Elisabetta Sirani

Elisabetta Sirani (* January 8, 1638 in Bologna, † August 28, 1665 ibid ) was an Italian painter and engraver. She has in Bologna founded an art school only for girls and women and was one of the first women ever to have been included in the prestigious Accademia di San Luca in Rome as a member.

Life

Elisabetta came from a Bolognese artists, artisans and craftsmen and merchant family. Her father Andrea Sirani selling art, he was a painter, an employee of Guido Reni and even holders of a workshop, were trained in the young artist. Elisabetta was, as her two younger sisters, taught by her father since she was 17 and worked as a professional artist.

Elisabetta was not only a comprehensive training in painting, she was also a talented musician, and she was educated in the humanistic disciplines. In her father's library, philosophical, historical and art-theoretical writings were at their disposal, which is important for the baroque painting by Cesare Ripa Iconologia belonged to the inventory of his father's library.

Your client initially came from circles of the wealthy bourgeoisie and the thriving University of Bologna. Among her patrons later belonged to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III. de ' Medici and other members of the Medici family, like Leopoldo or Margherita de' Medici. About an agent of the Medici and through their own agents Annibale Ranuzzi images Elisabetta were conveyed to the Elector of Bavaria, to members of the Gonzaga family in Mantua or the Farnese in Parma.

Since the age of 18 Elisabetta kept a record of their pictures that were sold through the company of his father. From the proceeds of the largest part of the cost of his workshop, the family and the budget was financed. In contrast to the employees Guido Reni, Elisabetta received no share in the fees, they were fully absorbed by the father. Not listed in the notebook ( Taccuino di lavoro ) are the images they sold secretly to their friends, and with whom she supported her mother or siphoned off money for their own needs, such as for their music lessons. Fee she received from her aristocratic clientele often in the form of silver and gold jewelery or precious stones. So you gave Leopoldo de ' Medici as a fee for their picture allegory of justice, charity and prudence a cross with 54 diamonds. As visitors report that these jewelry pieces were exhibited in the family living room in a separate cabinet. Elisabetta studio was for traveling superscript visitors obviously an attraction, the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the Duchess of Brunswick, Christina of Sweden or the son of the Viceroy of Bohemia they sought there on.

As women in the 17th century were not allowed to study at an art school, she founded an academy in Bologna only for female students from a number of professional painters, such as Maria Teresa Coriolano or Ginevra Cantofoli emerged. When her father could not teach anymore because of an illness, they also took his pupil.

Elisabetta was not married. She died at the age of only 27 years, probably due to peritonitis as a result of stomach ulcers ( ulcers perforata ) and not by suicide or, as it wants to be a persistent rumor of poisoning by her maid Lucia Tolomelli, by court of all charges Elisabetta 's father was acquitted. She was buried with great sympathy throughout the city in the Chapel of Guidotti Church of San Domenico. A common epitaph is reminiscent of Guido Reni and Elisabetta Sirani QVAE NON Miracula IVNXIT VITA IN HOC TVMOLO IVNGERE MORS POTVIT ( ... which does not have life connected by miracles that could unite the death in the grave. )

Work

Elisabetta Sirani painted many more small and medium -sized devotional pictures with the sought-after and again and again varied motives Madonna and Child Madonna and Child with St. John and the Holy Family, for which there is in following the Council of Trent, the private, the devotion of the faithful propagated, was a brisk demand. She took orders on the part of the Order and the brotherhoods for large altarpieces, painted some portraits, after the fashion of the time often roll portraits of the principal, as well as several self-portraits, including self-portraits as a nun, as an allegory of painting, as well as some pictures of allegorical and historical / mythological themes.

A striking feature of their history paintings is their fondness for " strong women " from ancient mythology and biblical history. There are pictures on Circe, Cleopatra, Dalila with scissors, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Portia that her husband Brutus demonstrates strength and manly courage by stabs a dagger in her thigh and Timoclea that of a captain of Alexander the Great the legs and grabs him headlong into the well, a rarely depicted scene from the " Vite " of Plutarch.

Portia wounded his thigh, 1664

Timoclea

Judith with the head of Holofernes

Portrait of Vincenzo Ferdinando Ranuzzi as Cupid

Elisabetta Sirani worked extremely fast, so that rumors spread that she had clandestine employees. Then she painted in her always open studio, under the eyes of the spectators came her images that could take on the same day even the occasional client. In their short creative period of about ten years, she left behind 14 engravings and around 200 oil paintings, including several large-scale altarpieces, and a large number of drawings, watercolors, sketches and preparatory bozzetti for her paintings

Works

• Allegory of Painting, 1658 Moscow, Pushkin Museum
• Madonna lactans, Bologna, Coll. Enrico Righi
• St. Anne with St. John, Vercelli, Museo borgonja
• Madonna with the Dove, 1663, Coll. Borromeo, Isola Bella
• Madonna with the Pear, 1664, Faenza, Pinacoteca Comunale
• Madonna and Child, 1663, Washington DC, National Museum of Women in the Arts
• Portrait of Vincenzo Ferdinando Ranuzzi as Cupid, Warsaw, National Museum
• Dalila, 1657, private collection,
• Timoclea crashes Captain Alexander the Great in a fountain, 1659, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte
• Sibylle, Venice, Accademia Gallery
• Portia che si ferisce alla coscia, Hoston, Stephen Warren Miles and Marilyn Ross Miles Foundation
• Cleopatra, Flint, Flint Institute of Art
• Allegory of Musik.1659, private collection
• Magdalena, 1660, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nationale
• The crucifixion of the Ten Thousand Martyrs, 1656, private collection
• Madonna with Child and Saints Francis and Anthony, Parish Church of St. Nazario and Celsus, Bologna
• The St. Anthony with the Child Jesus, Modena, Galleria Estense
• Allegory of justice, love and wisdom, Modena, Commune di Vignola
• Cupid and Psyche, Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig