25 Facts About Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana was an Italian Mannerist painter active in Bologna and Rome.

Lavinia Fontana is best known for her successful portraiture, but worked in the genres of mythology and religious painting.

Lavinia Fontana is regarded as the first female career artist in Western Europe, as she relied on commissions for her income.

Lavinia Fontana's family relied on her career as a painter, and her husband served as her agent and raised their 11 children.

Lavinia Fontana was perhaps the first female artist to paint female nudes, but this is a topic of controversy among art historians.

Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna in 1552 to Antonia de' Bonardis and Prospero Fontana.

Lavinia Fontana later studied under the Netherlandish artist Denis Calvaert, who had once been a pupil of Prospero and who ran an influential painting school in Bologna.

Lavinia Fontana's earliest known work, Child of the Monkey, was painted in 1575 at the age of 23.

Lavinia Fontana began her commercial practice by painting small devotional paintings on copper, which had popular appeal as papal and diplomatic gifts, given the value and lustre of the metal.

The couple moved into Prospero's house in Bologna and Lavinia Fontana added Zappi to her signature.

Lavinia Fontana gave birth to 11 children, though only 3 outlived her: Flaminio, Orazio, and Prospero.

Lavinia Fontana attended classes at the University of Bologna, and was listed as one of the city's Donne addottrinate in 1580.

The high demand for portraits painted by Lavinia Fontana was reflected in the large sums of money she earned during this period.

Lavinia Fontana gained the patronage of the Buoncompagni, of which Pope Gregory XIII was a member.

Lavinia Fontana was appointed as Portraitist in Ordinary at the Vatican.

Lavinia Fontana thrived in Rome as she had in Bologna and Pope Paul V was among her sitters.

Lavinia Fontana painted another Assumption of the Virgin in 1593 at the church of San Francesco Oltre Reno at Pieve di Cento, which was commissioned by the Bentivoglio family and placed in the family chapel.

Lavinia Fontana was commissioned for works by two popes, Gregory XIII and Clement VIII.

Lavinia Fontana's last painting, Minerva Dressing, was a true masterpiece.

Lavinia Fontana was the first female elected into the Accademia di San Luca of Rome, and was the recipient of numerous honors, including a bronze portrait medallion cast in 1611 by sculptor and architect Felice Antonio Casoni.

Lavinia Fontana posits that this is the first visual rendition of Cesare Ripa's 1603 description of Pittura.

Over 100 works by Lavinia Fontana are documented, but only 32 signed and dated works are known today.

Lavinia Fontana is immortalized as the subject of Portrait of a Woman by Paolo Veronese.

Lavinia Fontana was the only woman artist featured in Giulio Mancini's Considerazioni sulla pittura.

Murphy suggests that, like Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana had family members model for her.