Restoration Conversations magazine

Restoration

Conversations

ISSUE 8, AUTUMN 2025

WOMEN’S STORIES: TODAY AND THROUGH THE CENTURIES

Above: It’s All Kicking Off (detail), Lucy Gregory, ph. Nick Turpin, MARY MARY at theCOLAB/The Artist’s Garden, Temple, London

From the Editor

This edition of Restoration Conversations explores modern and contemporary art and

film from women’s perspectives, with several thought-provoking shows, like ‘MARY

MARY’ (quite contrary) at The Artist’s Garden and ‘Ketty La Rocca: you you’, the Estorick

Collection’s retrospective on the Italian conceptual artist. In Florence, we are celebrating

‘The Rose that Grew from Concrete’, the final exhibition at Museo Sant’Orsola, prior to the

venue’s re-opening in 2026. We’re also seeing the world from behind the lens of ‘Women

Trailblazers in Documentary Cinema’, with a special focus on French ‘pan-African’ film

director Sarah Maldoror and her tribute at the 66th edition of Festival dei Popoli, the world’s

oldest documentary film festival.

Curator Carla Danella’s interview with writer and art historian Vanessa Nicolson, author of

Have You Been Good? and The Truth Game, offers us a fascinating look at ‘the dark side

of privilege’, growing up in the shadow of Bloomsbury icons. Anne Chisholm’s personal

reflections on ‘Aunt’ Celia’ provides an insightful glimpse of portraitist Sarah Cecilia

Harrison. Margie MacKinnon brings painter Suzanne Valadon to the fore, together with

Berthe Weill, the art dealer who supported her and other ‘young artists’ of the Parisian

avant-garde whose works will soon be on show at the Musée de l’Orangerie. Finally, and

as always, this issue focuses on restoration, from the restored Artemisia painting damaged

in a Beirut bombing, to the art of Violante Ferroni, whose works created for an eighteenthcentury

hospital stand as testimony to the ‘art of healing’.

Enjoy the issue!

Fondly,

Linda Falcone

Managing Editor, Restoration Conversations

Managing Editor

Linda Falcone

Publisher

Calliope Arts Foundation, London

Contributing Editor

Margie MacKinnon

Design

Fiona Richards

FPE Media Ltd

www.calliopearts.org

Instagram: @calliopearts_restoration

YouTube: Calliope Arts

Above: Suzanne Valadon, 1922, Portrait of Mme Zamaron, detail. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift from Mr. and Mrs. Maxime L. Hermanos

© The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

4 Restoration Conversations • Autumn 2025

CONTENTS AUTUMN 2025

INSIGHTS FOR TODAY’S WORLD

6 The Rose that Grew from Concrete

13 Artists at Museo Sant’Orsola

14 The Truths You Can(‘t) Tell

In conversation with Vanessa Nicolson

20 How Does Your Garden Grow?

Women Sculptors In a Space of Their Own

28 you you

Ketty La Rocca at London’s Estorick Collection

36 The Female Gaze

Women Trailblazers and Documentary Cinema

AT THE EASEL:

PAINTERS, MODELS & GALLERISTS

44 Artist and Friend of the Poor

Anne Chisholm’s Personal Reflections

on Sarah Cecilia Harrison

50 Beginning with Paint

Exploring Pasquarosa’s Home and History

58 Make Way for Bertha Weill!

A Gallery and Life Dedicated to ‘the Young’

66 Marie-Clementine, Maria & Susanna

Becoming Suzanne Valadon

RESTORING WOMEN’S LEGACIES

74 Back From the Brink

The Restoration of Artemisia’s Hercules and Omphale

82 Restaurare: to repair, rebuild, renew

86 The Medici Are Dead

Violante Siriès’ Success in a Changing Art Market

90 The Day She Was Born

Building Violante Ferroni’s Biography

Autumn 2025 • Restoration Conversations 5

The Innocenti Hospital’s historical archive comprises more than

13,000 documents and objects from the thirteenth to the twentieth

centuries, including ‘tokens’ that parents left with their foundling

children, as proof of identity. Located in the ancient refectory, the archive

hosts one of the world’s most unique archival collections, that of the

city’s foundling children, most of whom were girls.

As an update on the project ‘Florence’s Daughters at the Innocenti’,

sponsored by donors Connie and Doug Clark and Margie MacKinnon

and Wayne McArdle, Restoration Conversations had a dual interview on

site, with two members of the all-woman project team Antonella Schena,

Head of Archives and Museum/ Cultural Activities and services, and the

Innocenti Institute’s archivist Lucia Ricciardi.

Chiara Bettazzi’s installation at Museo Sant’Orsola, 2025

ph. Marco Badiani


The Rose that

Grew from

Concrete

13 artists at Museo Sant’Orsola

There are times when Florence feels full,

with the Renaissance occupying far

more than its fair share of the creative

commons – a city where contemporary

artists are often forced to wonder whether the

concept of ‘re-birth’ remains a fifteenth-century

prerogative. The city’s statues stand, in all of

their Stendhalian glory, and continue to fuel our

humanist aspirations, but today’s humans – and

artists in particular – often feel there is little room

for their own seeds to grow in the City of Flowers.

But what if there were a space – 17,000 metres of

space – smack in the centre of town, just waiting

to display contemporary painters, sculptors and

artists with a new take on traditional crafts, in

dialogue with the past, present and future?

Such a place does indeed exist, and until now,

it has been the city’s best kept secret. Sant’Orsola

is an ancient former convent in the San Lorenzo

District with no artwork to its name. Its historic

collection, once used to keep its nuns holy, has

been dispersed or lost. This venue, known today

as Museo Sant’Orsola, is one year away from

its inauguration as a new museum and cultural

centre. Right now, it is still under reconstruction,

and the kind of place you come upon in a dream.

At times imposing and eerie, it is also lofty and

peaceful. Its memories are subdued by the silence

of stone. It’s where you’ll either face the minotaur

or free the princess – dystopian and utopian at

the same time.

Amidst the columns of the ancient cloister half

sheathed in concrete, you’ll find a card table and

lawn chairs, which serve as the outdoor ‘office’

of Morgane Lucquet Laforgue, the future venue’s

artistic and scientific director. Her minotaur is

this: “We are not creating a museum from a preexisting

collection. We are creating it from a void,

from scratches, from the marks left by history,

and from the absence of people.” And Morgane’s

princess? That contemporary artists are being

called upon to respond to the venue’s multicentury

past.


Above: Inauguration of ‘The Rose that Grew from Concrete’ with artwork by Cécile Davidovici and David Ctiborsky, 2025

and an installation by Marion Flament 2025, ph. Marco Badiani

Morgane works for the group Artea, the French

company that won Florence’s public bid in 2020

to restore, reorganise and manage the Sant’Orsola

complex for the next five decades. “The complex

was born as a Benedictine convent, which became

a Franciscan nunnery in the 1500s,” she says. “It

was repurposed as a tobacco factory with mostly

female workers in 1818, until 1940, after which,

it was used to host refugee families for several

decades. Following an abandoned project to

transform the space into a military barracks, it was

left untended for some fifty years.” Now, finally, and

largely thanks to Morgane’s vision, it has become

fertile ground for growing contemporary art.

On many a morning, throughout spring and

well into summer, I’d access the complex-inconstruction

through the grated back door, from

a street whose name is unknown. Morgane’s onlocation

equipe is made up of Camilla Palleschi,

and Alice Palmerini, plus ‘tuttofare’ Caligero, who


is on a first-name-only basis with everyone. But

this tiny team grappling with a titan’s task is not

the only group I was coming to see. It’s the artists

I was after – the 13 creatives from Italy, France,

Germany, South Africa, and the United States,

whom Morgane has brought together to form the

backbone of her latest show ‘The Rose that Grew

from Concrete’, whose title is borrowed from a

poem by African-American artist Tupac Amaru

Shakur. Open from 5 September to 4 January, it

is the last of three temporary exhibitions hosted

in the construction site. It features site-specific

works by artists Chiara Bettazzi, Mireille Blanc,

Bianca Bondi, David Ctiborsky, Cécile Davidovici,

Marion Flament, Federico Gori, Beate Höing, Flora

Moscovici, Chris Oh, Elise Peroi, Clara Rivault and

Shubha Taparia.

