“I was from a good family, the daughter of a famous painter who adored me and of a mother who came from an illustrious dynasty of booksellers. I was obedient, but I wanted everything. I was stubborn, obstinate, tenacious. Beneath a suave and enchanted air lay an iron will’.
In the world of Italian art, the story of Lavinia Fontana is unique: for success, fortune, perseverance. Born in Bologna on 24 August 1552, the daughter of Prospero Fontana – also a painter, author of the frescoes inside the Farnese Chapel in the Palazzo d’Accursio – and Antonia di Bartolomeo De Bonardis – who came from a family of well-known city printers – Lavinia followed her vocation from the start: painting.
Her story, an inspiration for many women and others, has now also become a book written by Paola Goretti and illustrated by Carlotta Passarini, published as part of the Storie della Storia di Bologna series, directed by Tiziana Roversi. For the first time, this precious little book presents the work of Lavinia Fontana to girls and boys, and it does so with the help of colour, entrusting the red and black bichromy to the story drawn by Carlotta Passarini and the four-colour process to the artist’s works.
The book retraces all the stages of his life, also through the figures he met. From the naturalist and botanist Ulisse Aldrovandi, a close friend of his father’s, to the painter Bartolomeo Passerotti, and the poet and storyteller Giulio Cesare Croce. And again, the Carracci brothers, Guido Reni, Giambologna, the Flemish sculptor and author of Neptune. And then Ugo Boncompagni, who ascended to the papal throne under the name of Gregory XIII, a great patron and author of the Gregorian calendar.
It was with a famous self-portrait that Lavinia began her activity as a “pittoressa”, continuing it even after her marriage to the Imola painter Giovan Paolo Zappi, without any career hindrance. Many famous figures of Bolognese life chose to be immortalised by her. Nobles and institutions acclaimed her, so much so that they entrusted her with the execution of the Madonna di Pontesanto, the first altarpiece made by a woman, currently kept in the Pinacoteca di Imola.
Fame then took Lavinia to Rome, where she worked for the Boncompagni, Borghese and Barberini families, for princes and ambassadors, or for foreigners passing through. And she became a member – the first woman ever – of the noble Accademia di San Luca, which brought together the most famous painters of the time.
After a life spent painting the most fashionable clothes, she finally indulges in nudity, as if stripping herself of everything, offering Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a great art collector, the Minerva in the act of dressing up . It is her last masterpiece, before finally leaving her beloved brushes ‘happy and grateful to have been able to lead a full and fulfilled life’.
