marble block does not contain within its excess, and that is only attained
by the hand that obeys the intellect.” This conceit was also commented on by Benedetto Varchi.
The poem is a Neoplatonic reflection on the process of artistic creation. It is the hand of the artist
that gives final life to the sculpture, but only when the hand obeys the intellect. Paleotti would
most probably have agreed with this process, but he would have specified a mano more devoted to
the spiritual realm (as opposed to the realm of art) than Michelangelo’s was, in the case of the
Sistine Chapel. One can deduce Michelangelo’s dedication to art and the classical form of the male
nude from the complaints regarding the naked saints in his Last Judgment; some, such as Biagio
da Cesena, stated that the naked saints would be more appropriate to a bathhouse than to the house
of God. As for Paleotti, he may have found his mano devota in the mano donnesca of Bologna.
In order to depict things, Aldrovandi states that the artist must know everything firsthand;
if he does not, he may on rare occasions refer to experts such as Aristotle. Aldrovandi thus
advocates a realism that is perfectly in step with Paleotti’s version of a naturalism that has the
veracity of history painting. An artist must, for example, know the right plants for the right seasons
in order to accurately depict a sacred narrative: “Bisogna che il pittore abbia considerazione della
stagone … per esempio nelle piante … per il freddo le piante perdono il suo decoro.” Aldrovandi
writes, in line with Vitruvius and later both Gilio da Fabriano and Paleotti, that grotesques are
refused by the said author (himself) since they exist only in the imagination: “Laonde le grotesche,
per esser chimerice e fondato solo nel nudo intelleto, non essendo conformi alla natura, sono
refutate dal sudetto autore.” Following this argument, it is clear that everything that is represented
in sacred narrative also “exists” since the artist is asked to paint it. This concurs with Paleotti’s
desire to depict sacred narrative as history painting, in addition to contemplative icon. One must
paint only “le cose che sono” (the things that are); within this category then, the artist is responsible
for researching that which he does not know. Aldrovandi states that the Bolognese artists Lorenzo
Sabbatini and Orazio Sammachini came to him to learn how to paint certain plants. The artist must
also know biology, for example, in order to depict the organs for a successful martyrdom scene:
“bisogna che abbia conversazione con gli anatomici eccellentissimi e vegga con diligenza tutta la
sezione del corpo umano... a fine che possa conoscere di qual figura sia e il cuore, il fegato, ... etc,
occorendo a dipingere qualche martirologio, ... lo sapia dipingere.”
Aldrovandi was in agreement with Michelangelo and Varchi that man was the most difficult
thing to represent. However, in contrast to Michelangelo, for whom man was also the most worthy,
Aldrovandi gives as much significance to the accurate depiction of a flower as Michelangelo did
to the human torso. Aldrovandi advocates a very close relationship between artist and scientist such
as he himself had with his illustrator, Jacopo Ligozzi. He also advocates that the artist give the
subject spirit, not simply create the description of a dead plant or animal, but more of a living
image; the artist must give the subject vivacity and life.74 Regarding this idea of the living image,
his ideas were in perfect concert with Paleotti’s directives for painting: muovere, delectare, docere:
to move, to enjoy, and to teach. Only this type of image that comes alive can actually move the
viewer to both enjoyment and, ultimately, to Christian edification, thus accomplishing Paleotti’s
goal of the Christian painter.
Apparently Aldrovandi was interested in the Bible not only from a pious, but also from a
scientific point of view. One of the other tracts on which he was working included a scientific
catalogue of all the significant aspects of nature encountered in the Bible, a theatrum naturae of
the biblical world, an unprecedented project. In addition, he was working on a treatise on wood,
more specifically the natural or scientific properties of the wood of the true cross itself. His
illustrations were done mostly by Ligozzi and engraved by a team of northern artists such as
Cornelius Schwindt (Figs. 15-16). Ligozzi was from Verona but lived in Florence while working
for the Medici. The artist was both interested and involved in the latest scientific discoveries, such
as the invention of the telescope, which was to have an impact on the painting of the day. One can
conclude that both Aldrovandi and Paleotti felt that the representation of scientific reality should
not lessen the devotional impact of an image, but rather, it should enhance it, as if one were to
combine the physicality of the relic with the spirituality of an icon to produce the final result.
Unfortunately, we have no record of any women artists working on Aldrovandi’s scientific
illustrations. However, we do have examples of a later Bolognese seventeenth-century female
artist, Veronica Fontana, creating the illustrations for the collection of Ferdinando Cospi, the
seventeenth-century noble who inherited Aldrovandi’s collection (which Aldrovandi left to the city
of Bologna), as we will see below. We also know that at least one female artist of Aldrovandi’s day,
Lavinia Fontana, was greatly influenced by his scientific work, and her paintings are the focus of
chapter 2. Fontana’s father, the mannerist artist Prospero Fontana, was also consulted by Paleotti
on his Discorso. However, the archive that contained the letters exchanged between the artists and
Paleotti was burned in a fire. Ilaria Bianchi was able to salvage some information from the
fragments left behind by the fire, which we will examine in
closer detail in the next chapter.
It is reasonable to conclude that Lavinia Fontana probably visited Aldrovandi’s collection,
although her name is not in the visitor’s book kept by the scientist. There are only two women
listed: Ippolita Paleotti and Christina of Sweden; however, there may have been some who visited
and did not leave their signatures behind. The reason for this lacuna may be that the visitor’s book
was more about the prestige of Aldrovandi’s collection, and as such it was important for him to
display the signatures of his most illustrious visitors, mostly males of course. Aldrovandi tells us
that his collection was for the enjoyment of all, but mostly for the use of artists, scientists, and
scholars. In addition, he states that his collection is specifically for the use of all Christian (my
italics) scholars; thus piety is always present, even in the natural history museum.
In truth, Aldrovandi’s collection was a combination of natural history and man-made
curiosities, an aesthetic combination that greatly increased in popularity in the seventeenth century.
This combination can especially be seen in Cospi’s collection, which was truly more of a
wunderkammer, or collection of curiosities, popular during the Early Modern period. Aldrovandi
saw himself as a type of Christopher Columbus who wanted to visit the New World and collect
rare, unusual specimens, but never managed the trip. Instead, he relied mostly on specimens that
were sent to him by others. He did, however, engage in his own field trips closer to home, even
visiting the volcanos of Etna and Vesuvius while preparing a treatise on volcanoes. Volcanoes too
were transformed from scientific phenomena to religious symbols, as we will see in chapter 5; the
theme of volcanoes was picked up by the seventeenth-century engraver Giuseppe Maria Mitelli
and recycled in popular prints of religious festivals.
Despite his claims, in some ways Aldrovandi does retain some superstitious elements in his
scientific tracts. His scientific method can be characterized as a combination of Aristotelian method
and scientific observation, but certainly not a complete discounting of ancient knowledge for new
scientific observation. An example of this type of combined knowledge is his work on the
Monstrorum; the original manuscripts for this work were published posthumously in 1642 by a
later scholar, Nicolai Tebaldini. The Monstrorum was a collection of all the aberrations in nature
such as two-headed individuals, hairy humans, and the like; some of these were plausible accidents
of nature, while others, purely mythological, were remnants of a moralistic and ancient scientific
tradition. One of the omens for the Buoncompagni pope, the Bolognese Gregory XIII (1585-1592),
that dealt with “monsters” was the arrival of a “real” dragon found in Bologna, in all probability a
type of reptile (Fig. 17). As the dragon was Gregory XIII’s emblem, its appearance near the city
was initially the cause of panic and doomsday predictions. Eventually, the dragon was taken as a
positive sign for the cardinal, but only after Aldrovandi was given the task of neutralizing and de-
mystifying the captured creature as part of nature’s wonders for the interests of powerful patrons
such as the Pope. Aldrovandi immediately set about writing a multi-volume treatise on dragons,
Dracologia, now that he felt he had an actual live specimen to work with; he described the creature
as a type of snake with feet. However, in other areas, Aldrovandi did make great strides in scientific
categorization, including many items from the
New World. Only four of his treatises were published while the scientist was alive. After his death,
other scholars made an attempt to publish some of his remaining work by appending their
own thoughts to a section of his and publishing the entire corpus under their own names.
Aldrovandi’s research was disseminated through his collection, which was a museum of
natural history, but above all, a pious one. This reminds us that religion and science were constantly
intertwined in Counter-Reformation Bologna. Despite being questioned by the Inquisition at one
point, he was backed by Paleotti and the charges were eventually dismissed. One of the reasons he
aroused the ire of the Inquisition was his support of the other important scholar in this group, Carlo
Sigonio. Sigonio was a historian originally from Padua who took up the University of Bologna’s
first chair in this discipline; he too was in contact with Paleotti. The archbishop engaged Sigonio
to write a history of the Catholic Church, one that was revolutionary in scope, starting from the
Old Testament and including a re-evaluation of the Jewish tradition. This project he dutifully
executed, although the ecclesiastical authorities were not very pleased with the final product.
Sigonio’s self-avowed method was to press for objectivity, a type of historical method with
scientific overtones, in concert with that of Aldrovandi. Unfortunately, Sigonio applied this
method to his history of the Church and described the donation of the papal lands to the Church by
Charlemagne as an event that was not securely documented. Due to this and other infractions his
work did not receive the praise he was expecting.
Returning to a consideration of the ties between these scholars, it would seem that Paleotti,
although known as a passionate religious reformer, was also very interested in scientific inquiry
and advancing the knowledge of the known physical world, all the while documenting the history
of man as a reflection of God’s greatness. Paleotti desired to appropriate this knowledge for the
church just as Pope Julius II had done with the frescoes in the Vatican Stanze. The pope had
commissioned Raphael to create frescoes representing all the branches of human knowledge, now
in the service of the glory of God and papacy. In this program he would have seen eye-to-eye with
Aldrovandi, who saw no conflict between his Catholic faith and his scientific pursuits. Paleotti
even upheld Sigonio’s cause until it was no longer tenable to do so. Sigonio was also unfortunately
accused of fabricating a newly found treatise by Cicero. This charge further discredited the
historian at the end of his career despite his early achievements such as the compilation of a learned
history of ancient Rome.
Paleotti was also involved in other academic endeavors with the scholars of his day. For
example, while he was still only bishop of Bologna, he promoted the typographical society and the
publishing of all manner of scientific and religious texts. This trend would prove significant for
later artists such as Veronica Fontana and Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, who, we will see, were both
prolific engravers of textual illustrations and popular prints. Sigonio was the scholar originally
entrusted with finishing a complete history of Bologna. Many of the scholars in Paleotti’s circle--
Aldrovandi, Sigonio, and Prospero--all supported the idea that the acquisition of knowledge across
all fields was an essential requirement for the artist, if he/she was to be successful as a painter. The
artist was expected to familiarize himself with all fields and “not to be merely a mechanic” (“non
solo operaio”) in order to succeed at his task, which was the transcription of reality into pictures
to be read by the faithful.
Perhaps Paleotti realized something that is still little commented upon, i.e., the fact that a tradition
of scientific inquiry could lead to a more objective and truthful mode of storytelling by artists engaged in
producing visual imagery for the church, as Trent required. Paleotti truly believed in images as the Bible
of the illiterate, a type of new and improved biblia pauperum, a long tradition, but one which weakened
through the mannerist period of the sixteenth century. The archbishop’s Discorso sought to rectify this
situation, and for its contents he drew upon not only his theological training, but also the expertise of his
university colleagues in science and history and the advice of his artist friends regarding painting.
Paleotti was eventually appointed archbishop of Bologna and began writing his Discorso
to be published in 1582. In the meantime, he kept a notebook of material for his later books on
imagery called the Addendum de picturis. As for spiritual guidance, both Bocchi and Aldrovandi
followed the Jesuit Francesco Palmio, who was also the consigliere, or spiritual advisor to Paleotti.
Paleotti must have appreciated the Jesuits, who were well known for their intellectual approach to
religion, one that often combined science with faith, a path close to his own heart. We will take a
closer look at the details of the Discorso, a unique document in its time, in the next chapter, after
a brief introduction to our first artist, Lavinia Fontana.
Lavinia Fontana from Bologna to Rome: A Brief Introduction
Lavinia Fontana is a rare example of a successful woman artist in the late sixteenth century,
a critical time for the fate of all religious imagery, but especially so in the Papal States.
Fontana’s artistic production and career allow us to analyze the intersection of women with art,
science, and religion in this crucial period, thanks to the unique influence on her work of university
scholars in Bologna such as Aldrovandi and the religious fervor of the reformer Paleotti. Lavinia
Fontana was born to an artist father, Prospero, who spent many years working in Rome with Vasari
and was also a close confidante of Paleotti. Although her father’s painting is closer to Vasari’s
manneristic style, it still contains elements of Bolognese naturalism that Lavinia would take further.
Lavinia Fontana’s period is closer to the time of the Carracci reform, in which she played an active
part in her own right. In 1599, her father even sent one of her drawings to the Medici sculptor
Giambologna in Florence for comment, in an attempt to promote his daughter’s talent. The original
letter from Prospero to Giambologna survives and it is clear from this letter that her work was
appreciated by the older artist:
quando penso alla sua tavola considero se ella si fosse a sorte trovata presente a quel
santissimo misterio; poi che l’ha si naturalmente et devotamente in si picciol quadro dipinto
et con tanta maesta, il che non ho possuto mancare ralegrarmene seco et insieme avisarli
che in Fiorenza non e restato pictore grande ne picciole che non sia stato a vederla et a tutti
ha portato gran stupore et Meraviglia.
This incident recalls how Sofonisba Anguissola’s father sent her drawings to Michelangelo
for comment, following the trope of the female artist seeking approval from the master and male
artist.96 In 1577 Lavinia was married to Gian Paolo Zappi of Imola. Explicit in her marriage contract
was a clause that stated that she would be the breadwinner and continue to paint after her marriage,
as opposed to withdrawing into a more domestic role as wife and mother. This is not to say that
she shirked her wifely duties; Lavinia gave birth to no fewer than 11 children, all the while actively
painting. She remained in Bologna for most of her life until her father passed away in 1597. Then
she made plans to go to the Eternal City and lived in Rome from 1604 until her death in 1614, in
what must have been an exciting time there for the Bolognese artist.
Fontana’s residence in Rome coincided with the period immediately after the time in which
Paleotti had been called to Rome; he was in Rome as archbishop of Albano and Sabina from 1589
until 1597, although he always kept close ties with his native city until the end of his life in 1597.
This was also the same time that other famous Bolognese artists were in Rome, such as Annibale
Carracci and later Reni, Albani, and Domenichino, promoting their new brand of classical
naturalism in opposition to Caravaggio’s more controversial hyperrealism. Perhaps before Paleotti
passed away, he was able to put in a good word for his favorite Christian artefice, Lavinia, since
she had already received a commission for the Vision of St. Hyacinth for the Church of Santa Sabina
in Rome (Fig. 18). The commission was obtained while she was still in Bologna, thus lending
credence to the possibility that her fame preceded her. The cleric Alfonso Ciaconio may have been
involved in this commission. Ciaconio, a prelate living in
Rome, had requested a portrait of Fontana for his collection of famous individuals. Both he and
Cardinal Berniero (the patron of the St. Hyacinth) were Dominicans. Ciaconio had also invited
Paleotti to Rome to see a recently discovered ancient Christian catacomb, and the two remained in
close contact due to a mutual interest in early Christian archaeology in Rome. These early Christian
ruins would have been important evidence for Paleotti’s insistence on the historicity of the saints,
necessary for his maniera devota. Fontana brought this style with her to Rome, and is responsible
for four panels of female saints (Saints Agnes, Cecilia, Catherine of Siena and Claire, Figs. 19-22).
In addition, she painted portrait roundels of the two patrons, the Rivaldi, in a chapel of this recently
finished Church of Santa Maria della Pace in Rome, which was designed by the Baroque architect
Carlo Maderno.
Fontana’s final important public commission in Rome was for the church of San Paolo
Fuori le Mura. The commission for the Stoning of St. Stephen required Fontana to paint numerous
figures in a large-scale painting. Unfortunately, the original painting was destroyed in 1823 and all
that remains is an engraving by Jacques Callot (Fig. 23). The Roman critic and artist Giovanni
Baglione, although praising Fontana’s portraits, complained that this large-scale commission was
a public failure for the artist; however, we should bear in mind that his opinion may be tainted by
the fact that he had wanted this commission for himself.104 Apparently, despite Baglione’s comment
regarding her failure, Fontana did many other works (especially portraits) while in Rome, most of
which have unfortunately vanished without a trace. For example, she is said to have done a portrait
of no less than the pope himself, for a visiting ambassador from Persia, as well as a portrait of this
ambassador, who, rumor has it, fell madly in love with her (according to Mancini). A painting of
Cleopatra (Fig. 24) attributed to Fontana also dates from this period. This painting has an almost
medievalizing style, flat and with the emphasis on the decorative surface. Perhaps Fontana was
attempting to incorporate an oriental style of portrait, in the tradition of Gentile Bellini’s portrait
of Mehmed II, if the commission was truly related to the Persian ambassador.
Fontana was also registered in the prestigious Academy of St. Luke, the artistic association
of Rome, however, still under her husband’s name. It was not until the time of Artemisia
Gentileschi that a female registered in her own name at the academy. Fontana was following in the
long tradition of Bolognese women associated with visual imagery and faith. The first of this line
was Caterina Vigri (Fig. 25), the fifteenth-century Clarissan nun who also illustrated her spiritual
texts with devotional images and self-portraits. Following Vigri was Properzia de’ Rossi, a female
sculptor who is actually mentioned by Vasari, although her life is depicted in unfavorable moral
terms. Vasari accuses Properzia of creating the Joseph Fleeing Potiphar’s Wife (Fig. 26) as a way
of expiating the pain of an unrequited love. Properzia was also famous for carving in miniature on
peach and cherry pits, such as the Grassi family stemma (crest, Fig. 27a) which is securely
attributed to Properzia (the Florence gem, with its one hundred heads, has now been attributed to
an anonymous sixteenth-century German carver (Fig. 27b). In another such carving, now lost, she
is said to have carved an entire Last Supper. In a certain sense, the difficulty of this miniature work
increased its sense of the devoto, where meraviglia (wonder) approaches the miraculous. Vasari’s
tone is a result of the fact that these earlier women artists were still seen as oddities or wonders in
the art criticism of the day, often in a negative sense. However, by the time of Elisabetta Sirani,
Fontana’s seventeenth-century successor, Bologna’s women artists were publicly praised and
valued. We can see this change in the splendor of Elisabetta Sirani’s funeral, complete with
elaborate catafalque, humanistic eulogies, and burial near the immortal Guido Reni.
Collaboration Between Women Artists: Lavinia Fontana and Diana Mantovana
Judging from Fontana’s interactions with the scholars of Bologna and the spread of her
success to the Papal city of Rome, the intellectual environment in Bologna in the sixteenth century
was a very fruitful one for women artists. This became even more true in the seventeenth century,
when the number of active women painters in Bologna increased to as many as between fourteen
and twenty-three. Yet, one of the fascinating and still understudied questions regarding women
artists of the period revolves around whether or not there was any contact or influence between
them. References are somewhat scarce, but certainly within the city of Bologna, the heritage of
women artists was well known from the time of Caterina Vigri to the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, only to be lost later in modern times. The continuity between Bolognese women artists
of the later seventeenth century will be the topic of chapter 4. However, outside of the city, there
may have been links between Lavinia Fontana and Artemisia Gentileschi, perhaps from Fontana’s
period in Rome. Gentileschi would have been 21 when Fontana died in Rome in 1614. It is
reasonable to assume that there may have been some contact between the two women artists. This
possible contact through travel would not have applied to Sirani, who never left the city of Bologna
during her short lifetime.
There also seems to have been a link between the work of Fontana and the engraver
Diana Mantovana. Fontana may have copied an image of Venus from the The Feast of the Gods in
the Palazzo del Te in Mantua. The original by Giulio Romano was known to her through the
engraving by Mantovana (Fig. 28a), and perhaps she used it as a model for her nude figure of the
goddess in Minerva in the Act of Dressing (Fig. 28b). The soft curves of Minerva’s body in
Fontana’s version, and the specific pose of the figure with her back turned to us, echo Mantovana’s
figure of the goddess. A collection of Mantovana’s engravings had just been reissued in 1613 after
her death and in the same year as Fontana’s painting of Minerva. In addition, Fontana’s Penitent
St. Jerome in a Landscape was inspired by an engraving by Mantovana based on a painting by
Daniele da Volterra (Figs. 29-30). Fontana’s version faithfully reproduces the engraving, with St.
Jerome shown kneeling in prayer and adoring a crucifix, the lion at his feet. However, the landscape
details are further developed by Fontana, as one would expect considering her botanical
knowledge. This is a rare instance of a female engraver influencing another female artist. Fontana’s
letter to the Spanish cleric living in Rome, Alfonso Ciaconio, acknowledges his comparison of her
to the female artist from Cremona,
Sofonisba Anguissola, of whom he already had a portrait; the letter also bears witness to Fontana’s
recognition of herself as part of a history of women artists. Ciaconio had requested a self-portrait
of Fontana to add to his portrait collection of famous people, thus acquiring a
double wonder, both a portrait of and a work by a woman artist.
Regarding other known collaboration between artists and across genders, Fontana is alleged
to have had a male student named Aurelio Bonelli, who may have been the same as the composer
(1569-1620?). I know of only two works traceable to Bonelli as of the time of this research: a
Madonna and Child with Saints Cosmas and Damian, and a Martyrdom of St. Cordola. Bonelli is
notated in the guild records as having painted an altarpiece for one of the Arte guilds, the above
Madonna and Child, now presumed lost; a version of this painting is attributed to Fontana by
Cantaro and Murphy (Fig. 31). Apparently, Bonelli also created The Martyrdom of Saint Cordola
for San Giovanni in Monte, found in an auction catalog, which is the only source of information
on this picture (Fig. 32). It remains challenging to analyze his stylistic debt to Fontana based on
this sole illustration. There is a certain sense of Bolognese naturalism in the figures and landscape,
although proportions remain awkward compared to those in works by the maestra. St. Cordola was
one of the martyred companions of St. Ursula. In a reversal of the typical trope of the female artist
with a male teacher, or even a female artist with a female teacher, we have possibly the first known
example of a female artist with a male pupil.
Science and the Mano Donnesca
Several of Fontana’s early paintings betray her intense interest in a naturalism that was
obviously fostered by her contact with Aldrovandi and the scientific culture of Bologna. This
quality derived ultimately from a combination of Flemish influence and native Bolognese interest
in genre-like verisimilitude, and it underlies all of her paintings. For example, Fontana drew a
portrait of a hirsute girl, Antonietta Gonzalez (Fig. 33), also called “the hairy girl.” The portrait of
Antonietta may have been commissioned by Aldrovandi, as we know that he was studying this
phenomenon. The Gonzalez family had sojourned in Bologna at Aldrovandi’s request. The image
is truthful and yet sympathetic, humanizing the young girl using feminine details such as the hair
tie, despite the detailed accuracy in the portrayal of her particular condition. One can see this
relative sympathy in a comparison of Fontana’s version with the one in Aldrovandi’s Monstrorum
catalog (Figs. 34-37), where the same girl is shown in a fulllength image, with the cold detachment
of a botanical illustration. She is placed among the catalogue’s monsters, both real and imagined,
such as exotic fish and three-headed humans. Some of these creatures must have been real, while
others were culled from descriptions in ancient sources and added to his scientific catalog.
Fontana’s painting of Antonietta Gonzalez (1594, Blois; Fig. 38) on the other hand, for which the
drawing may be a preparatory study, also displays an interest in scientific observation, but again
combined with a human warmth that is reminiscent of Bolognese naturalism.
Other examples of Fontana’s early work that were obviously deeply influenced by this
theory of naturalism are her two signed paintings of St. Francis (Figs. 39-40). The saint was famous
for preaching that the natural world of plants and animals is an important part of God’s kingdom,
as well as for his great Marian devotion. Both of Fontana’s paintings of St. Francis display a
detailed rendering of flora and fauna, a thick, dense forest in which St. Francis almost plays a
secondary role, lost in and overwhelmed by the immensity of God’s nature. These images go far
beyond the fifteenth-century Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini’s version (Frick Collection, New
York), the Ecstasy of St. Francis, which is normally considered an icon of
Franciscan values about nature and the divine. In the Venetian painting, the saint is shown in a
rocky landscape, communing with the divine. However, Fontana’s painting contains an element of
a nature-mysticism that is closer to Albrecht Altdorfer’s pantheistic images of nature as an
allencompassing expression of God’s wonder.123 These two examples are fairly uncommon in
Italian painting of the sixteenth century, while some examples of this type of landscape can be
found in northern painting of the period, most probably influenced by Flemish painters. Fontana
had access to other artists from the North, such as Dürer, through engravings that traveled widely
when the paintings could not.124 Fontana had also worked with Denys Calvaert, a Flemish artist
who lived and worked in Bologna. Calvaert apparently had a selection of Dürer’s engravings that
he may have used with his students (including Guido Reni for a brief time, as well as Prospero
Fontana, Lavinia’s father).125 We know that Paleotti approved of Calvaert’s depiction of nature,
since Malvasia reports this.126 Unfortunately we have no patron information for Fontana’s two
paintings of St. Francis, but they are signed and dated by the artist. Her skillful depiction of the
minutia of trees and dense forest reflects the scientific precision and categorization of Aldrovandi’s
collection of naturalia, with which Fontana would surely have been familiar. Both paintings
display a technique of close scientific observation of plant life, which the artist also employed in
order to convey the symbolic teachings of St. Francis. In these two paintings we can see how
Fontana’s style has perfectly adapted form to function, if we consider the writings
Companion to Giovanni Bellini, ed. Peter Humfrey (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993), 167-181;
Mauro Lucco, “Bellini and Flemish Painting,” in The Cambridge Companion to Giovanni Bellini, ed. Peter Humfrey
(New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993), 75-94. See also Frick Collection: an Illustrated Catalogue II (New
York: Princeton University Press, 1968), 203-209.
123 For further information on Altdorfer see Christoper S. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
124 Jane Campbell Hutchison, Albrecht Dürer: A Biography (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 188.
We have evidence from the Discorso itself that Paleotti appreciated Dürer’s work (see chapter 2, “The Artefice
Cristiano or Devout Painter”); Hutchison confirms this.
125 Hutchison, 188.
126 Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina pittrice: Vite de’ pittori bolognesi (1678), ed. G.P. Zanotti (Bologna: Tipografia
Guidi all’Ancora, 1841), I, 196.
of St. Francis such as his Canticle to the Sun. The viewer can observe St. Francis literally
communing with nature, a nature that serves as an expression of the divine. Fontana’s painting
style in these two examples can thus be considered a type of scientific maniera devota.
What was the end result of such a communion of science and art? We know that artists were
not immune to the progress of science, despite the Counter-Reformation climate. In addition to
Fontana, there were other artists involved in these developments, both in and outside of Bologna.
For example, the Florentine Cigoli even included Galilean sympathies in an Immacolata. However,
in contrast to the mannerist styles of the day, a scientific realism developed in Bologna that was
well suited to the demands of post-Tridentine art, when practiced by artists who could add the
necessary dose of decorum. These demands included creating images that could function as both
legible sacred narratives and living icons for prayer and devotion. The next chapter further analyzes
the links between naturalism and religion by relating several examples of Fontana’s religious
paintings to the content of Paleotti’s Discorso. The answer may lie within the iconic power of these
images, which, when combined with the veracity of a historic realism and tempered by decorum,
resulted in the devota style that was tirelessly pursued by Paleotti as the goal for his artists’ work.
Chapter 2
Tridentine Visual Reform in Paleotti’s Discorso: The Modes of the Artefice Cristiano in both
Theory and Practice
This chapter introduces Cardinal Paleotti’s work on visual reform, the Discorso intorno alle
immagini sacre e profane of 1582, in further detail. It presents biographical information from the
Cardinal’s life as relevant to the eventual formation of his theories on art as expressed in this
treatise, as well as highlighting the uniqueness of the book. It also closely examines the surviving
fragments of the index of his remaining three unfinished volumes of the Discorso, as a further
source of valuable information regarding his opinions on art. It then gives a detailed iconographical
analysis of a selection of Fontana’s religious paintings in light of a close reading of the Discorso.
Three elements emerge as dominant modes in Fontana’s approach to sacred painting aimed at
creating a devout manner: the iconic, the sacred narrative, and the religious historiated portrait. In
addition, the influence of science often intersects with these three modes. They in turn correlate to
certain key issues found in Paleotti’s writings regarding his search for the perfect maniera devota:
Christian humanism, further made manifest by his interest in Early Christian archaeology, the link
between portraiture and virtù, the need for an artefice cristiano or devout painter, and a discussion
of sacred versus profane elements in Christian narrative. The section ends by positing women as
the guardians of the icon, as seen in the example of Bologna’s miracle-working icon, the Madonna
of the Monte della Guardia, also known as the Madonna of Saint Luca.
The Theory: Paleotti’s Desires for Art and the Uniqueness of the Discorso
Cardinal Paleotti’s Discorso was written in 1582 in Bologna to address the topic of the creation of
visual imagery for the church that would conform to Tridentine dictates on decorum. Compared to
other treatises of the day on visual reform, Paleotti’s was as unique in many ways as was the cleric’s
formation. Four important aspects of its uniqueness are:
1. The Discorso addressed the artists directly and these exchanges reveal
Paleotti’s aesthetic sensibility.
2. It was the result of the advice he had taken from a variety of university
scholars, artists, and scientists (not merely clerics), regarding questions
where scientific and historical methods were useful for the maniera devota,
as discussed above.
3. It was meant to be illustrated and would have created a type of index of
devotional imagery, both the approved and prohibited versions.
4. Finally, part of Paleotti’s formation had included a heavily humanistic
education, which, despite being wary of it for his flock, he apparently still
valued, always seeking a type of Christian humanism.
In an attempt to map Fontana’s participation in this reform, this study analyzes a selection
of her many extant religious paintings through the lens of Paleotti’s Discorso, for which a new
conceptual framework is necessary. Many scholars have mentioned Paleotti’s work; however, until
recently, only Paolo Prodi had done a close reading of the text (his biography in 1959 and his work
on the Discorso and visual imagery in the 1980s), in contrast to other scholars who have often
dismissed the Counter-Reformatory writings as simply “repressive” to the visual arts, without fully
reading the text itself and noting the very high value that Paleotti ascribes to art. For example,
Paleotti gives a history of images from antiquity to the present day, and discusses man’s innate
quest to see an image of the divine. He means to prove the importance and necessity of images for
mankind, going so far as to salvage these images from their pagan roots and reinvent them in the
service of the church as the biblia pauperum.
Paleotti’s text is not the first Counter-Reformation treatise on visual imagery, but as
mentioned above, it is unique due to several important factors. The first version was written in
Italian as opposed to Latin so that it might be better understood by artists as well as clerics.
Aldrovandi had suggested that Paleotti write it in Latin, but he refused until he published a version
in 1594. Paleotti’s intense interest in creating a dialogue between artists and clerics is unique to his
treatise, compared for example to that of Molanus, the Flemish cleric, whose treatise (1570) was
not specifically addressed to artists. However, one of the most unusual aspects of Paleotti’s
Discorso is that he asked for advice from such a diverse range of scholars, artists, and scientists,
in addition to the clerics one would have expected him to ask. For example, Aldrovandi’s scientific
mode of inquiry and Sigonio’s historical method were the keys to Paleotti’s desired maniera
devota, as discussed in chapter one.
As evidence of this cooperation among scholars, artists, and clerics, in addition to the text
of the Discorso itself, we have letters that Paleotti wrote to his many colleagues that can be found
in the Isolani Archives but survive only in partially burned fragments, as noted by Prodi. They were
not examined until Bianchi’s recent work on Paleotti as art patron, in which she analyzes all of the
remaining letters and fragments of Paleotti’s other written works on reform and pastoral life.
Bianchi’s analysis seeks to recreate his activity as art patron in general, going so far as recreating
his lost chapel with its altarpiece by Fontana and a crypt that focused on the early Christian martyrs.
Her work is therefore directly related to the present inquiry, as she is the only scholar to have gone
through those letters recently. Instead, my research focuses on the effect of his reforms as visible
in the many religious paintings by Fontana in particular, and other women artists in general (see
chapter 4), through a close reading of the primary source, the Discorso. From this text, certain key
points relevant to the maniera devota will be identified and discussed here.
This analysis also takes into consideration the additional evidence present in the extant
index for the final three books of the first version, which were never completed. The index contains
vital clues to what was left unsaid, and reveals points such as Paleotti’s site-specific instructions
on visual imagery for all classes of people and for all manner of different sites, both religious and
secular. In book five of the index, Paleotti emphasizes Marian imagery, as well as the stories of the
saints and their martyrdoms, as manifested in his chapel and crypt. Furthermore, Paleotti’s interest
in early Christian archaeology leads him to analyze images such as the Veronica veil and other
icons, which are closely aligned with women, since women can be seen as the champions of icons
since the Byzantine days. His choice of Fontana as the hand to create his icon of the Assumption
in his own chapel indicates an openness to the feminine element in devotional practice. In addition,
this work documents his encouragement of an environment open to the participation of women in
the creation of sacred visual imagery. In order to uncover all these previously neglected elements,
this research will examine the sites of women’s piety and visual culture such as the conservatorio
(chapter 3), which was the intended destination of many of these religious paintings. We will also
look at the artistic legacies of these women artists in various types of media in the later chapters.
Christian Humanism and the Cardinal’s Formation
One of the themes that becomes evident when examining Paleotti’s youthful training is his
exposure to a classical humanist education. Paleotti’s reforms were marked by his intellectual
training; during his education he was involved in all manner of humanistic and artistic enterprises.
As a youth he was friends with the future Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, with whom he shared a
great interest in antiquity and the classics. Paleotti was also involved in the creation of Achille
Bocchi’s emblem book, Symbolicarum quaestionum (1574), together with Prospero Fontana, who
created the designs, and Giulio Bonasone, who was responsible for the engraving. He was also
involved in the Accademia degli Affumati (“smoked ones,” perhaps relating to volcanoes and the
idea of creative genius as an intellect that is smoking with activity) along with Prospero Fontana,
who created the sets for the Accademia’s commedia during Lent. Prospero created perspective
views for these events in the manner of the threedimensional drawings by the architect Sebastiano
Serlio. Prospero also created scientific images such as the volcano of Etna, which related back to
the Academy’s name, derived from the fumo or smoke of the volcano. This theme was later picked
up also by the engraver Giuseppe Maria Mitelli in his rendering of the mythological volcano god,
Tifone, created for one of the city’s many street festivals. Tifone was a type of chaos god who is
let loose to wreak havoc, and who gets captured and defeated by the end of the play. The subject
can be construed as a moral allegory for the constant battle between good and evil, and so in a
neoplatonic sense can be applied to Christian values.
The only documents that remain for the Accademia’s Lenten comedy are some burned
fragments of the original contract. Despite the pious post-Tridentine climate of the city, the
commedia contained pagan mythological themes reminiscent of earlier humanistic endeavors. The
themes of the play were as follows: the second intermezzo depicted the contest between
Neptune and Pallas, the third told the story of Adonis and Venus, the fourth was the story of
Orpheus playing his lyre while being followed by five animals, and the fifth was the moralistic tale
of human pride toward the gods gone wrong, Apollo and Marsyas. By the time he was archbishop
in 1582, in a display of changing values, Paleotti forbade the playing of comedies during the Lenten
period. It seems that in the end, he was more concerned about the possible dangers of pagan
mythology to his Christian flock than of science, which conversely, he found useful to his cause.
Portraiture: Ritratti and Virtù
An important subject for Paleotti’s visual reform was portraiture. Bologna, being a papal
state, had a large aristocratic noble class that wanted and valued portraits. We have ample evidence
of this desire through the many portraits created by Lavinia Fontana. However, Paleotti felt that
portraits should only be allowed if they inspire virtue, as in the case of the portrait of an important
person. We can assume that the latter was the case with two portraits of the cardinal himself (Figs.
41-42). The first is a copy of a portrait originally by Fontana, and the second is a portrait of Paleotti
with the city’s patron saint, San Petronio, which Bianchi attributes to Fontana. The first example
is similar to Fontana’s portrait of Sigonio (Fig. 8), which shows the humanist scholar seated at his
desk with some documents and an inkwell to indicate his important scholarly work. There is a slice
of the back room visible behind Sigonio, where we also see his students; the portrait displays the
symbols of education and status. The portrait of Paleotti is similarly arranged, showing the cleric
in his studio surrounded simply by divine light and the image of a cross. The artist has also added
the necessary attributes to turn scholarly activity into spiritual meditation, creating a Christian
humanist portrait. The cross implies Paleotti’s directives to the faithful gleaned from his index, in
which he writes that all should have their own altars over which should be hung an image of the
cross for prayer. The second portrait of Paleotti was of an even more devotional nature, with the
Cardinal shown kneeling in front of his patron saint San Petronio; this painting was created for his
monastery, Il Sacro Eremo at Camaldoli. There are no surviving documents for the Camaldoli
portrait, but we know that in order to depict the image of a saint, Paleotti had always attempted to
investigate the “reality” of a saint’s portrait. His fourth book was to contain specific instructions
on how to portray the various saints, based on information available such as hagiography. Paleotti
felt that even the image of Christ is only there as a pale reminder of the original, but that it is still
necessary to focus the meditation of the faithful. This belief will be discussed further in the section
on Paleotti and early Christian
archaeology below.
