Travel broadens the dame

Posted by Barbara on June 10, 2025 in Art, Blog, Europe, feminism, women artists, women artists | 2 comments

This dame has returned from her travels in Italy broadened in every respect. Needless to say, the enlargement of my middle is due to an abundance of delicious food and wine.  But I am pleased to report another exciting expansion: I found more artistic dames in northern Italy to add to those that Dame V discovered in Bologna.

After three magnificent days in Bologna, followed by four magical days in Vicenza, the epicentre of the numerous sublime buildings designed by Renaissance architect Andreas Palladio, we repaired to Padua, where he was born. This was when things got even more exciting.

Meet Chiara Varotari: born in Padua in 1584, she was the daughter of a painter, Dario Varotari, called the Elder. Her brother, Alessandro Varotari, called Il Padovanino, was also a celebrated artist and the siblings worked closely together. In 1596, their father died and they moved to Venice, where they founded a teaching studio.  Varotari became well-known for her portraits and for the lavish attention she paid to her sitters’ clothing and jewellery. Little else is known about her life and career; she died in Venice in 1663.

Her students included Caterina Tarabotti (b. 1615) and Lucia Scaligeri (1637–1700), among others.  Tarabotti practiced chiefly in Vicenza where she painted historical pictures; unfortunately her paintings at chiesa di San Silvestro were destroyed in 1944 during the bombing.  Scaligeri was born in Venice in 1637. She was well known for her command of languages, and her skill in music and painting. Several of her pictures are in the churches of Venice, where she died in 1700.

We now turn to Ginevra Cantofoli: she was born in Bologna in 1618.  Initially she made her reputation as a miniaturist, which was a popular avenue for women artists of the Baroque era. In her thirties she attended an art school run by artist prodigy Elisabetta Sirani, who urged Cantofoli to start painting big canvases – portraits, allegories and altar pieces. The hugely talented Sirani was 20 years younger than Cantofoli and along with taking on numerous commissions, also ran an art school – mainly for women.

Up until that time the only place where women could learn to paint was inside a convent (unless they were a daughter of a painter) and Sirani’s school was the first art academy in Europe that catered for aspiring women artists. The main reason why art was deemed an inappropriate field of study for women was that the curriculum included studying the nude male form.  Sirani had developed her ability under the hand of her artist father, Giovanni Andrea Sirani, but by the time she was a teenager, she had already eclipsed him. Her influence on Cantofoli was profound; she began to undertake works on a larger scale, altarpieces and historical paintings. In 1569 she had the signal honour of seeing her altarpiece of St Thomas Villanuova carried in solemn procession around the streets of Bologna before it was formally blessed and installed in the church of San Giacomo Maggiore. Cantofoli died in 1672.

So there you have it – I am sure we have only scratched the surface, and the journey of discovery continues.  What fun!