Women Artists: Renaissance and Baroque Painters, Sculptors and Engravers

More of this Feature • Page 1: 16th Century Women Artists • Page 2: 17th Century Women Artists

Related Resources • Top Books on Women Artists • Properzia de Rossi • Levina Teerlinc • Catharina van Hemessen • Sofonisba Anguissola • Lucia Anguissola • Diana Montovana • Lavinia Fontana • Barbara Longhi • Marietta Robusti Tintoretto • Esther Inglis Kello • Fede Galizia • Clara Peeters • Artemisia Gentileschi • Christine de Pizan (Christine de Pisan) • Queen Elizabeth I of England • Queen Isabella I of Spain • Women and Painting • Medieval and Renaissance Women's History

From Other Guidesites • Women and Art - Women's Issues Guide, Nikki Katz

Elsewhere on the Web • National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, D.C.) • Women and Art in the Renaissance • Women Artists - 16th/17th Centuries • Women Artists - 17th/18th Centuries • Women Artists of the Baroque Period • Italian Women Artists of the 16th and 17th Centuries • more

Some Flemish and Dutch women were also successful painters, with subjects including portraits and still life pictures, but also more family and group scenes than painters from Italy portrayed.

Women Renaissance and Baroque painters tended, like their male counterparts, to focus on portraits of individuals, religious themes and still life paintings. Some of these women learned to paint in their fathers' workshops and others were noble women whose advantages in life included the ability to learn and practice the art of painting. Their talent is obvious though their names are barely known.

Second page > Women Artists of the 17th Century > Page 1, 2

Women Artists of the 16th Century

Properzia de Rossi (1490-1530): An Italian sculptor and miniaturist (on fruit pits!) who learned art from Marcantonio Raimondi, Raphael's engraver.

• Properzia de Rossi - Biographies and Images

Levina Teerlinc (Levina Teerling) (1510?-1576): Her miniature portraits were favorites of the English court in the time of the children of Henry VIII. This Flemish-born artist was more successful in her time than Hans Holbein or Nicholas Hilliard, but no works that can be attributed to her with certainty survive.

• Levina Teerlinc - Biographies and Images

Catharina van Hemessen (Catarina van Hemessen, Catherina van Hemessen) (1527-1587): A painter from Antwerp, taught by her father Jan van Sanders Hemessen. She is known for her religious paintings and her portraits.

• Catharina van Hemessen - Biographies and Images

Sofonisba Anguissola (1531-1626): Of noble background, she learned painting from Bernardino Campi and was well known in her own time.  Her portraits are good examples of Renaissance humanism: the individuality of her subjects comes through. Four of her five sisters were also painters.

• Sofonisba Anguissola - Biographies and Images

Lucia Anguissola (1540?-1565): sister of Sofonisba Anguissola. Her surviving work is "Dr. Pietro Maria."

• Lucia Anguissola - Biographies and Images

Diana Scultori Ghisi (1547-1612) (Diana Mantuana or Diana Mantovana): An engraver of Mantura and Rome, unique among women of the time in being permitted to put her name on her plates.

• Diana Montovana - Biographies and Images

Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614): her father was the artist Prospero Fontana and it was in his workshop that she learned to paint.  She found time to paint even though she became the mother of eleven! Her husband was the painter Zappi, and he also worked with her father. Her work was much in demand, including large-scale public commissions. She was official painter at the papal court for a time. After her father's death she moved to Rome where she was elected to the Roman Academy in recognition of her success. She painted portraits and also depicted religious and mythological themes.

• Lavinia Fontana - Biographies and Images

Barbara Longhi (1552-1638): Her father was Luca Longhi. She focused on religious themes, especially paintings depicting the Madonna and Child (12 of her known 15 works).

• Barbara Longhi - Biographies and Images

Marietta Robusti Tintoretto (La Tintoretta) (1560-1590): A Venetian, apprenticed to her father, the painter Jacobo Rubusti, known as Tintoretto, who was also a musician. She died at 30 in childbirth.

• Marietta Robusti Tintoretto - Biographies and Images

Esther Inglis (Kello) (1571-1624): Esther Inglis (originally spelled Langlois) was born to a Huguenot family that had moved to Scotland to escape persecution. She learned calligraphy from her mother and served as an official scribe for her husband.  She used her calligraphy skills to produce miniature books, some of which included a self-portrait.

• Esther Inglis Kello - Biography and Images

Fede Galizia (1578-1630): She was from Milan, the daughter of a miniature painter. She first came to notice by the age of 12. She also painted some portraits and religious scenes and was commissioned to do several altarpieces in Milan, but realistic still-life with fruit in a bowl is what she's most known for today.

• Fede Galizia - Biographies and Images

Clara Peeters (1589-1657?): Her paintings include still life depictions, portraits and even self-portraits. (Look carefully at some of her still life paintings to see her self-portrait reflected in an object.) She disappears from history in 1657, and her fate is unknown.

• Clara Peeters - Biographies and Images 

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653?): An Italian painter, her paintings often had Biblical themes.  Critics still argue over whether she was a feminist. A 1988 movie on her life evoked controversy asking whether it distorted the facts of her life too much.

• Artemisia Gentileschi - Biographies and Images

More links to resources on women in art history during this period:

• Definining the Renaissance Virtuosa: Women Artists and the Langue of Art History and Criticism - from CAA Reviews, a review of the book by Fredrika H. Jacobs.
• Women Artists of Bologna: Caterina dei Vigri, Lavinia Fontana, and Elizabetta Sirani - an abstract of a dissertation by Maria Mantziou.
• Underrepresentation of Women Artists

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