Fontana is responsible for many portraits of Bolognese scholars and clerics in the local
naturalistic style, including the scientist Francesco Panigarola, 1585 (Palazzo Pitti, Florence), the
physician Girolamo Mercuriale, 1590 (Pinacoteca Nazionale Bologna), and the mathematician
Ignazio Danti and senator Fulvio Orsini, 1579 (Bordeaux). Each of these scholars contributed to
the rich and fertile environment of Bologna as an intellectual center, so we can assume that their
portraits represent Paleotti’s exception to the rule. Normally, Paleotti writes, portraits of living
individuals could be seen as a sign of vanity; however, in this case, these individuals are there as
exempla of virtue, to be used as role models to incite others to a virtuous life and to meaningful
scholarly pursuits.
Paleotti often asked his Milanese counterpart, the reforming Archbishop Carlo Borromeo,
for advice regarding his Discorso. They agreed on most points of doctrine, especially the reform
of Christian imagery. Paleotti sent Borromeo a copy of his draft in 1581, as well as requesting a
copy of Molanus’s work on the subject; however, according to Prodi, neither Borromeo nor the
Flemish reformer Molanus had the aesthetic sensibility that Paleotti possessed. Paleotti did
appreciate beauty in addition to decorum, but only in its proper place. All the details of Tridentine
rules were well represented in Paleotti’s final version; for example, artists were prohibited from
creating or inserting images of popular folklore in accurate biblical stories. It is in his other work,
the Addenda de picturis, Avvertimenti ai curati, that Paleotti gives us details regarding church
decor: “Upon entering the church the first image should be a large cross over the altar with angels
on the sides as well as a Madonna and Child and God the father.” We know that the altar in Paleotti’s
chapel did have such a statuary group. It thus affirmed some of the central tenets of the Tridentine
Council, which upheld the presence of Christ in the Eucharist with the Crucifixion as symbolic
host, as well as reinforcing Marian imagery in the face of Protestant doubt. The Crucifixion, the
site of Christ’s sacrifice, is embodied in the host in the
Catholic mass. The host itself is a metaphor for the body of Christ, a tangible reminder of Christ’s
sacrifice to redeem mankind.
The Artefice Cristiano or Devout Painter
One of the most important topoi that arises out of the Discorso is the concept of the artefice
cristiano, or the devout painter. For Paleotti, the devout painter must naturally have a devout style
or maniera devota. Paleotti used sources such as the Church Fathers, but also treatises on art and
artists such as those by Alberti and Vasari, where the idea of a devout painter had already been in
circulation. Paleotti attempted to equate terms taken from biblical psalms with aesthetic art
criticism: confessio is likened to the art of disegno; pulchritudo is likened to beauty and color;
sanctimonia is for the spirituali, and magnificentia is for the literati.150
Based on archival letters, the other people whom Paleotti asked for advice regarding
religious imagery included the abbot of San Procolo, Don Egidio da Matelica; the Jesuit Francesco
Palmio; the philosopher Federico Pendasio; the architect Domenico Tibaldi; the scientist Ulisse
Aldrovandi; the artist Prospero Fontana; and the historian Carlo Sigonio. Among these, it was Don
Egidio who suggested the exclusive use of official artists who had led a devout life, in the tradition
of Vasari’s comments on Fra Angelico that correlate his personal holiness with pious images. It
required a saintly hand to create an effective image of religious devotion; in other words, if the
creator were not devout, neither would his creations be. According to Vasari, Fra Angelico’s
Madonnas were to be considered all the more devout, due to the purity and saintliness of the hand
that created them. Egidio also gives examples of bad images, such as a Virgin Mary where the
patron had used his mistress as the model. Paleotti was very clear that the image of the Virgin
Mary or a saint should never be a known or common face.
One might ask at this point, who was Paleotti’s choice for most devout artist? Although he
mentions that there are several notable pious examples in Bologna, he does not give their names.
He does, however, mention one later in his Discorso, a name which is surprising in some ways and
yet a natural choice in others. The power of the Madonna as a miracle-working icon increased in
proportion to the saintliness of the artist himself, and thus Paleotti was investigating the tradition
of what I would call active images, or in other words, the miracle-working Madonna. He singles
out one at San Procolo by the artist Dalmasio, whom even the painter Guido Reni considered a
“santo artefice.” Reni himself was known as the sinner/saint artist, the slightly corrupt but still
somehow pure painter with a fear of women, who, nonetheless, earned his living by painting
heavenly things. Yet, it was Dürer whom the archbishop considered one of the most devout
painters: “Di Alberto Dürer, pittore e geometra germano, e reso nella vita sua chiaro testimonio,
quando egli nelle opere sue fosse osservante della santita e onesta.” Scholars of Italian art have not
commented on this preference, although it adds further proof of the Northern connections with the
maniera devota, even this late into the sixteenth century (1582). This is a true testament to Dürer’s
maniera devota, since the artist was also known for having Protestant sympathies, and yet his
sacred narratives and icons are all done with the utmost regard for textual accuracy. Apparently
this is also one of the characteristics that must have satisfied Paleotti’s requirements, as Dürer was
a highly literate and intellectual painter, intimately acquainted with the writings of holy scripture.
Dürer writes in his notes that the purpose of painting is to show the suffering of Christ, as well as
to serve the church, a purpose of which Paleotti would certainly have approved.
Other research indicates yet another possible source for the trope of the saintly artist/image,
one which emerges from the Byzantine icon tradition and the Stoglav. The Stoglav was a church
council held in Russia in 1551 to protect the church from those who wanted to abolish feudalism
and clerical rights. It was a dialogue between the Tsar and the Orthodox Church, which resulted in
the standardization of dogma and practice, including rules for the visual representation of the icon.
Coincidentally, it happened in 1551, in the middle of the Council of Trent in the West (1543-1565);
it also accords well with Paleotti’s desire for images as icons, his passion for early Christian
archaeology as the key to a tangible proof of Christianity, and his emphasis on the need for a saintly
artist to create these icons.
Paleotti went so far as to define different types of sacred images in the Discorso, of which
the Sindone, or Shroud of Turin, and the Veil of Veronica are two of the most important (Figs. 43-
44). The archbishop had an entire dossier on the holy face of Christ in the Sindone. He considered
it a holy relic and empirical proof of the existence of Christ. He even went to Torino to see it along
with Borromeo, and he requested information regarding the relic from both Sigonio and
Aldrovandi. He also saw the Veil of Veronica in the Vatican, which was sometimes conflated with
the Shroud of Turin. This erroneous identification exemplifies the tendency throughout history for
icons to be closely associated with women. The most holy portrait of Christ was created, in some
fashion then, by a woman, on a piece of cloth. Paleotti writes of her in the Discorso as “quello
santa donna” of the Veronica – linking the icons with textiles and women. Dürer also gives great
prominence in the series to the legend of the Veronica; the artist’s woodcut version of this image
from his Small Passion (Fig. 44) is in the form of an andachtsbild, a picture solely for
contemplation. In the discussion of embroidery in the conservatori in chapter 3, we will see how
a piece of cloth can restore young women’s virtue, due to its sacred image.
Although Dürer’s pious style explains why Paleotti so approved of him, the two men also
seemed to have shared an interest in the important female figures of the Bible and the redemption
of female virtue. There are as many as five scenes with the Magdelene in Dürer’s Small Passion
woodcut series, leading to the thought that the series may have been aimed at a female audience,
according to Angela Haas.163 The scenes include Mary Magdelene at the foot of the cross
embracing Christ’s feet as well as the Noli Me Tangere (Fig. 69). However, rather than depicting
the Magdalen far from Christ’s touch in the Noli, a more traditional iconography, Dürer covers her
head and has Christ make a gesture of blessing toward the Magdelene, a sign of physical touching
meant to evoke spiritual renewal.
The Nude in Religious Imagery: In Dialogue with the Artist
Among Paleotti’s main directives to devout artists was the call to avoid gratuitous nudity
or lascivious pictures. During his research for these topics in the Discorso, Paleotti most certainly
consulted the artists of the day with whom he had collaborated, even borrowing Prospero Fontana’s
copy of the Lives of the Artists. Prospero was the artist most in dialogue with Paleotti, as testified
by the remaining letters. The Isolani archives contain letters from Prospero to Paleotti regarding
advice for his Discorso. In these letters, Prospero follows Vasari in discussing the decline of art
after the barbarian invasions. Prospero defends the need to study both the nude and antiquity to
create figures; however, he reminds Paleotti that it is also the responsibility of the patron not to ask
for pagan or lascivious pictures, for the artist must always do whatever the patron requires in order
to survive. Prospero is quite blunt here, but he offers the novel solution of using a confessor, who
could discourage the patron from requesting lascivious nudes; this would shift the responsibility to
the patron instead of leaving it solely to the artist. This is reminiscent of those who came to
Michelangelo’s defense regarding the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel (Fig. 45) after Giovanni
Andrea Gilio’s condemnation, which sparked the fire of the Counter-Reformation regarding visual
imagery. In the case of Michelangelo’s defenders, it is the viewer who is given the responsibility
of seeing only the beauty of God’s creation when gazing upon the artist’s nudes in the chapel.
Those who see otherwise are at fault for their own lewd thoughts. Regarding Prospero’s opinion,
it is the patron who is at fault for requesting profane images. Thus in both examples, albeit for
different reasons, the artist is exonerated from blame.
It is clear that Paleotti appreciated beauty and well-formed figures, since he acknowledged
that study of the nude was still necessary for an artist’s training, as Prospero had claimed. However,
Paleotti declared that nudes should exist in religious painting only when history requires it, for
example, in a martyrdom scene such as those in his family crypt in San Pietro, whose iconography
he strictly controlled. At times, the Bible dictates nudity, such as Christ’s suffering on the cross
and other martyrdoms, but all must be done with “ratio, ordo, dignitas and pietas.” It may even be
excused for Adam and Eve, but only because they were unconscious of their nudity. And yet it is
in this climate that Lavinia Fontana produced her Minerva in the Act of Dressing (1613) for
Cardinal Scipione Borghese in Rome (Fig. 28b). Technically, such secular subjects were not subject
to the church ban on nudity, though this powerful patron’s high religious position made them
problematic; the nudity here was most probably at his request, just as Prospero Fontana had warned
Paleotti in his letters.
Fontana’s final work while living in Rome, the Minerva, was a fairly erotic portrayal of the
goddess without armor or clothing, with the church of St. Peter’s in the background. The depiction
of Minerva as a naked woman is an interesting choice in light of Paleotti’s directives on the nude.
However, it recalls Prospero’s advice above, that the patron is the one truly responsible, as the artist
must strive to please the patron in order to find work. In this case, the patron was none other than
Cardinal Scipione Borghese. Of course the figure of Minerva also references virtue and chastity,
yet we will never know in what spirit it was desired by the Cardinal, for Minerva could certainly
have done as much with her armor on. Perhaps the figure also speaks to Prodi’s incisive comment
regarding the Carraccis’ time in Rome, since the Minerva was created while Fontana was in the
Eternal City; according to him, Rome had corrupted Annibale’s naturalism, overwhelming it with
the unavoidable presence of classical antiquity in the city. Rome had somehow rejected true
Bolognese naturalism, and displayed a clear preference for the continued primacy of the classical
pagan world as seen in Annibale’s “profane” frescoes for the Farnese, despite stylistic
modifications to the representation of the ancient gods themselves.171 Perhaps the Bolognese artists
in Rome had simply infused Apollo with the flesh and blood of the man in the street. The figure of
Minerva also declares Fontana’s proficiency in depicting profane or classical subjects when
required. As previously mentioned, the nude figure of Minerva herself may have been based on
Giulio Romano and/or Raphael’s figure of Venus or Psyche from Mantua in the Palazzo del Te,
ultimately via Diana Mantovana’s engraving of the same subject.172 Again, the classical antiquity
of Rome infiltrates the otherwise devout painter.
which the cardinal added moralistic verses regarding the fleeting nature of material pleasures. For more on Bernini,
see Howard Hibbard, Bernini (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1965). Also, while still in Bologna, Fontana
did paint an erotic portrait of Isabella Ruini as Venus, but this was probably commissioned by her husband, and
furthermore, this paragraph is concerned with establishing her work as it related to the clerical patrons of her Roman
sojourn. On Fontana’s Minerva and Venus, see also Cantaro, 222 and 102 respectively. Despite being a secular work,
the Minerva was commssioned for a cleric, and as such, Paleotti would certainly have disapproved of the patrons’s
request for a sensual and disrobed version of the goddess of chastity.
171 Prodi, Ricerca, 69.
172 Silvia Urbini, “Sul ruolo della donna ‘incisore’ nella storia del libro illustrato,” in Donna, disciplina, creanza
cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo: Studi e testi a stampa, ed. Gabriela Zarri (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura,
1996), 372. See chapter 1 for the Minerva.
An Illustrated Index of Images
Originally Paleotti’s Discorso was meant to be illustrated, a unique feature of great
importance for its legibility by artists; thus the artists could see for themselves the “do’s and
don’t’s” of Counter-Reformation visual imagery. Only two of the five books of the original version
were ever published, but the second version of six books done in Latin was to be much larger in
size due to all the illustrated examples, underlining the importance of the visual to the project.
Paleotti was in the process of creating an illustrated index of iconography that would serve the
same purpose as the Index of Prohibited Books. He would have known the Index well, since he
helped work on it during the Council of Trent. In this way, he created a link between text and
image, reminiscent of the Bolognese tradition of emblems. Paleotti went beyond Gilio in saying
that there should never be a mix of sacred and profane art, yet he found science a necessary tool
for naturalism, as classical models alone would not suffice for the maniera devota. Paleotti feared
the contamination of Christian imagery with classical prototypes, despite all of his humanistic
tendencies. To be more specific, Prospero wrote that if saints must be rendered in the nude for
martyrdom scenes, then their proportions must be taken not from Giove but from nature; Paleotti
reiterates this attitude by emphasizing in his Addenda Avvertimenti de Picturis that Christ should
not be an Apollo. This comment is obviously directed at Michelangelo, as the figure of Christ in
his Last Judgment is rendered as a type of classical Apollo. We can compare Michelangelo’s
version of Christ (Fig. 45) with Lavinia
Fontana’s in her iconic image of Christ with the Symbols of the Passion (Fig. 49) in which she
certainly used the more natural proportions of the human body, rather than those of an ancient
pagan god.
Sacred and Profane: Genre Details in Religious Narrative
One of the errors that disturbed Paleotti the most was to have superfluous details in religious
paintings, for example, the addition of a cat in the Annunciation scene. He was especially interested
in the iconography of the Annunciation, as there was an artistic debate swirling around this issue
in the period. He complained about the version of the Missale Romanum printed in Antwerp in
1574 by Christopher Plantin with an illustration of the Annunciation by Peter van Arst, containing
the said cat. Would such an animal have been present at this holy event? Paleotti’s answer would
surely have been “no.” In general, however, this feature was normally included by most northern
artists; even his favorite Italian, Barocci, included genre-like details such as a cat in two versions
of his Annunciation (1582 and 1592, Figs. 46-47). However, we can only speculate on whether
Paleotti closed an eye to this, since he did ask Barocci to paint the altarpiece for his chapel. We do
know that he usually gave strict and precise instructions to his artists. If we take one of Fontana’s
very early paintings as a comparison, an Annunciation on copper from 1579 (Fig. 48), probably
created for private devotion due to its size, we can see that there was nothing superfluous,
especially not a cat. Certain details were added, such as the abandoned sewing basket on the
ground. However, these details were an important part of the religious narrative, a type of aide-
memoire justified by tradition: the Virgin was caught unawares by the angel Gabriel while sewing.
The sewing basket is an appropriate indication of the Virgin’s virtue; sewing was considered one
of the most pious tasks for women, especially in Bologna with its many Christian reform houses
for women filled with young hands to keep busy. The basket is a type of symbol in the great
tradition of early Netherlandish discourses of the sacred and profane: a profane or everyday object
tied to a religious meaning. The cat, by contrast, had no such sacred purpose confirmed in the
offical biblical sources, other than a folk legend that tells of a litter of kittens born at the same time
as Christ. This concern for dogmatic accuracy would have been especially important since some
of these small paintings may have been created as gifts for young girls who learned their catechisms
especially well; thus correct dogma would have been critical.
Therefore, we can safely say that Paleotti was not objecting to all details (knowing that
Bologna was famous for its naturalism), only the superfluous ones. In other examples of Fontana’s
work, such as her versions of St Francis (see chapter 1), Paleotti would surely have approved of
her dense forest meant to suggest the nature-mysticism of St. Francis and God’s creation. Fontana
was the one commissioned to create the altarpiece for Paleotti’s own family chapel in the
metropolitan church of San Pietro in Bologna, in place of Barocci, who was working for the Duke
of Urbino, among other patrons; one can surmise that Paleotti considered Fontana to be one of the
city’s Christian artefici par excellence. Paleotti had great interest in the Bolognese “realismo
naturalistico storico,” perhaps a last attempt at uniting humanism with scriptures, using the
scriptures and holy relics as tangible evidence of Christ’s existence and the martyrdom of the saints.
He was attempting to create an accurate history of Christianity in which religious painting would
take on the characteristic of history painting: veracity. This interest will be treated further when
we examine the martyr frescoes in the crypt of San Pietro that Paleotti commissioned.
Interior Decorating for the Counter-Reformation Home, or “Every abode shall have a
cappella”: The Index for the Uncompleted Books, Three, Four and Five
Only two volumes of the Discorso exist today, although Paleotti had originally planned to
write a total of five; of the final three, only the index was completed. Although often passed over
as of little value to the discussion of visual reform (even Bianchi says there is very little other than
a discussion of how to represent the Trinity and the Saints), the index for Paleotti’s three remaining
chapters is filled with much more. It contains pearls of information that can be explored for their
potential impact on artists and visual imagery, as well as being an invaluable key to the full scope
of Paleotti’s thought on the value and utility of art. What remains of the index contains the seeds
of key discussions about visual reform, many of which are revolutionary compared to other such
tracts. Among the issues covered are the influence of classical antiquity on the devout artist, an
emphasis on the place of individual prayer in the home that can be linked to the devotio moderna,
and advice on the proper site-specific religious imagery for all locales, including secular sites, as
well as specific details on how to represent holy figures. This section also discusses the conditions
under which the index was written and certain influences on Paleotti during his time in Rome.
Paleotti developed his ideas for the final three books while he was in much closer contact
with classical antiquity. He was sent to Rome in 1590 and remained there until his death in 1597,
except for two brief trips to Bologna. Once in the papal capital, Paleotti continued his passion for
visual imagery reform. He was elected as a reformer to the Academy of St. Luke, the painter’s
guild in Rome, of which Fontana was a member through her husband. Paleotti’s Latin version of
the Discorso that came out in 1595 was doubled in size, due to the number of iconographic
examples included. According to Prodi, Paleotti was discouraged by the end of his life and felt that
his reform had not been successful; he must have felt that more work was still needed on the topic,
since he wrote a final work on imagery while in Rome, De tollendis imaginum abusibus novissima
consideratio. However, the present study posits that Paleotti and his artists, at least in his home
town of Bologna, had achieved a high degree of fidelity to Trent’s guidelines for religious imagery.
Even so, pagan trends continued in Rome, despite Paleotti’s struggles. One wonders what
Paleotti would have thought of the Farnese ceiling by Annibale, or Caravaggio’s vanitas paintings
of Bacchus, owned by Cardinal Francesco del Monte, with whom Paleotti shared the responsibility
for the visual reform of the Academy of St Luke. Paleotti himself had recently become the protector
of the Academy.183 According to some, it was the influence of Rome itself, the ever-present power
of the classical world, that inspired Annibale to explore the pagan forms of the Farnese ceiling.
There were mythological ceilings in Palazzo Fava in Bologna, but in the Farnese, the figures fully
incorporate the forms of classical antiquity, overwhelming Annibale’s homegrown naturalism.
Sermons were being given even in the Academy of St. Luke against lascivious art. Therefore, most
artists of the day could not have failed to be aware of and involved in this movement, no matter
which side of the fence they were on.
Paleotti’s ideas were shared by others in Rome; another notable influence during his years
in Rome was his fellow reformer, Filippo Neri. Paleotti has been linked to the rigor, decorum, and
spirituality of Neri’s Oratorio. Neri was a spiritual reformer interested in the discalced life and in
creating images of Christianity that would appeal to the common man of the street, such as those
produced by Caravaggio. Paleotti’s realism, however, stopped short of this extreme. We can see
this connection to Neri and the barefoot orders in a work that Paleotti owned in his residence in
Rome, the Washing of the Feet. In addition to connections with the Oratorio, this painting would
be appropriate to the Eternal City, as its theme of the barefoot follower also relates to pilgrimage,
which was encouraged for visits to relics and catacombs. The link with the followers of Neri, the
Filippini, stretches to our later female artists, as the legacy of Neri’s oratorio continued with Angela
Teresa Muratori. Muratori not only painted religious pictures, but was also responsible for writing
sacred oratorios to be performed in the churches of Bologna.
The Devotio Moderna in Italy
In addition to Neri, Paleotti may also have been influenced by the fifteenth-century goals
and methods of the devotio moderna. By the sixteenth century, the idea of projecting oneself into
a biblical scene and communing with a sacred personage was seen as a type of spiritual meditation
that would be conducive to piety. Although these virtual pilgrimages are also part of the spiritual
exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, they began as far back as the fifteenth century, i.e., before the
Reformation, with the spiritual reform movement called the devotio moderna. That movement was
started as a response to corrupt clergy and urban poverty by Gerard Groote (1409-1443), a monk
from Windesheim. Groote began his work by turning his family home into a shelter for poor
women. He formed a monastic group called the Brethren of the Common Life; eventually a
Sisterhood of the Common Life was also formed. Groote and his followers were especially
interested in serving the needs of female poverty, a concept with which Paleotti would have agreed.
The movement was also associated with a form of Christian humanism. Although certain scholars
have implied that the movement was a substitute for church attendance, that certainly was not the
case in Italy, especially for Paleotti. The idea of home prayer in place of (my italics) liturgical
participation is not the aspect of the devotio moderna that would have inspired Paleotti, who was
only interested in their systematic methods of meditation and visualization, and their ideas of
reform. For example, his book five makes suggestions about individual prayer at home that recall
those practices, meant to supplement the mass. The movement spread in Italy through Luigi Barbo,
who reformed sixteen monasteries, including San
Paolo Fuori le Mura in Rome.
A detailed analysis of the Index begins with book three, where Paleotti actually devoted a
whole section to lascivious imagery. However, he only does so after having discussed the history
and use of these pagan images in their proper context, in book two. There he explains exactly in
what mode/spirit or “maniera” one should view pagan antiquity. Other reformers of the period may
have simply dismissed pagan imagery as a wholesale evil, yet Paleotti acknowledges that there is
a history to pagan images that should not be ignored. Pagan images were born of a specific time
and place, i.e. the time before Christ, and that is how they should be seen, as remnants and even
relics of a pagan past that has now been superseded by Christianity. Along with his discussion of
the nude, one can consider Paleotti’s description of the eye as “infected” with lascivious images,
for which faith is the medicine. Book three was to include a discussion of why we tolerate the
“meretrice” or prostitute, and do not tolerate dishonest paintings. (More will be said on the
meretrice in tandem with prints and piety in chapter 5.) Paleotti went so far as to explain exactly
how an artist can show off his skill even in clothed images, an indirect reference to the art of
Michelangelo, who needed the nude human form to show off his mastery of human anatomy. This
type of advice is another reason why women artists could flourish in Bologna: with clothed figures,
female artists would not suffer as much of a disadvantage compared with male artists, since they
were not allowed to study the nude male figure from life, but only from casts and drawings.
Book four contains instructions on how to depict the Trinity and the saints, but also many
other important dogmatic issues, such as how to paint heaven and purgatory, using the writings of
St. Augustine and the church fathers. The doctrine of the Trinity was very important to Tridentine
reformers, and Paleotti chose to follow the conventions which depict it as the elderly
God, Christ on the cross, and the dove of the Holy Spirit. This image was quite popular in Northern
iconography, and is known as the throne of grace. He takes a scientific approach to piety, attempting
to add the relics themselves as part of the verification process. He also gives directions on how to
paint Hell, the Last Judgment, and even Satan himself. This chapter was to contain details on
Marian imagery, for example, the Assumption and the “Death” of the Virgin Mary, on the
Magdalene: “whose tears bathed his feet,” and on how to depict the Sudario and the Sindone, both
of which he had taken great pains to see in person. This chapter would have been invaluable for
images of women’s virtue.
Paleotti felt that the iconography had first to be proven accurate in order to be effective.
Rather than exaggerating a certain sentiment for piety’s sake, he strove for a decorous and
historically accurate representation whenever possible: a unique combination of the devotional
power of the icon and the truth of verisimilitude comprised his desired maniera devota. For this
reason he was extremely interested in the archaeology of early Christianity and its martyrs. In this
way, he felt he could represent the historical accuracy of the Christian faith. He sought to make
tangible that which is not, and his preferred artists were the vehicles for this transformation.
Paleotti also advised the use of gold as appropriate for precious images, such as icons, again
reinforcing the link with the Byzantine past of Christianity.
Book five is among the most interesting, as it also gives evidence of his possible sympathies
for the devotio moderna. This book had a chapter dedicated to the idea that “every abode shall have
a cappella or oratorio, if it fits, for the family’s service.” This directive implies a type of attitude
toward personal prayer and meditation that has links with both the devotio moderna and the
spiritual exercises of Loyola, as mentioned above, thus reflecting Paleotti’s ideas on two key
movements of Christian spirituality. As the roots of the sixteenth-century maniera devota are to be
found in the fifteenth century (and earlier), it follows logically that these practices are rooted in
such early movements.
Of special interest are Paleotti’s recommendations for site-specific art, important for our
later discussion of the imagery in the conservatorio for young girls. His index gives advice for all
media, including decorative arts, displaying his diverse approach to sacred imagery. In it, Paleotti
tells the artist to consult all the specialist authors necessary (not just clerics). We know that this
advice was heeded: for example, in commenting on Paleotti’s Discorso, Aldrovandi agrees with
this idea and writes that the painter Orazio Sammachini came to him for advice on how to paint
certain plants in his landscape. Paleotti also gives advice for the devout painter in general, and for
others: secular patrons, princes, etc. Paleotti became a type of interior decorator of the sacred, for
all patrons, all sites, and in all media. In book five, he also mentions a section on how (in what
spirit) to view ancient art, displaying a continued sense of Christian humanism by not entirely
dismissing ancient art, but simply qualifying its use. Finally, he goes so far as to add punishment
for those who harm images, for example the iconoclasts. This shows in what high regard he places
imagery in general, and the pittore cristiano in particular: good religious painting was akin to
performing Christian charity.
This section has provided an analysis of Paleotti’s theories, their origin, and the fine points
of the crucial debates regarding visual imagery in the post-Tridentine era as well as an introduction
to one woman artist’s work in this paradigm. Fontana’s work in religious imagery certainly
answered Paleotti’s call for the Christian pittora, as we shall see below in further detail. At this
point we pass from theory to practice by examining the specific iconography in other examples of
her religious paintings within the framework of the Discorso’s modes.
The Practice:
Lavinia’s Religious Paintings where Aesthetic Theory meets Religious Dogma
Paleotti’s directions were not lost on Fontana, who executed the largest number of religious
paintings of any woman artist before Artemisia Gentileschi. If we take a closer look at a
representative selection of her less studied paintings, we will see the creation of three modes of
painting that roughly correspond to Paleotti’s main themes in the Discorso regarding the production
of sacred visual imagery: the iconic, which corresponds to the idea of the devout painter (necessary
to create an effective icon); the religious narrative, which deals with the fine line between sacred
and profane details in a historical genre of a sacred nature; and the historiated portrait, which
intersects the concept of virtù, a key theme in Christian humanism. In addition, these modes also
incorporate the knowledge newly available from early Christian archaeology in Rome, an aspect
directly tied to the maniera devota.
This study places Fontana’s religious paintings into these three categories, which only
occasionally overlap, but do have a common element: science. The merging of sacred imagery with
a scientific sense of verism is especially noteworthy when applied to her more iconic images.
Paleotti’s goal had always been to merge the two -- piety and verism, history and religion, icon and
narrative. He used science as the link between them, to demonstrate that devotion was due to Christ,
Mary, and the saints since the stories of the bible were “real.” The raison d’être of the iconic image
is that it is meant to be used as an aid to contemplation, in the manner of the Jesuit Spiritual
Exercises by Loyola, where one is urged to identify with Christ’s suffering on the cross, for
example, by evoking a deep meditative empathy with the image of the Crucifixion. The historical
religious narrative, in contrast, is meant to communicate a sacred story by means of historical detail
and accuracy, in as simple and direct a manner as possible, without any embellishments or
unnecessary details. The religious historiated portrait is a category that included the traditional
donor portrait, where the donor is placed somewhere in the image, although at times only on the
fringe of the space shared by the religious figure. In Fontana’s paintings, however, this genre takes
on the more active role of placing the individual in the scene, in the manner of the early Flemish
painters such as Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck, implying a virtual pilgrimage.
An example of virtual pilgrimage is van Eyck’s Madonna of Canon van der Paele. In this
painting the elderly canon is in the presence of the Madonna and Child, conjured up by his intense
prayers, as he was perhaps too ill and frail to attend mass, and so van Eyck’s painting functioned
as a type of spiritual pilgrimage. The painting was kept in his home, thus bringing the sanctity of
the church into his abode, where he could kneel in the presence of the sacred personages without
leaving his home. Although it is painted in a domestic interior, it is an elaborately furnished one,
indicating the formality of a church setting where the chair is really a celestial throne for the mother
and child. At times it is the sacred personage who comes to the home of the donor; in other
examples, the viewer is on a mental pilgrimage to the sacred site; still other examples contain a
domestic site conflated with a heavenly palace. In general, these images function as what Gelfand
and Gibson call “surrogate selves,” images that identify, proclaim and memorialize the donor’s
generosity, while at the same time, fixing the donor as a surrogate who will continue to pray for
his own soul (pro remedio et anima sua) for eternity.193
Iconic Images
Historically, although this is rarely discussed, women have had a special rapport with icons.
In Paleotti’s Bologna, iconic images were those whose purpose was to encourage meditation and
virtue, often combining a scientific verism with religious piety. Fontana’s style both lent itself to
and simultaneously helped to construct the type of religious imagery that interested the Council of
Trent and Paleotti: historically accurate (in the mind of Paleotti), scientifically provable religious
narratives, which also contained the power of Byzantine icons to move the faithful. Paleotti’s own
words were “teach, move, delight” (docere, muovere, delectare). He wanted an active image, which
is perhaps why he based his terms for painting on sermon vocabulary, trying to liken those terms
to the words of a religious orator. Paleotti knew that active images required beautiful color and
design to persuade, not with falsity, but with the beauty of the truth as contained in sacred scripture.
Paleotti shared with Filippo Neri the belief that the image helps contemplation and aids in human
contact with the divine.
Above all, Fontana’s minimal use of superfluous detail or exaggeration of form, despite
having come out of a mannerist background, allowed her to infuse some of her more contemplative
subjects with the necessary icon-like quality, such as her painting of Christ with the Symbols of the
Passion (1576, Fig. 49). This idea of the icon also comes out of Paleotti’s interest in early
Christianity and relics, as the icon is the ultimate proof of the history of Christianity. Christ with
the Symbols of the Passion was based on Taddeo Zuccari’s version of the subject, through
Calvaert’s engraving. Fortunati describes it as neo-Correggesque due to its feminine gracefulness
compared with Michelangelo’s version. However, Fontana included a detailed landscape, which
one would not find in a Michelangelo. For Fontana, this was a combination of Flemish
fastidiousness with a mystical sense of nature, a landscape as part of God’s theatrum mundi. This
painting reflects that strain of Fontana’s work that can be called contemplative icons, a type of
meditative image that is meant to move the viewer to pious thought, while contemplating the image
of Christ’s suffering, as in the exercises of St. Ignatius.
Fontana’s lost Pietà was based on Michelangelo’s original image, as seen through the eyes
of Giulio Bonasone and Agostino Carracci’s engravings (1546, 1579 respectively), no doubt based
on the drawing that Michelangelo had done for Vittoria Colonna (Figs. 50-52). This image remains
part of the iconic tradition in Bologna, an image meant to be a direct aid to meditation. The Virgin
Mary looks up at the skies in grief with open arms, and two angels hold up Christ’s limp arms as
his body begins to slump toward the grave. The viewer is meant to participate in the holy event
through virtual pilgrimage, in the manner of both the devotio moderna and the spiritual exercises.
Although there is a narrative strain to the tale of St. Francis and the stigmata, Fontana’s
image is treated as more of an icon of a nature-mysticism, a Franciscan approach to Christian piety
and devotional imagery. The artist employed a Flemish attention to detail that allowed her to
participate in Paleotti’s ideas of visual verism assisted by the use of scientific phenomena, such as
botanical studies in religious narratives. The previously mentioned example of St. Francis Receives
the Stigmata (1579, Fig. 40) has been described by Fortunati as having a mythological landscape
reminiscent of Tasso. However, I would stress instead the religious and scientific associations,
especially regarding the mystical landscape and the adoration of the holy cross by St. Francis.
Apparently the story of St. Francis was important to the city of Bologna since the saint and his
order were closely associated with a preference for Marian imagery in accordance with Paleotti’s
reforms.
Fontana’s talent at creating iconic images of saints was known as far away as Rome. Her
painting of The Vision of St. Hyacinth (1599, Fig. 18) was commissioned for the church of Santa
Sabina in Rome, as previously mentioned, for the Polish Cardinal Bernerio. Clement VIII had just
canonized St. Hyacinth in 1599. Although based on other versions of similar works by
Ludovico Carracci and Guido Reni, Fontana’s version is less formal in composition, as the space
between the saint and the sacred figure is minimal, thus creating a sense of immediacy. The golden
light breaks through the mundane and takes the viewer from the profane or everyday world, to the
moment of the divine encounter. At the same time, the picture satisfied the Tridentine emphasis on
devotion, based on the saint’s facial expression of piety and humble gesture. It was well received
and commented on by Baldinucci. This painting combines elements of both iconic and narrative
modes, but in the end is more related to Netherlandish devotional imagery of virtual pilgrimage,
as it creates a direct encounter between the patron and the sacred personage.
The Holy Family with the Sleeping Child (1589, Fig. 53) was created for Philip II; the
Dominican cleric Ciaconio may have assisted with this commission.200 The subject is ultimately
based on Michelangelo’s drawing for Victoria Colonna, the Silentium (Fig. 54), through versions
by Sebastiano del Piombo, via Bonasone’s engraving. There is also a version of the subject by
Sammacchini. Fontana’s version had an inscription calling for silence, truth, and piety (Cor
Meum Vigilat), but there are also other versions created for domestic use (Galleria Borghese, Rome
and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). As a non-narrative image, the Silentium represents an icon
for deep contemplation, a moment when the sleeping Christ child alludes to his future sacrifice and
death while his mother looks on.
Marian Icons and the Woman Artist: The Immaculate Conception and the Assumption
In the late-sixteenth century, a controversy raged over the iconographic details of Marian
dogmas such as the Assumption of the Virgin and the Immaculate Conception, and Fontana’s
version of the Assumption (1593, Fig. 55), done for the chapel of Paleotti himself in the cathedral
of San Pietro in Bologna, could not help but be influenced by this religious climate. Fontana had
been asked to step in when Paleotti’s first choice, Federico Barocci, was no longer available
because he was working for the Duke of Urbino, among other patrons. However, despite her being
the second choice, it was an extremely prestigious commission and one that was key to the display
of Paleotti’s Counter-Reformatory dictates. This section also discusses other examples of these
Marian themes by various artists, illustrating different approaches to the problem of representing
this important iconographic tradition.
One iconographic debate regarding the Assumption centered around whether the apostles
could have been present to witness this event, which would have been anachronistic. Sigonio’s
opinion was that they would only have been able to witness the event because it was revealed to
them by the divine spirit, as if in a vision. In this case, Fontana does not represent the Apostles as
present, but uses the city of Bologna in their stead, a symbolic representation of the Christian
community as witness to the sacred event. This must have been satisfactory to Paleotti since we
know that he praised Fontana’s work in his Archiepiscopale Bononensis.
