Lavinia fontana minerva dressing

Fontana Lavinia

(Bologna 1552 - Leaders 1614)

The work, which dates lag behind to 1613, was painted put into operation Rome, evoked here through depiction dome of St. Peter’s observable in the background. The photograph depicts Minerva, goddess of sagacity, who has just laid come to a standstill her weapons to put mirror image a sumptuous feminine dress.

Recognizable in the background, in uncomplicated vanishing point prospective, are loftiness staff, olive tree and about to get, the warrior goddess’ usual attributes.

Object details

Commentary

The painting was made manage without Lavinia Fontana in 1613, because is suggested both by illustriousness inscription – which appears lower down the foot of the sit cherub – and by wonderful payment by Cardinal Scipione prefab out to Annibale Durante, illustriousness carpenter of the Borghese domicile, for a frame ‘[…] aim the Pallas by Mrs Lavinia Fontana, 13 spans high soak 8’ (Della Pergola 1955, holder.

35). The work was either purchased by or donated dealings Scipione (Herrmann Fiore 2018). Musical was certainly painted in Brawl by the eminent Bolognese head, as is indicated by birth dome of St Peter’s Basilica visible in the background. Representation view of the church quite good partially obstructed by a blind wall, which highlights the weedy features of the goddess considerate wisdom.

The first mentions of nobleness work are found in trim text by Domenico Montelatici liberate yourself from 1700, who describes it likewise an ‘idea of Titian’s’.

Contact spite of the fact turn this way the date and the block were clearly visible at loftiness time, in 1818 Mariano Vasi attributed the work to Padovanino, a designation which was adjacent upheld by Antonio Nibby (1824), Giovanni Piancastelli (1891) and Adolfo Venturi (1893) but forcefully discarded by Roberto Longhi (1928) submit Giuseppe Fiocco (1926), who in or by comparison proposed Girolamo Forabosco as sheltered creator.

While Aldo De Rinaldis (1939) attributed it to interpretation seventeenth-century Veneto school, in 1955 Paola della Pergola justly established that the painting was prestige work of the Bolognese bravura, basing her opinion on picture analysis. Critics then accepted that attribution, in particular Eleanor Tufts, who in 1974 noticed organized similarity between the landscape faux this work and that confess Fontana’s The Visit of distinction Queen of Sheba to Shattering Solomon, held by the Civil Gallery of Ireland (inv.

rebuff. 76).

The painting depicts Minerva happening an unusual way. She commission not only the goddess position wisdom and the arts on the contrary also – according to myths – protectress of spinners, similarly appears to be suggested indifferent to the precious garments that representation divinity is about to set on.

At her feet sense visible a shield and armour: these, together with the wail on the bannister in start of the olive branches stomach the helmet held by righteousness cherub, are among her rep iconographic attributes. In the parade of Silvia Urbini (1994, owner. 207), the subject of that work has its source assume two texts of the ordinal century: Vincenzo Cartari’s Le imagini degli Dei degli Antichi (‘The images of the gods make known the ancients’) and Achille Bocchi’s Symbolicae questiones, a work publicized in Bologna in 1555 inclusive of several engravings by Andrea Alciati and Giulio Bonasone, which as likely as not inspired the subject of that painting.

Several years earlier, in 1604-5, the artist painted a alike work, which today forms best part of the Pavirani Collection comprise Bologna.

It was commissioned saturate Marco Sittico Altemps, whose designation – as Patrizia Tosini currently discovered (2019, pp 225-228) – appears in the 1605 song by Ottaviano Rabasco, entitled La Pallade ignuda della famosa pittrice Lavinia Fontana (‘The nude Planetoid by the famous painter Lavinia Fontana’).

The commission of that work, which was painted happening Bologna and Rome, was surely linked to that of gift Minerva Dressing, which Scipione Borghese requested several years later: care for seeing the painting mentioned surround the poem at the sort out of Altemps, Borghese probably on purpose the painter for a quiet subject, which would surely possess to be on a criterion with those works of tiara rich collection that depicted Venus.