The Curators’ Quaderno - The Search for Violante
The Search for Violante in Florence. Issue 5 of The Curators’ Quaderno follows the restoration of three devotional paintings attributed to eighteenth-century painter Violante Siries, at Certosa di Firenze, a vast monastery in Tuscany. Violante’s Reading Madonna, a rare, highly damaged altarpiece is a mysterious commission for a Grand Tour female artist, even of her calibre. Conservators and scholars embark on a multi-faceted search for these paintings’ attributions. They scour the archives and safeguard the paintings’ future in a restoration laboratory in the Santa Croce district, to determine whether these attributions match the painter’s hand. The Curators’ Quaderno is a collection of notebook-style publications, conceived by Calliope Arts, in collaboration with The Florentine and Restoration Conversations, to raise awareness of women’s contributions to the fields of art, science and culture.
The Search for Violante in Florence. Issue 5 of The Curators’ Quaderno follows the restoration of three devotional paintings attributed to eighteenth-century painter Violante Siries, at Certosa di Firenze, a vast monastery in Tuscany. Violante’s Reading Madonna, a rare, highly damaged altarpiece is a mysterious commission for a Grand Tour female artist, even of her calibre. Conservators and scholars embark on a multi-faceted search for these paintings’ attributions. They scour the archives and safeguard the paintings’ future in a restoration laboratory in the Santa Croce district, to determine whether these attributions match the painter’s hand.
The Curators’ Quaderno is a collection of notebook-style publications, conceived by Calliope Arts, in collaboration with The Florentine and Restoration Conversations, to raise awareness of women’s contributions to the fields of art, science and culture.
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“For these commissions, Violante Siriès gained access to
an extremely private all-male environment, a monastery,
and that feat should not be taken for granted. Violante
would have been no more than 30 years old when she
painted her Reading Madonna. She was a married woman
– with children – and a working professional. Let’s not take
that for granted either! The artist’s success is indicative
of the city’s dynamic social climate in a period usually
considered the twilight of Florentine culture (mid-1730s
to mid-1760s) with the death of Gian Gastone de’ Medici
and the advent of the Regency period, when Florence’s
new foreign ruler, Francis Stephen of Lorraine, opted to
stay in Vienna rather than establish a court in Florence.
Violante didn’t work under the auspices of a Grand
Duchess, like Giovanna Fratellini before her. Yet, the lower
echelons of Florentine nobility threw parties, hosted
salons, organised art exhibitions and held festivals – all
potential occasions in which to garner commissions.
This period also saw the burgeoning of the English
Community in Florence – comprised of English speakers
of all nationalities – and Violante achieved considerable
acclaim in the Grand Tour circuit. Her time is one of
the lesser-studied eras in Florentine history – yet her
contemporaries laid the foundations of the modern era,
and within that context, she played a significant role.”
Giulia Coco
Curator and art historian
Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze
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