At an early point in the history of Christianity (fourth century), the question arose of
whether the Madonna herself was born immaculate, free from original sin, so that she could in turn
give birth to Christ without the stain of original sin. Apparently, this belief was accepted by the
faithful in popular piety long before it ever became dogma (1854). The key Marian dogmas were
the Virgin Birth of Christ, the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin, as well as her own
Immaculate Conception. Officially, the church encouraged the acceptance of Christ’s Immaculate
Birth; the dogmas that were still being debated were the Assumption of the Virgin and her
Immaculate Conception. In the fifteenth century, Sixtus IV approved indulgences for the
Immaculate Conception without, however, officially condemning those who rejected it.205 This
amounted to a “sitting on the fence” policy. Divisions arose between the orders regarding this
point and the Dominicans remained typically more conservative, whereas the Franciscans were
often closer to the ideas of popular piety, being one of the orders deeply involved in outreach to
help the poor.
In order to understand the changing iconography of the Immaculate Conception we need to
look at the historical events of the period, in addition to the dogma, and most importantly, at the
images themselves. The first litany to the Virgin goes as far back as the twelfth century, but it was
not until 1587 that Sixtus IV officially approved it. The artists became automatically involved in
this debate, since the altarpiece itself became a visual manifesto of dogma. Northern heresy caused
much controversy, and by the sixteenth century there were great debates concerning the veracity
of the Immaculate Conception within the Catholic Church itself. By this time, however, the image
of the Immacolata had become entrenched in the imagination of the faithful. The debate raged on
and for a while there was a stalemate. The image of the Immacolata was greatly revived, according
to Spada, after the battle of Lepanto, where the
Christian forces had appealed to the Virgin Mary for help against the Turks and were subsequently
victorious. After this victory, the half-moon under Mary’s feet came to stand for the victory of the
Christian church over the infidel. More will be said on this in chapter four, as part of the discussion
of Fontana’s seventeenth-century successors.
The Immacolata also has northern roots, which point to Dürer (Figs. 56-58). As we have
seen, Dürer was one of Paleotti’s favorite artists in terms of decorum, despite his origins in the land
of heresy and any Lutheran sympathies he may have shown near the end of his life. The Madonna
of the Apocalypse comes from the book of Revelations (12:1-6): she is the woman clothed by the
sun, with the moon underfoot and a crown with twelve stars, who defeats the seven-headed dragon.
Copies of Dürer’s famous woodcut images of the Woman Clothed by the Sun and the Seven-Headed
Dragon (1498, from the Apocalypse), and the Virgin on the Crescent (1511, from the Life of the
Virgin) would have been dispersed in Italy. The twelve stars on her crown symbolize the twelve
tribes of Israel, the sun and moon symbolize illumination, and the crown stands for the triumph of
the church.
The religious climate of the sixteenth century encouraged some unusual and interesting
examples of the Immacolata in Italian painting. At a certain point the two dogmas become conflated
and the Immacolata took on aspects of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. Garofalo’s
version (1528-36), for example, includes, along with the saints who were in favor of
the dogma, floating symbols which Fortunati states are in sympathy with the interest in Bologna
in emblems. These particulars may also relate to the commission, as this painting was for a convent
of cloistered nuns. Female communities had a special devotion to the Immacolata, even forming
confraternities named after it. The altarpiece became an integral part of their Marian rituals; it was
decorated with flowers, which were imbued with religious symbolism based on their colors, such
as white for Mary’s purity. There are other examples of the Immacolata from this period which
display the special relationship between the Marian iconography and the paintings’ donors.
Barocci’s altarpiece the Madonna del Popolo (1575-9, Fig. 59), includes the female patrons and
according to Spada has an air of the “devotio moderna.” Scipione Pulzone’s Immacolata with
Angels, Saints, and a Donor (1581) is a combination of the
Immacolata and the Assumption, as Mary is shown floating up into the heavens over the donor.
Giovan Battista Bagnacavallo created an Immacolata for a convent of nuns from noble families
(1575), whose unusual iconography may be explained by their high rank. The painting was for the
nuns of Santa Maria della Consolazione, eventually renamed Concezione after 1547, patrons for
whom the artist adds the animula (child-like soul) of Mary. This rare iconography was meant to
show that the idea of an immaculate Mary free from sin was already in God’s mind. Paleotti advises
painters to avoid subjects that are “temeraria,” or contested. The Immacolata was one of the
dogmas that were still unresolved by the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. Lavinia
Fontana’s Madonna of the Assumption of Ponte Santo with Saints Cassiano and Crisologo (1584,
Fig. 60) for the city of Imola may have been considered temerarious, but certainly not heretical.
The church had not outlawed the subject; it had merely not yet confirmed it, and meanwhile the
faithful had already accepted it as true. The painting depicts Mary with her veil and at the correct
age for the event, when she would have been an older woman. However, Fontana also includes
the crown and the moon of the Immaculate Conception as well as a mandorla. Originally the
commission was meant to be simply an apparition of the Madonna to the faithful, related to the
miracle of Ponte Santo, a Bolognese legend stating that the Madonna appeared to the faithful on
this bridge. Apparently the Immacolata was already part of the collective imagination of the faithful
in Imola. In Fontana’s version, the image became a performative icon activating the faithful,
exactly what Paleotti wanted in his descriptions of the power of religious imagery to delectare,
movere, and docere: the truth with the power of an icon.
A comparison of Fontana’s Pieve di Cento Assumption (Fig. 55) with her Imola version
(Fig. 60) gives further proof of her Northern connections and the importance of Paleotti’s dictates.
For example, there is no moon depicted in the Pieve version, no crown of stars, none of the things
that might confuse the faithful between the two stories. It is not as much of a blending of the two
dogmas as we find in the Imola version, most likely because the Pieve di Cento Assumption was
created for Paleotti’s own chapel. Therefore it needed to display the most accurate iconography,
as opposed to the Imola Assumption, which still displayed aspects of popular piety. In yet another
example, Fontana created a unique Immacolata (1602, Fig. 61) for a Capuchin monastery. In this
painting, Mary wears the crown, carries the Christ child, and stands upon a sliver of half-moon.
This version seems to refer back to Dürer’s versions. The mixing of the two scenes may have been
a request of the patrons at the monastery for a more mystical version than the Tridentine standard.
Other Bolognese artists participated in this iconographic debate as well, such as Ludovico
Carracci and Guido Reni. Ludovico created an unusual Madonna degli Scalzi (1590s, Fig. 62)
using part of Dürer’s iconography. The large figure of the Madonna dominates the canvas, standing
on a huge sliver of moon while holding the Christ child. We can see twelve faint stars around her
head, reminiscent of the Madonna of the Apocalypse, and she is accompanied by Saints Jerome
and Francis. The Madonna gazes out at the spectator, seeking contact with the viewer, perhaps
indicating her intervention in our salvation. Ludovico had always been the
Carracci family member most drawn to mystical interpretation of biblical narratives.
Spain, arch-conservative in reform and influential land of the Inquisition, was, however,
very much in favor of the Immaculate Conception. Guido Reni created an altarpiece of the
Immacolata in 1627, originally for the royal family of Spain, to be located in the cathedral of
Seville. The painting is a combination of the iconography of the Assumption together with the
Immacolata, continuing the iconographic blurring of the two scenes well into the seventeenth
century. Philip IV seems to have decided for himself that the Immacolata was sacred truth, and
thus wished to have it immediately illustrated by another devout artist, Reni.
The doctrine of the Virgin’s Assumption into heaven was central to the
CounterReformation, together with that of the Immacolata, despite the fact that the latter was still
under debate, if only among the clerics and not the faithful. Images of these doctrines served as a
type of icon for feminine virtue, a sacred vision of womanhood. The Assumption tells the story of
Mary, who could not expire in the normal fashion of any ordinary woman, and was instead taken
up into the heavens to join her son. The Immaculate Conception is the prequel to this theme, proof
that Mary was not conceived through original sin in the manner of the rest of humanity, but only
through the intervention of God. Thus the Virgin becomes a second Eve who redeems mankind
through the birth of her son and his ultimate sacrifice, as well as through her intercession in heaven
for us. As a result, the iconography of the two images became porous during the sixteenth century,
resulting in hybrid forms. We do know that Paleotti preferred the apocalyptic version of the
Immacolata, with the sun and moon underfoot and crowned by 12 stars, humble but also of
incomparable beauty.
Fontana’s painting falls squarely within this tradition of the Virgin as exemplar of women’s
virtue. It was created for a chapel whose design was meant to bring Christianity back to its earliest
roots using the veneration of the relics of the first bishops of Bologna, which would reinforce the
Counter-Reformation’s support of the saints. In addition, it encourages the appeal to the Virgin as
intercessor for mankind, something which was perhaps lost in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment,
where the Virgin cowers under her veils, powerless to help those lost souls destined for the fires of
hell. The relics of St. Vitale and St. Agricola, the first bishops of Bologna, were given to Paleotti
by Pope Gregory XIII, and they were put in place after a ceremonial procession through the streets
of the city. Alfonso Paleotti, Gabriele’s cousin and successor, had also had a copy made of the
thirteenth-century Madonna of the Immaculate Conception for the reliquary cabinet behind
Fontana’s altarpiece; the painting had been arranged so that it could be moved, and behind it were
kept the holy relics of the saints, thus confirming that Christ was approached through Mary and the
Saints.
In addition to her father’s version and the work of the Carracci, Fontana’s sources for the
Pieve di Cento Assumption included Dürer and his model of the Apocalyptic Woman, as well as
Aldrovandi’s scientific studies of the day. Fontana created a clear distinction between the two
realms as Counter-Reformation dogma would have maintained. However, she updated her father’s
manneristic style, always adding the pious maniera devota required by Paleotti, influenced by her
exposure to Northern artists’ work, as well as assimilating knowledge and ideas that circulated due
to the great presence of university scholars. For example, the heavenly realm also contains some
unique characteristics. The heavens open up to a cone of divine light, which can be described as
an almost scientific depiction of the phenomenon of light. We know that Aldrovandi was engaged
in scientific studies of biblical nature, without fear of combining the two fields, despite this being
a moment of conflict between religion and science. One of his favorite artists (mentioned above in
chapter one), Jacopo Ligozzi of Florence, had links with Galileo and the telescope, and wanted to
learn how to view the celestial bodies through this controversial instrument. Other artists were also
involved in the scientific debates of the day and some seem to have supported the cause of science,
such as Ludovico Cigoli, even in his religious paintings. Cigoli added a more realistic solid sphere
to his fresco of the Immacolata (1610-12, Fig. 63), rather than the symbolically pure white sliver
of a moon traditionally used to signify the Virgin’s purity. The evidence for this is the apparent
shadow that the moon casts and the irregular surface of the moon, an indication of Cigoli’s
sympathies for Galilean discoveries. Even the great Michelangelo apparently had Copernican
allegiances, which may be seen in the cosmological mapping of his Last Judgment in the Sistine
Chapel (Rome), where a solar Christ is the centerpiece of a circle of clockwise bodies that rise and
fall around him as they either descend into hell, or rise up into heaven. For Michelangelo’s critics,
though, the Last Judgment came to be viewed as rife with problems of decorum, mostly involving
his nude figures, as opposed to any scientific modifications.
Another possible source for Fontana’s version is a painting by the Dutch artist Hieronymus
Bosch. The cone of the light of heaven into which Fontana’s Madonna is being lifted is similar to
that in Bosch’s painting of the Vision of the Afterlife (Fig. 64). This painting is a representation of
the supernatural as a realm of divine light, which bears closer inspection as a unique representation
of the afterlife. Bosch’s Vision was commissioned for Domenico Grimani of Venice circa 1500-
1503. These two unusual panels depict the artist’s vision of the afterlife, focusing on the entrance
into heaven of the faithful. One of these depicts the faithful being taken up into heaven by a cone
of light, as in Fontana’s Pieve Assumption. This strange, tunnel-shaped cone is a combination of
both the scientific and supernatural, and as such it parallels similar iconography in Fontana’s
Assumption. It is conceivable that engravings of Bosch’s paintings were in the collection of
Fontana’s colleague, the Fleming Calvaert.226 As previously mentioned, Fontana was familiar with
Northern painting through Calvaert, who was renowned for his landscapes, and even Paleotti
commented on his representation of nature in the background of a painting on which he cooperated
with Prospero Fontana. Bianchi notes that the cone of light points towards an infinity not
perceptible to man; however, in the tradition of the scientific studies in Bologna, it more likely
relates to a scientific vision of light as a tangible force of salvation.228 The idea of the cone of light
may also stem from the Franciscan Francesco Panigarola’s study of lumen. Panigarola was a
Milanese, who spoke of a silent lumen that covered the Madonna and Child in his sermons given
in Bologna while a lettore there.229
Other sources for Fontana’s painting include Michelangelo, as the Virgin’s hand gesture is
based on Bonasone’s engraving of Michelangelo’s drawing of the Deposition as copied by Carracci
(Figs. 51-52), which Fontana could have known.230 She also depicts the Virgin as an older woman
here, an accurate detail which Paleotti had covered in his treatise: the Virgin must be beautiful, but
can still show her age, which would have been 62 at the time of her Assumption, because she would
have preserved her beauty due to her piety. This would make the image both truthful and decorous
at the same time.
In the previously mentioned version of this theme for the city of Imola (Fig. 60),231
Fontana had also made certain necessary Counter-Reformation adjustments: for example, the
Madonna is in a mandorla, recalling earlier Dutch painting, where the holy realm is separated from
the human one. The most elaborate Dutch example of this motif is in a work by Geertgen Tot Sint
Jans, The Glorification of Mary (1480-90, Fig. 65), in which the mandorla takes on an almost
cosmic golden glow, completely surrounding the Virgin and Child. Thus, in Fontana’s work, it is a
deliberate archaizing element relating to early Christian spirituality. She infuses the
too leccato (overly smooth and filled with too many trivial details), at least as far as Malvasia was concerned by the
seventeenth century, whereas in the late sixteenth century, Paleotti appreciated this mode of naturalism, when
compared to mannerist excess, as can be seen in the tone of the Discorso. 228 Bianchi, 196. 229 Ibid.
230 Cantaro, 166.
231 Ibid., 125. For figure 65 see Van Eyck to Bruegel, 1400-1550: Dutch and Flemish Painting in the Collection of the
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam: The Museum, 1994).
painting with divine light, adding a small cityscape at the bottom and music-making angels, always
related to the idea of harmony, but in this case denoting a spiritual one.
To conclude, Fontana’s Pieve di Cento Assumption was in perfect accord with the latest
debates regarding the iconography of the maniera devota. Yet she was versatile enough to create
other versions such as the Imola Assumption, which could accommodate concepts of popular piety
such as the Immaculate Conception. However, when called upon to create an altarpiece for
Paleotti’s chapel, her work was the epitome of the artefice cristiano (Fig. 55). It was no surprise
then, that Fontana, the first female painter of the Papal States, found herself in Rome at the
beginning of the Seicento, considering her status as pious painter and her relations with Paleotti,
who had spent the final years of his life there as well. Adding to her prestige was the patronage of
no less than two Bolognese popes, Clement VIII and Gregory XIII.
The Maniera Devota and Early Christian Archaeology
After a discussion of the iconic mode, a further investigation into the roots of this mode and
its connections to the maniera devota is necessary. The ideal maniera devota image is a
combination of a Byzantine icon and Bolognese naturalism. Paleotti was seeking visual imagery
that could harness the power of an icon to move the faithful, with the added verisimilitude of the
historical truth to inspire the average churchgoer. This type of image would not have lapsed into
what Paleotti would have seen as the hyperrealism of Caravaggio, which ultimately lacked the
strict decorum sought by the Counter-Reformation. The answer to his prayers came in the form of
early Christian archaeology, which provided the scientific proof he needed for the veracity of his
sermons. Women were to play an active role in this schema of pious imagery and icons, as both
artists and saintly models of Christian virtue.
During this period, the church was experiencing the birth of early Christian archaeology.
Paleotti was very interested in this field because he wanted to convince the faithful that events such
as the martyrdoms of the saints were true. In this campaign to prove the history of the church,
relics were to become the most sought-after and tangible evidence. Far from simply representing
an idea of medieval mysticism, they were meant to provide a kind of scientific assurance of a saint’s
existence. To encourage this favorable policy towards relics and rituals, Gregory XIII gave many
indulgences to altars with relics in Bolognese churches; in 1575 he conceded a total of 11, including
San Pietro. Cardinal Borromeo of Milan also encouraged Paleotti to use relics, so he added
processions to highlight these sacred objects; this created a combination of reliquary and ritual that
became a frequent performance of faith in the city, fostering civic and religious unity.
There were guides written about pilgrimage to relic sites, but in Bologna scholars were
writing more scientific tracts such as the Sindone and De ritu sepeliendi apud diverses nationes by
Aldrovandi. Both of these were written in response to Paleotti’s searching quest for the historical
accuracy of the Shroud of Turin, Veronica’s Veil, and the history of the early saints via the catacomb
remains. Cesare Baronio, the scholar selected to replace Sigonio in writing a history of the Church,
wrote about the history of the beginning of holy pilgrimage in Rome; Filippo Neri was also
interested in and encouraged tourism to the catacombs, to reconstruct the history of the church.
The catacombs were also important proof of the church’s Christian roots and biblical truths.
The Spanish Dominican Alfonso Ciaconio alerted Paleotti to the discovery of the Roman
catacombs of Saint Priscilla on Via Salaria in 1578, which Paleotti hastened to visit. That same
year, the pope had donated to Bologna the relics of Saint Vitale and Saint Agricola, the first bishops
of Bologna. These were transferred to the crypt in the church of San Pietro by Paleotti, as
previously mentioned, with a great procession. Finally, here was more evidence to counter the
Protestants’ disbelief in the Catholic cult of saints. Paleotti was especially influenced, though, by
the frescoes that represented the martyrdoms of the saints in the Jesuit-inspired program of the
church of the Hungarian college, Santo Stefano Rotondo. This was the model for his lost fresco
cycle in the crypt of San Pietro in Bologna. Paleotti especially appreciated the realism used in
depicting the scenes of martyrdom and the fact that each was accompanied by both text and image.
Paleotti was in close contact with the Order of the Society of Jesus and was very interested in the
church of the Jesuits, the Gesù, as another visual model of piety; in 1578 he even sent a draft of his
Discorso to the Jesuit, Francesco Palmio.
These concerns and artistic sources can best be seen in Paleotti’s crypt in San Pietro, with
its altar to Saints Vitale and Agricola as the culmination of his program. The following description
is based on Bianchi’s recreation. Originally, Paleotti’s altar contained only a sculptural crucifixion
group by Alfonso Lombardi. The two altarpieces were by Prospero Fontana and Bartolomeo
Passerotti: Prospero created the Madonna and Child with Saints Peter and Paul and Passerotti
created the Adoration of the Magi. The two altarpieces were opposite each other, combined with
images of both the male and female saints on the wall. Thus the program displays the historical
proof of the martyrs, who also represent the church itself, combined with religious narration.
Paleotti made sure to include both male and female saints in the crypt; the female saints were in
the chapel of the Madonna and the male saints were in the chapel of the Magi. Paleotti had written
that artists should always follow history and convention in creating the portraits of the saints.
However, Paleotti was always willing to consider new evidence, such as Ciaconio’s insistence that
he had found the real portrait of Saint Peter in the early Roman frescoes that had been recently
discovered in the Lateran Church.
The crypt has been described as a sacred theater of martyrdoms, whose frescos were
executed by Camillo Procaccini and Bartolomeo Cesi, inspired by the engravings of G.B. Cavalieri,
Ecclesia militantis triumphis (1585, Modena). These frescoes were meant to be examples for the
faithful, and each image of a saint was accompanied by his or her hagiography, verses from the
scripture, and information on each one’s feast days. This resulted in a combination of text and
imagery that remains a leitmotif of the city’s visual imagery, whether it be in pious imagery or
scientific illustration. Both Baronio and Molanus wrote a life of the
martyrs, while Paleotti had tried to verify all the historical details of their lives.
There was an urge for encyclopedic compendiums of knowledge across all fields, and
religion was no exception in Bologna; the crypt is a good example of this tendency. Parallel to
Aldrovandi’s cataloguing approach, Christian dogma was verified and categorized with the
precision of scientific descriptions, in order to help prove its truth and thus its relevance to the
faithful. Paleotti wanted to have a chapter in his Discorso specifically explaining how to represent
the saints and their icons. He wanted the images to be in color, so they would more efficiently
move the faithful to piety. This chapter would have been a type of illustrated encyclopedic
classification of the saints, akin to Aldrovandi’s work with samples of naturalia, and the Bolognese
interest in emblems. As seen in chapter 1, Aldrovandi added his own advice to Paleotti’s Discorso
on how to represent things. The crypt would have had a verbal description of each saint,
accompanied by his or her physical relics and an illustration. Knowledge was a weapon of the
church, and the plethora of maniera devota imagery was its ammunition.
Paleotti’s interest in early Christianity served two seemingly contradictory ends. On the one
hand, it infused his visual imagery with the power of the Byzantine icon, in all its mysticism and
aura. Yet, on the other, it simultaneously presented the Early Christian tradition as a type of
scientific proof that the stories of the saints and martyrs were objective truth, thus attempting to
give Christianity a solid scientific foundation. For this, he needed to add the naturalism so typical
of his native city and its artists, including and often especially, the women artists of the city.
Sacred and Profane: The Use or Abuse of Genre Details in Historical Religious Narratives
Having come to understand the reasons why Paleotti desired the iconic mode, and how Fontana
provided it, we can now better analyze the distinctive ways in which Fontana treated the second of
the three modes we are tracing here, the narrative mode. An important distinction to be made is
that normally the two modes are separated: Ringbom defines the early andachtsbild or
icon/contemplative image as separate from the narrative, as was traditionally done, yet here we
have the exact opposite. Paleotti wanted to combine icon and narrative, because he wanted both in
one image. Two techniques that Fontana employed to accomplish this maniera devota are an
avoidance of superfluous detail and the use of simultaneous narrative, both of which contribute to
the narrative clarity of the scene and thus the power of the sacred image.
Fontana’s avoidance of superfluous details was important to both her iconic and her
narrative paintings; in the latter, she only included the details that would be necessary to get the
Christian message across to its viewers, as Paleotti had required. An example of this method is her
previously mentioned early Annunciation (1579, Fig. 48). This very early painting on copper is a
good example of Fontana’s maniera devota. The painting combines naturalistic effects in the
figures of the angel and the Virgin Mary with just the few genre details that are pertinent to the
story, for example the knitting basket of the Virgin. This detail unites the sacred and profane, but
only for the purpose of displaying the virtuous and industrious character of the Virgin. Knitting or
weaving was considered the most pious work for female hands; thus it is not merely a trivializing
detail of a genre scene.
Fontana was especially effective at creating representations of biblical narratives that
include a direct confrontation between Christ and a female figure, such as the following three
examples: Christ with the Magdalene in the Noli Me Tangere, Christ and the Canaanite Woman,
and Christ and the Samaritan Woman. The Noli Me Tangere (1581; Fig. 66) has already been
discussed by Cantaro, Fortunati, and Murphy and has even shown up in some survey books. It is
normally taken to be based on Correggio’s model (1522-5; Fig. 67); however, it is more closely
aligned with Calvaert’s version (Fig. 68), which is probably originally based on Dürer’s woodcut
of this theme in his Small Passion, 1511 (Fig. 69). Once again, Fontana provides a Flemish
attention to the landscape and genre details such as the gardener’s hoe and hat. These are included
solely for the purpose of clarifying the narrative, and such details are not normally found in the
Italian versions. The artist also includes the scene where those who show up at the tomb find it
empty since Christ has risen, thus combining two moments of the story in one scene.
The technique of simultaneous narrative shows several scenes in one frame, so as to encode the
entire sacred history in one image to be read as text, where beholding the image becomes akin to
reading the Bible. The format is meant to be readable for all, creating a narrative clarity with only
the most essential details. In order to accomplish a maniera devota, Fontana’s work makes use of
techniques such as simultaneous narratives.
Christ and the Canaanite Woman (1577, Fig. 70) was probably commissioned by
Ferdinando de’ Medici; the architecture may have been done by Fontana’s father because he had
worked in Rome and would have known the Roman palazzi well. Fontana’s early work
demonstrates a great interest in landscape, especially in her religious paintings. The Canaanite
woman’s gesture of humility at Christ’s feet is a powerful expression of female piety by a devout
artist, as well as a convincing part of the narrative device.
Christ and the Samaritan Woman (1607; Fig. 71) is considered a late work from her Roman
period, since it includes the Aurelian walls in the background. The jug and well feature
prominently, and they function as key visual elements of narration, emblems to help tell the story.
Here the jug represents the kindness of the Samaritan woman to Christ, who had stopped and asked
for a drink of water from the well when he was thirsty. The figures are close to the foreground and
more monumental in size, displaying both a Roman influence and inspiration from the Carracci.
Fontana’s simple but direct gestures are different from her father’s more mannered figures. There
is a close intimacy between the two figures and a sense of humanity in their expressions. As usual
for Fontana, there is a virtuoso display of fabric in the costumes, especially the diaphanous veil of
the woman.
The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes (1583, Fig. 72) is now located in Santa Maria
della Pietà, detta della Misericordia. This painting was found at the altar of the patron church of
the Arte dei Barbieri and originally belonged to the Arte della Seta. It is one of her attempts at a
multi-figure, grand narrative composition. Notably, through a dramatic diagonal, the eye is drawn
to the small child in the lower foreground, a key figure in this story of miracles and Christian
charity. It also sets the stage for the seventeenth-century category of miracle paintings, set against
a background of Baroque theater and piety, which was to become an important part of the
Bolognese female artist’s repertoire and is discussed further in chapter four.
Religious-Historiated Portraiture
The purpose of this section is not to analyze Fontana’s many secular portraits in detail, but
to focus instead on her religious examples, since they represent a problem to be solved. Fontana
was famous for her ability in portraiture, as was common for women artists. However, she added
to this skill by utilizing portraits in her narratives, including religious ones; there is an interesting
contradiction to resolve on this issue. Ironically, Paleotti’s directives were that religious narratives
should never contain recognizable faces. He notes in his Addenda that the Virgin is usually
represented with the Christ child in her arms, alla greca, so as to never be confused with any other
portrait. Paleotti did not want a Madonna of the streets such as Caravaggio’s versions, which
breached all decorum, and were not “true” by his standards of scriptural truth. However, the
solution to this dilemma can be found in certain exceptions to this rule, in which the subject of
virtue entered into the picture (literally).
For example, in Fontana’s painting of the Apparition of the Madonna and Child to the Five
Saints (1601, Fig. 73), the women are related to the virtuous examples of the saints. The legacy of
this trend for women artists in the seventeenth century was that many of them came to specialize
in historiated portraits, where they could encode an entire narrative in a single portrait. One
example is Elisabetta Sirani’s portrait of Delilah, shown without any other details of the story
except for her shears in hand. Fontana’s Apparition of the Madonna, originally in the refectory of
San Michele in Bosco apparently contains more than meets the eye. Malvasia reports that St.
Barbara is a self-portrait; revealingly, she holds not a bible but a drawing book. Due to the rich
clothing and portrait-like appearance of the saints, it has been speculated that they represent the
noblewomen of Bologna. Fontana has also created the necessary separation between the heavenly
and earthly realms, in proper Counter-Reformation style. What of the recognizable portraits of
women as saints, something which Paleotti would most certainly not have condoned? He wrote
that portraits were only allowed if they represented an important role model, but he specifically
forbade recognizable portraits of contemporary people in the guise of saints or other religious
figures. Perhaps these were especially important or virtuous noblewomen of Bologna, and dressed
as saints they would reinforce the image of female virtue, a combination of the devotional quality
of a Byzantine icon with the naturalism of Flemish portraiture. Rather than a complete violation of
his rules, this seems to be an exception that Paleotti would have permitted.
In the painting of St. Francis di Paola Blessing the Child of Luisa of Savoy (1590, Fig. 74),
the saint blesses the child carried by a woman identified as Luisa of Savoy. Perhaps this painting
was created as an ex-voto for the safe delivery of the child-king Louis, as suggested by Cantaro,
and commissioned by someone in the service of the family. The figure of St Francis dominates the
space with his large stature while blessing the child. The deep diagonal of the architecture focuses
the viewer on the gesture of the woman, who is given pride of place in the foreground as she kneels
and presents her child to the saint.
An unusual altarpiece in Fontana’s oeuvre is the Gnetti Pala or Altarpiece, also known as
the Consecration to the Virgin and Child with Saints (1599, Figs. 75-76). This painting includes
four patrons, all of them children: two boys and two girls with their patron saints. This is a very
unusual depiction of a votive painting in that it shows only the children sharing the same sacred
space in the heavenly clouds as the saints. Children had been present in altarpieces before, but
normally their parents were included as well. This type of altarpiece would have taken on special
importance in relation to the Christian institutes of charitable reform for girls that proliferated in
Bologna in the sixteenth century.
A further category of religious portraiture includes those paintings that deal with apocryphal
biblical and historical heroines. Figures such as the virtuous Judith and the legendary Queen of
Sheba are characters that would have been familiar to their audience as examples of female role
models, and they were often part of the religious sermons of the day. Even Cleopatra was included
in this coterie, albeit as an example of the exotic other, the eastern queen in all of her finery; her
story was used to teach a moral lesson through her errors.
Fontana created several versions of Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1595, Figs. 7779).
These three paintings all deal with the trope of the virtuous woman, the virgin/virago heroine that
remained an important theme in the Papal States throughout the CounterReformation period, since
Judith is associated with the triumphant church. Fontana’s characterization does not present Judith
as the femme fatale but the pious heroine. This reading is based on her modest dress and lack of
emphasis on the bloody act, which would otherwise invoke the idea of the dangerous female virago
who can overcome the masculine, in a reversal of the “natural” roles where males are expected to
conquer. For example, there is something of the icon in this image (Fig. 77), which is also meant
to be a self-portrait. Much of the canvas is left in darkness, yet the focus is on the light reflecting
off Judith’s triumphant face. There is also an almost temporary flash of light that illuminates
Holofernes’s severed head from the shadows. The mood was created for the contemplation of a
woman’s righteous virtue.
Fontana was skillful in depicting all the luxuries of court environments. The Queen of Sheba
Visits King Solomon (1600, Fig. 80) is a true court-style painting containing all the details of fine
costumes and jewelry; however, there is a moralistic message to the tale. It is theorized that the
women in Sheba’s retinue are portraits of local noblewomen, that the Queen represents the Duchess
Eleonora Gonzaga of Mantua, and that Solomon is the Duke. As such, they would fall under the
rule of portraits that display virtuous women. There is evidence for the identification of Sheba as
Eleonora Gonzaga, since she possessed an onyx vase believed to have come from the Temple of
Solomon. In addition, poetic verses had been composed in her honor that compare her to Sheba.
The painting of Cleopatra (1604-14, Fig. 24) mentioned earlier also falls under this
category. The painting is in a somewhat archaizing mode, and its orientalism may be related to
Fontana’s period in Rome when she met the Persian ambassador to the Vatican. The portrait
emphasizes Cleopatra’s exotic appearance and costume, rather than her famously violent act of
suicide. Compare Fontana’s decorous version to a typical male artist’s version of the theme, such
as Guido Cagnacci’s (1658, Fig. 126) voyeuristic and sensual image of Cleopatra’s nude body.
Cagnacci, born in Rimini but considered part of the Bolognese school, presents Cleopatra in her
moment of abandon to the sleep of death. The figure of Cleopatra is turned into a luxurious display
of female flesh for male consumption. Whether or not Fontana’s work was influenced by meeting
the Persian ambassador, he also commissioned her to paint portraits of Pope Sixtus V and himself.
It seems that portraits of important individuals were acceptable at the papal court and were not
considered violations of Tridentine rules, at least in Rome.
Finally, we can begin to tie together some of the many strands of the maniera devota and
the mano donnesca. As mentioned earlier, Charles Dempsey discusses the maniera devota as
stemming from the paintings of Francesco Francia and Raphael. However, one must add to this
genealogy the influence of the Northern painters, from whom the style originates, such as Jan van
Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hans Memling, as well as Dürer. In addition, the examples
discussed so far have inserted women into this picture, a topic which continues in chapter 3 via an
analysis of imagery created both by and for women in the Christian houses of reform, beginning
with Fontana’s work. The three modes of painting, the iconic, the sacred narrative, and the religious
historiated portrait, which at times overlap with each other and with science, allowed Fontana to
satisfy the demands of Paleotti for reformed visual imagery. The contemplative air of the icon
merges with the veracity of a history painting using a northern sense of piety and local trends of
naturalism to arrive at the maniera devota. In his writings, Paleotti defends the use of images in
part to resurrect the mores of primitive Christianity in Rome. Since Dempsey cites the Bolognese
painter Francia as an example of the Italian maniera devota, one should note that Francia’s
altarpiece in the church of San Vitale and Agricola has been described as “icon-like.” Furthermore,
Fontana’s Assumption for San Pietro includes the actual relics of those early Christian saints that
are located behind the painting. This evidence supports the conclusion that the roots of the maniera
devota partly stemmed from the non-Italian elements of a Byzantine past, from the icon. However,
even the piety of a Byzantine icon subsequently needed to be translated into the idiom of a scientific
document using Bolognese naturalism, in order to move the faithful to worship.
The mano donnesca and the maniera devota: Women as Guardians of the Icon and the
Madonna di San Luca in Bologna
It is fitting that Paleotti should have entrusted a part of his visual campaign to Fontana,
since historically, it was women who were seen as the guardians of the icons and the iconic
tradition. It was Empress Theodora who reversed her husband Theodosius’s decisions to ban icons
in the eighth to ninth century. Also, since icons were often used for private devotion, and the
domestic area was a site of female influence, icons became associated with the feminine in
Byzantine culture. Although the very first icons were of the face of Christ, many of the other
surviving icons are of the Virgin Mary. They have spread Marian devotion since Byzantine times,
and it is the icon of Mary that is directly related to the image of the first artist: St. Luke painting
the Virgin. What could be more devout than the hand of the woman artist that takes up the brush
of St. Luke, as some of the self-portraits by our women artists show?
Bologna has long had a very special relationship with icons, because it is the home of the
miracle-working icon of the Madonna of St. Luke on the Monte della Guardia (Fig. 81). Legend
tells us that the first sanctuary on the Monte della Guardia in Bologna was created in 1087 when a
young girl named Angela went to the mountain to become a hermit. Female hermits were rare,
except for the Magdalene, and yet in Bologna one of the most famous shrines was started, as the
story goes, by a young girl of about sixteen. Following this, by 1160, legend continues, a pilgrim
from the eastern city of Constantinople brought the true icon of the Madonna to Bologna.273 This
was the icon of Byzantine tradition, said to be painted by the hand of St. Luke himself and then
installed on the Monte della Guardia. The installation was seen as a unification of civic, political,
and religious tradition, a highly symbolic performance of piety in the presence of the bishop of
Bologna. Of even more interest for this study of the role of women and the sacred in Bologna is
that the image was given into the care of female hermits, the eremetisse of Bologna, the
congregation of nuns that developed on the Monte after Angela’s death. This story was told by
Graziolo Accarisi in the fifteenth century and even the historian Sigonio repeated the main points
of the story, although he had doubted the authenticity of the icon. Ironically, today the Byzantine
origin of the icon has definitely been proven by using modern technology and stylistic attribution.
Miraculous icons would automatically have granted a certain status of piety to the city that
possessed one. The icon was from the city of the mythic eastern tradition, Constantinople, also
thought of as the second Rome and heir of early Christianity. In this genealogy, Bologna now
inserted itself as the third Rome; Bologna was already the second city of the Papal States by the
sixteenth century. In terms of prestige, the icon could also be related to the proceedings of the
Council of Ferrara in 1438, where the eastern patriarch sought protection from the Turks and the
faithful prayed to their icon for deliverance.
The story of the Madonna della Monte also provides evidence for the important rapport
between women, piety, and icons in the city. There is a printed account from 1539 which described
the site as existing as far back as 992 as a place for holy hermits, and relates that in later years even
noblewomen were said to be living there as eremitesse. In later centuries, women writers also got
involved in the story: in 1603, Lucrezia Marinelli wrote a play on the origin of the icon and named
the pilgrim who brought the icon back from Constantinople, Eutimio. It seems that the story of
icons and devotion is constantly interwoven with that of women in Bologna.
The icon had been a crucial part of the performance of piety since the time of early
Christianity, a tangible reminder of the intangible. The image was even seen as superior to the word
after the second Nicaean Council, which reinforced the power of images to propagate the faith.
These ideas were all in line with Paleotti’s Tridentine directives of visual reform. Pilgrimage
became one aspect of the icon’s function, and served to activate its power. In order to protect the
image for such activities, the icon itself was richly framed within an elaborate silver screen. Many
seventeenth-century woodcut prints attest to similar types of performances of faith that continued
in later recreations long after the departure of the Byzantine Council of 1438, due to the afterlife
of the icon. Pilgrimages included those coming to Bologna to visit the Monte, as well as the icon
itself traveling down into the city during sacred processions. These visits have left traces of group
pilgrimage to the site by confraternities, during which the faithful came bearing donations and ex-
votos in times of trouble. The pilgrimage up the Monte was arduous, and not everyone could make
the climb. Therefore, in lieu of the original, many ceramic icons reproducing the Monte image
were set up in places of borders, i.e., street corners, bridges, or sites marking dangerous conflicts.
