Ravenna, 1552 – Ravenna, 1638
Born from an accomplished painter and contemporary of the better-known Lavinia Fontana, Barbara took her first artistic steps in her father’s workshop.
We know very little of her life: Vasari talks of her as you would for a child, though she was 14 years old at the time of his Lives‘ second edition… you could be old enough to marry but, apparently, not to be taken seriously as a painter. He says she drew really well and coloured prettily (inside the lines too, I bet). A more flattering mention of her comes from Muzio Manfredi, who dedicated her some verses in which he said she was a “wonderful painter” and her own father was “marvelling at her talent”. That’s better.
Regardless of her evident skills, she remained relegated to a provincial dimension as her father before her, and her works are mostly private commissions from the family’s circle of patrons. After her father’s death in 1580, the family workshop was taken over by Barbara’s brother Francesco and the business struggled for a while, but Barbara continued working, and her most gracious accomplishment possibly comes from this year: a bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandra, often presumed a self-portrait.
Saint Catherine of Alexandra (1580)
She never married and continued working till her death, at the venerable age of 86 years, after drafting a testament in which she left her considerable possessions to her nephews. Amongst her more notable works, particularly interesting is the only non-religious subject I could dig up: a Lady with the Unicorn.
Her paintings are still being discovered all over Europe: only three years ago, a museum in Ravenna intercepted a grand Holy Family at an auction in Vienna.
Lady with the Unicorn
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