Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana (baptized in Bologna Cathedral, August 24 1552, died in Rome, August 11 1614) was an Italian portrait-painter whose father was the painter Prospero Fontana. Her gender made her choice of profession a rarity at the time.

Related Topics:
Bologna Cathedral - August 24 - 1552 - Rome - August 11 - 1614 - Italian - Prospero Fontana

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She spent most of her career painting upper-class residents of her native Bologna. She also travelled to Rome, where she gained the patronage of the Buoncampagni, of which Pope Gregory XIII was a member. Lavinia thrived in Rome as she had in Bologna and Pope Paul V himself was among her sitters. Some of her portraits, often lavishly paid for, have been attributed to Guido.

Related Topics:
Bologna - Pope Paul V - Guido

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Among the chief of these are a Venus; the Virgin lifting a veil from the sleeping infant Christ; and the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon. Her self-portrait – in youth she was said to have been very beautiful – was perhaps her masterpiece; it belongs to Count Zappi of Imola, the family into which Lavinia married. Her husband, whose name is given as Paolo Zappi or Paolo Foppa, painted the draperies in many of Lavinia's pictures.

Related Topics:
Venus - Queen of Sheba - Solomon

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She is deemed on the whole a better painter than her father; from him naturally came her first instruction, but she gradually adopted the Caraccesque style, with strong quasi-Venetian coloring. She was elected into the Academy of Rome, and died there in 1614.

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