In turn, these liminal spaces became sites of the manifestation of popular piety.
Conclusion
This chapter has analyzed the underpinnings of the maniera devota via an examination of
both theory and practice. After having analyzed Paleotti’s Discorso, it is clear that in addition to
Counter-Reformation dogma, his humanist background, and his interest in scientific and historical
studies, contributed greatly to his ideas on visual imagery. The chapter further elucidated the
connections between Paleotti’s theories and the practice of one woman artist, Lavinia Fontana,
through an in-depth look at specific examples of iconography in her religious work that exhibit the
modes of painting gleaned from the Discorso. Finally, Paleotti’s interest in early Christian
archaeology served as a catalyst for the consideration of the special relationship between women
artists and icons, a reflection of the ties that bind the feminine to the maniera devota. In addition,
it is important to note in this discussion of women and icons that many early icons from the sixth
century were actually done in embroidery, not just tempera, and were considered as precious as
those on panels despite the fact that the medium of embroidery was associated with women’s work.
The embroidered icon of the Virgin from Egypt, ca. 500’s AD (Fig. 82), is a perfect example of
this trend and was most likely woven by women. The most holy image in Christendom other than
the Sindone, the Veil of Veronica, was created by a woman on fabric. By the seventeenth century,
much of the embroidery based on religious paintings was produced in the conservatorio, or
Christian reform house for young girls, of which more will be said in the following chapter.
Chapter 3
Stitching for Virtue: Women’s Work in Embroidery for the Conservatori of Bologna
This chapter explores the social history of the conservatori, or Christian reform houses for
young girls, as well as the site-specific iconography of the visual imagery that developed therein,
in both painting and textiles, for a very particular audience. Patronage is another important aspect
covered in this chapter, since the iconography was often related to the patron, be it a Bolognese
noblewoman or wealthy silk merchants. This chapter ends with an analysis of the reception history
of these images and their makers and viewers. Bologna had a thriving industry of embroidery,
most of which was produced by women in convents and conservatori, who often copied famous
paintings of local artists, including women. This practice bears witness to the collaboration and
influence among mani donnesche that is found in various media within the sacred visual culture of
the city, including textiles. In particular, this chapter analyzes two works by Lavinia Fontana and
her seventeenth-century successor, Elisabetta Sirani, which were reproduced in embroidery for the
conservatorio sites.
The conservatori are important sites of religious imagery, often displaying the specific
iconography of Counter-Reformation models of virtue as adapted for the women living and
working there. The girls at the conservatori were taught that their virtue could be both maintained
and restored through their prayers and pious handiwork. The institutions varied in their founding
statutes regarding whom they could assist, with some accepting the daughters of prostitutes, but
others accepting only the children of nobility who had now fallen on hard times and were thus the
victims of “honorable” shame. This chapter focuses on two places of the latter category: the Opera
dei Poveri Vergognosi and the Baraccano. In such an environment, the act of embroidery itself
became a vehicle for meditation, in line with its function as a virtuous task for pious women’s
hands. The making of embroidery thus also recalled the meditative practices of the devotio
moderna as discussed in chapter 2, concepts closely involved in the reception and use of these
objects. However, the final product was often “lavoro di pregio per mani spreggiate”: precious
work by undervalued hands, due to the fact that the girls were often exploited in terms of the
financial value of their work. Finally, this undervaluing of textiles continues to the present day,
since textiles are not often given their due importance in art history. They are relegated to the field
of decorative arts, and as such, are not analyzed in terms of religious iconography and reception
studies. This chapter seeks to address that lacuna.
Conserving Virtue: Embroidery and the Social History of the Conservatori
The story of embroidery in Bologna is inseparable from the institution of the charitable
house of reform, the conservatorio. The very name of these institutions comes from the city’s need
to preserve the girls’ honor. A virtuous form of work, embroidery was considered the ideal way to
occupy idle young hands in a pious fashion, as well as a way for the girls to earn their keep, and
more importantly, a dowry. Often, the girls earned much more than that in terms of labor, but the
profits went to others. For example, the girls, or Putte di Santa Marta, specialized in punto pittura,
which is the technical term for a particular type of embroidery that copied famous paintings. Punto
pittura was very much in demand for church and conservatori décor, especially when it depicted
themes of women’s virtue. The conservatori utilized these didactic religious paintings created by
women for women in a continuous visual display of female virtue and decorum. The particular
iconography of the two examples of religious paintings by Fontana and Sirani that exist in
embroidered copies will be discussed below, but first a closer look at the institutions that displayed
them is necessary, as well as some brief background on the textile industry itself.
Although male artists were also involved in textile production, there was a preponderance
of female artists who are not as well known or studied and who greatly contributed to this art form.
This situation is especially due to the fact that embroidery was the occupation of choice for young
women cloistered in religious institutions. There were also professional associations of silk
weavers and spinners in Bologna, which did include males. The field apparently enjoyed a dramatic
expansion after the invention in the fifteenth century of the filatoio idraulico, or hydraulic spinner,
a water-powered machine that allowed production to go much faster. However, most of the
embroidery destined for the local liturgical and private devotional market was created by the girls
in these conservatori. In a display of gender-specific roles, the boys in similar institutions were
instead employed in different work, such as professional mourning. For this task, young boys were
employed from charitable institutions to accompany the public
funeral procession and weep for the departed. This maintained the traditional gender stereotypes
of women in the domestic interior, and males out in the public sphere, since mourning was a very
public task, while embroidery was meant for the cloistered female.
Recent research has uncovered evidence that in some orphanages the children (both boys
and girls) actually died within a short time of being admitted; apparently this was especially true
in Florence. In his case study comparing Florence and Bologna, Nicholas Terpstra discovered that
the children were in fact treated much better in Bologna than in Florence. The reason for this
discrepancy is that Bologna had a separate institution for the children of ex-upper classes, i.e.,
those who had once been part of the aristocratic class, but had fallen on hard times (the Opere dei
Povere Vergognosi, discussed below). Thus, it seems that they were kept in a slightly better
condition than the general orphanages for the children of the poor or those who had been
abandoned. In Florence, there was no such distinction and therefore the mortality rates were very
high for young girls working in these general orphanages. Why the discrepancy? Poverty had
become more of a concern in Counter-Reformation times in the Papal States, as it could lead to
other sins, especially, for young women, the dreaded sin of prostitution. However, in the Papal
State of Bologna, it appears that there was a better administered system of care for the poor and
disenfranchised, since the institutions were divided into different types and classes. Perhaps due
to Paleotti’s zealous approach to his pastoral care and tending of the flock, there was a much
stronger presence of the church in that system, as opposed to the system in a ducal city such as
Florence, which was much more subject instead to the whims of its Medici rulers.
The Opera dei Poveri Vergognosi was started as far back as 1495 and was dedicated to
St. Nicholas, patron of wayward girls, on the Feast of the Annunciation. He was known as the
protector of fallen women, in line with Paleotti’s declared interest in helping prostitutes recover
their honor and virtue. By 1554, another charitable group especially for women was annexed to the
Opere, the Putte di Santa Marta. The resulting institution was a conservatorio for the daughters of
Bolognese nobility who had lost their fortunes, but being of noble blood could not beg without
incurring shame and loss of face. The statutes for the Opera dei Poveri Vergognosi had been created
in 1507 and were written by Pope Julius II himself, who gave the first official permission for the
institution. The archives of the Opere inform us that only the “belle e vistose” or “beautiful and
showy ones” were taken in, since they were most at risk for the sin of prostitution due to their
beauty.292 Older women members were assigned the task of performing inspections of the girls, and
we are fortunate that a record of these survives from later periods. The girls’ honor was not
necessarily their own: it belonged to the city of Bologna and the city took great care in protecting
it. Other such institutions included Santa Croce and San Giuseppe, which specialized in taking in
the daughters of prostitutes.
Another one of these institutions in Bologna for the Christian reform of young girls for
which we have some extant documentation is the conservatorio at the Baraccano. This institution
was associated with the Madonna of the Baraccano, a miraculous image of the Virgin that was
located on a low wall that had once encircled that part of the city. According to the records, the
girls at the Baraccano were examined upon entry since they were being groomed for either
marriage or the nunnery, and they would have needed a dowry for either one. The dowry was
something they could accumulate with their own work; thus their appearance, health, good
behavior, and manual skills were all of great importance to the conservatorio. Women’s hands were
considered most appropriate for the delicate work of embroidery. However, as previously
mentioned, the girls were somewhat exploited in this system in terms of the amount of work that
they did relative to the profits they received. They were made to work extremely long 12-hour
days for which they were paid very little. The work itself, although crucial to the city’s economy,
was very tedious, with the owners of the fabric rights making quite a profit from the girls’ work.
The girls had very specific rules of behavior and dress: for example, they were to dress in blue,
like the Madonna – a visual manifestation of their piety in a textile. However, only after having
been there for six months were they allowed to don the blue clothes. It seems that it took that long
to ascertain their virtue. The women’s holy seclusion had another material manifestation in the
conservatorio, the spioncino. The spioncino was a small wooden panel with a tiny opening in the
doorway that allowed a person on the inside to see who was at the gate on the outside. It tells the
poignant story of the aspect of confinement in these women’s lives, since they were not permitted
to circulate on their own; only their embroidery destined for altars or ecclesiastical garments would
leave the institution.
There were four churches associated with collecting alms for the poor: San Pietro, San
Petronio, San Giovanni in Monte, and San Domenico. They each collected for their respective
neighborhoods and had the responsibility of dispersing the alms for those poor who requested
assistance. These requests took the form of little slips of paper (scriptarini) which were inserted
into a special box; each of the four churches had its own box. This box had been created to insure
that the assistance was dispersed in a discreet manner, in order to avoid embarrassment. The
requests were then verified to make certain that those asking for assistance were God-fearing and
“persone da bene.” In other words, this assistance was reserved for those who were once of the
genteel class but had fallen on hard times, since, as noted, these people could not beg. In the
illustration from Vecellio’s sixteenth-century text on costume, a poverty-stricken soul of this class
is shown with his identity covered up by a cloak and hood (Fig. 83) in order to avoid the shame of
being seen begging.
In general, only the daughters of ex-nobility and rich merchants who fell into financial or
personal ruin were considered honorable enough to obtain the Vergognosi’s assistance. There were
other institutions set up specifically for the lower classes of poor and sick, such as the Mendicanti,
but this study does not consider these sites. Interestingly, however, exceptions were made for
painters, sculptors, and surgeons, who were considered worthy of the Vergognosi charities by the
seventeenth century. In terms of prestige, painters were equal to surgeons and wealthy merchants
in the eyes of the church. On the other hand, merchants of bestiame (livestock) were considered
too lowly. By 1682 the category of poveri vergognosi had to be confirmed; those requesting
assistance had to be of the right status. By the 1700s, even some daughters of senators in dire
straits received assistance and dowries. In the eighteenth century, certain patrons, however,
actually began to specify that those requesting assistance not be of noble birth. This shift reflects
the changing attitudes toward nobility, labor, and poverty on the cusp of the enlightenment. In other
words, the laborer could now be noble and the unemployed nobleman could be a lazy ne’r-do-well
by comparison (however, the details of this shift are beyond the scope of the current discussion).
In order to truly understand the imagery created at and for the conservatori, one must analyze the
iconography more closely.
The Iconography of Women’s Virtue
The iconography of the religious imagery created for these sites was intrinsically related to
the function of these images in the conservatorio. Subjects such as Martha and Mary, St. Nicholas,
the Sewing Madonna, and other holy mother and child imagery had special resonance with the
audience of these images. In addition, the iconography was also indicative of convent reform, with
an emphasis on certain female saints as role models, an important part of the salvation of women’s
virtue. The Conservatorio of the Putte di Santa Marta needed religious imagery that would illustrate
the appropriate Christian behavior for the virgins living therein. Two of these images, Lavinia
Fontana’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (Fig. 84), and her seventeenth-century successor
Elisabetta Sirani’s Madonna and Child with St. Joseph and Teresa (Fig. 86), are the focus of this
section. Fontana’s painting was done for the chapel of the Putte di Santa Marta, and is miraculously
still in its original location. Sirani’s painting, done for the silk merchant Rizzardi, and translated
into embroidery by the putte with some modifications, is now in a private collection. Unfortunately,
many of the paintings for these institutions have been moved from their original locations due to
the tragic disruption of religious life caused by Napoleon’s suppression of the orders in the 1790s;
we will revisit this theme in regard to the students of Elisabetta Sirani in chapter 4. The importance
of these particular paintings for the study of women and the Counter-Reformation is that they were
recreated in embroidery by the virgins themselves. In the cases of the two examples by Fontana
and Sirani, there is an unbroken chain of female virtue that goes from the original painting by a
female artist, itself used as a role model for the girls, to the embroidered copy, made by the girls
themselves as the embodiment and material display of their virtue.
The biographer Malvasia confirms that Fontana’s painting of Christ in the House of Martha
and Mary was used as the model for the embroidered copy at Santa Marta. The painting is unique
as a document that carries traces of collaboration between generations of women and the
manifestation of their piety. The work is partly influenced by the style of her father, Prospero
Fontana, who may even have executed the figure of Christ and the architecture in the background,
leaving Lavinia the female figures. Lavinia goes beyond her father’s characterizations, however,
when it comes to the female figures. Martha and Mary are shown as two young girls, who may
have been intended as role models for the viewers of this painting. In Counter-Reformation
iconography, Martha and Mary respectively represent the active and contemplative life, a perfect
set of role models for young women in the conservatorio whose lives would have mirrored these
two spheres of devotion: pious work and pious thought.
These types of site-specific works for conserving women’s virtue continued to be made in
the seventeenth century, by and for women. Lavinia’s heir was the seventeenth-century Bolognese
painter Elisabetta Sirani. Sirani painted for only a short ten years or so, yet produced over 200
paintings, drawings and etchings. She was noted for her pious Madonnas in the style of Guido
Reni, with whom her father had worked, and she represents the Bolognese classicism of the early
modern period. Sirani was also famous for her school of painting, one of the first of its kind to be
attended by many young women of Bologna, whose work will be the subject of chapter 4. Sirani’s
work continued the rapport between the women of the city, visual imagery, and the convents and
houses of reform. She created a Madonna and Child with Saints Joseph and Teresa for the silk
merchant Gabriele Rizzardi.308 This painting was then also copied in embroidery (Figs. 85-87).309
However, rather than create a straight copy, the institution appropriated Sirani’s image with
a few relevant changes. St. Joseph was eliminated and St. Martha, who was the patron saint of the
reform institution, was substituted for St. Teresa. Thus the girls in the institution personalized the
artist’s painting, creating a site-specific version using their patron in an example of textual and
iconographic appropriation. St. Joseph was considered extraneous to their needs, and thus St.
Teresa, who had been given money to found her own convent and promoted a cult dedicated to
Joseph, would not have been as appropriate. St. Martha was considered a role model for the girls,
as was Mary Magdalene, and there are several paintings of St. Martha by other female artists of
Sirani’s school.310
A closer examination of the embroidered copy of Sirani’s painting of the Madonna and
Child with Saints Joseph and Teresa (Figs. 85-87) rewards us with further insights into the
hybridity of this artwork and its ties to the visual culture of the city. First, as previously mentioned,
the girls replaced St. Teresa with their patron, St. Martha, and removed St. Joseph,
painting. See also Babette Bohn, “Drawing Practices in Early Modern Bologna,” Master Drawings 42, no. 3 (2004):
207-36.
308 Jadranka Bentini, ed., Elisabetta Sirani: Pittrice eroina, 1638-1665 (Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 2004), 148;
Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, II, 397-8.
309 Arte e pietà, 219, cat. nos. 181,189; illustration received via email communication with Opera dei Poveri
Vergognosi.
310 For further discussion of paintings of the Magdalene, see below, chapter 4.
creating a more intimate sacra conversazione between the Madonna and Child and their patron
saint. Second, the framing device used to set off the scene is very similar to that used in the
frontispieces of book illustration. More specifically, the embroidery of Sirani’s painting is framed
in an almost identical fashion to the frontispiece for the Teatro dell’honore (Fig. 88) from Parma
by Veronica Fontana, one of Sirani’s students discussed further in chapter 5. The image is set within
a border created by the same type of decorative scroll device. Since the girls often worked from a
print copy of the original painting, this addition is a further level of appropriation. Their repetition
of this framing motif, originally found in books, in the medium of embroidery gives evidence of
the close connection between these different media during the seventeenth century (which will
become more apparent through the analysis of Veronica Fontana’s prints in chapter 5).
The demarcation here between frontispiece, painting, and embroidery was quite porous.
Thus the embroidered version created a real hybrid combining visual motifs drawn not only from
book illustration in the emblematic Bolognese tradition, but also from painting, print, and fabric.
The prints would have been convenient to work from because they were widely dispersed
throughout the seventeenth century. By using prints, the girls would not even have had to leave the
institution to view the original painting. It would usually have been impossible for them to see the
original, unless it happened to be in their own church, as is the case with Fontana’s Christ in the
House of Martha and Mary in the chapel of the conservatorio.
As proof of the skill of these women artists in textiles, several other embroideries after
famous artists are still extant in the collections of the conservatori. One of these is an embroidered
copy of Ludovico Carracci’s painting from San Michele in Bosco, the Miracle of Saint Benedict
(Fig. 90). From a comparison of the embroidery with an engraved version of the painting (Fig. 89),
it is evident that these girls were extremely skilled at replicating a painting, since they made a
perfect copy. The scene illustrated is St. Benedict removing a stone which a demon had made
immovable; as in this example, these girls often had to work from prints, as opposed to the original
painting. Other surviving examples include creation scenes from Genesis, on a liturgical vestment
or cope, perhaps influenced by Raphael’s designs for the Vatican Loggie. These examples were all
the work of the girls of the Opera dei Poveri Vergognosi who specialized in this very complex
process of translating pictorial compositions into embroidery
(Figs. 91-92).
In addition to the embroidered example of St. Martha, paintings of other saints related to
women’s virtue are often found in these institutes of reform, such as St. Nicholas of Bari. St.
Nicholas is associated with fallen women, as he is known for having procured a dowry for three
poor young girls so that they would not fall into the sin of prostitution. The iconography of St.
Nicholas became specifically elaborated in Bologna to focus on this part of his task. The saint is
often shown with the three gold balls that represent his gift, but in some of these Bolognese
examples, he is also shown with the three young ladies themselves. These figures may function as
stand-ins for the girls enrolled at the casa, as for example in the painting by Amico Aspertini of
this subject, St. Nicholas Provides the Virgins’ Dowries (Fig. 93). St. Nicholas is shown with three
lovely women to emphasize the beneficiaries of his assistance; the three gold balls are also
included. The saint and young women are all shown in the presence of the Madonna and Child,
who blesses all those present and approves St. Nicholas’s act of charity towards women’s virtue.
The Madonna del Cucito, or the Sewing Madonna is an additional iconographical theme of
paintings normally found in these reform institutions; certainly the girls would have identified with
this image. Of two important extant versions, the first is Andrea Sirani’s Sewing Madonna (Fig.
94) and the second is another version of the same subject by Guido Reni (Fig. 95). In these two
paintings, once again, young girls are present with the holy figure and the Madonna herself is
sewing, mirroring an activity that the girls would have been all too familiar with. These paintings
reinforce proper decorous behavior and would have been displayed in places where the young
women living in these institutions would certainly not fail to get the message. Thus the paintings
functioned similarly to the embroidered examples described above. The paintings fall into the
category of site-specific genre scenes with a didactic purpose geared toward saving women’s
virtue. These images are a combination of the sacred and the genre scene, in the pious tradition of
early Netherlandish works such as Robert Campin’s Merode
Triptych.
There are still extant examples of religious scenes which include the young girls of the
conservatori in the presence of the sacred personage. Among the specific iconography of the
conservatori, an archetypal example of mother and child images such as Fontana’s Birth of the
Virgin (1590; Fig. 96) demonstrates a special relationship between the young females of its
intended audience and its subject matter. The painting is now at Santa Trinita, having been moved
there at the time of Napoleon’s invasions, but it was originally created for San Biagio.
The Church of San Biagio has since been destroyed, but we know that there was a Christian school
for girls there. In such a context, the painting would have been particularly appropriate for its
audience. The Birth of the Virgin includes genre-like details, but it is more specifically geared
towards the young ladies of reform houses. For example, the artist depicts a little girl warming the
linens in which to swaddle the newborn by the fire. These images would have unique resonance to
the girls, whether they were to be spiritual or earthly mothers. The spiritual life of children was
also of great importance to Paleotti’s campaign, and visual imagery was key to the success of these
reforms. Other examples include the anonymous Madonna and Child with Saints and Putte, and
the Crucifixion with Putte, both at the Baraccano (Figs. 98-99). These images were meant for
prayer and contemplation and would have brought the girls directly into the pious mood of the
painting. Although the statutes for the Baraccano date back to the fifteenth century, these paintings
display a unique devout style with the direct participation of the putte, far into the seventeenth
century (Fig. 97).
Paleotti stressed the importance of both parents in the child’s education, but especially
exhorted women to become involved with the religious teaching of young girls held at churches
and conservatori. These schools for young women were taught by the laity, mostly by noblewomen
of the city. For example, Fontana’s Birth of the Virgin was commissioned by the Ghelli family, and
Dorotea Ghelli became a teacher at one of these conservatories.321 Paleotti had left specific
instructions for the education of children in religious dogma. His work was titled Ordine delle
scuole delle putte che vanno ad imperare la dottrine christiana le domeniche e feste nella citta di
Bologna, or “the order of the schools for girls who go to learn Christian doctrine on Sundays and
feast days in the city of Bologna.” For example, he encouraged a Jesuit Sunday school for children,
the Congregation of the Virgin of Christian Doctrine. Children were also to be given prizes for
remembering their prayers; these prizes would consist of small images of saints, thus reinforcing
the connection between word, image and prayer. An example of this type of image is Lavinia
Fontana’s Sts. Cecilia and Sebastian (Fig. 100), a small work on copper, an appropriate format for
the task. The religious teaching was to be dedicated to a different saint each month, such as Anna,
Catherine, or the Magdalene, assuring the girls of proper Christian behavioral models.
Paleotti specifically emphasized the importance of role models such as St. Anne, who is often
depicted teaching the Virgin how to read, especially in the context of the houses of reform, and
Pope Gregory XV gave indulgences to those who celebrated her feast. Both Sirani and Angela
Teresa Muratori created religious works of art for the Madonna di Galliera church, a site of
education for Christian girls that functioned as both a Sunday school and a meeting place for
conservatori officials. For the rector, Father Ghisilieri, Sirani painted a St. Anne with the Madonna
and Child for the chapel of the Oratory of San Filippo Neri in the Galliera church.
This painting was later copied by Lorenzo Tinti, one of Sirani’s colleagues, in an engraving.
Apparently, the school was dedicated to St. Francis de Sales. St. Francis was known as a saint who
championed women and preached to the noblewomen of France, and he was thus an appealing
figure to the circle of the devout and charitable ladies of Paleotti’s Bologna.
The choice of themes such as St. Anne teaching the Virgin how to read -- in other words,
women helping women -- was also influenced by new aspects of convent reform. In addition to
performing charitable work as a noblewoman by teaching in a conservatorio or becoming a nun,
there was a third state for women in which they could assist the religious campaign for young
women’s virtue, that of the unenclosed nuns or tertiaries. These women lived in lay communities
and performed charitable works. Zarri also mentions a fourth state, that of the stayat-home virgin.
These were young girls who dedicated their lives to service and prayer but neither married nor
entered the convent and continued to live with their families. After Gabriele, his successor Alfonso
Paleotti agreed with these other options for young girls.328 The category of the stay-at-home virgin
became simply another manifestation of the conservation of women’s virtue for the city’s well-
being and posterity, in tandem with the images of saintly females displayed in the conservatori. By
the seventeenth century, part of Tridentine reform also included new rules for girls entering the
convent. The most important of these were to inquire if they had a true vocation, to establish a
minimum age for entering the convent, and to mandate the presence of the bishop at the ceremony.
The goal of these reforms was to establish a true piety in the convents, and, as will be demonstrated,
embroidery played an important part in this endeavor.
Pious Patrons and the Iconography of the Silk Trade
In addition to the considerations of intended audience of these works, the history of these
institutions and the imagery produced by their occupants is also closely tied to the story of their
patronage. The donors were mostly wealthy silk merchants and noblemen and women involved in
the salvation of these girls’ virtue. The dowry, which the girls could earn with their labor, was an
essential part of this salvation operation, since it could assure that these young women entered one
of the two states necessary for the preservation of honor: i.e., marriage or the convent. The patrons
helped the conservatori acquire the necessary funds for the girls’ dowries, and in turn, often
included special provisions for the funds’ disbursement. Thus the images the patrons commissioned
were directly linked to this particular function regarding the girls’ honor, as discussed above. Many
patrons left money in their wills for the Opere del Poveri Vergognosi and the Putte of Santa Marta.
For example, the Negri family left 400 lira for girls who were to marry and left 800 lira for those
wishing to enter the nunnery. Apparently some patrons preferred to leave behind more money for
the girls to take the veil of the convent; perhaps it was more desirable for the young women to
become brides of Christ rather than earthly brides. An important consideration in this choice was
that the marriage dowry could return to the conservatorio if the girl died childless, whereas if she
joined the convent, it would remain there. Some funds came from Rome, and in 1578 Pope Gregory
XIII conceded a special indulgence to those who gave to the Vergognosi and the orphanages, which
encouraged communal piety and economic assistance to those less fortunate (Fig. 101). Records
indicate that in 1586 Cardinal Salviati, the pontifical legate in Bologna, assigned 100 corbe
(barrels) of wine to the Vergognosi and 20 carra (carts) of wood for the Putte.332 The company
operated with 12 governors “of good fame and condition and honest riches” in order to ensure
proper accounting of the charitable funds.
Special attention was paid to the poverty of women, and female patrons were very active
in charitable donations to the conservatori. According to the records, many of the donations were
dedicated to charities for women since women’s honor and virtue was considered by the church to
be in more constant peril and more at risk for corruption than that of males. According to the
statistics, 17 out of 57 donors addressed their gifts directly to the fanciulle. For example, Virginia
Cospi donated a mulino and any revenues that the mill generated to the Putte of Santa Croce.
Girolamo Negri (whose family was mentioned above) stipulated in 1616 that after his demise his
money was to be invested for 20 years, the proceeds of which were to be specifically set aside to
provide dowries for 40 girls from the parish of San Tommaso del Mercato to be able to join the
Putte; controls were set in place to make certain that Negri’s inheritance went to its destined targets.
Without the honor of their virgins intact, the honor of the city would also suffer, and the city took
great pains to avoid this.
The city’s sites of pious patronage by the women of Bologna often intersected. Originally,
the Opera dei Poveri Vergognosi met in the Church of San Domenico, and they later moved to the
Church of Santa Maria di Galliera. This shift is of interest, since several of the religious works
done by Sirani and her students were commissioned for Sta. Maria. In addition, the musical
oratorios of Angela Teresa Muratori (one of Sirani’s students) were composed for that same church
and, together with the paintings that will be discussed in chapter 4, reinforce the ties between these
women artists and the charitable organizations of Christian reform for young women. Ginevra
Sampieri left a painting of the Madonna with St. Joseph to the
Baraccano. Many of these paintings had a new emphasis on including children as donors, even at
times presenting children without their parents. For example, Fontana’s Gnetti altarpiece,
discussed previously, was created for Santa Maria dei Servi and contained portraits of the four
Gnetti children with their patron saints but without their parents (Fig. 75). A school for Christian
doctrine for children was held at Santa Maria dei Servi, which may partially explain the reasons
for the unconventional image. The altarpiece would have taken on new significance in such a
context, where the children could play an important role, depicted in direct contact with the saints,
as the patrons would have wished.
The silk trade and its wealthy merchant patrons were also intimately embroiled with the
history of institutions for women, since the merchants depended heavily on these girls for their
industry. Even Bologna’s other institutions for the poor, such as St. Ursula and San Gregorio, which
were located outside the city walls along the southwest, were conveniently near the silk merchants.
The silk industry was among the most important of the arte guilds. It was such a necessary part of
the economy of the city that important and well-attended fairs were held in Bologna regularly, as
we can see in Mitelli’s seventeenth-century etching of the silk market or Mercato del Follicello
(Fig. 102). This image depicts the main piazza filled with merchants and crammed with all manner
of stalls that display wares dealing with the silk industry. In some ways due to the silk trade, one
could say that “honore” could be bought and virtue could be embroidered.
Most of the liturgical vestments and decor in use throughout the city were embroidered by
women in the conservatori and convents. One example is the Baldacchino for the Madonna of San
Luca, the important miracle-working icon of Bologna and one of the city’s most revered religious
treasures, said to be woven by the girls at Santa Marta. This would have been a very prestigious
commission, entrusted only to the mani devote of these pious girls. Weaving was the highest-
paying job, and the more robust girls were put on the loom. From the sixteenth century on, veils,
or pizzi, were also an important part of the girls’ work, as these embroidered objects were very
expensive. The embroidery and silk were sold at a very good price, as mentioned earlier, but the
workers kept very little of this themselves, except, hopefully, as a dowry.
Certain merchants received very profitable monopolies on the girls’ labor. One man, the
silk merchant Gabriele Rizzardi, acquired the rights to the work of 90 girls at the Baraccano for a
full ten years. Most certainly, Rizzardi would have commissioned some religious work of art to
memorialize his investment and to expiate any sins from the profitability of his enterprise, as was
common for the merchant class. If one considers a similar case, Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel,
Scrovegni was trying to expiate his family’s sin of usury by commissioning Giotto’s frescoes.
Apparently, Rizzardi did the same thing: according to the records, he commissioned the original
painting from Sirani, the Holy Family with St. Teresa that the embroidery is based on, as well as,
most probably, the embroidered version in silk. This subject would be a logical choice; what more
pious gift could a silk merchant give, than to commission images with the power to help save the
virtue of the very same young girls who worked in the conservatorio creating these artworks? In
fact, Fontana’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary was found in the chapel of
Saint Martha, reinforcing the message of women’s virtue.
Not all merchants were as capitalistic as Rizzardi. One Bonifacio dalle Balle created a house
of reform specifically to help the daughters of prostitutes. There is an anonymous painting that
depicts dalle Balle kneeling in prayer surrounded by the putte whose virtue he had helped save
(Fig. 103). For this endeavor, he utilized his share of family wealth that had been accumulated,
ironically, through the silk trade. Dalle Balle’s name even comes from his family’s industry, i.e.
the balls of silk used in the Arte emblem, an example of which is in Mitelli’s illustration of trades
(Fig. 104a). He had a special devotion to St. Francis, which comes as no surprise if we realize that
the Franciscans were the most devoted to both the Marian cult and to helping the poor, thus closely
related to women’s poverty. Fontana’s paintings of the saint, in all his nature theism, may be
considered as a completion of the link between St. Francis and the women of the city. These
commissions also continued the tradition of expiating merchant guilt for acquiring wealth through
religious commissions. In this case, it was not dalle Balle’s own, but instead his family’s guilt,
because they continued to operate the family business.
The Embroidery and the Ecstasy: The Production and Reception of Embroidery as a
Performance of Piety
For the last piece of the puzzle, having uncovered the social history of these institutions as
sites of religious imagery, and analyzed their iconography and patronage, this section analyzes the
reception of the embroidered imagery, including its use as a meditative tool in the daily rituals of
the mani donnesche of the city. One must consider the production of these embroideries and their
reception and use as part of a performance of piety, both in the making and in the final product.
The writings of nuns from the period provide written evidence for these practices. The post-
Tridentine climate had required an examination of convent life, and subsequently, measures and
reforms were enacted to correct certain problems that had arisen during the years, such as illiteracy
and boredom. The communal pious work of embroidery, choral practice, and private prayer were
just some of the practices that Trent encouraged in order to rectify these issues. These practices, in
turn, resulted in specific sites, both actual and virtual, that required rituals, images, and
iconography tailored to their use. One of the most important of these activities was embroidery and
connecting it to the stanza dell’anima, or the room of the soul, which resulted in visions of the
sacred and a type of virtual pilgrimage.
It should be noted, however, that in Italy this practice did not in any way diminish the importance
of the liturgical devotions or attendance at mass, a diminishing that has been claimed by some
modern scholars to have occurred in the North. According to Harbison, there was a problematic
relationship between the image and private devotion; he states that the devotio moderna did not
encourage the visual arts. However, quite the opposite was true in Bologna in the sixteenth century
thanks to Paleotti’s reforms. Spiritual visions and meditation during the making of embroidery was
merely an additional mode of prayer, stemming from the earlier practices of the devotio moderna.
Boredom and illiteracy were seen as particularly dangerous for the nuns. Boredom could
be relieved with work such as embroidery and singing. Increasing literacy among the nuns was
achieved through communal prayer, which also encouraged piety. The fact that many novice nuns
were illiterate prohibited them from participating in the choral exercises of the mass; this was seen
as a situation in need of remedy. The goal was to have all members of the convent active in
communal prayer, which would encourage a virtuous piety and productive collaboration. The
members of the convent were also to be trained to become teachers of song and embroidery, since
these were seen as virtuous and pious activities for nuns, or ways to keep devoted hands occupied
in pious tasks. In addition to communal work, they practiced the technique of mental oration and
private meditation. These two techniques are reminiscent of sentiments related to the devotio
moderna and were more popular in the North, although echoes of this practice persisted in Italy in
conservatori and convents where the maniera devota was practiced not only in visual imagery but
also in daily life.
Following these reforms in the sixteenth century, special rooms were set up for the
communal work of embroidery for those in the convents and conservatori; in the end, this practice
became highly symbolic. In Counter-Reformation imagery, the stanza del lavoro, or the room of
work, is also seen as the stanza dell’anima, or the room of the soul. This directly correlates to the
practice of Marian devotion in the devotio moderna, which speaks of the room of the heart, since
the heart is also tied to the soul, for example, as in a reading of Memling’s Nieuwenhove Diptych.
The patron, Maartin van Nieuwenhove, is rewarded for his piety with a vision of the Madonna in
his own home, which stands in for his heart and soul. The image of a room for Mary implies a
space for Mary housed in one’s own heart, a place that is pure and filled with pious thoughts, a
worthy abode for the Virgin herself; thus one is asked to clear out one’s heart to make room for the
Virgin. Mystical writings speak of both the heart and soul as places of purity, to be decorated with
the flowers of piety in preparation for being occupied by the Virgin. This imagery can also be
associated with the devices of other meditative practices such as memory theater, the devotio
moderna, and the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. In addition to an apparition, or visit
from a sacred personage, such an exercise would also include picturing oneself in the scene of a
sacred narrative in the presence of the Virgin or Christ. One would engage in this exercise while
actually still in a room in which pious work is being done, be it religious embroidery, choral song,
or meditation upon the Virgin Mary or the mysteries of Christ’s passion.
Many of the convents and conservatori in Bologna in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries included schools for crafts such as painting and music. These schools produced all
manner of visual imagery including sculpture and textiles. Artists such as the Florentine nun
Caterina de’ Ricci were known for having hands of exceptional ability; the work of these virtuous
artists was greatly sought after outside of the convent. In addition to coming from local churches
and patrons, commissions for the nuns’ work often came from noble courts such as the Este. One
would have needed talented hands indeed to create some of these complex embroideries in which
entire paintings were perfectly copied in wool and silk in all their painterly details. There are
several talented nun artists from this period whose names or work survives, such as the fifteenth
century Clarissan nun from Bologna, Caterina Vigri, and Jacopo Tintoretto’s two daughters, who
apparently worked for years on the embroidered altarpiece for the Convent of St. Anna in Venice.
Vigri created small illustrations for her breviary that included the image of Christ and the Christ
child, as well as some self-portraits. Her work contains an emphasis on the face of Christ that has
been related to the Veronica, with which a female audience would have had a special rapport as the
beloved divine bridegroom, thus giving the image particular potency in the convent. However,
Vigri chose to depict the face of Christ in three-quarter view, as opposed to the fully frontal image.
Vigri had also worked in Ferrara before becoming head of the Corpus Domini convent in Bologna,
and it seems that the city of Ferrara had links with the devotio moderna.359 This background may
have influenced her choice of combining the potency of the icon in terms of its simplistic features,
plus the more realistic view of the portrait, a combination of modes that Paleotti would require by
the CounterReformation period. These personalized images would be ideal compliments to work
and prayer, defined above all by their use.
