A new spirit of inquiry and a feeling of self-reliance had entered the popular mind that did not fail to influence the progress both of literature and art. The masters who were most strikingly instrumental in giving to painting the impetus of reform were Ludovico, Augustin, and Annibal Caracci. Amid many difficulties they opened an academy in their native city, Bologna, where art was taught on the principles then esteemed essential. In its theoretical and practical departments a goodly number of students were there permitted to profit by the works of the early masters. The good example was soon followed, and we hear of a Milanese lady opening her house for an academy.
Arcangela Palladini excelled in painting, poetry, music, and embroidery. A piece of her needle-work hung in the ducal gallery at Pisa, where none but great works were preserved. Beatrice Pappafava, a paintress, was also a learned lady, and is said to have celebrated her own hundredth birthday in an original sonnet of much merit. Caterina Rusca obtained some repute as an engraver on copper; and Augusta Tarabotti, who studied painting under the direction of Clara Varotari, was also a poet and the author of “An Apology for the Female Sex,” which was received with considerable attention. Fede Galizia, the daughter of a celebrated miniaturist, lived in Milan. In figures and landscapes she evinced taste, accuracy, and finish. She was devoted to the ideal, and this tendency appeared in her design and coloring.
LAVINIA FONTANA.
One among the female artists who adopted the style of the Caracci and helped to introduce a change in art was Lavinia Fontana, one of the most celebrated women of the century. She was the daughter of that Prospero Fontana who gave lessons in painting to Ludovico Caracci, and was wont much to disparage him. He once remarked that his scholar would do better at mixing colors than as a painter! But Caracci had his revenge in after years, when Fontana was heard to lament that he was too old to become the pupil of the great artist who had once been his own despised scholar! The instruction he could not receive was the privilege of his daughter Lavinia, who was born in Bologna in 1552. She adopted her father’s manner, and gained great celebrity in portrait painting; but, in later years, became the disciple of Caracci, after which she succeeded in giving her pictures so much softness, sweetness, and tenderness, that some of them have even been compared to those of Guido Reni. To delicacy of touch she united rare skill in taking likenesses. Her talents met with appreciation and honors not often accorded to female merit. The first ladies in Rome sought to become her sitters, and the greatest cardinals deemed themselves fortunate in having their portraits executed by her skillful hand. Her portraits were so highly esteemed that they commanded enormous prices, and were displayed with pride in the galleries of the nobility and the most cultivated persons in the land. Her services were engaged by Pope Gregory XIII. as his painter in ordinary; and she worked for the Buoncompagni family. Other crowned heads sought her society, and the most wondrous grace of all was that these honors did not create in her vanity or self-conceit. To her accomplishments she added such personal attractions that her hand was sought by many distinguished and titled suitors; but she preferred to them all a young man unknown to fame, Giovanni Paolo Zappi, of Imola. Some authorities speak of him as a wealthy nobleman. He had painted in her father’s studio for love of the charming daughter, and had been accustomed to paint the clothes in her portraits so well that she had made concerning him the not very flattering observation, that “he was worth more as a tailor than a painter.” He was rewarded by marrying her, the condition being exacted that Lavinia should remain free to follow her professional career.
Besides portraits, she produced several compositions on sacred subjects; some church pictures now in Bologna, and some on worldly themes, as the picture of Venus in the Berlin Museum. In her later works, after her lessons with Caracci, she acquired a softness and warmth of coloring that remind one of the masters of the Venetian school. One of her productions—Saint Francis de Paula raising a dead person—preserved in the Pinacothek of Bologna—has been noticed for this. Of her pictures besides are the Crucifixion, the Miracle of the Loaves, and the Annunciation. These were for churches of Bologna.
Lavinia lived at the close of what was peculiarly the period of Christian art, and it seems just to place her among the artists who labored while the Christian ideal, in all its splendor, was yet above the horizon. On this period Raphael and Michael Angelo had set their seal, and the Christian ideal was exhausted in the Transfiguration, and the frescoes of the Sistine chapel; they could not be surpassed. One of Lavinia’s works—the Nativity of the Virgin, at nighttime—is still exhibited in her native city. The infant Mary is surrounded by a cloud of angels, and a saint is pointing to two children below. A figure in magnificent bishop’s robes, on the other side, is in the act of sprinkling holy water on two beautiful kneeling girls. This picture, Bolognini asserts, alone justifies the artist’s fame. In the Escurial at Madrid is a piece by her, representing a Madonna uplifting a veil to view her sleeping child, who reposes on richly-embroidered cushions; St. Joseph and St. John stand near. “A picture,” says Mazzolari, “so vivid, so gay and graceful, and of such glorious coloring, so full of beauty, that one is never weary of admiring it.” A picture which has especially contributed to her artistic fame represents the Queen of Sheba in the presence of Solomon; but it has also an allegorical reference to the Duke and Duchess of Mantua, and various personages of their court. Lanzi considers this production worthy of the Venetian school. Another represents a royal infant, playing on a bed, wrapped in blankets, and adorned with a splendid necklace. A “Judith, seen by torch-light,” is in the possession of the Della Casa family. A Virgin and Child, which she painted for Cardinal Ascoli, and sent to Rome, has been thought her best production, and brought her so much fame, that, a large painting being required for a church, the commission was intrusted to Lavinia, in preference to many first-class artists, who sought it. She painted a stoning of Stephen, with a number of figures, and a halo above representing heaven opening. The figures were larger than life, and the work was not as successful as Lavinia had hoped. But after she confined herself to portrait painting, she had no reason to be dissatisfied with her success. Her chef d’œuvre is said to be her own portrait, taken when she was young and surpassingly beautiful. It is now in the possession of Count Zappi, at Imola, and has been engraved by Rossini, for his history of Italian painting. The portrait is painted in an oval; in the background, ranged on a shelf, are models in clay of busts, heads, trunks, hands, and feet. The artist is seated at a table, on which are two casts of Greek statues; she is in the act of commencing a drawing, and is dressed with elegant simplicity, her mantle flowing in clear and ample folds. Under the ruff encircling her neck hangs a pearl necklace, to which is attached a golden crucifix. She wears a Mary Stuart headdress, and the head is colored with wonderful delicacy and transparency. The work unites correctness of drawing with incomparable grace. England possesses three paintings by Lavinia Fontana.
This famous artist had three children, and was unhappy in them. Her only daughter lost the sight of one eye, by running a pin into it; and one of her boys was half-witted, and served to amuse loungers in the Pope’s antechamber. Malvasia remarks, “The story ran that he inherited his simplicity from his father; assuredly it came not from his mother, who was as full of talent and sagacity as she was good and virtuous.”
Lavinia was elected a member of the Roman Academy. Her merits were celebrated by contemporaries; Marini, among other poets, wrote in her praise; and in such estimation was she held, that, when she passed near the seat of the Lord of Sora and Vignola, the proud patrician came out to meet her at the head of his retainers, according to the fashion then in vogue for the reception of royal personages.
Among the Lettere Pittoriche is a letter dated 1609, signed Lavinia Fontana Zappi. This proves her to have been living then. One authority states that she died at Rome, in 1614, aged sixty-two.
While Lavinia Fontana availed herself of the system of Caracci, another, who enjoyed in early life the advantage of being Ludovico’s pupil, emulated his excellences so successfully that she produced a fine picture, full of figures, from one of his compositions, in 1614, for the church of the Annunziata, in Bologna. This was Antonia Pinelli. For skill in drawing and purity of tone she was held in high estimation.