In the stanza del lavoro, a direct relationship developed between work and prayer in the
task of embroidery. Working together encouraged spiritual meditation and productive labor efforts,
an antidote to ozio (boredom). At the convent of Santa Caterina di Soncino, sources write in 1601
that all the nuns would retire to the same room to work with “l’ago overo filare” (“the needle or to
spool wool”); there is even a record of a nun, Diomira del Verbo, from the convent of Fanano, who
supposedly went into religious ecstasy while working on the loom. She stated that “questo lavoro
per la sua belleza e nobilita levava il mio spirito a contemplare le bellezze del mio dio” (“This
work, with its beauty and nobility, raised up my spirit to contemplate the beauties of my God”). It
was thought at the time that spiritual readings ennobled manual labor, which, in the case of
embroidery, was especially true, since it was considered a very refined type of work. Thus an
inherent connection was created between embroidery and spiritual
meditation.
The nun-writer Arcangela Tarabotti, located in the convent of St. Anna in Venice, left a
detailed personal record of life in the convents. In Tarabotti’s book Paradiso monacale (the
Paradise of Nuns, 1643), she discusses embroidery as it relates to spiritual meditation and color;
she imagines “a beautiful work of embroidery in which one admires the turquoise of celestial love,
the purple of ardent affections, the green of hope, the white of pure intentions, and the gold of the
Immacolata.” Apparently the colors of embroidery had great spiritual symbolism, especially after
Trent. The Council of Trent established the importance of textiles for liturgical use and the aspect
of color was highly symbolic, depending on the time of year and/or event.
The sumptuousness of the textile was meant to evoke heavenly splendors on earth in order to
transport the faithful. Ornamental designs, such as flowers, were taken directly from nature, as
one would expect from the Bolognese tradition of naturalism. Designs often combined different
materials for their light effects. The city of Bologna had a very strong protectionist attitude towards
its textile sector, indicating the great importance of the medium to the city in both a civic and
religious sense. Bologna’s shrine to the Madonna of the Monte, discussed in chapter 2, is even said
to have contained a piece of the cloak of the Madonna itself. The work of embroidery thus became
the catalyst for a type of devoto meditation also, at times, associated with a religious ecstasy that
emerges from the constant relationship between work and prayer. Regarding embroidery and
prayer, more specifically, the link with the devotio moderna becomes more explicit if we examine
the words of Gertrude ter Venne, part of the Sisterhood of Gerard Groote, who states that: “I never
knew whether I was more in ecstasy at prayer or at the loom.”
Mental oration was practiced by these women both in private and communally. The nuns
used a particular method in which one imagined participating in a religious scene while reflecting
on the sacred mysteries, thus involving both one’s heart and mind. This practice was greatly aided
by the provision of a small personal altar in every private room or cell. We may recall that Paleotti
had recommended such a personal altar in his Discorso, calling forth echoes of the devotio
moderna. Most importantly, all of these altars would have needed specific imagery. This space
may have been known as the stanza dei santini, or room of the saints, and examples were often
found in the homes of noble families. Paleotti himself had required, above all, a crucifix over the
altar for prayer, as mentioned earlier. Using the faculty of sight was necessary for the anima devota,
in order to impress pious images upon the fantasy of the mind, in the manner of Alberti’s
explanation of the reception of images in the function of sight. The room could then become a type
of diorama of the concept of the biblia pauperum, resulting in unique sites for religious imagery.
Paleotti had attempted this with his crypt of martyrs, discussed in chapter 2. Although some of
these practices were already in use in Rome by the thirteenth century, they continued to the
eighteenth century and beyond. The nun Caterina de’ Ricci writes in 1542 that there was a small
crucifix in her room upon which she meditated, that at times came to life during her prayers.
Paleotti would certainly have been pleased with the intensity of her devotion.
The devota image then, was an active icon, beyond the andachtsbild, capable of inducing
the state of virtual pilgrimage. During meditation the image comes alive and becomes internalized
in the soul by the faithful. The religious image can also inspire sacred oratory, as we will see with
one of Sirani’s students in the following chapter. During the recitation of chorales in Latin, the
empty spaces in the phrasing could be filled in by the nuns with private oration. We have evidence
of this type of virtual pilgrimage from many nuns’ writings, for example Maria Muratori, a
seventeenth-century Benedictine nun from Bologna. Muratori describes her mental oration as a
pilgrimage of the scenes from the passion of Christ. There are also extant texts that were written to
address specifically prayer and meditation for women. As late as 1609, St. Francis de Sales wrote
the Introduction to the Vita Devota, in which he describes the six interior actions. This text was
meant to aid the nuns in seeking a better way to approach the liturgy of the mass:
1. Present yourself and ask God’s pardon
2. Meditate on the life of Christ
3. Reflect on Christ’s words to live and die with the faith
4. Apply your heart to the sacrifice and passion of Christ
5. Contemplate the one thousand desires to unite with Christ
6. Thank Christ for his sacrifice
Meditation then, in tandem with active visual imagery and rituals of pious work, became
the key to creating a room in one’s soul as a worthy domicile for Christ and Mary, conflating both
the soul and heart into a single motif together with the stanza del lavoro. These practices
culminated in episodes of spiritual pilgrimage and ecstasy, with many of the nuns having mystical
visions. The visions, in turn, often found their way into the visual imagery of the convent. For
example, Caterina de’ Ricci had a Face of Christ and a piece of silk with the Virgin Mary’s image,
which were later copied for engraving and popular prints. In 1561, de’ Ricci recommends to
“always keep your heart full of Christ, keeping ornaments of peace and quiet and finding these real
ornaments in your heart, and Christ will come live there.” Eventually, the room of the soul became
part of canonical practice, in terms of church-sanctioned imagery that appropriated the visual topos
of the heart as pious domicile for the sacred.
A final powerful symbol was the image of the heart of Christ with the wounds of the cross.
In the Jesuit Tommaso Auriemma’s work, The Room of the Soul in the Wounds of Christ, published
in Venice in 1673, one of the meditations required the faithful to imagine entering into Christ’s
wounds to feel his pain; in 1541, Caterina de’ Ricci writes that, one day, after taking communion,
she had a vision of Christ taking out her heart and replacing it with his own instead. Thus many of
the smaller embroideries and ex-votos of the period or later show a heart with wounds and/or
pierced by swords. What greater image of the performance of piety and charity could there be than
that of the bleeding heart of Christ, literally inserted into the chest of a pious nun, as a reward for
her meditations?
Conclusion: Expressions of Female Sanctity
The great religious crisis of the sixteenth century, ironically, had allowed women a chance
for greater participation in the Catholic world, especially in Bologna. Convents and conservatori
became talismans against evil and sacred spaces of miracles, but they were simultaneously real
places; all of these roles were reflected in their visual imagery and rituals. By that time, an increase
in literacy for nuns coincided with an increase in interest in hagiography and the use of saints’
relics to verify the details of their lives and existence. There was ample evidence of this already,
in Paleotti’s interest in early Christian archaeology as an integral part of his reform campaign, as
shown in chapter 2. As the importance of music in convents and the mass grew, opportunities
opened up for both nuns and laywomen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; they could
contribute to the church campaign as artists and teachers. In addition, noblewomen could also be
heavily involved in religious education for young girls, particularly as patrons of didactic imagery.
As discussed in this chapter, there was an expansion of charitable organizations for the protection
of young women’s honor in the sixteenth century. These institutions, patronized by the
noblewomen of the city, were in line with the reform efforts of the Council of Trent. In Bologna,
institutions like the Conservatorio of the Putte and the Baraccano were created to shelter women
from the risk of sin, specifically the loss of honor that could only afflict women. The silk industry
of Bologna, in turn, employed large numbers of these young putte in creating embroidered objects
of beauty and devotion, often with a didactic purpose. These virgins had an enormous impact on
the sanctity of the city, since women’s honor was now inherently tied to the virtue of their city.
This was also a period of the spread of popular piety (as an addition to the attendance at
mass), which was echoed in the ideas of the devotio moderna and virtual pilgrimage, both in and
out of the convents. A well-known example of this is the sanctuary at Monte Varallo, a type of
virtual pilgrimage to Jerusalem that was actually in the north of Italy. The site is a threedimensional
stage set of the stories of the passion of Christ for pilgrims to experience or read pictorially, since
many couldn’t read the text of the Bible. The stories were depicted as realistically as possible in
polychrome sculpture. At the same time, the Monte was a real place for the faithful to visit so that
their meditations on the passion, for example, could be connected to everyday tactile experience.
In the conservatorio and convents, communal tasks encouraged a similar type of spiritual
meditation where interior visions of piety interacted with the sacred surroundings. Private
meditation was, as discussed, also prevalent in the sixteenth and into the seventeenth century. It
helped nuns reach a “devoto” sense of spirituality in which many experienced visions as a result
of focused prayer. At times even virginity could be conceived of in a virtual sense, to be recovered
through intense prayer, Christian good works, and above all, a focus on the right images and role
models.
Women’s work, both literally and figuratively, offered new models of sanctity, such as the
image of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary in which Martha represents the active and Mary
the contemplative life. In addition, with the expansion of women’s activities within the church,
more importance was given to Marian themes, as we have seen in chapter 2. Together with Christ
in the House of Martha and Mary, these paintings served as virtuous role models for young
Christian women. In other words, the conservatori were places where women could take care of
other women, weaving a sacred tapestry of feminine virtue, with the assistance of a specific visual
imaginaire of their own. The next chapter continues to explore these themes as they unfolded in
Bologna in the century after Trent, when female artists carried on the legacies of piety and visual
display begun by their sixteenth-century predecessors.
Chapter 4
Felsina Pittrice: Elisabetta Sirani, Her Students and Circle, and the Maniera Devota
It is ironic but fitting that Carlo Cesare Malvasia titled his lives of the artists Felsina pittrice,
considering the large number of active women artists working in Bologna in the seventeenth
century. Felsina was the Etruscan name for Bologna and the term is feminine in gender, thus
appropriate for a city of women artists. The tradition that linked women with piety and visual
imagery in the seventeenth century continued to flourish in Bologna, through the heirs of Lavinia
Fontana and the students and colleagues of Elisabetta Sirani. The discussion begins with the
maestra Sirani and her modes of religious paintings, which follow those of Fontana and Paleotti as
discussed in chapter 2, then adds the category of miracle paintings. This chapter also looks at
representations of virtuous (and not) women from history, as well as the intersection of theater and
religion against the backdrop of the noblewomen patrons of the city. It then analyzes the work of
a selection of Sirani’s “students” in an attempt to create an artistic genealogy for the mani
donnesche. Although normally subsumed under the category of students, some were actually
precursors, while others lived too late to have been direct students, and two others are her sisters
Anna and Barbara Sirani. The seventeenth-century sources Malvasia and Masini mention fewer
names, but eighteenth-century primary sources such as Marcello Oretti and Luigi Crespi mention
far greater numbers; Crespi mentions up to 28 women artists working in Bologna in the seventeenth
century. Of the total mentioned by these writers, some remain only names, with most of their work
still lost or missing. Therefore, this study does not intend to continue down the path of simply
repeating the long list of names without extant paintings attached, since this information has
already been reported in previous sources; rather, it focuses on what this author considers a more
fruitful path, that of analyzing the concrete examples of the surviving works and what they can tell
us about women’s production in early modern Bologna.380 In addition to Sirani’s two sisters, four
of the listed women have left enough extant work that one can attempt a comparative visual
analysis of the iconographic themes and stylistic influences among them; other works still remain
to be found, located, or attributed.381 One of these four, the engraver Veronica Fontana, will be the
subject of chapter 5, but this chapter will explore the works of the other three painters: Antonia
Pinelli, Ginevra Cantofoli, and Angela Teresa Muratori, as well as Barbara and Anna Maria Sirani.
Most of their works continued the maniera devota into the next generations of the city’s mano
donnesca, and one even expanded into other media such as fresco and music.
The mystery of the disappearance of Sirani’s students from history can be explained by
various factors. The most important reason is Napoleon’s suppression of the convents in Bologna
in 1799.382 This is especially relevant since many of these women’s paintings dealt with religious
Sardegna &C. &C.. (Bologna: Marco Pagliarini, 1769); Crespi’s total of 23 goes up to 26 if one adds embroiderers,
more than other writers; Masini lists far fewer in his 1666 work, but adds to the number for his 1690 edition;
Antonio Masini, Bologna perlustrata, Edizione completamante riveduta e accresciuta dall’autore (Bologna: L’erede
di Vittorio Benacci, 1666); However, Oretti gives the highest total of 26 painters, sculptors and graphic artists, plus
six enbroiderers for a grand total of 33; Marcello Oretti, Notizie de’ professori del disegno, cioe pittori, scultori et
architetti bolognesi e de’ forestieri di sua scuola, 1760-1780, ms. B 123-135, IV, Biblioteca Comunale
dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna. Microfilm. Bohn gives a total of 22 in her 2002 article, but later amends this number to
23 in her most recent work, based on the Morselli inventories (email communication).
380 See Greer for such a list of many lost works, see Modesti for a more reliable and detailed account of
primary sources, and see Bohn’s article “Female Self-Portraiture in Early Modern Bologna,” Renaissance Studies
18, no. 2 (2004): 239-86, in which she mentions Sirani’s students as well.
381 Thanks to the recent critical archival research done by Anna Maria degli Angeli, Ilaria Bianchi, Stefania
Biancani, Massimo Pulini, Vera Fortunati (as prolific editor and mentor to a generation of students at the University
of Bologna who have taken on her mantle to advance the knowledge of these women artists through successful
research and publications), Adelina Modesti, Babette Bohn, Stefania Sabbatini and others, we are slowly
reconstructing the lives and works of these female artists so that they can once more enjoy the recognition they
deserve, after languishing for centuries in the dust. See bibliography for full references to these authors.
382 See Daniela Camurri, L'arte perduta: le requisizioni di opere d'arte a Bologna in età napoleonica (1796-
1815) (Bologna: Minerva, 2003) for further discussion on the Napoleonic suppression.
subjects, and thus were to be found in convents and churches that were dismantled, converted into
barracks, or suffered similar atrocious fates. This treatment dispersed and destroyed, often forever,
these precious artifacts and their archives. This upheaval has complicated the recovery and
reinstatement of these women and their work. Patron and commission information is often missing;
moreover, the paintings themselves, except for a few cases, have been moved from their original
locations, and without archival documentation it is no longer possible to recover their original sites
and patrons.
The Maestra and the Modes of Religious Painting of the Maniera Devota: Sacred Narratives,
Miracle-Working Icons, Historiated Portraits, and Female Role Models
Elisabetta Sirani is the only female artist of the early modern period who started a school
for painting that was mostly for women. In her very short career she left behind a record of her
work in her taccuino, or notebook, of almost 200 paintings, drawings and etchings. Sirani was quite
famous, a local celebrity of sorts, and anyone who was anyone stopped by her studio when passing
through Bologna. In general, Sirani’s oeuvre consists of portraits, as well as history painting,
religious painting, and even mythological subjects. Her religious paintings are in the devoto style.
However, many of her other paintings take traditional subjects, such as women’s role models, and
present them with innovative compositions and/or iconography. These paintings represent an
expansion beyond the more typical portraits of religious role models to portraits of historical and
literary female figures encoded with messages regarding women’s virtue, as new models of
sanctity. More specifically, Sirani’s work incorporates the three Counter-Reformatory modes of her
predecessor Fontana: sacred narratives, iconic paintings, and historiated portraits, arising out of
Paleotti’s sixteenth-century sermons and discussed in chapter 2. However, Sirani and her students
also added a further dimension to the sacred narrative with their versions of miracle paintings, a
documentation of a type of virtual pilgrimage in reverse, where the sacred personage appears in
the patron’s space. This category emerged as a natural continuation of Paleotti’s quest to prove to
the faithful the authentic history and truth of Christianity in visual form.
The first mode of sacred narrative is well represented in Sirani’s oeuvre. The artist was
responsible for full-scale religious narratives, such as her Baptism of Christ for San Gerolamo della
Certosa of Bologna in 1657-8, one of her early public commissions (Fig. 105). The scene is a multi-
figure composition focusing on the central figures of Christ and John the Baptist. There are,
however, many ancillary figures, resulting in a crowded but ambitious composition.
The artist included a female figure in the foreground that may represent the allegorical figure of
Charity, as well as two angels flanking Christ that look as though they were painted from life,
perhaps modeled on two of the young acolytes of the monastery. In this scene, the extra figures are
placed there to bear witness to the sacred event, as opposed to being superfluous figures such as
Veronese’s Germans at the Last Supper, in his painting Feast in the House of Levi (Venice, 1573),
for which the artist had aroused the ire of the Inquisition. Sirani also includes genre details such as
the linens hanging out to dry on the branches, linens that may be both liturgical symbols and
references to Bologna’s cloth trade.
Sirani’s Ten Thousand Martyrs (1656) is a much smaller but no less ambitious painting in
terms of anatomical draftsmanship, due to the number of male nudes required by the scene. The
painting was commissioned for the Duchess of Mantua and is based on her father’s composition of
the same subject (Fig. 106). The story of the Ten Thousand Martyrs tells the tale of Roman soldiers
during the period of the Antonines who converted to Christianity after a victorious battle, and were
crucified by the Roman emperor for refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods. Sirani includes exotic
turbaned figures and a menacing sky, depicting the heart of the dramatic moment of their agony.
She boldly attacks the challenge of depicting male anatomy, with the body of the crucified figure
as the focus of the composition. Sirani would have studied male anatomy from casts of classical
sculpture in her father’s studio, as was the case for most women artists since they still could not
study the male nude directly. There is evidence that Sirani’s father had collected casts of
Michelangelo’s work, which Sirani may have used as models for this work. However, although she
uses the master’s models, she does not fall into the error of turning Christ into an Apollo, as Paleotti
and Prospero Fontana had warned a century earlier. That lesson, it seems, had been learned.
In proceeding to the second mode, we come to Sirani’s iconic paintings, whose subjects
include Marian images for private devotion, as well as depictions of important CounterReformation
saints such as St. Francis and the Magdalene. One of these iconic paintings was a small yet
powerful image of the Virgin Addolorata with the Symbols of the Passion (1657, Fig.
107). This small devotional painting was for Father Ettore Ghisilieri, the Filippini cleric who had
run a small art academy out of his own house. The Virgin wears an expression of extreme suffering
on her countenance; even the cupids are mourning. Sirani made an etching of this painting, which
allowed the image to be widely disseminated, thus propagating an important aspect of Marian
devotion for personal piety and meditation. This painting can be compared with Fontana’s version
of a similar theme, Christ with the Symbols of the Passion (Fig. 49). Sirani focuses instead on
Marian imagery, but she may have been aware of her predecessor’s example. The iconic intensity
of the image remains the same, although Fontana depicts Christ in a naturalistic landscape in the
Flemish tradition; Sirani, however, adopts a more austere background, using it instead almost as a
stage set for the Virgin’s grief, a seventeenth-century version of the andachtsbild.
In another iconic work, Sirani creates a representation of the Holy Family (1662, Fig.
108) in the tradition of genre painting turned sacred, where the sacred and profane commingle.
Sirani depicts Mary as a pious young “girl next door” in the role of a domestic and virtuous mother,
seated next to Joseph as he holds the Christ child in his lap in a domestic moment. This Virgin is
also reminiscent of Fontana’s depiction of Mary as a humble young girl in the Annunciation (Fig.
48), since Sirani has set the holy family in an ambiguous yet bare setting, as opposed to an elaborate
ecclesiastical interior. However, despite the naturalism of a genre painting, Sirani has chosen to
use the profile view of the Madonna, which reinforces the idea of the Madonna as icon, especially
given the painting’s small size and medium. This type of painting would have served as a
contemplative image for private devotion and spiritual meditation, especially for a female
audience, as it focuses on the role of Mary as a simple young mother.
St. Francis was an important saint for Christian reform and women’s issues since the
Franciscans were so closely related to tending to the poor. Sirani’s St. Francis Adoring the
Crucifix (1664, Fig. 109) is depicted in the same attitude of rapt attention as Fontana’s version
(Fig. 39), adoring the crucifix. However, in Sirani’s case, she has once again eliminated Fontana’s
verdant background and given viewers a bust-length representation of Francis that focuses on his
facial expression as he venerates the cross and meditates on Christ’s sacrifice, becoming himself
an icon of meditation. Lest one assume that the scientific naturalism of the sixteenth century is no
more, Sirani’s painting and etching of the Vision of St. Eustache (1657, Figs. 110-111) do contain
the lush northern-style background that she inherited from the Bolognese tradition of naturalism in
the form of Fontana and the Carracci. In this case, the verdant background is relevant to the story,
as it is the moment in which St. Eustache, an exRoman general, sees a vision of a stag with the
crucifix on its head, which converts the saint to Christianity.
Another saint with special meaning to women was Mary Magdalene, whose repentance
served as a role model for women in Bologna active in the religious community. Depictions of her
survive in great number from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by both male and female
artists, and her image was often treated differently by women artists compared to their male
colleagues. The Magdalene had often been utilized as a vehicle of sensuous display by male artists,
including local proponents of Bolognese classicism such as Guido Reni (Fig. 112). However, in
the work of Sirani and her students, there is a special emphasis on this subject, in a contrastingly
devoto tone. For example, Sirani’s iconic version of Mary Magdalene (1660, Fig. 113) does not
follow this pattern, but instead engages the image of the Magdalene as an icon of the female hermit
living in the desert, the embodiment of penitence. This painting was one of two pendants, the
second being a St. Jerome (Fig. 114).395 Sirani depicts the saints as hermits, yet both are shown
with books, even the Magdalene. The Magdalene is wearing a simple, togalike masculine version
of the hair shirt which does expose her breasts; however, she is depicted as very thin and not full-
figured, so as to neutralize any eroticism of her body. She is shown with objects that symbolize the
meaning of her life: the cross, the skull, and the sacred texts. This iconography stresses the
importance of the aspect of literacy and education, while the skull is a memento mori, a reminder
of the vanity of fleeting earthly pleasures. This theme may have held special importance to the
patron who was a jeweler, perhaps as a symbol of his piety and of the futility of earthly wealth.396
The crucifix is meant to inspire devotion to the cross and spiritual meditation; Paleotti had
recommended that everyone have a crucifix over their altars.397 Sirani also created other examples
of the Magdalene that are closer to Reni’s more sensual style (1664, Fig. 115), exceptions perhaps
due to a patron’s request, but fig. 113 emphasizes instead the hermit saint’s sacrifice and austerity,
in tune with Counter-Reformation dogma.
Sirani’s female students and circle (of whom more will be said in the following section)
also participated in this characterization of the saint, such as an example by Angela Teresa
no. 1 (2002): 52-79; see also Frisoni regarding the Magdalene, “Una Sirani ancora piu ‘Vera’,” in Elisabetta Sirani:
Pittrice eroina, 1638-1665, edited by Jadranka Bentini and Vera Fortunati (Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 2004),
85. Irrespective of his own possibly homoerotic tastes, Reni would have created such images of the Magdalene for
the pleasure of his heterosexual patrons.
395 Modesti, 126; Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, II, 393-401.
396 The patron was Giovanni Battista, Cremonese; Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, II, 395; Bohn email communication. 397
See above, chapter 2.
Muratori (1670s, Fig. 116); although this Magdalene (in the Sans Souci Palace in Potsdam) is
partly based on Reni’s version, it is closer to Sirani’s depiction, especially since the Magdalene’s
long hair covers any sensual nudity of the exposed breasts. However, Muratori created two versions
of the penitent Magdalene, and the second example, located in San Giovanni in Monte, Bologna,
is more sensual (Fig. 162). Here the Magdalene looks away from us and one breast is left
provocatively bare, echoing a more sensual style and a less hermit-like or devout image of the
saint. Again, this may have been a request of the patron, as mentioned by Prospero Fontana’s
warnings in the sixteenth century.
The third category, that of miracle paintings, is a particular seventeenth-century
development of the depiction of religious narratives. The miracle paintings can be seen as the fruit
of Paleotti’s Tridentine desire to prove the stories of the lives of the saints to the faithful through
image and text, in other words the image as text, or the miracle as narrative. Sirani’s painting of
Liberation of the Possessed Boy of Constantinople by the Icon of Christ (Mandylion) (late 1650s,
Fig. 117) falls into this category. It is also a rare example of a painting that illustrates the importance
of icons and the Byzantine tradition to the Counter-Reformation dogma, and the prestige shown to
the Bolognese artists chosen to depict this important narrative of faith; Bologna had its own
miracle-working icon, the Madonna of San Luca, as previously discussed. Paleotti had established
the importance of icons such as the Shroud of Turin and Veronica’s Veil in the sixteenth century.
His personal visits to these icons had confirmed their use as visible proof of Christianity and as a
stimulus to devotion. Here, the painting refers to the mandylion, the icon from Edessa. The biblical
legend relates that an image of Christ was created by an artist from the court of Edessa, whose king
had requested Christ’s presence. Unable to go, Christ sent the king his image instead. In Sirani’s
painting, the possessed child is pressed against the foreground and the viewer is placed in the
position of being cured by the vision of the face of Christ.
Paleotti’s plan to prove the efficacy of Christianity’s relics and icons continued into the
seventeenth century, and the Icon of the Face of Christ was a manifestation of this reform. The
mandylion painting was commissioned for a church in Genoa, San Bartolomeo degli Armeni, by
the Barnabite Father Marchelli.402 It was one of a series of six paintings; Sirani’s colleague,
Lorenzo Loli (of whom more will be said in chapter 5) also executed a related painting that is now
lost. A book had just been published by A. Calcagnino in 1639 telling the story of the icon of
Edessa and its travels from Constantinople to Genoa in 1388.403 The painting’s role as an active
image was to prove the biblical truth on two different levels: one, as documentation of the miracles
produced by this relic from the east and two, as proof of the authenticity of the historical relic and
its transfer to the city of Genoa. Therefore the painting operates on both planes, that of faith and
miracles as well as that of history and reality. Sirani also includes Margaret of Austria as one of the
witnesses to the sacred event; such a prestigious attendee underscores the importance of the
miracle.404
The fourth mode, historiated portraiture, was popular with both Sirani and her circle. Sirani
created historiated religious portraits of herself and her patrons, for example, her Self-
times, the Veronica has been conflated with the Sindone, or Shroud of Turin. The mandylion is the icon with the face
of Christ said to have been created for the King of Edessa by one of his court artists who had gone to see Jesus in the
hope of bringing him back to court to heal the sick King. Instead, Jesus sent the artist back with his portrait. 402
Bentini, 50; Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, II, 393-401.
403 Bentini, 50.
404 Ibid.; Margaret of Austria had traveled there to see the icon, on her way to Spain. Colette Dufour Bozzo, Il Sacro
Volto di Genova (Rome: Istituto Nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, 1974), 71.
Portrait as a Nun (1658, Fig. 118). In this image, the nun’s head is surrounded by a golden aura of
sacred light, a visual symbol of sainthood and an apt identity for the virginal artist; this self-portrait
thus harkens back to Lavinia Fontana’s self-portrait as St. Barbara (Fig. 73). Sirani also created a
portrait of Signora Ortensia Leoni Cordini as Saint Dorothy (1661, Fig. 119), including only the
necessary attributes in the portrait. Dorothy is holding a basket with roses and apples; an angel
sent these to her mocker Theophilus, who was thus converted to Christianity. Certainly her chastity
is part of the message of this historiated religious portrait, similarly to the example of St. Margaret.
Sirani’s painting of St Margaret of Antioch (1661, Fig. 120) is given a realism that can only be
called portrait-like, although the subject is of a sacred personage, inherited from the previous
century’s emphasis on hagiography and the work of Fontana in the era of Paleotti’s reforms. These
types of religious paintings of saints and female role models combine history painting and
portraiture, allowing female artists and patrons, to participate in the male-dominated genre of
history painting.
The Good, the Bad, and the Sorceress: Counter-Reformation Role Models and AntiHeroines
A subdivision of the mode of historiated religious portraiture is biblical heroines. The
seventeenth century continued the Counter-Reformation theme of virtuous women as role models,
begun already by the time of Fontana. These models were both saintly and secular, with examples
such as the apocryphal heroine Judith, but the list was now extended to cover less wellknown and
complex figures of female virtue such as Timoclea and Portia. In addition, figures such as Cleopatra
and Circe represented a type of Tridentine anti-heroine. However, unlike men, most females treated
them as more than merely a vehicle for the female eroticism of a suicide scene, for example, as
men had done in earlier pictures typically geared towards a heterosexual male audience. These
female artists often created a more complex and subtly nuanced characterization of these subjects.
The figure of Judith was a perfect vehicle for the propagation of female virtue, despite the
overtones of the trope of dangerous female. A comparison here between both Sirani’s and Fontana’s
earlier version helps to illustrate the Counter-Reformation tradition of presenting Judith as a pious
heroine. The idea of a female subduing a male had, during the early modern period, connotations
of unnatural murder, or the world upside down and woman on top. However, these connotations
could be subdued by presenting a fully dressed Judith and focusing on her manly deed, rather than
on the use of her feminine wiles. Fontana’s Judith and Holofernes, for example, discussed in chap.
2, was commissioned for the virtuous widow
Bargellini as a model of female fortitude in fine decorous dress (Fig. 77). Sirani’s Judith Showing
the Head of Holofernes to the Israelites (1658) is also shown fully robed and triumphant, returning
to her people of Bethulia with her prize head (Fig. 121); this version emphasizes the moment when
Judith’s deed is publicly revealed to her people, thus saving the Israelites from their Assyrian
oppressor. Her decorous clothing emphasizes the fact that her virtue was not compromised in order
to accomplish this victory, thus still conforming to Tridentine preferences. Fontana’s Judith does
not include the townscape but merely Judith with Holofernes’s severed head and her maidservant.
Fontana’s painting has also been considered a self-portrait of the artist, a historiated portrait of a
model of Counter-Reformation female virtue that would have been appropriate for its patron, the
widow Bargellini. In Sirani’s painting of Judith, the heroine wears on her breast the image of
Minerva, the exemplum of the virgin warrior. Sirani’s Judith was commissioned for the banker
Andrea Cattalani, also the patron of the Timoclea.
The Roman Portia, wife of Brutus, was meant to stand for female bravery and marital
fidelity. Since Sirani’s painting Portia Wounding Her Thigh (1664, Fig. 122) was commissioned
for Simone Tassi, the silk merchant, the artist included a virtuoso depiction of the luxurious silk
fabric. The protagonist is shown in the act of cutting her thigh with a knife in order to prove her
bravery to her husband Brutus, who is plotting to kill Caesar to save the Roman Republic. As
Modesti and Bohn note, the scene in the foreground is contrasted with the domestic work of women
in the background. Portia wishes to prove to her husband that she is made of harder stuff and can
share in her husband’s political ambitions. Her virtue is that of a faithful warrior queen, a virtuous
Minerva.
In the story of Timoclea (1659, Fig. 123), painted for the banker Andrea Cattalani, the
heroine tricks her assailant, one of Alexander’s generals, into looking down a well for her treasure
when he attempts to ravish her. She then proceeds to push him in, reclaiming her honor. This is a
very rare subject and Sirani’s version depicts the most crucial moment and the most challenging to
achieve in terms of composition, with the general’s limbs flailing in all directions as he falls into
the well. Sirani also adds a sign of her knowledge of antiquity to authenticate the scene, adding
classical reliefs of a battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs on the side of the well, traditionally
a comment on misguided passion. Timoclea represented female bravery in the face of wartime rape
and pillage. Modesti points out that in most illustrations of the story of Timoclea, the moment
chosen is the rape, focusing on the effects of war on women as victims. However, Sirani has chosen
a more empowered moment when Timoclea takes revenge; her focus is on the agency of women
as opposed to representing them as passive victims. This subject was probably taken from
Plutarch’s Life of Alexander the Great, which Sirani would have found in her father’s substantial
library, and the description therein may have inspired her attention to the exotic dress.
Cleopatra, in contrast, is more of an anti-heroine in terms of female behavior (1660s, Fig.
124). As with Judith, a comparison of Sirani’s version of Cleopatra with the earlier work of Fontana
is instructive (Fig. 24). Fontana’s version of Cleopatra is elaborately dressed, with the artist
focusing more on costume detail; it may have been done for the Persian ambassador and as such is
a display of her skill in depicting realistic surface detail as well as exotic Oriental costume. Sirani’s
version, however, shows the whole narrative encoded in a sole figure with a simple attribute; she
depicts Cleopatra in the moment of her rash and wasteful act of dissolving a large pearl in a cup of
vinegar to win her bet with Marc Anthony. Cleopatra had bet him that she could spend ten thousand
cisterces in one single night. She wins her bet but also represents, perhaps, what not to do as a
virtuous woman. Both Fontana and Sirani adopted the decorously clothed version of the queen of
Egypt, with none of the wanton sexuality of versions such as Reni’s and Guido Cagnacci’s Death
of Cleopatra (1640, 1658 respectively, Figs. 125-126), which show Cleopatra as a passive piece of
erotic flesh for male consumption. Fontana’s Cleopatra is depicted in a more conservative, almost
medievalizing tone, with much focus on her lavish, exotic eastern dress rather than her foolish,
capricious act.
Sirani’s painting of Circe, once thought to be lost, is an example of how the artist transforms
the image by playing with the boundaries of the character’s persona (1657, Fig. 127). The evil
sorceress is certainly not meant to be a role model, yet she is imbued with certain positive traits.
Despite the fact that she turns Odysseus’s men into swine, an anti-heroine if there ever was one,
she is also quite clever and learned. In her hand she holds several magical charts, and she holds a
pen (or a wand) in the manner in which an artist would hold a brush. This may imply a certain
positive aspect, perhaps even a semblance of self-portraiture in the character, who represents a type
of magical creativity akin to that of the artist and her ability to create something from nothing. In
this case, Circe is involved in the performance of magic, in the same sense that a painter such as
Sirani performs her creative magic for important visitors.
The subject of Delilah (1657, Fig. 128) as a role model also invites comment: could it be a
type of talisman image, where to confront evil is to appropriate its powers? Delilah represents
another anti-heroine: the biblical woman whose seduction caused the destruction of Samson, the
brave warrior. She represents cunning, since she obtained her victory over Samson by using her
female charms for evil deeds, one of the “don’t’s” so often embodied in Counter-Reformation
females. Judith had also availed herself of her beauty to lure Holofernes, but the story makes a
point of reminding the reader that she slew him before her virtue could be compromised, and she
murdered him to save her people. This painting of Delilah is an abbreviated history painting, a
format that Sirani used often, where all that is needed to cue the story for the viewer, in good
emblematic fashion, is a single figure with one attribute, the pair of shears with which she chopped
off the hair that gave Samson his strength.
As a final, but somewhat different, example of the embodiment of female virtue, Sirani
created an allegorical depiction of Justice, Charity, and Prudence (1664, Fig. 129). Although not
a historiated portrait, this painting was an extremely prestigious commission, as it was created for
the Medici Prince Leopoldo. Sirani records the work in her taccuino, and notes that the Cardinal
rewarded her with a piece of gem-studded jewelry (56 diamonds), a very public mark of his
pleasure with the artist and her work. The symbolism of the painting concerns the virtues most
needed for a wise and just ruler: justice, prudence, and charity. However, they are also a feminine
embodiment of virtue that accords well with the city’s continued fascination with women’s honor.
Sirani’s source for the iconography would probably have been Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, as her
father owned a copy, and Ripa describes the attributes of each figure: the sword and scales for
justice, the mirror for prudence, and the little children at the breast of charity.
Female Patrons and the Sacred
After viewing these examples of Sirani’s work, one can explore further aspects of her
patronage. Fortunately, Sirani left a detailed record of her patrons and commissions in both her
taccuino and in the records of her biographer, Conte Carlo Cesare Malvasia. From his Felsina
pittrice, the Bolognese Lives of the Artists, written in the seventeenth century, readers learn that
when important visitors came to Bologna, they often stopped to see the virtuosa paint. These
visitors could then be asked to donate to women’s charitable causes; in addition to Leopoldo de’
Medici, other prominent visitors to Sirani’s studio included the Duchess of Brunswick. Sirani also
had important patrons from among the best families of Bologna: the Cospi, the Malvezzi, and the
Bentivoglio, and also had contact with the Medici through Cospi. It was more often than not the
women in these families who were the custodians of the sacred.
The women of Bologna were greatly involved in patronage, as we can see from the
following examples. This patronage expanded in the seventeenth century, thanks to the growth of
private collecting; Modesti uses the word “matronage” to describe this phenomenon. As far back
as 1513, it was the pious noblewoman Elena Duglioli who was the patron for Raphael’s Ecstasy of
St. Cecilia (Fig. 4), painted for the Bolognese church of San Giovanni in Monte. The St. Cecilia is
probably the most famous model of a painting in the maniera devota style, since the time of its
installation. This painting was so successful that Vasari states that Francesco Francia decided to
abandon painting out of despair after he saw it, another one of Vasari’s probable exaggerations.
Coincidentally, the descendant of Elena, the Marchesa Christiana Duglioli Angelelli, acquired
certain special relics for Bologna: the veil of the blessed Virgin and the cloak of St. Joseph from
Rome in 1647. She was also responsible for the annual celebration of the feast of the Madonna
della Neve in her family chapel. This passion for relics has been a continual development in the
city, which began in earnest with Paleotti’s interest in early Christian archaeology. This trend
continued into the seventeenth century, especially through the participation of the women of
Bologna as the guardians of the icons. It was women who guarded the most sacred image in the
city, the miracle-working Madonna of San Luca on the Monte, as discussed previously. These
women were in charge of most religious arrangements and artistic commissions for both civic and
social affairs, as well as, by extension, the virtue of the city’s women. For example, the Patarazzi
family commissioned from Sirani an altarpiece for their chapel in the church of San Biagio, the
same church for which Fontana had painted the Birth of the Virgin. The women of the city also
encouraged charity for institutions such as the Baraccano and the Putte di Santa Marta, as we have
seen in the previous chapter. The Madonna of the Rosario in the Guidotti chapel in the church of
San Domenico was maintained by a noblewoman from the Malvezzi family, who was also the
rector of the Confraternity of the Rose. Both Sirani and Reni are buried in this chapel, perhaps
suggesting that the artists were both admired for their devoto style and its associations with
women’s virtue.
To conclude this section, one should note that the religious climate in Bologna continued
to support Tridentine reform in visual imagery throughout the seventeenth century and that Sirani’s
students and colleagues were greatly involved in this visual manifestation of the city’s religious
life, creating religious paintings in line with the requirements handed down from the sixteenth
century. These paintings reflect both the city’s continuing obsession with women’s virtue and the
original modes of painting that had emerged out of Paleotti’s guidelines for visual reform from the
previous century, as manifested in Lavinia Fontana’s work.
The Mani Donnesche of the Felsina pittrice: Sirani’s Circle
Sirani’s school of painting was, as mentioned, the first for women, with at least 14 female
students mentioned by the primary sources. A great deal of misunderstanding exists regarding the
fragmentary information on these women. To summarize, three painters, considered to be Sirani’s
students (or rather, colleagues, followers, and precursors in some cases), have left the most extant
traceable and/or securely attributed work at the moment of this study. The three painters are
Antonia Pinelli, Ginevra Cantofoli, and Angela Teresa Muratori; the engraver Veronica Fontana
will be the subject of chapter five. The three painters’ biographies are still somewhat incomplete,
and some of the attributions continue to be contested, but by looking at
Sirani’s circle one can begin to unravel the tangled threads of their stylistic ties to one another. Of
the many women painters in Bologna in the seventeenth century, this study focuses on these three
because they have the most demonstrably secure stylistic links to the city’s tradition of maniera
devota, from Fontana down to Sirani and beyond, even if all three were not officially students of
Sirani. In addition, this discussion introduces the work of Sirani’s sisters, Barbara and Anna Maria,
of which very little survives. What follows is a brief introduction to this artistic coterie, and
subsequently, an iconographical and stylistic examination of the extant works of the
three main characters of this chapter, as they relate to each other’s work and to the maniera devota.
The end of this section touches upon another facet of religious artistic expression by these women,
music, because Muratori also wrote sacred oratorios whose themes were related to the Counter-
Reformatory modes of painting that these women practiced.
The first of the three, Antonia Pinelli, should be considered the closest female heir to
Lavinia Fontana’s style. She is the missing link between Lavinia and her seventeenth-century
successor, Elisabetta Sirani. Pinelli died in 1644, so she could not have been a direct student of
Sirani (as Malvasia maintains in his biography of Sirani), since Sirani would have been only six
years old at the time of Pinelli’s death; Pinelli was actually a student of Ludovico Carracci. There
is very little left of biography for Pinelli, except for mentions by Masini as well as Malvasia.
The second of these women artists is Ginevra Cantofoli (1618-1672), who was discussed
by both Malvasia and Masini. Malvasia tells us that she is a student of Sirani’s, but in actuality she
was already painting by the 1640s, at which time Sirani was still a small child. Cantofoli’s output
is still mostly undocumented and uncertain; Massimo Pulini has attributed up to 40 paintings to the
artist, but only a few of these are generally accepted by other scholars. It seems that her production
consists mostly of portraits, sometimes historiated, quite similar to Sirani’s work.
Finally, the third artist, Angela Teresa Muratori (1672-1708), was one of the most active
female painters at the time in Bologna, if one judges by the number of surviving paintings.
However, it may also be that she is simply the one with the most paintings that survived the
Napoleonic suppression. There are quite a few religious paintings by Muratori still extant, although
not as many as the total number on record from an inventory taken of her father’s house including
copies of paintings by the famous artists of the Bolognese school such as Reni and the Carracci
(5); however, a few are of her own invention. Muratori is mentioned by Luigi Crespi, an eighteenth-
century biographer, and is said to have been a student first of Emilio Taruffi, then
Lorenzo Pasinelli from 1696-1700, and finally Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole from 1700-1708.
Muratori is also notable for having worked in the normally male-only medium of fresco.
She created a fresco in honor of her father, Memory of Roberto Muratori, still in the Bologna
Archiginnasio, although quite ruined by now (1680s-90s, Fig. 130).437 The fresco is an allegory
of Aesclapius, the Greek god of medicine. Aesclapius was the son of Apollo and Coronis; his
mother supposedly either died in childbirth or was killed for an infidelity, and his six daughters
were all named after aspects of health. Aesclapius would thus have been a perfect vehicle for the
eulogization of Muratori’s father, a doctor and professor of medicine at the University. The fresco
displays the artist’s talent in creating a large multi-figure allegorical composition with images of
Fame and other figures (Fig. 131). In order to immortalize Muratori, the fresco shows Aesclapius
seated in the act of healing a sick man, together with the allegory of Fame, a skeleton, and Father
Time. Her father’s title as a university professor may have helped
Muratori’s status as an artist, since his own prestigious position would naturally have brought his
daughter’s career more into the limelight. Muratori is also famous for creating sacred oratorios for
the liturgy, but these will be discussed separately below.
In addition to artists who trained with Sirani in her school, two other artists were tied to her
circle by blood as well as education: Anna Maria and Barbara Sirani. There is precious little left of
their careers, yet both were known as painters by the time of Elisabetta’s death in 1665. There is a
portrait of Sirani said to be by Barbara, as well as an Ecce Homo. Anna Maria produced a St. Martin
and some allegorical drawings of still-contested attribution. The Portrait of Elisabetta Sirani
(1660s, Fig. 132) by Barbara was originally attributed to Sirani herself, although it is clearly the
work of an artist with less experience than Sirani in terms of its realism. On the other hand,
Barbara’s Ecce Homo (1660s, Fig. 133) is an icon in true maniera devota style. Usually a northern
subject, the face of Christ betrays the pain and suffering of the final hours of the Passion. Anna’s
The Holy Trinity with St. Martin (Bishop) (1669, Fig. 134) depicts the bishop with eyes glazed over
in a pious expression, and rolled up to glance at the heavens. These visual clues to the figure’s piety
were used by both Sirani and Reni, and are being recycled here through Sirani’s students. The
allegorical drawings attributed to Barbara
Sirani mentioned above refer to the trope of fame at the time of Sirani’s death (1665, Fig. 135136).
Figure 135 depicts the figure of a crowned young woman standing next to a skeleton, who is
trampling on symbols of the arts and holding on to the crown of fame on the young lady’s head.
Figure 136 contains an image of a young woman sitting near another skeleton, who this time carries
a scythe, ready for his morbid reaping. Although typical of allegorical representations of death and
fame, as they are dated to around the time of Sirani’s death, both of these drawings may also reveal
some of the adulation that Barbara and Anna must have felt towards Elisabetta.
Sirani must have left some very large shoes for her sisters to fill in terms of her artistic
reputation. These allegories of Fame cut down in her prime by a cruel and premature death speak
volumes about her sisters’ opinions of their famous sibling. They are also an eloquent comment on
the legend of the great Sirani, the gem of Europe, which was propagated by Malvasia after the
death of Elisabetta Sirani, the maestra of this group, under mysterious circumstances in 1665.
Giovanni Luigi Picinardi composed a eulogy for her, Il pennello lagrimato: orazione (The
Crying Brush) (Fig. 137). In this eulogy, Picinardi praises her virtues and calls her “the gem of
Europe” and “splendid like the sun.” Sirani’s fame continued into the nineteenth century,
romanticized through the story of her possible poisoning by her maidservant, or even her dying
from unrequited love, although it is more probable that she died of an ulcer due to overwork. One
of her important paintings is still missing, but is reflected in nineteenth-century engraved copies:
Sirani’s Self-Portrait Painting Her Father (Fig. 138). This painting participated in the illustrious
history of the female artist painting her “master,” in this case, her father. The tradition was started
in the sixteenth century by Sofonisba Anguissola, who painted her mentor, Bernardino Campi, in
the act of painting an image of herself.446 These paintings represent a comment on the nature of the
many levels of representation, in the manner of Velasquez’s Las Meninas (Madrid, 1656).
However, these paintings are from the point of view of the female artist, who is “created” in some
sense by her male teacher, but then in turn, is herself the creator. In addition, these artists have
attempted to rise above the gender-specific bias of the woman artist as product of the male artist’s
genius; in Sirani’s case, she was the breadwinner of the family after her father began to experience
health problems. Her self-portrait is a manifestation of the agency of the female artist, as seen
already in the work of Anguissola and carried on through the seventeenth century by Sirani and her
circle. Sirani was cast by Malvasia as the virgin heroine, her death more of an apotheosis, whereby
she was deified as a great prodigy cut down in her youth, overshadowing all of her female pupils
and colleagues, to whom Malvasia only devotes a paragraph.
Felsina’s Modes of Painting in the Seventeenth Century: Icons of Devotion, New and Old
Although this chapter is focused on the seventeenth century, the modes of painting by these
women still reflect those of Lavinia Fontana: the iconic, the sacred narratives, and historiated and
religious portraiture. However, one can add to this list the specific category of miracle paintings,
as seen in the work of the women artists’ maestra, Sirani. The following is an analysis of the extant
paintings by this circle, categorized by the four Counter-Reformatory modes of the sixteenth
century outlined above.
1638-1665, edited by Jadranka Bentini and Vera Fortunati (Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 2004), 91-106, 168.
446 For further information on this subject see Mary Garrard, cited in the introduction, n. 16.
The first mode to consider is the iconic, examples of which are the many versions of the
Immaculate Conception. The theme of the Immaculate Conception as icon seen in sixteenthcentury
examples remained popular with women artists and patrons through the seventeenth century. It is
instructive to compare those early versions with those by Sirani and her students. As mentioned
previously, certain examples had come to be a mix of both the Assumption and the Immaculate
Conception. For example, we have seen that Fontana created a unique Immacolata for a Capuchin
monastery (Fig. 61), despite the dogma’s uncertain fate at that time, but apparently to the
satisfaction of her monastic patrons. Also, her Assumption at Imola (Fig. 50) does contain a mix of
both episodes in the life of the Virgin. However, Fontana’s Assumption for Paleotti was not so
risky (Fig. 55).
A century later, Cantofoli’s Immaculate Virgin with the Christ Child (1650s, Fig. 139) also
includes the crown (referring to the Virgin’s Assumption and Coronation) and moon, whereas
Sirani (1664, Fig. 140) and Muratori (1680s-90s, Fig. 141) eliminate the crown in their versions,
but retain the stars and the moon. Both Sirani’s and Muratori’s Conceptions have a sweet-faced,
youthful Madonna standing on a sliver of the moon holding both hands on her heart, recalling the
pose of the Madonna of Humility. Sirani’s Immaculate Conception for Father Ghisilieri, rector of
Santa Maria di Galliera, also refers to the Virgin as stella maris (star of the sea), since there is a
tiny slice of seascape in the background. Muratori’s painting can be found in the same church of
Santa Maria, one of the locales for the reform schools, underscoring the importance of the subject
and the devoto tone of the image. The moons in these paintings, however, remain in the tradition
of the sliver of a white orb from the woman of the Apocalypse, representing Mary’s purity and
triumph over evil. Disregarding the intermediate phase of
scientifically accurate moons discussed above, chapter 2, these women artists created Immaculate
Conceptions in line with the Tridentine view of the moon and in contrast with such works as
Ludovico Cigoli’s version (1610-12, Fig. 63). Recalling Reeves’s discussion of Cigoli’s maculate
Immacolata, she pointed out his scientific depictions of the moon as a solid orb capable of casting
shadows, and how this resulted from his connections to Galileo’s explanation of the moon as a
craterous rock. His transformation of the symbolic lunette shape into a ball of actual rock is
especially ironic in view of the earlier discussion of the half-moon as a symbol of Mary’s triumph
over the infidel Turks. This infidel reference was no longer apparent in Cigoli’s moon, once he
made it an orb, and was replaced by the dragon underfoot as the manifestation of Satan over which
the Virgin triumphs. Perhaps science had briefly trumped religion in Florence during the early
seventeenth century, whereas in later Bologna, science was utilized for naturalism, but decorum
remained essential. One wonders if Paleotti could have accepted this much scientific progress, but
on the other hand, it may have been his emphasis on the utilization of the scientific method in art
that helped sow the seeds for this progress.
Another example of the iconic mode is Pinelli’s Guardian Angel (1620s, Fig. 142), painted
in the 1620s for San Giuseppe dei Cappuccini in Bologna. The subject is rare, but very appropriate
to its location, since San Giuseppe had a Christian school for children. The image of a small child
accompanied by the large figure of a guardian angel with wings is obviously the type of image that
could be found in these Christian houses of reform or orphanages. The iconography of the guardian
angel is often associated with personal piety and charity. Pinelli depicts the child as a small and
poorly dressed soul, surely in need of protection. It brings to mind the many unique images and
portraits of children created by Fontana such as the Child in a Cradle (Fig. 76).
The Annunciation also falls under the category of iconic paintings for contemplation.
Muratori apparently painted two different versions of this theme, one in Santissima Trinita (1700-
06, Fig. 144) and one in San Giovanni dei Celestini (1700-08, Fig. 145). Both versions contain
elements reminiscent of Lavinia Fontana’s painting of the same subject (Fig. 48). The overall
shading is more tenebroso in the San Giovanni version; also here the Virgin has been interrupted
while reading the scriptures, whereas the Trinita version depicts the Virgin as more of a Madonna
of Humility with one hand on her heart and the other in open acceptance. In both paintings the
angel holds the lily in one hand while pointing to the heavens with the other, simple gestures meant
to narrate as clearly as possible. In the Trinita version, the Virgin is depicted in the tradition of the
maniera devota, humbly accepting Gabriel’s message; also, there is a clearer distinction between
a domestic interior and a heavenly realm, indicated by the flash of white divine light where the
heavenly realm resides. The flash of light recalls Lavinia Fontana’s Assumption (Fig. 55) with its
cone of light based on scientific studies of lumen. In the San Giovanni version, the coloring is
much darker and there is no supernatural separation of realms.
Miracle Paintings
Having examined the iconic mode, the second mode of the maniera devota evident in the
religious paintings by women artists of the seventeenth century is miracle paintings, a mode that
contains within it both the iconic and the narrative. The witnessing of a miracle also leads to another
dimension, that of virtual pilgrimage. Virtual pilgrimage in visual imagery is not new; it
harkens back to fifteenth-century Flemish painters (as discussed previously in chapters 2 and 3)
and their images of donors witnessing sacred events or in the presence of a visit from the divine (a
virtual pilgrimage in reverse). As such, virtual pilgrimage is an appropriate part of the maniera
devota. There is also an inherent aspect of the theatrical in the witnessing of a miracle. The idea
of religious theater and performance was prevalent in Baroque imagery in general, as for example
in Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Teresa, but in Bologna, the theatrical was always tempered with a devout
naturalism. The result was more akin to that of the active icon, adding the proper decorum and
dimension of reality. This style was a tempering of Bernini’s full-blown and self-conscious
theatricality to a more Tridentine expression, in line with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of
Loyola. In the Exercises, the focus is on the viewer’s comprehension of the miracle’s narrative, as
opposed to a display of the supernatural special effects of the event.
Pinelli, the generational link between Lavinia Fontana and Elisabetta Sirani, created miracle
paintings such as St. John the Evangelist Resuscitates the Earthquake Victims (1614, Fig. 146).
The work is recorded as having been based on a drawing of the same subject by her teacher,
Ludovico Carracci. This painting is an uncommon scene, a rare eyewitness type of narrative, as
well as a votive painting at the same time. It is an icon or votive image of faith giving thanks for
divine intervention during a disaster, while at the same time being almost a piece of journalistic
reportage, like Sirani’s Liberation of the Possessed Boy of Constantinople by the Icon of Christ
(Mandylion) (late 1650s, Fig. 117). There is reason to believe that Pinelli included her self-portrait
in this image, something she may have seen in works by Fontana. For example, Fontana’s
biographer tells us that she included a self-portrait in her painting of The Appearance of the
Madonna and Child to the Five Saints (Fig. 73). Perhaps, judging from the sumptuousness of the
other four female saints’ clothing, the artist may also have included four noblewomen of Bologna,
memorializing them forever in this religious painting. Pinelli was most certainly influenced by
Fontana in portraiture, since one of Fontana’s great strengths was the ability to capture the image
of her sitters with an exactitude and attention to detail regarding their costumes, i.e., the surface of
silk, pearls, velvets, etc., as well as their physiognomy and a sense of the interior identity, always
with a sense of the decorum required by Paleotti’s postTridentine guidelines. However, as we saw
in chapter 2, Paleotti says that portraits in religious paintings are not appropriate, i.e., that one
should not make a saint or religious figure with a recognizable likeness of a contemporary person.
Although this practice thus remained problematic in theory, somehow artists from Fontana to
Pinelli circumvented this rule in their work; perhaps portraiture of nobility or artists themselves
was too much in demand to refuse.
Muratori’s painting of the Miracle of Saint Benedict (1690-1708, Fig. 147) can be found in
the church of Santo Stefano in Bologna. In the painting’s composition, Muratori displays an interest
in Baroque diagonals and architecture, while the figure of the saint is reminiscent of Fontana’s St.
Francis di Paola Blessing the Child of Luisa of Savoy (Fig. 74). In Muratori’s painting, the image
of the Madonna and Child appears in the sky above the figures, as the architecture recedes to a
dramatic diagonal. The architecture may also have been influenced by
Ludovico Carracci’s version (Fig. 90), though in Muratori’s version the figures take up the majority
of the foreground. The embroidered version of this scene, mentioned previously (Fig. 89), is based
on Ludovico’s version, but it is tempting to think that Muratori’s version is part of this chain of a
pious image created by women for women.
A final example of the mode of miracle painting is the Apparition of the Madonna to St.
Peter (1690s, Fig. 148) by Muratori, at the Church of San Domenico in Ferrara. This painting
recalls both Sirani’s version of St. Anthony of Padua Adoring the Christ Child (Fig. 186) and
Fontana’s St. Hyacinth (Fig. 18) in composition. St. Peter faces the Madonna and Child with a
pious expression, while a cherub holds a scroll to which the Madonna points. There is a hint of a
triumphal arch in the background, and the artist has added the customary putti flying overhead.
The focus is on the saint’s perception of the miraculous event, the presence of the Madonna and
Child as they come down from the heavens to inhabit the same earthly space as the saint.
Sacred Narrative: The Biblia Pauperum Lives On
The third mode, that of sacred narrative, comes directly out of the sixteenth-century
examples discussed in chapter 2, which present biblical narratives using a decorous form of realism
without any superfluous details. For example, Pinelli’s Birth of the Virgin (1620s-40s, Fig. 149)
was created for the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Regola, Imola, and it is the closest to Lavinia Fontana’s
style compared with various local examples of this scene, which include those by Prospero Fontana
and Orazio Sammachini; Prospero’s version tends more towards a mannerism that is gone in
Pinelli’s version.459 Pinelli depicts St. Anne resting on the bed in the background with the two large
figures of midwives in the lower foreground and two helpers; one comes forward bearing a jug of
water, while another holds fresh linens for the child, probably warming them by the fire, very
similar to the same detail in Lavinia’s version. These motifs are not superfluous, but may refer also
to the idea of the spiritual nourishment that the Virgin will be to the world. Pinelli uses the same
vertical composition that Lavinia employed, as opposed to a more horizontal one used by artists
such as Sammachini. Angels arrive at the top bearing a crown of flowers to inaugurate the sacred
birth. The figures are lifelike, and the artist has added small details of genre painting in the
Northern tradition: for example, the water jug could refer to baptism. This painting is still located
in the church in Regola, but there is no record of the the original commission. Lavinia had ties to
Imola through her husband, who was from that city, and she received an important commission for
the Madonna of Imola (Fig. 60) shortly after her marriage to Zappi. Thus there was already a
tradition in place in Imola of commissioning paintings from talented Bolognese female artists. This
example is evidence of Pinelli’s close links to the style of Lavinia Fontana, especially that
Bolognese naturalism derived from genre elements in Northern religious paintings.
In addition to works by Pinelli and Sirani in the Church of Santa Maria di Galliera,
Muratori’s Incredulity of St. Thomas (1690s-1700, Fig. 150) is also located there (the painting is
noted by Oretti as “in collaboration with Gian Gioseffo dal Sole, one of Muratori’s teachers”). It
may have been influenced by the work of Simone Cantarini and Flaminio Torri, but the
composition and architecture also look very Venetian. For example, there are three large columns
in the background, a heavily draped figure, two putti flying above, a temple interior with a deeply
angled perspective, and an open sky above, all reminiscent of Titian’s famous Pesaro Madonna,
especially in the use of the columns to set the composition in the background. In this scene, the
apostles crowd around Christ, while Thomas puts his hand in Christ’s wound, so that he may
believe. All eyes are focused on Christ’s torso, while Thomas is only seen from the back. The focus
is on Christ’s confrontation with the viewer, so he is placed between the two columns for effect, so
that the viewer’s eye immediately falls on the sacred figure. The implication is that viewers as
believers should not do as Thomas has done, but should believe based on faith.
Cantofoli’s Role Models and Portraits of Female Virtue
Proceeding to the final mode of historiated portraiture, the extant work of Ginevra Cantofoli
supports the idea that she was best known for this mode, in terms of the number and the high quality
of these portraits. As mentioned earlier, Tridentine models of female sanctity included portraits of
both biblical and historical heroines, which became a tradition for the women painters of Bologna.
For example, Cantofoli’s documented work includes a number of enigmatic portraits across various
sub-genres such as the Beatrice Cenci (1650s, Fig. 151), a painting long attributed to Guido Reni
(and at one point, also to Sirani). Cenci was a patricide who, however just her reasons (her father
violently abused his wife and children), was nonetheless punished with decapitation in 1599, an
event that may have been witnessed by several artists including Caravaggio. She is a perfect, if
complex heroine, a type of martyr figure for the injustice done to women. Unfortunately the papacy
did not uphold her cause, choosing instead to reinforce paternal authority. Cantofoli’s sympathetic
portrait of Cenci may be a vindication for a virtuous woman, a type of secular martyr. Eventually,
the story arose that Reni had visited Cenci’s cell to paint her portrait before her execution, as
illustrated in a nineteenth-century painting (Fig. 152). The portrait is certainly in the style of Guido
Reni: with the figure’s upturned gaze, luminous eyes, and elegant turban, she would normally be
considered a sibyl (1650s, Fig. 153). The identification of this figure as Beatrice Cenci is endorsed,
however, by Pulini, the authority on Cantofoli. The depiction of Cenci here offers a sympathetic
view of a young girl who was wronged by a system of law that cruelly punished a woman for a
justifiable crime, simply because it was committed by a woman against a man, thus upsetting the
natural order of the cosmos.
Cantofoli’s portrait of Fanciulla con pecorella, or Young Girl with a Lamb (1660s, Fig.
154), has been described as genre painting. However, another view is that, considering the
continuing Counter-Reformatory climate of the city, it may also be a representation of St. Agnes
with her attribute, the lamb. The painting is done in the style of a realistic portrait, and as such, it
may also have been a historiated portrait, although no further archival evidence exists for this
theory. The figure is depicted against a turbulent night sky, in a costume painted with rich tones of
blue and red, holding the innocent lamb at her waist. In a tender gesture, the young girl holds one
of its legs in her hand, possibly a religious reference to Christ as the lamb of God.
The sub-genre of self-portraits in Cantofoli’s work draws on a long tradition of such images
from Fontana to Sirani. Among the examples attributed to Cantofoli are two self-portraits and one
portrait of Sirani. The Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (1660s, Fig. 155) is an example of
the female artist as the embodiment of painting, a tradition followed by others such as Lavinia
Fontana and Artemisia Gentileschi. Another possible identification of the subject is Self-Portrait
Painting the Virgin; in that case, the painting would harken back to the tradition of St. Luke painting
the Virgin, the original Marian icon, and as such participates in the devota tradition par excellence.
Second, there is a drawing, Self-Portrait at the Easel, by Cantofoli from the Fondazione Cini
(1640s, Fig. 156). Both Fontana and Sirani painted self-portraits that, like these later examples,
display their status as artists. The self-portrait at the easel has a long and noble tradition among
male artists, but the female variations exhibit slight differences. For example, the portrait of
Fontana discussed in the introduction (Fig. 1), was created for her marriage in 1577; it emphasizes
her sophisticated talents of music making, but does not omit her easel in the background. Fontana’s
marriage contract included a clause that she would continue her career as a painter, thus earning
the family a sustainable living. Sirani also created a selfportrait (Fig. 2) that emphasizes her
learning and sophistication, choosing in this case to display erudite texts and dress herself in the
splendor appropriate to a maestra. The portrait of Sirani attributed to Cantofoli by Pulini (1650s-
60s, Fig. 158) is related to an engraved copy by Lorenzo Tinti (one of Sirani’s students discussed
in chapter 5) of a lost self-portrait of Sirani in the act of painting her father. In Cantofoli’s version,
however, the subject on the canvas is the infant John the Baptist. In this case, one female artist
becomes a type of professional role model for the other, a position propagated through the use of
self-portraiture.
Cantofoli’s oeuvre also contains several portraits of powerful females, such as Atropos
(1660s, Fig. 159) and Portia (1660s, Fig. 160), which may be historiated self-portraits, although
these are recent attributions by Pulini and not yet generally accepted by all scholars of the period.
The painting of Atropos is very similar in facial type and composition to Cantofoli’s other attributed
work of Marine Nymph (1660s, Fig. 161), except for the costume and scissors; the nymph is all
dressed in conch shells as a type of Galatea. Atropos is the mythological figure responsible for
ending human life by cutting the strings of eternity. The title is Pulini’s and so the subject is also
still contested. However, it could also represent Delilah with her shears, which would be in tune
with the rest of the Counter-Reformation anti-heroines. Cantofoli’s Portia is identified as such,
again by Pulini, based mostly on her costume and headpiece, which resemble those in earlier
medieval representations of this heroine. Based on the similarity of the facial features among these
paintings, they may also represent historiated self-portraits of Cantofoli herself. Finally, these
paintings participate in the maniera devota style, which continued throughout the careers of both
Lavinia Fontana and Elisabetta Sirani despite, and/or along with, the expansion of secular and
theatrical Baroque subject matter. In the context of most of these examples of historiated self-
portaiture, the maniera devota maintains its link with piety, and adds a further dimension of the
role models of women’s virtue.
The Performance of Virtue and the Sound of Angels: Theater, Music, and the Maniera
Devota
Women, religion, and theater (both religious and secular) were intimately tied together in
Bologna. The concept of virtuous female heroines was so entrenched in Bolognese society that
there were also frequent theatrical productions given about women such as Judith in the
seventeenth century. Most of the noblewomen of the city of Bologna were involved in the
production of these representations, and at times they were presented in the homes of said ladies.
In addition, music was yet another category of female artistic production; Angela Teresa Muratori
apparently wrote sacred oratorios to be sung in the churches of Bologna, as a further manifestation
of the performance of piety.
Most theatrical productions in Bologna had strict ties with the church. For example, a play
was presented on the life of Alexander the Great, in order to show support of Pope Alexander VII
(r. 1655-67); even the local pastor at times gave sermons centered on the examples of Timoclea,
the brave widow pardoned by Alexander, and Judith. An allegorical play was staged in Piazza
Maggiore in which both men and women acted, witnessed by the pontifical legate. Some of the
plays were dedicated to the noblewomen of the city, many of whom were Sirani’s patrons. For
example, Panina Malvezzi Bentivoglio produced the Barriera di Carnevale in 1656, in Palazzo
Bentivoglio. Theatrical productions were co-ordinated with religious festivals, so there seems to
have been no prohibitionary attitude towards theater by the Church in the seventeenth century, at
least not in Bologna. On the contrary, theater was used as another form for the performance of
religion, to reinforce Counter-Reformatory models of behavior. One of the biggest feasts in
Bologna, the Festa della Porchetta (feast of the pork), was held on the day of St. Bartholomew in
August. Sirani was recorded as having attended this feast in August 1665, the year of her death,
shortly before she became ill. More will be said on this feast in the next chapter, as Sirani’s
colleague Giuseppe Maria Mitelli was responsible for several engravings depicting the theatrical
representations put on during the feast, such as the moralistic battle of the forces of good versus
the evil Tifone.
This atmosphere of theatricality and performance must have rubbed off on Sirani and her
students, and the paintings themselves serve as evidence for this situation as recounted in the
primary sources. Sirani’s paintings were often imbued with theatrical effects, especially her Judith
(Fig. 121), discussed earlier, who seems to be standing on a stage set with her prized severed head.
At times, the paintings themselves, such as Sirani’s Baptism of Christ for the church of the Certosa
(1657-8 Fig.105), were carried aloft in procession, enacting the city’s theater of religion.
Collaboration between Sirani and her students is difficult to assess; however, there is evidence for
one instance of such an exchange in reference to a procession. Cantofoli’s St. Thomas of Villanova
(1659, Fig. 163) bears some similarities to one of Sirani’s drawings for the saint for her own
painting of 1663 (Figs. 164-165). St. Thomas of Villanova was a Spanish saint who died in 1555
and was canonized in 1658 by Alexander VII. The saint was famous for his sacred oratories, which
contemporaries say were so effective that they could even move rocks to devotion and prayer. St.
Thomas lived during the heart of the Counter-Reformation period and was very interested in
helping the poor; thus he was a perfect role model for a maniera devota painting. In addition, he
was known for having a special devotion to the Virgin; he compared the Virgin’s heart to a burning
bush that would never be consumed. In both paintings, in the true tradition of the maniera devota,
Thomas is shown in rapt religious fervor. In Cantofoli’s version, the saint is shown frontally,
whereas in Sirani’s work the saint is glancing back at the viewer; both images attempt to
communicate the saint’s piety to the faithful. In turn, Cantofoli’s painting also participated in the
city’s collective performance of piety in the streets. According to Malvasia, Cantofoli’s St. Thomas
was carried aloft in a triumphant religious procession to its destined church, San Giacomo
Maggiore, for installation on the altar. The details of its commission may account for its devota
style; by comparison, Sirani’s version was for the church of the Madonna of Loreto and includes
San Bernardino, San Loreto, San Francesco, and San Pellegrini.
In addition to continuing the themes that were already prevalent in the paintings of the
maniera devota, one of these female artists, Muratori, extended these modes across other media
such as music. Music was an important part of women’s virtuous work, another facet of the
performance of piety, which “added dignity to the liturgy.” Music making was an important part of
the models of sanctity in the convents, and as an artist, Muratori was able to participate in the trope
of the sacred feminine: music and song pertained to the angelic quality of the female saints and
martyrs, yet were also skills that could be taught. It has already been explained that between the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women were made increasingly responsible for the religious
education of girls, including music lessons. In this case, there are documented ties between the
painting modes, sacred theater, the women painters in Bologna, and the Oratory of Neri. It is
significant that three of Muratori’s oratorios are for the Church of Santa Maria di
Galliera, since it seems that the Muratori family had a special relationship with the Oratorio of
Filippo Neri.480 Muratori’s sacred oratorios were commissioned by the Filippini; Neri himself was
dedicated to helping fallen women in Rome, a complement to Paleotti’s efforts in Bologna, so he
was a perfect role model for a confraternity dedicated to St. Nicholas, the Putte di Santa Marta at
the Opera dei Poveri Vergognosi, and an appropriate saint to reinforce the theme of women’s virtue.
Muratori’s four extant oratorios are the following: The Martyrdom of St Colomba, The
Games of Samson, and Esther for Santa Maria di Galliera, and the Cristo morto for Santa Maria
della Morte. All four of these subjects can be related to the modes of painting of the maniera devota,
as it was expressed visually by the women artists of Bologna. The Martyrdom of St. Colomba tells
the story of a male saint from Ireland associated with divine love, prophetic revelations, miracles,
and apparitions. The story of The Games of Samson recalls the image of the evil female, Delilah,
as a negative example of feminine behavior, who cuts Samson’s strength by cropping his locks,
using her feminine wiles for deception. In addition, Delilah was a subject already found in Sirani’s
work (Fig. 128, above). In direct contrast to Delilah, Esther is a positive role model, the woman
who saved her people by telling Ahasuerus of Haman’s plot against the Jews. She would fit in
perfectly with the other more familiar biblical female role models of virtue or femmes fortes,
previously discussed. The Cristo morto (Dead Christ) is a meditation on the death of Christ. This
oratory would have been an appropriate iconic theme for this particular church and the
confraternity named after Santa Maria della Morte, since it was a musical version of the image of
the Man of Sorrows. In this fashion, the female artist has added yet another dimension in which to
activate the icon, where Muratori’s oratorio becomes a musical andachtsbild.
Conclusion
We have seen that, among women artists, the three modes of the maniera devota (the iconic,
the sacred narrative, and the historiated portrait) continued and spread in the seventeenth century,
from the maestra Sirani, the gem of Europe, and her older contemporaries to her female students
and colleagues. An additional mode was also added: the visual narration of miracles became
another important strand in the fabric of belief. This type of painting rewarded the believer with a
type of virtual pilgrimage, an encounter with the sacred personage as an apparition in an actual
space. At the same time, it was meant to be imagery with the force of a realistic narrative; as such,
it completed the list of the modes of visual storytelling necessary for the propaganda of the church
in its struggle for visual reform in Bologna. The next chaptillustrates how this campaign further
expanded among female artists and their colleagues to the use of the medium of print, appropriating
discourses of science and popular culture along the way. This development will be demonstrated
in the work of Sirani’s student Veronica Fontana, as well as her colleague Giuseppe Maria Mitelli.
Chapter 5
Veronica Fontana and Giuseppe Maria Mitelli: Prints, Piety, and Science in the Work of
Sirani’s Students and Colleagues
The medium of prints played a significant role in the visual program of the
CounterReformation in Bologna, and Sirani’s students and colleagues, both male and female, were
greatly involved in this endeavor through book illustration and popular prints. Their production
covered areas of religious, scientific, and cultural significance, many specific to the intellectual
history of the city. This chapter focuses on another of Sirani’s students, or at the very least, a
follower greatly influenced by her work, the prolific engraver Veronica Fontana (1651-1694; no
relation to Lavinia Fontana has been discovered). Fontana specialized in woodcut illustrations for
all manner of texts, religious, scientific, and courtly.482 She would have been about fourteen
482 Veronica Fontana is mentioned by both Oretti and Malvasia as being one of Sirani’s students; see below in text
for further discussion. For primary sources on her, see Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina pittrice: Vite de’ pittori
bolognesi (1678), ed. G.P. Zanotti (Bologna: Tipografia Guidi all’Ancora, 1841), II, 407, II, 106; Luigi Crespi,
Felsina pittrice: Vite de’pittori Bolognesi tomo terzo alla maesta de Carlo Emanuele Iii. re di Sardegna &C. &C.
(Bologna: Marco Pagliarini, 1769), 249-50, in the life of Giuseppe Maria Moretti; Marcello Oretti, Notizie de’
Professori del Disegno, cioe Pittori, Scultori et Architetti bolognesi e de’ forestieri di sua scuola, 1760-1780 ( Ms.
B 126, IV, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna; microfiche).
Although Babette Bohn maintains that Fontana created wood engravings (“Self-Portraiture,” 247, and via email
communication), this is unlikely, since Fontana is listed by both the primary and secondary sources as creating
woodcuts, not wood engravings, which were not invented until the end of the eighteenth century: Bamber Gascogne,
How to Identify Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Inkjet, second
edition (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004), 5-6. The terminology is confusingly ambiguous, since “engraver” is
rendered, at times, as both intagliatore and incisore in Italian primary sources (Malvasia calls Fontana an
intagliatore, but Crespi calls her an incisore). Intaglio in Italian generally refers to woodcut (relief) techniques,
whereas incisione usually refers to the processes of engraving and etching on metal (which, more confusingly, are
called “intaglio” techniques in English). The principal source dedicated solely to Veronica Fontana as a woman
“engraver” is Silvia Urbini, “Sul ruolo della donna ‘incisore’ nella storia del libro illustrato,” in Donna, disciplina,
creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo: studi e testi a stampa, ed. Gabriela Zarri (Rome: Edizioni di storia e
letteratura, 1996), 367-391; see also her shorter catalogue entry in Vera Fortunati, Lavinia Fontana of Bologna,
1552-1614 (exhibition catalog, Washington, DC: National Museum of Women in the Arts; Milan: Electa, 1998), 148.
There Urbini clearly states that Fontana’s illustrations are in the "woodcut" (xilografie) medium.
at the time of Sirani’s death, and so could conceivably have trained with her for a short while, in
addition to training with her own father, the engraver Domenico Fontana. Veronica was quite well
known for her remarkable diversity of book illustration, and she worked for some of the city’s most
important patrons. She also collaborated with other male artists of Sirani’s circle on important
volumes such as the illustrations for Cospi’s Wunderkammer. No catalogue for her work exists as
yet; this chapter seeks to offer the germ of one. Three of Sirani’s male colleagues are also treated
here, as examples of the collaboration between male and female artists in Bologna in the graphic
arts The second half of this chapter focuses on one of these men, Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634-
1718), a colleague of both Sirani and Fontana, who continued the intertwining of women, religion,
and science in his prolific engraving career. His collaboration on the Museo Cospiano with
Veronica Fontana is only one facet of his output. He was known for his many festival prints, both
courtly and religious. In addition, although he has received little credit for these, his game sheets
are a unique representation of the post-Tridentine city, a true theatrum mundi of Bologna, with
special attention paid to subjects such as women’s virtue.
Veronica Fontana: The mano donnesca and the Jesuits, the Court at Parma, and Ferdinando
Cospi’s Wunderkammer
Adolescentula coelatrice praestantissima, ob incisum affabre in legno Gynoeceum
Regis Turcarum, Structa ad Opus Veneris Turcarum Claustra Tyranni, virginea
incidi no meruere manu. De Eadem additur una stylo ‘Claustris’ castissima raro,
non Venus orta Mari, sed Venus orta Manu.
Beyond this intriguing epigram, the story of Veronica Fontana’s life and work can be
reconstructed briefly from the fragmentary comments by the Bolognese writers Malvasia, Masini,
and Oretti. According to Oretti, her works were to be found in Bologna and many other cities. The
agreed-upon dates for her birth and early death are 1651-1694. She was a master cutter and was
certainly influenced by Sirani’s work in etching. However, for most of the texts that she illustrated,
she used the woodcut technique since this best accommodated the incorporation of illustrations
with text. One curious comment that survives comes from Gandellini, who recounts the tale of a
young male artist who took up the graphic arts with the hope of impressing Fontana and winning
her affections, but to no avail. One of the only other remnants of written records that refer directly
to her is the short encomium in the Latin epigram above, which was dedicated to the artist by
Bonaventura De Rossi in 1686. The trope of the female artist’s hand is nowhere more evident than
in this epigram written in her honor. Fontana achieved her fame by the virtue of her own hand, i.e.
the mano donnesca, using “the purest form and rare style.” Rather than a Venus who is birthed
from the sea, Fontana was the agent of her own fame. The Bolognese artist may even have traveled
to the faraway Ottoman court, as other artists such as Bellini had done. Of even more interest to
this study on women and visual imagery, the subject of her commission there seems to have been
the harem itself, the traditional mysterious enclave of the exotic image of the eastern woman, the
sensual “other.” The space of the harem was a segregated and gendered space, normally closed off
to all outside western men. These exotic views of the eastern female were often created for the
delectation of the male western viewer, as in the later nineteenth-century tradition of the odalisque.
Yet according to this record, Veronica Fontana was somehow allowed access into this world,
“instructed about feminine charms,” while working for the infidel tyrant, “undeserving of such a
fine engraver hand.”488 Again it seems as if the hand of the woman artist has vanquished the infidel
(like Judith and Holofernes) and used the virtue of the maniera devota to illuminate the mysteries
of the harem.
Veronica Fontana was prolific in her woodcuts and remarkable in the range and diversity
of her subject matter. In line with the maniera devota of the other mani donnesche in Bologna,
heirs of Lavinia Fontana and Elisabetta Sirani, together with certain male artists of the city, she
created the illustrations for many important religious tracts, such as the Quaresimale (Lenten
reader) for the Jesuit Paolo Segneri.489 She was also responsible for the prestigious commission of
the illustrations for the printed version of Ferdinando Cospi’s wunderkammer collection, the Museo
Cospiano (1677).490 In addition, she was involved in illustrating the collection of emblems and
knightly exercises for the Collegio of Parma. Her visual imagery thus participated in all three areas
central to Bolognese life during this period: religion, nobility, and science. In so doing, Fontana
worked for some of the most illustrious and important patrons of the day: the
Medici, the Jesuits, the Farnese, and the nobility of Bologna such as Cospi.
For more on books and prints with images of the Turkish world available to Westerners, see Bronwen Wilson, The
World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 70.
488 See note above.
489 Urbini, “Sul ruolo della donna incisore,” 374.
490 Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, II, 407.
Fontana worked closely with the Jesuits on several different religious texts including Il
Christiano istruito nella sua Legge (the Christian educated in his law) by Paolo Segneri, for which
she was given the responsibility to create the Jesuit emblem based on her own designs, and the
Quaresimale of 1679 (Fig. 166), also by Segneri, with the same emblem. She also illustrated scenes
in the Epistole et evangeli (1682; Fig. 167); unfortunately, no other information is available
regarding this work or the illustrations. One important piece of information not noted by previous
scholars is that there are several initials as signatures throughout the text, including those of
Veronica Fontana. She is responsible for two scenes: Christ Addressing the Apostles (Fig. 167),
and Christ on the Way to Jerusalem. In addition, she is responsible for some of the images of the
evangelists throughout the text. These scenes display a style of woodcut that is very similar to her
Museo illustrations, especially in the cupids used on the side borders of the scenes with the
evangelists, which also recall those on her courtly frontispieces discussed below.
Of these various works, first we will examine the emblem from Segneri’s Quaresimale of
1679, published by Jacopo Sabatini, in which several details are important. The frontispiece (Fig.
166) has a ring or a crown of flowers with cupids carrying the six Medici palle signifying Cosimo
III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, to whom the volume is dedicated. In addition to the crown at the top,
there is the sacred heart symbol of the Jesuits, a heart with three protruding arrows. This image
may also be a symbol for the Madonna of the Sette Dolori, at times conflated with the bacio del
divino amore. The kiss of divine love referred to receiving the wounds of Christ, often illustrated
in the form of a pierced heart. This wounded heart represented the sorrows of the Virgin over the
suffering and death of Christ. Eventually this iconography became especially popular in the
seventeenth century in images of pious females and saints, such as Suor Cecilia of Nocera and St.
Teresa of Avila. The bacio del divino amore was illustrated by another female artist, Suor Isabella
Piccini (1646-1734), in the Poetica anatomia by Giovanni Maria Ziletti (1675). Another mano
donnesca with a maniera devota, Piccini was a Venetian nun and artist who was also very active
in book illustration. Piccini used the iconography of the pierced heart for the Madonna of the Sette
Dolori in the Anatomia. This volume contains the illustration of Sister Cecilia of Nocera, whose
heart suffered the pains of the Passion and was burned by the kiss of divino amore. The legend says
that her body was autopsied and found to have these marks on her heart.
But religion alone does not cover all of Fontana’s work, which was an integral part of the
larger fabric of the city, in a specific time and place, as expressed in a unified concept of virtue,
piety, and prestige. Prestige is the guiding theme of the other two texts she illustrated that concern
knightly exercises and courtly emblems: Il Teatro dell’honore, Parma, 1675 (Fig. 88), and the
Convictorium collegii nobelium Parmae nomenclatura, Parma, 1675. Both of these texts were
created for the court of Parma; they are examples of the treatises that descend from
Castiglione’s Courtier regarding learned societies and ideal knightly behavior at the court, and that
would have been of interest to families like the Farnese. The Teatro dell’honore (Fig. 88) is a work
containing exercises appropriate for knights; it was dedicated to Ranuccio Farnese, as indicated by
the coat of arms. The frontispiece consists of two putti framing a scene that shows a beehive,
referring to the bee that was a family symbol. Surrounded by garlands of flowers, there is a bee in
the center. The scroll-shaped frame is surmounted by a crown, a symbol of Farnese dominion over
their territory. Fontana was responsible for both the creation and execution of this emblem, whereas
her other work for this text (Fig. 168) bears the name of M. Odi as designer and Fontana as engraver
(del[ineavit] and sculp[sit], respectively). The designs are very similar to the framing elements
used in embroidery designs, themselves ultimately descended from printed frontispieces such as
this. Her cupids elegantly cross their legs as they stand, reminiscent of the putti behind the sibyls
in Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling. However, despite the similarity in the design of a central open
area framed by an angel on either side, there is a formality in Odi’s design that is not found in
Fontana’s version. The angels are full-grown females, whereas Fontana used putti in the other
example. Also, Odi uses the mannerist trope of the mask at the bottom of his frame, similar to that
used by artists such as Zuccaro, from which Fontana abstains in her version. The two female figures
in Odi’s version are allegories of fame with their trumpets in hand. The coat of arms includes the
papal keys in the center, indicating a dedication to the Pope. In addition, the emblem displays the
fleur-de-lis and stripes for the ruling House of Farnese in Parma, as well as their connections with
the House of Savoy through marriage. Finally, the same crown is present in both versions of the
emblem.
In the Convictorium collegii nobelium Parmae nomenclatura, Fontana once again created
the emblem of the Collegio di Parma for the frontispiece. This work is a collection of emblems for
the society of learned men from Parma; each member had his own unique emblem.
Emblems were essential to courtly and learned societies because they represented the ideals of the
society as well as the particular characteristics of its members in a concise visual form, and as such
were a type of members’ signature. Emblems had long been popular in Bologna; as we saw in
chapter 1, Bocchi’s sixteenth-century text, Symbolicarum quaestionum, was illustrated by Prospero
Fontana and engraved by Bonasone. In addition to Bocchi, Fontana’s other possible precursors
include later compendia such as the famous set of allegorical symbols for the use of artists by
Cesare Ripa, the Iconologia (1611).
In addition to the above-mentioned works, according to Oretti many other extant works by
Fontana’s hand could be seen in Bologna and in other cities; her work for noble patrons included
imprese and portraits. What is extant and attributed at the moment includes two of Fontana’s
designs for imprese included by Oretti in his manuscript.499 The first design for a frontispiece (Fig.
169) is a drawing with two heraldic lions holding up the coat of arms with the name Antonio di
Paolo Masini e Comp (Compania). The design is very similar to those found in women’s
embroidery, i.e., a framed border with scrolls. This is most probably the title page for Masini’s
Aggiunte as mentioned by Oretti. A second image, impresa per gelati, is the emblem for a learned
Bolognese society (Fig. 170). Once again there is the typical border framed with a scroll like those
Fontana used in her other designs. It is clear that Fontana worked with academies since she
engraved the frontispiece for the Academy in Parma as well, as discussed earlier. She may have
been influenced by the emblem of the Incamminati by Agostino
Carracci, or that of the Ardenti, for the Bolognese Academy. She also created the illustration for
the family tree of the Carracci (Fig. 171) for Malvasia’s Felsina pittrice, as well as a portrait of the
artist Francesco Brizio (Fig. 172) for the same volume, 1678. These commissions were an
indication of the prestige of her work, due to the illustrious patrons involved.
Cospi, Science, and the Wunderkammer
Perhaps the most important commission for Veronica involves the aspect of science and the
city, the illustration of Ferdinando Cospi’s Museo Cospiano (Figs. 173-174). Cospi was a Medici
art agent who had been a page in the Medici household as a child. He was also gonfaloniere of
Bologna in his later years. The Museo was a combination of text and illustration that completely
described Cospi’s collection of naturalia and artificialia. As discussed in chapter 1, his collection
was inherited from the sixteenth-century naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, who left it to the city of
Bologna. However, the nature of the collection had changed by the seventeenth century. Originally
it was mostly composed of natural items, with some examples of man-made curiosities; by the
seventeenth century, the collection increasingly incorporated any items meant to elicit wonder in
the viewer, making it more of a wunderkammer.503 Cospi’s collection contained examples of both
natural and artificial phenomena, i.e., coins, medals, arms, and the like. According to Olmi, the
collection actually had much in common with the literature of the Baroque period, in its rich and
eclectic compostion. One could say that the arrangement was meant to provoke meraviglia in a
similar way that a religious miracle could elicit wonder from the faithful. Both collections
represented the three spheres of influence in post CounterReformation Bologna, i.e., clerics,
scientists, and nobility. The artificial wonders were necessary to the nobility as a mark of good
taste, while the natural wonders were indicative of erudition for both the nobility and the scientists;
the clerics could utilize both artificial and manmade curiosities as examples of God’s wonders,
since man himself was God’s greatest wonder.
Aldrovandi’s collection began with a scientific approach, with more than 4,000 specimens
categorized. When Cospi recorded his collection in the Museo, the text took its scientific
information from Aldrovandi’s notes, often wholesale.506 Although some of this information was,
by the seventeenth century, scientifically inaccurate, this deficiency did not perturb the author, who
was the scholar Lorenzo Legati, not Cospi himself. Furthermore, the objects themselves were not
organized in the didactic fashion set forth by Legati’s text. They were arranged in an aesthetically
pleasing fashion, rather than by rigorous scientific categorization. One can glimpse this aesthetic
type of organization in the book’s frontispiece, created by Fontana’s colleague, Giuseppe Maria
Mitelli (Fig. 3). His illustration depicts the collection arranged with the smaller objects in the
cabinets and the larger objects such as shields and swords attached to the wall and ceiling in an
artfully arranged display of wonder. In addition to what appears to be a self-portrait of the artist,
there is the figure of the dwarf who was the curator and guide for the collection, himself displayed
as an integral part of the meraviglia. Mitelli’s work was involved in the same three areas that
constantly intertwine in our female artists’ visual production: science, religion, and virtue, in this
case, the virtue of the nobility, by way of prestige; his other work will be discussed below. Cospi
and Legati were still pursuing the same path followed by Aldrovandi wherein as many objects as
possible should be illustrated as accurately as possible. The book is divided into five separate
sections: 1. nature, 2. man-made wonders, 3. ancient coins, 4. armor, 5. epigrams and inscriptions.
The text and image constantly reinforce one another in description.
Although Mitelli created the frontispiece for this text, Fontana presumably created all of
the other illustrations, since she signed it “VF Fecit Omnia” at the beginning of the text’s
dedication. There she also created a portrait of Ferdinand de’ Medici (Fig. 175), to whom the
volume was dedicated. Apparently the circulation was quite wide, if sources are to be believed;
Comelli, writing in the eighteenth century, states that 800 copies were printed. In a certain sense,
the publication of this text was also a bid for the honor that nobles always seek, and public
knowledge of the possession of such a fine collection would surely have added to Cospi’s prestige.
However, what is most specific about his catalogue is his desire to illustrate as much of the corpus
as possible, and to advertise it to such an extent. Perhaps this is because he was heir to Aldrovandi’s
collection and original methodology regarding the combination of the visual and textual for a full
description of the object. Aldrovandi also insisted on having his work illustrated as accurately as
possible. In this he was aided by the naturalism of the Bolognese school of artists, despite the fact
that Aldrovandi’s head engravers were Jacopo Ligozzi, a Florentine, and Cornelius Schwindt, a
Fleming. As stated earlier, the Flemish had also been noted for the proficiency and exactitude
necessary for this scientific style of representation since the days of van Eyck and Memling, and
the Bolognese had inherited this interest and combined it with their own traditions of naturalism
such as in the work of Francia and Lavinia Fontana. In a certain sense, the text was itself a type of
wunderkammer in the form of a book that contained an encyclopedic microcosm of the universe.
Cospi inherited two tendencies from Aldrovandi: one, a desire for accurate illustrations and
two, a Tridentine sense of piety in the tone of the objects’ textual descriptions. Some other texts
of wunderkammers from the period are only partially illustrated, relying mostly on text, yet the
Museo has 87 illustrations by Fontana, showing all manner of things and creatures. Perhaps even
more noteworthy are the descriptions; some contain a moralizing tone, very much in concert with
the counter-reformatory zeal that remained in Bologna long after Trent. For example, the
illustration of an Etruscan oil lamp (Fig. 176) is accompanied by an explanation that goes into the
details of the social and cultural history and context of the object. In this case, the figure is posed
in a rather obscene position, which Legati attributes to a type of punishment meted out in certain
Middle Eastern cultures for adultery.513 Thus, in addition to the accurate physical description of
the object, the reader is given a moralistic judgment and an explanation of cultural anthropology
and practice. Legati also describes how it could be the pose of acrobats or gymnasts in certain
cultures, and after this “objective” description, he ventures into the moralistic one.
Other important examples of Fontana’s work in the Museo include the Bacchante (Fig. 177),
which she signed separately, indicating that perhaps this image may have been used in a separate
composition, or considered a finished work in itself, outside of the text. It displays Fontana’s sense
of classical antiquity and her ability to reproduce not only naturalia, but also works of man-made
art. The description of the object includes a discussion of the figure of bacchantes in ancient
mythology, to reinforce the history of the image. Regarding naturalia, one of the examples that
might be more familiar today is the Turkey (Fig. 178). The turkey, native to the Americas, was
proof of both Aldrovandi and Cospi’s interest in the latest exploratory discoveries. Aldrovandi had
been very interested in New World discoveries, despite not having been able to travel there, and
his collection even included a Pre-columbian text; Cospi’s collection continued this fascination.
In Bologna, there was a constant exchange between artists, scholars, and collectors, and Cospi’s
collection (both the objects and the illustrated text) was as important a source for the artists of the
day, regarding the naturalistic depiction of the world around them, as Aldrovandi’s had been a
century earlier. This importance is evident in Sirani’s painting of Galatea (Fig. 179), for which she
probably used Cospi’s shells from the Museo as a source for the elaborate conch shell upon which
Galatea rides. Although used in a mythological painting and enlarged to fit its rider, Sirani’s shell
is otherwise scientifically very accurate. Thus, her painting takes part in the continual give-and-
take between the women artists, patrons, and scholars of the city that characterized the artistic life
of Bologna.
Finally, Cospi’s Museo is a unique record of a wunderkammer in that it attempts to add even
more than what may be seen at first glance, i.e., the cultural background and moralistic judgments,
as an integral part of the interpretation and comprehension of the object’s meaning and purpose in
context. As such, the Museo becomes a document of its place and time, repesenting cultural values
present in Bologna. For example, it mirrors the encyclopedic urge of the seventeenth century to
categorize its surroundings, including all the new discoveries of the
New World, but often places them in the old categories. This is evidenced by the type of judgments
in the description of the Etruscan lamp in the Museo Cospiano, most likely a leftover from Aristotle
combined with the post-Tridentine climate, as already seen in Aldrovandi’s Monstrorum.
Therefore, the commission for the Museo was a crucial one for Fontana’s career, considering the
widespread diffusion of the text and the importance of the erudite subject matter and its noble
patron. Added to her other work for the Jesuits and the court of Parma, it indicates the high level
of prestige that was accorded to the female engraver. This chapter is but a beginning toward a
catalogue of her oeuvre, and surely more of her works still remain to be discovered. Only then can
scholars fully assess the role of Fontana and her fellow women artists in this period, and their
contribution to the cultural life of the city and to the history of art as a whole.
Virtù Virile: Sirani’s Male Colleagues and Collaborators in Engraving and Etching
As Sirani was also an excellent etcher, she was an inspiration to her circle in this medium,
both male and female. Although this study has been focusing on her female students, Sirani also
had several male collaborators and colleagues, who continued the tradition of being involved in the
major printing fields of the day: scientific, courtly, and religious. Although these artists were
considerably older than Sirani, the extant works from three of her male colleagues, (who were also
active with her father, in the case of the first two), Lorenzo Tinti, Lorenzo Loli, and Matteo
Borbone, demonstrate the diversity of their production. Based on the surviving number of works,
it seems that Tinti was the most active in textual illustration. Both Tinti and Loli created,
repectively, engraved and etched versions of Sirani’s work (as well as the work of other Bolognese
artists such as Agostino Carracci), whereas Borbone is mostly rembered as the sculptor who created
the funerary catafalque for Sirani, inspired by her brief yet shining career. The following is a partial
list of what remains of Tinti’s oeuvre, although more work needs to be done on it.
Teatro anatomica di Bologna, 1668; La spada d’onore, 1672 in Venice for Paolo Balioni;
Pompe funebre nell’essequie dell’illustrissimi signor Berlingiero Gessi, 1672; Ulisse
Aldrovandi, dendro logiae naturalis, 1668; Astronomiae reformatae, 1665, Bologna; Il
pennello lagrimato, 1665 (the frontispiece for the eulogy for Sirani by Picinardi);
Memoriae, imprese e ritratti dei signori accademici Gelati di Bologna, 1672.
As this list of titles shows, Tinti was active in the same range of work as both Veronica
Fontana and Mitelli: religious volumes, scientific tomes, and courtly treatises. For such a range of
work in illustration, he would have needed similar skills to the artists of the Felsina pittrice: a
decorous sense of realism and a pious style. He also created an engraved copy of Sirani’s
Selfportrait at the Easel (Fig. 180), a painting which was in the Hercolani collection until about
1835, and subsequently lost;519 this same painting, which shows Sirani seated at the easel painting
a portrait of her father, may also have been copied by Ginevra Cantofoli (see chapter 4).
These examples reinforce the idea of cooperation between the female artists of Bologna and their
male colleagues.
Lorenzo Loli is the second of Sirani’s male colleagues, whom we know about from a few
comments in the primary sources, as well as his extant prints. He created several etchings of
Elisabetta’s work such as the Madonna and Child (Fig. 181). Finally, Matteo Borbone is
remembered as the creator of the tempietto d’onore (temple of honor), the funerary monument or
catafalque for Elisabetta’s funeral (Fig. 182), as well as a map of Bologna marking all the churches
and houses of reform. The catafalque consisted of a life-size effigy of Sirani surrounded by the
columns of a classical temple and seated at the easel, frozen forever in the act of painting. The
tempietto was thus part of the construction of Sirani’s legend as the great pittrice after her death.
In another example of interchange among the artists being studied here, Borbone’s design for the
catafalque was copied by Veronica Fontana for the woodcut in Malvasia’s Felsina pittrice
illustrating the biography of Sirani.
Sirani and Fontana’s Male Colleagues: Giuseppe Maria Mitelli and Images of Women in
Virtue and Vice
Social commentary, local culture, and Lombard naturalism (as shown in Carracci’s genre
painting of a butcher shop) (Fig. 183) are all critical parts of Mitelli’s oeuvre. A prolific artist,
Mitelli engraved Annibale Carracci’s compendium of tradespeople, his version of the Cris de
Paris (Fig. 184). He also engraved copies of religious paintings by famous Bolognese artists, such
as Elisabetta Sirani: for example, St. Anthony of Padua Adoring the Christ Child (1660s, Figs. 185-
186). In addition, Mitelli engraved various scientific manuals, some in collaboration with women
artists. However, he is best known for his myriad illustrations of the human condition in the
Bologna of the late seventeenth century. Mitelli’s production thus intersects with the main themes
discussed throughout this work and shared by the women artists of Bologna: scientific (e.g., the
Museo Cospiano), courtly (e.g., his representations of allegorical festival theater), and religious
(e.g., didactic games and proverbs, religious processions and sacred theater). The remainder of this
chapter looks at four main areas of his production: his festival prints; his proverbs; his didactic
games, some of which were descended from courtly treatises but employed as propaganda for the
Catholic church, especially regarding women and virtue; and finally, his site-specific games, whose
themes are inseparable from the cultural and historical context of contemporary Bologna. It also
examines this imagery in relation to the social history of gambling and the church’s position about
it, as well as the possible origins of some of these games in the courtly treatises of the period.
Volcanoes, Piety and Pork: Mitelli’s Festival Prints and the Performance of Religion
Religious festivals, which Mitelli often illustrated in his prints, were sites of elaborate
theatrical display in the form of macchine, or floats. These floats were imbued with complex sacred
iconography; one such example was the mountain of Moses sponsored by the Compagnia of San
Domenico (Figs. 187-191). The following description of the macchina is taken from the printed
account of the Festa della Maria Vergine coronata held in Reggio, a city in Emilia, in
1674, which was written by the abbot Giacomo Certani and dedicated to Francesco II d’Este, Duke
of Modena and Reggio (Fig. 187,188). This float was composed of a large mountain with the figure
of Moses at the bottom. The mountain breaks up after Moses hits it with his staff. Fountains emerge
out of the mound with rivers, shells, masks of bronze, and representations of the four parts of the
world complete with a religious inscription in Latin from the book of Ecclesiastes. Also included
are four statues of the evangelists, four harpies, a garden with a religious inscription, and the image
of the Virgin of the Ghiara at the top bearing the quote “I am your fountain.” The focus is on Marian
worship using the symbolism of water, in which the Virgin is the pure fons vitae from whom all
virtues flow forth. She is the image of the sacred feminine, a life-giving fountain of purity and
virtue. Part of the inscription calls her “a mountain blooming with virtues, enriched with a fountain
from whence flows the oil of merciful grace... who will not drink at the bosom of Mary, the fountain
of the savior? The wave of the virgin catches the dragon of the inferno. Her fountain comes from
the rock and she crushes the serpent.” This image of the Virgin catching the dragon and crushing
the serpent recalls the Woman of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation, who crushes Satan
beneath her feet and thus brings about man’s salvation.
In order for the miracle to be convincing, the audience must suspend disbelief and allow
itself to be convinced of the veracity of the mountain. Thus the float is represented in the conical
shape of a real mountain, complete with shrubbery along its slopes. Only in this way, when the
mountain opens and the Virgin emerges from within, will the faithful be certain of having witnessed
a true miracle. In the festival of Maria Vergine coronata held at Reggio in Emilia, scientific
knowledge of an accurate volcano is appropriated for pietistic intent. The naturalistic mountain
opens as it would during an eruption but instead here it is transformed into the biblical mountain
of Moses, from which emerges the bucolic paradise of the fountain of the Virgin, after Moses
activates the power of the float with his gesture. This piece is represented as an active image, both
real and iconic. In a scene which blends both Old and New Testaments, the ultimate goal is the
glorification of the Virgin; science is co-opted in the service of Marian devotion.
A second example of Mitelli’s festival prints is from one of the most popular and longlived
of the feasts in Bologna: the festa della Porchetta, or feast of the pork (Figs. 192-193), still enacted
today, sans the traditional bulls. The following is from a written description of the feast from
August 24th, 1693, the day of St. Bartholomew; there may be a relation between roasted pork and
the flaying of the saint. The feast consisted of the spectacle of a bullfight with 40 armed hunters
and dogs chasing two bulls that had been loosed in the piazza. The city’s ladies and gentlemen
dressed in their finery for the event, which was sponsored by both the local gonfaloniere and the
papal legate. They ended the feast by throwing pieces of roasted pork and coins of silver to the
needy over the main railing of the Palazzo degli Anziani. The raison d’etre for these feasts was to
“avoid the dangers of boredom.” The writer of this account relates that some version of the feast
was started as far back as the time of the ancient Romans and was recreated by the thirteenth
century. The illustration depicts the piazza filled with knights on horseback and surmounted by the
coats of arms that belonged to the Gonfalonieri Casalini and to eight other noble families, the
Malvezzi, Mariani, Orsi, Ercolani, Angelelli, Pepoli, Fontana, and Bentivoglio-Patarazzi.
The third example of Mitelli’s festival prints is the depiction of an allegorical play, the
Battaglia contro Tifone (Fig. 194), that was held in Bologna as part of the festa della Porchetta of
1665. The scenery required a volcano to be built from which the angry god Tifone would emerge.
The volcano was created with the utmost attention to scientific detail; science was utilized in the
elaboration of allegory and myth, and yet even this mythology had as its final end the triumph of
virtue, of good over evil, which is what the allegorical story of Tifone represents. Tifone is the god
of chaos who must be subdued, and in Bologna his defeat is accomplished via faith. Tifone was the
son of Gaia and Tartarus; Gaia set him against Zeus to punish Zeus for having defeated the Titans.
Tifone was described as a horrible and formidable monster, but Zeus finally won the day. Zeus then
buried Tifone under Mt. Etna to make sure that, except for the occasional eruption, he would remain
underground and in check. The natural function of the volcano is transformed into a perfect
Christian allegory.
Virtuous Vices: The Social Mapping of Leisure in Bologna Through Mitelli’s Game Prints
Mitelli’s second category of work was his didactic game sheets and proverbs. As equipment
for a type of virtuous vice, these game prints allow scholars to engage in the social mapping of
leisure in post-Tridentine Bologna, as the prints cover important religious and social issues of the
period. They are a treasure trove of the panorama of local urban life, both reflecting and
contributing to the social fabric of the city. The topics often involve didactic images of women
because, as we have seen, in the eyes of the Church the city’s well-being was directly tied to the
virtue of its women. Gambling itself is part of the subject of these prints, despite the Church’s
prohibition; some of the illustrations even include figures of people in the act of gambling, and
show that it usually leads to a tragic end. Ironically, in all of Mitelli’s game prints, the morally
correct position is arrived at through gambling, i.e., by throwing the dice and using the print as a
game board, the player arrives at the conclusion that gambling is a moral hazard. Before examining
several key examples of these virtuous vices, in order to better understand how Mitelli’s prints
functioned among their users, a closer look at gambling in Bologna and the Papal States during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is needed.
Despite the city's pious reputation, the Church was forced to engage in an aggressive
prohibitionary campaign against the social evil of gambling, using a strategy of surveillance and
penalty. Surviving prints bear witness to, on the one hand, the papal bandi or posters that banned
the use of dice and on the other, a vast collection of Mitelli’s engraving for printed game sheets. It
is accepted that the games were meant to be played with dice, since the illustrations included both
numerical equivalents for each scene and directions on how much to pay or take from the pot
depending on where the dice landed the player on the board. How did Mitelli’s prints function as
evidence for the encounter between the conflicting discourses of Catholic prohibition and the daily
life of early modern Bologna? As will be shown, the artist created a hybrid form.
By the time of the first bando in 1588 (Fig. 195), certain forms of games had come to be
seen by the church as an evil habit. These printed edicts were posted to inform the public of
restrictions and prohibitions on gambling in the Papal States of Rome, Bologna, and Perugia.
Examples range in date from 1588 into the twentieth century. Their proliferation throughout the
centuries attests to the fact that gambling was actually alive and well in the Papal States, since there
was a need to continually emphasize its prohibition. For instance, the bando in figure 195 uses
words such as “scandalous” and “pernicious” to indicate the moral dangers of the game of dice:
“essendosi gia per ordine della sanctica di N.S. prohibito il gioco tanto scandaloso e perniscioso
de Dadi...” (having been prohibited by the order of His Holiness, the game of dice, so scandalous
and pernicious...).527
During religious festivals such as Christmas and Holy Week, gambling was expressly forbidden,
as it would interfere with religious devotion. The perils of gambling, in addition to distracting
players from religious purpose, are stated as morally dangerous. Gambling is seen as a pernicious
vice that will bring about the ruin of one's family through the loss of one’s private possessions
and thus lead to economic, moral, and social ruin. By contrast, in other cities such as Venice,
some scholars believe that gambling was actually used by the noble classes as a way to retain a
certain amount of the gentlemanly dignity associated with a class of society whose powers were
dying out.
Mitelli’s game prints are unique in many ways. Examples of more historically wellknown
games include the Giuocho dell’oca (the game of the swan) and Pela il chiu (skin the owl game,
Fig. 196), which were played with a traditional game board and dice. In these games, one would
follow a circular path, which led to the center by way of passes or setbacks. Mitelli, however,
created a hybrid form of game sheet with a moralistic twist. Encoded in his games are proverbs
and archetypes of folk wisdom, which contain messages in concert with the Church’s position on,
for example, women. Ironically, however, these messages must be arrived at through gambling,
something which the Church wished to eradicate. Mitelli’s choice of this hybrid perhaps reveals an
ambiguous position. He may have been caught between his relationship to the Church and to his
society, an artist who, in the words of De Certeau, was using everyday tactics to counter religious
strategies; in other words, he employed the game sheet as “la perruque,” or the wig, a tactic of
resistance and evasion that the reader/player can appropriate for himself.
The format of these games is usually a broadsheet, and all are played with a number of dice
ranging from one to three. The artist uses P for pagare, or payment, and T for tirare, or take from
the pot. In the games’ directions, he often suggests un quattrino as a forfeit, but then leaves the
players the option of whatever they agree upon. If one rolls three of a kind, for example, one usually
takes half the pot. Also significant is that many of Mitelli’s prints contain verses in Bolognese
dialect, reinforcing the moralistic message of his games and creating a complex interweaving of
image, text, and morality.
Regarding the diverse subject matter, female virtue was often an important topic in both
games and proverbs. The first two games under consideration, the Game of Truth and the Game of
Husbands and Wives, touch upon the city’s fear of loose women and the moral hazards of gambling
by showing dire consequences for both the male and female characters on the game boards. These
examples are specifically related to the city and the church’s fight to restore women’s lost honor.
The typical format is most evident in the Game of Truth (Fig. 197). The game is divided into six
squares, in two rows of three squares each. The squares are arranged from left to right, top to
bottom, except for the top central square, the winning number. The numerical order mimics the
gravity of the moral infraction until one reaches the winning number 6, which ironically is the most
pious scene. Each square contains an illustration, a number, a direction, and a line of text. This
game is closely related to the tradition of moralizing broadsheets such as the miserable end of the
courtesan, a theme especially popular in Venice. The top center square, number 6, dominates the
board with its illustration of the well-behaved family. This square is further emphasized by being
depicted on a type of tapestry to distinguish it from the other squares and draw one’s eyes to it. The
most ironic is square number 3 (lower left), in that it tells the player that “he who plays, loses, and
he who doesn't play, wins.” This is a clear message against gambling, reminding one of its possible
dire consequences, and yet in order to play this game one must take up the dice and gamble. The
sexual suggestiveness of the two
players’ feet touching under the table refers to promiscuity as a vice that would accompany, or be
a consequence of, gambling. That form of contact could also refer to cheating at cards, but sexual
promiscuity is more in concert with the rest of the game’s moralistic message.
Square number 4 (lower center) tells us that “by dancing, you lose more than you believe,”
perhaps implying once more a loss of virtue. It is interesting to note that as the number increases,
so do the vice and its penalty. For example, one square says, “outside of the home, one always
loses.” The illustration shows two female figures about to get into trouble with a strange male suitor
outside, giving a very direct reminder that a woman's place is in the home. The dog, usually a
symbol of marital fidelity, is barking at the unknown suitor, signifying danger. Square number 2
(upper right) represents perhaps a lesser vice, but one that could lead to others: "talking on the
doorstep, one loses." Again this encounter is used to imply promiscuity. One can see a tradesman
in the background, similar to the stock representations of tradesmen in the Arti di Bologna. Most
of the admonitions to stay indoors seem to be addressed to women, although in square 1, the penalty
is based on the vice of vanity, with both sexes preening themselves in that age-old trope of vanity,
the mirror. The characters are dressed in fancy seventeenth-century costume with a background
resembling an interior stage set, perhaps implying performance of identity through use of the
mirror. Although literacy is implied, the family is depicted as being of modest means, and not in
rich costume. One could even argue that there is a slight suggestion that the vices are associated
with the upper classes. In square 2, the worker in the background who is simply doing his job in
order to earn a living contrasts with the foppish suitor who represents infidelity.
The winning image is in the upper center, so as to be easily spotted, and the added use of
the tapestry highlights the proper choice of behavior that one must perform with a theatrical
flourish. The inclusion of the child implies family, as opposed to simply lovers. Note that the
woman's hair is neatly kept in and restrained, signifying a parallel with moral restraint. In addition,
the woman is engaged in that most pious of activities for Christian women, as seen in chapter 3:
embroidery.
Another game related to the moralizing broadsheet tradition is the Game of Husbands and
Wives (Fig. 198). This game has a narrative progression, composed of four rows with the top and
bottom containing six squares and images each; it describes the slow decline of a married couple,
similar to the “decline of the courtesan” broadsheets. (Mitelli also took up the theme of the fall of
the meretrice, or prostitutes, in his lunario, or calendar, to be discussed below, Fig. 202). The
winning combination of 18, or 3 sixes, is symbolized by the handing over of the dowry to the
husband by the wife in the first square. The first two rows are taking squares and the last two are
paying squares. One might assume, then, that there is a positive implication to the images and
actions in the first 2 rows, even though one of these images is reminiscent of the woman on top
(number 9) and another is a man in woman's clothing (il mondo rovesciato, or the world upside
down, number 6). These two squares echo themes that were already a part of life in seventeenth-
century Bologna, as there were numerous prints of the woman in breeches circulating, and she was
both a feared and celebrated figure. The man dressed as a woman is the inverse: having lost his
masculinity, he becomes an unnatural image (connected to crossdressing rituals that were part of
carnival celebrations) and thus a reflection of the world upside down, another widely circulating
theme of the day. Bologna was especially familiar with these themes through the satiric yet
empathetic verses of Giulio Cesare Croce, a sixteenth-century poet of the piazza.
The husband going gambling can be seen as the beginning of the decline, or the turning
point in the couple’s story. It is interesting to note that when the wife complains, there is a penalty,
but if the husband is angry, one takes from the pot. The implications of this system are quite clear,
as gender roles give primacy to the man. It may also imply the idea of woman as lunatic and less
emotionally stable than man, then a widespread notion: women were often represented as
melancholy, though without the benefit of its creative fire.536 The number of the final square is nil:
no penalty paid, no forfeit taken. The illustration in this final square depicts the couple's complete
economic and spiritual ruin, shown, ironically, as a result of gambling. The other message in this
game was that women’s place was in the home or the convent: the CounterReformation continued.
Players are thus reminded in these two games (while in the very act of gambling) of the
church’s position on gambling and women. To gamble was to put one’s faith passively in Chance,
and Chance was considered the opposite of Divine Providence, especially because Providence also
operated through active good works on the part of the faithful. Therefore dice were to be completely
eliminated: “piu danosi e detestibili... interdetto e estinto” (more ruinous and detestible…
forbidden and extinguished), whereas cards would be tolerated: “con qualche peso imposto ai
giocatori” (with some burden imposed upon the players), i.e., a tax.537 The Camera Apostolica still
hoped to eliminate them eventually: “con la speranza di annicilar questo delle carte a suo tempo e
luogho” (with the hope of annihilating this (vice) of cards in its own time and place). Although
they decided to ban dice, on a somewhat contradictory yet perhaps financially profitable note, cards
would be tolerated with the minor penalty of an imposed tax. This was to be accomplished through
the branding of card decks with a papal stamp, so that they might be identified as legal decks, and
tax upon them for the stamp would be collected at the time of purchase. Could the more obvious
reason that cards were tolerated be the fact that they were a tangible source of revenue? The papacy
of Sixtus V apparently needed money for growing city expenses and to curb the towering debt left
by the lavish personal spending of previous popes.
A special commissioner was appointed to enforce the legal stamping of card decks and to
collect fines on those who broke the law. The card tax was “un giulio di moneta Romana,” and if
caught with cards that were unstamped or illegally stamped, one would pay a ducat per deck
(including, naturally, the confiscation of the deck). If caught gambling with dice, one was fined the
punitive sum of a gold scudo, and if the criminal were unable to pay, a prison sentence would be
imposed. Anyone with illegal card decks was commanded to come forward and declare them in
order to rectify the situation, no later than 10 days from the posting of the bando. As previously
mentioned, gambling in general was expressly forbidden during religious festivals. However, the
idea of allowing the specific game of card-playing outside of religious festivals implies a temporal
aspect to morality. For example, cards were morally tolerated, yet during a religious festival they
were transformed into a greater social evil, a sign of papal and religious disrespect: “sara lecito
giochare, purche si porti … honore e reverenza alle santissime feste” (“gambling will be accepted,
so long as honor and reverence is shown to the holy feasts”). In this context they become a
distraction, but perhaps in actuality, gambling with cards during festivals represented more of a
resistance to the total discipline of the Catholic regime, or a tactic of carving out personal space
against the papal and religious order. In the case of card-playing, the players were asked to come
forward and declare their card decks so that they may be taxed. As in a Foucauldian world, the first
step towards discipline and punishment is surveillance. Unfortunately, the taxes did not necessarily
achieve their prohibitive function; more bandi were continually created to try to stop the
proliferation of evasion of the card tax. Another interesting aspect to the tax is that it was destined
for "charitable works," to help support the “Ospizio dei poveri mendicanti di San Sisto” erected by
Sixtus V in 1587. It had been started by the Bolognese pope, the Buoncompagni Gregory XIII, to
“togliere i mendicanti dalla citta” -- perhaps also to visually order the city by ridding it of its more
obvious socially marginalized groups.543 Thus gambling, in a circuitous fashion, was prohibited to
the public, yet then the profits from its taxes were utilized to “benefit” society and clean up the
homeless from the
streets.
Games of a Courtly Origin
But were games always considered to be such a social evil? A more positive view of the
history of games can be found in courtly literature, as a pastime for the bored members of the
nobility and the rich classes. From mentions in period literature to behavioral treatises such as
Castiglione’s Cortegiano and even more elaborate tracts written specifically on games, their
pedigree is long and complex. The next few examples of Mitelli’s games, such as the Game of
Professions, the Game of the Beloved with her Lovers, and the Game of Eyes and Mouths, are
directly descended from courtly prototypes. These games involved various activities from the
miming of professions to discussions of the true meaning of love. As such, their roots in courtly
treatises on game-playing merit further investigation. In the history of games before their
prohibition in the early modern period, their most remote origins go back to antiquity, and due to
this heritage, they were seen as a respectable pastime. Bakhtin states that games still preserved this
philosophical meaning reminiscent of antiquity during the time of Rabelais in 1542.
According to Peter Burke, associated with the courtly concept of leisure were the academies, such
as the Intronati of Siena, whose partial function was to create absorbing games to avoid boredom.
Out of these institutions would come the published parlor games of the Bargagli brothers of Siena,
and the “Cento Giuochi” from their Bolognese counterpart, Innocentio Ringhieri. These
institutions used leisure for intellectual games involving philosophy and knowledge. They also
delineated the concept of ozio onesto vs. ozio disonesto.549 Ozio onesto, or honest leisure, was
considered to consist of courtly parlor games associated with the academies, whereas ozio
disonesto, or dishonest leisure, as described previously, was represented by dice-playing in the
local taverns. Although these academies were mostly for elites, the flurry of how-to books
published during the sixteenth century most probably pervaded other classes.
This social crossing gives evidence for the lack of a “pure” popular culture; rather, these forms are
all interpenetrated and thus transformed. Leisure developed an emphasis on agency through the
publication of treatises such as these. Certain examples of Mitelli’s games (discussed below) thus
serve as a reminder to the reader, that although these game prints are considered part of so-called
popular print culture, they are also partially derived from courtly parlor games and as such are
hybrid high/low forms of visual imagery that transcend simple categorization.
Girolamo Bargagli’s Dialogo dei giuochi che nelle veghe sanesi si usino di fare was
published in Siena in 1572. He divides games into games of wit and ingegno, games of jest, and
games of pleasure. A master of revels is elected and must wear a laurel upon his head to signify his
status, and a pestle (mestola) is used as a prop for the game. There is also a prescriptive section on
the etiquette of playing these games. For example, the author clearly states that the Game of Weights
is to be avoided, as it puts undue physical discomfort upon a player by piling heavy objects on the
player’s back. Other games to be avoided included games where religion is treated as sport, as well
as the Game of the Temple of Love. Time and place are also considered, with serious games
destined for the hours before the evening meal, and lighter games being prescribed for after dinner.
The author includes advice to the players on manners, dress, disposition, and a specific admonition
to always praise women. Poetic verses are suggested as a mode to create this praise. There is even
a Game of Proverbs included in the work. Other games include the Game of the Love, in which the
participants must answer philosophical questions regarding love, for example, “What would be the
most appropriate gift to a lady love?”
Girolamo’s brother also wrote a treatise on games. Scipione Bargagli’s I Trattenimenti di
Scipion Bargagli; Dove da vaghe donne e da giovani huomini rappresentati sono honesti, e
dilettevol giuochi: narrate novelle; e cantate alcune amorose canzonette was published in Venice
in 1587, as he belonged to both the Venetian and Sienese academies. The scene for his work is the
siege of Siena by Florence in 1554; it is modeled on Bocaccio’s Decameron, in that the speakers
in both tell various stories to avoid boredom during forced idleness.553 The games are similar to
previously mentioned examples, including questions on the nature of love, as well as a paragone
on which is superior, art or nature, the mind or the body? There is also a Game of Devices, a Game
of the Gardener, and a pastoral play. Curiously, this particular group plays the Game of the Temple
of Love, the very one that Scipione’s brother Girolamo so disapproved of; perhaps Girolamo was
the more pious of the two.
Innocentio Ringhieri, a member of the Academy of the Ritrouvati, published his Cento
giuochi liberali e d’ingegno in Bologna in 1551. His book predates the Sienese versions, but no
mention of his work is made by the others; in fact the Sienese volumes insist that these games were
invented in Siena. However, if one were to take the dates as evidence, it could seem that some of
these games may have been invented in Bologna. Ringhieri’s Cento Giuochi was also translated
into French, and he dedicated it to Catherine de’ Medici of France. The work is introduced by a
didactic letter specifically addressed to the ladies, followed by questions. It is divided into ten
books with ten games in each, such as the Game of Love and the Game of the Gods. The Game of
Love includes blindfolding a player who must guess who he or she is touched by. Upon failing, the
blindfolded player must then answer questions such as “why is love blind?” If the player fails to
answer the question, he or she must pay a forfeit. The second book contains encyclopedic games
such as the Game of Fountains and Rivers and the Game of
Cities. By the fifth book, the subject matter becomes more serious, such as the Game of Life and
the Game of Death; the fifth book also deals with themes such as madness, jealousy, chastity, and
beauty. Other games include the Game of the Philosopher and the Game of Poets. An example of
one of Ringhieri’s games is the Game of Wild Beasts, where the company is divided and each is
assigned an animal and a trait. When the name of the animal is called, the person must respond
with its trait, and then to a question regarding, for example, the habits of the animal. This type of
game falls into the category of educational games, through the teaching of scientific knowledge.
These parlor-game books usually contained no images but were based instead on riddles,
stories, charades, and philosophical questions with the inclusion of token forfeits as the symbolic
link to the aspect of gambling. Among most game prints of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
in contrast, one can find similar subject matter translated into visual images. Appropriating courtly
themes for gambling, the prints became the gambler’s version of philosophical questions of love
and beauty, a shared practice of “text, object, and act that grasps it,” or game, illustration, and the
act of playing. Two examples of Mitelli’s games which most closely reveal their courtly origins
regarding love and chivalry are the Game of the Beloved with Her Lovers, and the Game of Eyes
and Mouths.
The Game of the Beloved with Her Lovers (Fig. 199) is one single vignette played with the
dice. The lady representing the beloved beauty is at the center of the game and is the winning
combination that takes all. Her various lovers are arranged in three rows of figures across the page
but without being framed in squares. The figures represent stock types already seen in Mitelli’s
other engravings, such as the fool from his images of the land of Cockaigne. The subject of this
game could easily be related to the various courtly parlor games surrounding the Game of Love,
which came in many different formats, including questions regarding value judgments about what
type of lover a lady would prefer: handsome, honest, brave, etc. The highest numbers are given to
the knowledgeable and rich lover, whereas the poor lover and the foolish one neither take nor pay.
Perhaps the hunchback is again a sign of good luck as his number allows the player to take four
quattrini. This game seems to assert the pragmatic view that women always choose the lover with
the most money. Other like-minded games include Women and Their Affairs (Fig. 200). The
winning numbers in this game illustrate women attending to their domestic chores. The
iconography of this game neatly places women in the moral pigeonhole of good homemaker and
virtuous wife.
The Game of Eyes and Mouths (Fig. 201) is once again in broadsheet format with four rows
of five squares, and played with three dice. This game brings to mind the prevalence in the sixteenth
century of physiognomy treatises, which continued to be of interest in the seventeenth century
although scholars were moving towards a more scientific system of classification. The top middle
image is the winning combination, composed of two lovely eyes in an oval, which take all. This
premise of the beautiful eyes also calls to mind the supremacy of sight and Domenico Bruni’s
verses regarding beauty. The eyes are seen as the supreme expression of a woman's beauty, with a
beautiful mouth as second place. This game is not one of progression, and the numbers are not
placed in order. Although as obviously as in some of Mitelli’s other games, this example also
contains moralistic messages encoded within its illustrations and text. In the last square to the right
in the second row, the text indicates that a tight mouth is silent and will always win. This is another
way of referring to one of Mitelli’s proverbs, which states the importance of not always speaking,
and of knowing when to be prudently silent, especially for women. The last illustration on the
lower right also tells us that the ready eye guards itself against falling, a message that can easily be
translated into Christian morality as not falling victim to sin, based on the sensuality of what the
eye sees.
Vanity and Virtue: Mitelli’s Moralistic Prints of Women in Proverb and Calendar Format
In addition to courtly manuals and parlor games, other sources for Mitelli’s game imagery
are local proverbs and didactic broadsheets, of which he created many himself. In this tradition, he
translated the story of the fall of the meretrice or prostitute into the lunario format, a sort of
moralizing calendar, which describes in detailed monthly installments the moral and physical
disintegration of a young lady. The lunario is similar to the broadsheet and offered a convenient
visual format for the telling of a multi-vignette story, with a clear temporal beginning and end.
Mitelli also created many collections of proverbs that draw on centuries of old local sayings and
folk wisdom, combined with his own image of Bologna and its customs. As can be expected in
Paleotti’s Bologna, women’s virtue remains a key theme.
The lunario of the Unhappy Life of the Meretrice (Fig. 202) is a type of calendar with a
different scene for each month. This image is akin to the broadsheet of the prostitute, which was a
tradition already common in Venice and the North. However, Mitelli reinterprets it with a calendar,
adding the important temporal aspect for a post-Tridentine sense of morality. The calendar expands
time and shows how the prostitute’s decline progresses over time, from one wrong decision to
another, until it is too late to save her life, though perhaps still her soul, if she repents. The viewer
is privy to the whole saga; he or she has the chance to meditate on the woman’s fall from grace and
to observe the point at which she might have saved herself, if she
had looked to faith for help and had given up her sinful ways. In this example, one can witness the
slow decline from a fair young maiden at the beginning to the pawn of an old procuress as the
young lady falls prey to her first suitor. Then the inevitable fight erupts between rival suitors and
one ends up in jail, after which the wronged suitor slashes her face in anger. No longer able to
attract the best suitor as protector, she goes down a miserable and unholy path and ends up in a
hospital run by nuns for diseases such as syphilis, which is represented by the marks on her diseased
body. This is a realistic image; the archives reveal that Bologna had many such Christian houses
of reform created to save, if not their bodies, then what was more important, the lost women’s
souls. Mitelli’s moralizing messages seem to have existed in other media as well; a fresco attributed
to him of the Conversion of the Meretrici of Todi by San Filippo still exists in the Archiginnasio
(Fig. 203). Unfortunately, it is not in a good state of preservation. Mitelli also illustrated the nun,
the inverse of the meretrice as the example for women (Fig. 204). This image is a visual catalogue
of all the orders of nuns in Bologna, in which the figures of pious women are slotted into a chart
of virtue.
Two images can represent Mitelli’s extensive collection of prints on proverbs regarding
images of women. Like many others in his collections, these examples continue the city’s obsession
with women’s lost virtue. In Figure 205, the proverb reads “le donne spesse volte hanno lunga la
veste e corte l’intelleto” (“women often have long dresses and short intellects”). In this surreal
example, a woman has had the top of her head removed, a symbolically lobotomized version of
female gender. These proverbs are a type of memento mori, an established convention in
seventeenth-century visual imagery, into which Mitelli inserts himself. Once again, the extra verses
at the bottom of the image reinforce the negative stereotype of women:
Femina o tu che vuoi de saggia il vanto Non
offetar ne gli ornamenti il fasto
Poco senno tal hor scopre un gran manto.
Woman, O you who want of wisdom to brag,
Do not put your faith in ornaments, for
Little wisdom is sometimes unmasked by a great cloak.
The second print example (Fig. 206) contains the image of woman as the embodiment of
vanity and pride: “donna superba.” Here is the allegorical image of woman as pride itself. The
artist has included the peacock as a symbolic parody of the woman as she preens in front of the
mirror in fancy costume. The mirror is a constant reminder of vanitas and the uselessness of
attachment to temporal beauty as opposed to faith. Once again the verses that accompany the image
reinforce the moralistic message, where Death itself responds to the woman’s vanity:
Donna Superba
Quanto bella son io! Quanti consuma Per
me l’amor l’inestinguibil foco!
M’incensano i sospiri in ogni loco,
Onde non e stupor, se la mi fuma
Morte
Vana: lo specchio tuo frangi che tanto Nel
consigliarti a la ragion prevale,
Meglio potrai di tua bellezza il frale
Espresso contemplar nel vetro infranto
Prideful Woman
How beautiful I am! How much
Does love’s inextinguishable fire burn for me!
I am filled with sighs in every locale,
Therefore, be not surprised, if there is smoke there
Death
Vain one: break your mirror,
In order that reason may prevail,
In counseling you,
For better will you be able to contemplate Your
beauty, its frail expression,
In a broken mirror
Finally, the topos of the world upside down is also illustrated in terms of gender, as in
Mitelli’s “Triste è quella casa dove la gallina canta e il gallo tace” (Fig. 207). This image is a
clear reversal of gender roles, a dangerous thing (as the verses below it emphasize), where the
woman “wears the pants,” so to speak. These games display the artist’s unique grasp of the world
around him, in visual terms.
Mitelli and the Imaginaire of Bologna in the Seventeenth Century
In addition to the intersection with religious prohibition and courtly origins, some of
Mitelli’s games are very site-specific and local in nature, because he weaves in the cultural and
historical fabric of the city. By additionally drawing on the popular literature of the day, including
local poets of the piazza such as Giulio Cesare Croce, the artist truly maps the city’s intellectual
history in visual game form. This section will examine two other games, including the Game of
Professions: for whom they go well and for whom they go badly (Fig. 209), which is an almost
autobiographical account of Bologna’s professions of the day, with the artist’s own profession
added and rather critically commented upon. The third example, The New Game of the Turk, the
German and the Venetian (Fig. 210), shows contemporary politics as another source of inspiration
for Mitelli. In this game, the Turk, being the infidel, always loses of course, as the church would
wish.
A key concept in the imaginaire of early modern Bologna is the World Upside Down, or
land of the Cuccagna, where all is not as it should be. The Game of the Land of Cockaigne, where
one never loses but always earns (Fig. 208) is part of the iconography of the world upside down,
in which one does not work, but nonetheless has everything one needs. This theme was already
suggested in the Game of Husbands and Wives with their cross-dressing. This particular example
creates an ingeniously site-specific game. The central figure is the winning combination set into a
type of oval which seems to imply a portrait painting. This oval is set on a pedestal within which
the rules of the game are written. Each figure is labeled with the name of a food and the city of
which it is representative. In these images Mitelli has represented a vast selection of figure types
of various classes (as indicated by costume), including both male and female figures, a panorama
of humanity. Their gestures are emphatic, as each figure either points to his or her food, or is in the
process of eating or drinking it.
The translation of the theme of Cockaigne into a game of regional foods seems to be a
creation of Mitelli’s, where the local flavor as the winning combination represents a bit of
campanilismo, or rooting for your own town, regarding Bologna’s celebrated local sausage,
mortadella. This would obviously be a theme of central importance to Mitelli’s audience. Looking
closely at the print, one notices that staple foods such as bread and fish are represented by members
of the lower classes, whereas a liquor from Torino is represented by the third figure in the top row,
who is directed to only sniff his liquor. Perhaps this high-class fop is not in need of the sustenance
of hearty food, but desires only the appearance of wealth, such as fancy liquor, to correspond with
his fancy clothing. In a certain fashion this game is still related to the encyclopedic types of parlor
games, yet the theme and variety of illustrations point to a deeper meaning. It also seems that the
figure holding the bread (second figure in the bottom row) is a bit larger in size than the others,
perhaps a hint to the primacy of that staple food. The first figure also contains a comment that the
food he carries is expensive for him. Perhaps, for those who could not afford these foods in reality,
the game provided a means for them to appropriate them visually, thus offering some temporary
respite from poverty.
The Game of Professions (Fig. 209) is partly an autobiographical statement by Mitelli. The
subject matter for this game also exists in courtly parlor games, such as the Game of Trades, where
one is asked to mime a particular trade. This game is a combination of lower-ranking trades with
high-ranking skilled professions, including the artist's own profession in the final square on the
lower right. The format is again his standard rectangular broad sheet with four rows, each with five
squares. The winning combination is held by the first square of musicians and players. The
illustrations are lively and active, including several figures displaying the actions of the profession.
Graphically, this has a very different effect when compared to the iconic images of the trades in
Brambilla’s game of Pela il chiu (Fig. 196). The artist has contrived to create a more engaging
scene for each profession.
What is perhaps more interesting, and very site-specific, is that in addition to labeling the
profession above each illustration, the artist has included a phrase in local Bolognese dialect below
the image that comments on how economically successful that particular profession is. The
integration of this text would also serve to help the players memorize the numerical combinations,
so as to eventually permit playing even without Mitelli’s sheet. Textuality, including visual text,
and orality are intimately connected here; each reinforces the other. Each player can thus
appropriate the “text” for himself. It seems that to Mitelli, musicians were earning the most,
whereas painters, sculptors, and engravers were earning the least, perhaps a tantalizing
autobiographical comment on the plight of the artist himself. Further research would
be required to substantiate this, since Mitelli was extremely prolific and thus may have had a good
income. Despite the prominence of women as artists in Mitelli’s milieu, there is no mention in
these games of women artists and their plight or successes.
The New Game of the Turk, the German and the Venetian (Fig. 210) is a political satire
composed of a single vignette and is played with two dice. It is described as a new game, thus
implying improvisation on the artist’s part. Caricatures of Turks were quite common, a result of
the Catholic Church’s war against the infidels. When portrayed in games, the Turk was always the
loser, in a sort of sympathetic magic, which the Church wished to believe was always the case,
even if at times this was not so. In this game in particular, the text at the top announces the
intentions of the German and the Venetian to skin the Turk as much as possible and divide the
winnings, as well as to take back from him what he has usurped (referring to the Ottoman Empire's
attempts to take over Christian lands, which were then reconquered by the church). The
combinations are listed at the bottom, with the German and Venetian as having the best numbers
and the Turk representing the loser. The artist made use of the tablecloth as a place for displaying
the rules of the game. He also paid particular attention to physiognomic types and gestures as seen
in the Turk’s despairing gesture of loss, as compared to the aggressive Venetian and finelyclothed
German.
Gambling for Virtue and the Hand of Piety
Finally, one of the tantalizing questions that remain for further research concerns the
audience for Mitelli’s games. There is very little evidence of who the readers might have been,
apart from any visual clues in the illustrations themselves. One notes a variety of physiognomic
types, ages, and classes of male and female characters, as well as various themes both high and
low, implying a vast and diverse audience, but most likely male and Catholic, as it would have
been unheard of to find women gambling in public taverns. The games would most probably have
been played in local taverns, since taverns are depicted in some of the games themselves and were
normally frequented by a certain class of males. The prints were portable and inexpensive, and thus
they could be widely circulated. These hybrids also raise questions of authorship, as in Stallybrass
and White’s discussion of the marketplace as an intersection of high and low, center and periphery.
It is in this light that Mitelli’s games should be seen. If one takes them as text, they are an
intersection of high and low, sacred and profane, an example of the constant re-surfacing of that
which is suppressed, and a recycling of appropriated themes in original ways that each
reader/player can also make his own.
Although Bakhtin states that before Rabelais (apart from antiquity), games were essentially
linked to the popular marketplace aspect of feasts, he finds that their more “noble” aspects survived
in important episodes from literature, such as Gargantua and Pantagruel. For example, the
philosopher’s riddle (related to the enigmatic sphinx) and the dice casting (as used to settle judicial
disputes) are seen as noble remnants of practices from antiquity that often dealt with prophecy.
Play and prophecy are thus intimately connected here, with games often seen as a condensed form
of life’s historic process, and according to Bakhtin, games also freed the players from the bounds
of everyday life, liberating them from the laws of nature. Seen in this light, it is obvious why the
Catholic Church would reject them. However, I would argue that this
“noble” aspect also survives in the courtly origins of Mitelli’s didactic hybrid games, transformed
by their encounter with religion and daily life. The intervention of the church is partly responsible
for Mitelli’s hybrid form. By prohibiting gambling, it thus became the abject that the church desired
to flush out of society, but which constantly returned (albeit transformed) in the form of Mitelli’s
prints. Gambling was the socially peripheral which then became symbolically central, especially
to the Church.
As we have seen, Mitelli created illustrations for playing with dice that were didactically
moralistic, yet were arrived at through gambling. His Game of Truth clearly illustrates its Catholic
moral by associating the winning number with the ideal Christian family. Not surprisingly, due to
the city’s reputation as a Counter-Reformation stronghold and to Paleotti’s politics, the struggle for
women’s virtue was one of the most prominent themes in these virtuous vices. Mitelli’s other
games, such as the Land of Cockaigne, are tied to his interests in naturalism and caricature, while
still others, such as the Game of Professions, are closer to courtly parlor games. However, although
some of the themes, such as in the Game of the Lovers, are similar to those of Bargagli and
Ringhieri, the majority of Mitelli’s games are involved in social commentary while playing dice,
transcending their progenitor genre of courtly games. Thus, despite bandi constantly prohibiting
the playing of dice games, the artist’s ironic solution is to create games that cross boundaries and
end up in the interstices, a hybrid place, a site of resistance which allows the artist to express the
world of Bologna through his eyes, while responding to the didactic demands of the church. In
these images, print became practice, an ambiguous site of both compliance with and resistance to
the church’s disciplinary strategy, with Mitelli’s games as its tactics. Along with some of the city’s
talented women artists such as
Elisabetta Sirani, whose paintings he copied, and Veronica Fontana, with whom he collaborated on
the Museo Cospiano, that microcosm of God’s theatrum mundi, Mitelli worked to promote the
values of the Catholic church, even when creating visual imagery destined for the dice.
Several concluding points can bring this chapter to a close. In examining the work of
Veronica Fontana alongside that of other students and colleagues of Elisabetta Sirani, a picture
emerges of the versatility of the female artist in seventeenth-century Bologna when one considers
the many different arenas for which Fontana produced her illustrations. From Jesuit tracts to
courtly manuals and scientific collections, her scientifically accurate and devoto style was in great
demand, as were her skills in creating elegant emblems for the court of Parma. Both sets of skills
can be said to descend from the work of the sixteenth-century artist Lavinia Fontana, as discussed
in chapter two, regarding scientific naturalism and a Flemish attention to details. Not to leave male
artists totally out of the picture, so to speak, evidence of the engraving work of Sirani’s male
students also reinforces these three areas of patronage: courtly, religious, and scientific. Finally,
the work of Fontana’s colleague Mitelli expands the discourse of the intellectual history of the city
to include motifs from popular prints and proverbs, such as the world upside down. In the process,
Mitelli’s prints speak to both high and low audiences and employ a sense of local Bolognese
naturalism to persuade the viewer of their message. The message, however, was often tied to
themes of women’s virtue, another effect of Paleotti’s sixteenth-century reforms in the continuation
of the Counter-Reformation’s visual campaign in Bologna.
The thread that combines visual imagery with women, religion, and science runs deeply
through the Bologna of the late sixteenth and into the seventeenth century, creating a unique
environment in which women artists flourished in all media and genres, alongside their male
colleagues. Thus one can now begin to map women’s participation in sites where church reform,
naturalism, artistic display, and communal devotion all combine to weave a visual culture of the
sacred. In Counter-Reformation Bologna, thanks to Paleotti’s zealous reform, the maniera devota
was alive and well, and the mano donnesca had a great “hand” in its creation.
Conclusion
Mapping the Feminine onto the Visual Culture of the Counter-Reformation
The development of a maniera devota in Bologna was inextricably tied to Cardinal Paleotti
and his quest for visual reform in the wake of Trent. In his advice to artists, Paleotti managed to
combine a preference for Christian humanism with the austere piety demanded by the Counter-
Reformation, as evidenced in the visual production of his city. In doing so, he inspired pious modes
of visual culture that would continue long into the seventeenth century. He accomplished this by
combining science and history with religion, while engaging in discourses on naturalism and piety.
Most importantly for this research, he appreciated the virtue and talent of the mano donnesca
enough to employ women in his campaign. Thus Bologna became a city in which women’s
participation in visual imagery flourished throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries across
the media of painting, prints, and textiles, creating a true Felsina pittrice.
Paleotti was a ground-breaking cleric who maintained a close link between science and
religion despite, or perhaps, ironically, because of the Counter-Reformation climate. In such a
climate he could not afford to ignore any knowledge that might have been advantageous in the
church’s campaign for visual reform. In the end, the scientific background of the university’s
scholars proved to be just that: beneficial, if not essential to creating the maniera devota required
by Trent. Aldrovandi’s botanical collections later became models of a nature to be emulated by the
city’s artists in order to avoid the mannerist excesses then fashionable; this role continued into the
seventeenth century with the collection of Cospi’s wunderkammer.
This sense of naturalism was already inherent in both the Bolognese and Lombard schools,
beginning with Leonardo and continuing on with Caravaggio and the Carracci. However, Paleotti’s
requirements were quite precise: naturalism but with decorum. Decorum was a dictate that an artist
such as Caravaggio had no wish to be constrained by. Yet in Bologna, this Lombard naturalism
was combined with the influence of Northern examples such as Dürer and Memling, known for
their devout style, and the city in turn produced the early local example of this style par excellence,
Francesco Francia. In addition, the example of, and interest in botanical illustration had exposed
the city’s artists to an analytical approach, as shown in examples such as Lavinia Fontana’s Hairy
Girl. Some artists in the city lost no time in applying this style to religious painting, as we have
seen in Fontana’s St. Francis.
Paleotti also recognized the importance of using history to authenticate the church, for
example, by validating and verifying the lives of the saints through the use of their relics and
hagiography. By combining images with the tangible evidence that relics provided of the existence
and history of early Christianity, he inspired spiritually communicative modes of painting in the
artists of his day, especially Lavinia Fontana. These modes corresponded to liturgical sermons and
to Paleotti’s Tridentine dictates of decorum. Many of Fontana’s paintings, as well as those of her
seventeenth-century successors, participated in these modes, such as the iconic power of her
Madonna with the Sleeping Child for the Escorial and the clarity of her sacred narratives, as in the
Noli Me Tangere.
Paleotti felt so strongly about visual reform that he wrote the ultimate guide for artists in a post-
Tridentine world, his Discorso sopre gli imagini sacre e profane. Although the work has been
mentioned by many scholars, outside of Bologna few have taken the time to read it thoroughly and
to examine whether or not the artists of Paleotti’s city put his rules into practice; and none have
attempted to draw links between many of the lesser-known women artists and the Discorso. By
examining many of Fontana’s religious paintings, this study has made clear that his rules were
observed by one of the most successful Bolognese artists of her time, male or female. Lavinia
Fontana took Flemish painting, Northern prints, Raphael, and Francesco Francia as her models, in
addition to and at times in contrast to her father’s more Mannerist work. Despite any personal
frustrations regarding its success, Paleotti’s Discorso remains a landmark document of Tridentine
reform. This document is unique in that it was addressed to artists as well as others and, from the
evidence examined here, it appears that the artists were listening, at least in Bologna.
Just as Paleotti had realized the worth of scientific and historical study to his campaign, so
he was discriminating enough to put the city’s talented women to work for the same cause. This
pattern is evident in his employment of Fontana as the creator of the altarpiece of the Assumption
for his own chapel. Furthermore, the bishop encouraged not only women artists, but women in
general, to be a part of the church’s program. The work produced in the conservatori has
demonstrated that the legacy of the mani devote flowed across the generations and involved various
media, some of which will still require more study. The religious paintings by these women artists
for the conservatori, such as Fontana’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, became models
for the girls themselves and for the handiwork they created in these institutions. This work was
strictly tied to ideas of women’s virtue and piety that began in the early sixteenth century with the
founding of the Opere Poveri Vergognosi and the later Putte di Santa Marta, and continued on into
the late seventeenth century and beyond. Despite being an important source of visual culture, these
embroideries have been largely ignored by modern art historians. However, the embroideries speak
volumes about the artistic legacy between women artists of all types and the search for women’s
virtue, continuing the link between women and the iconic. Women had been the guardians of the
icon tradition from early Christianity and Byzantine times, throughout the iconoclastic clashes.
Perhaps this connection is something that Paleotti, with his special interest in Early Christian relics,
was more aware of than other reformers of the period. These gendered hands could create a devout
style with both the convincing clarity of a naturalistic tradition, and the power of an icon to move
the faithful: delectare, muovere, docere. The extant paintings from the conservatori are proof that
these institutions developed site-specific iconography, appropriate for the needs of their female
audience. For example, there began to appear versions of St. Nicholas that emphasized images of
the three gold balls to be used as a dowry to save the young girls from prostitution. In addition, the
Madonna del cucito symbolized the pious task of embroidery undertaken by all the girls in these
reform houses; even the Virgin herself is shown as a role model engaged in this task. Eventually,
the very act of embroidery became a way of promoting spiritual meditation and ecstasy, invoking
echoes of the devotio moderna.
In addition to artists such as Fontana and Sirani, who have left quite a bit of extant work,
are the many other women artists of the Felsina pittrice named by Crespi, Malvasia and others.
For the first time, this study has attempted to map a stylistic genesis of modes between the
lesserknown female artists. Their paintings all carry distinct marks of a maniera devota, in the
tradition of Paleotti’s reforms. Examples such as the Birth of the Virigin by Pinelli, a direct
descendant of Lavinia Fontana’s version, and the many decorous images of Mary Magdalene and
the iconic Immaculate Conception all show a common preoccupation with women’s virtue and the
devoto far into the seventeenth century. The Marian ideal is the exemplum of women’s virtue, often
extended to more unorthodox historical female role models such as Portia; women artists’ work
also includes examples of the more ambiguous female characters or anti-heroines, Cleopatra and
Circe. Often the women artists of Bologna even transformed themselves into la pittura, thus
visually conflating the virtues of the allegory with the devout mano donnesca, as in the example
of Ginevra Cantofoli’s allegorical Self-Portrait.
As shown by the embroidery examples from the conservatori, collaboration between these
women continued as several of them created religious works for some of the same sites of display.
For example, several women created paintings for the church of Santa Maria di Galliera, and most
of the artists participated in the category of miracle painting in the devout style. One of Sirani’s
students in particular, Angela Teresa Muratori, cut across many lines of artistic media. Her painting
of The Appearance of the Madonna and Child to St. Peter invoked a theme similar to virtual
pilgrimage, in which spiritual meditation resulted in direct and personal contact with the divine (in
this case in the form of an apparition where the holy figure comes to the viewer’s abode or the
viewer is transported to the heavenly realm), but Muratori also wrote sacred music or oratories for
the same church of Santa Maria.
Because of its great importance to the campaign for visual reform, the production of prints,
both as book illustration and popular prints, was the pulse of devotional piety and practices. By the
sixteenth century, Bologna was a great printing center, thanks to the University scholars and
Paleotti’s encouragement. As one of Sirani’s students and colleagues, Veronica Fontana’s work ran
toward both the sacred and profane. The work of this female engraver for the Museo Cospiano
demonstrates that science continued to be linked to religion, long into the seventeenth century. The
result of this collaboration is a coming together of the two terms, miracolo and meraviglia. A
miracle, in the religious sense, is something to wonder at, something that defies belief, and a
wonder (as from the wunderkammer collections this text has examined) is one of the miracles of
God’s creation. The wonders of God’s universe were catalogued and displayed as proof of their
existence, from the time of Aldrovandi in the sixteenth century, and Paleotti wanted his artefice
cristiano to narrate and illustrate the miracles of the Catholic faith as proof of God’s work on earth.
These trends continued in the work of the male colleagues of these women artists, such as
Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, who also worked on the Museo, but was most prolific with his popular
game prints. Examples such as the Game of Truth or the Lunario of the Meretrice were still
didactically concerned with women’s honor and virtue. Although the zenith of the
CounterReformation was in the sixteenth century, by the end of the seventeenth the Bolognese
fusion of women with religion and virtue continued in the city’s leisure activities, as seen in game
prints and festivals. Mitelli’s work also demonstrates continued connections between male artists
and the women artists of the city, as his engraved copy of Sirani’s Vision of St. Anthony attests. In
addition, Mitelli’s proverbs represent the full spectrum of the Bolognese imaginaire, covering all
topics with a Counter-Reformation sense of morality and a good dose of irony. Although there is
room for expansion, what this study has outlined about Sirani’s school has opened up a dialogue
on the intricate relationship between these women artists, their male colleagues, and their work in
the second city of the Papal States.
To enrich and deepen the scenario presented here, more research could be done along
several lines. For example, more attention is needed in the area of decorative arts such as textiles
since, as has been demonstrated, they are important sites of transference between various media
and generations of artists. Finally, more paintings by these women artists may one day be found,
and such discoveries would create a more complete picture of attributions, stylistic influence, and
iconography. Even so, it is clear now that the ties that bind women and the sacred together in
Bologna interweave many different strands such as science, virtue, popular piety, and even music.
With so much disparate information available piecemeal from scholars working on single
aspects of the total tapestry of visual imagery, women, and religion in Bologna during the late
sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth century, a consolidation of the “bigger picture” was both
possible and needed. The concepts elaborated in the previous chapters are all individual strands,
yet they are intrinsically related to one another, and together they help answer the question with
which this work began, regarding the uniquely high number of active women artists in the city:
Why Bologna? The answer is somewhat paradoxical. Although the CounterReformation is usually
associated with repression, in Bologna it produced, at least in terms of women’s creative output for
the church, a maniera devota that was shaped by the mani donnesche of its female artists, as well
as being a crucial factor in these artists’ own stylistic formation and the visual presentation of the
city: the Felsina pittrice.