Once Calliope Arts Foundation – the museum’s

first private donor – decided to lend its support

to the future museum’s artist residency project,



Left: Installation at the exhibition ‘The Rose that Grew

from Concrete’ at Museo Sant’Orsola, with artwork by

Elise Peroi, 2025, ph. Marco Badiani

via grants awarded to French textile artist Cécile

Davidovici and UK-based Indian artist and curator

Shubha Taparia, (see Restoration Conversations,

Issue 7) the interviews began – with everyone.

“During their residencies, artists create sitespecific

installations that are in dialogue with

the museum’s history,” Morgane explains. “Some

of the artists employ ancient crafts in their work,

like gold-leaf, scagliola and ceramics, or have

worked with local artisans, but no matter their

techniques, the artists in this exhibition tell a story

of rediscovery, repair and resilience in this space,

throughout the ages – even today.”

French artist Clara Rivault, like a number of

her colleagues, focused on the many women

who spent all or part of their lives within these

walls. Rivault, a stained glass artist based in Paris,

created La Naissance de Lisa, with the Polloni

workshop in Florence, inspired by Lisa Gherardini,

the Florentine noblewoman thought to have

modelled for Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. Relegated

to the convent following her husband’s death in

1542, she is buried in Sant’Orsola’s former church,

now an archaeological site. “I immersed myself in

the figure of Lisa,” Rivault explains. “I researched,

imagined, and searched deeply – despite the

very little that history has preserved about her. I

wanted to give her body, voice, and light again.

This was a place where women lived, prayed,

helped each other – and that inspired a piece

about sisterhood.”



Opposite, top and bottom left: Artwork at ‘The Rose that Grew

from Concrete’ at Museo Sant’Orsola by Federico Gori, Beate

Höing and Mireille Blanc, 2025, phs. Giulia Padoan

Opposite, bottom right: Detail of Chiara Bettazzi’s installation at

the exhibition, ph. Marco Badiani

Elise Peroi, painter and textile artist also based in

France, turned her focus to Sant’Orsola’s natural

environment through the centuries. She began

by authoring largescale paintings on fabric, which

she cut to strips once finished. Then, using her

strips as ‘yarn’, she wove panels featuring ‘an

ideal forest’ or walk-through garden landscapes

depicting medicinal herbs, caper flowers, and

even weeds – with a special preference for plants

that “poke through concrete”.

German ceramist Beate Höing responded to

the venue’s lost artwork, the bulk of which was

transferred or dispersed following Napoleonic

reforms. Beate’s testimony to the memory of the

place are her floor-based installations for what was

once the convent’s inner church. They reference

two Della Robbia medallions, [now at the Bargello]

depicting Saint Francis and Saint Ursula. In Höing’s

version, the young saints are modern-day adults,

and the fruit referencing Della Robbia’s iconic

garlands are placed on shards of porcelain that

the artist smashed intentionally for this purpose.

“It was also very important to me that these two

new medallions have the exact same diameter as

the original pieces – 1.43 meters,” Beate explains.

“This connection in scale felt essential: a gesture

of respect and continuity across time, anchoring

my reinterpretation to the physical memory of the

originals.”

For some, the most exciting thing about working

in the venue was not it’s history but it’s present

state. “With the museum still in its construction

phase, I could go wild with this installation,”

South African artist Bianca Bondi explains. “In

Sant’Orsola, there was nothing to clean up. It’s a

living environment, not a sterile one. The tonnes

of salt I used could be in direct contact with

the floor. There is no glass on the windows,

which allowed the work’s metals to interact

with temperature changes, and to sweat. So, the

copper goes blue and crystals grow in saline

solution. My art comes from me being a ‘bad

chemist’ and my work continues to create itself

over time.”

The ‘words and pictures’ of all thirteen artists

are recorded in the September 2025 edition of

The Curators Quaderno, a quarterly notebookstyle

publication, published by Calliope Arts

Foundation and The Florentine Press, supported,

on this occasion, by Christian Levett and FAMM,

the first museum dedicated to women artists in

Europe. The publication, entitled ‘Now or Never’,

is a behind-the-scenes look at an exhibition

and a museum in the making. “We are in a

transitional moment, in the creation of the

museum. For the thirteen artists participating in

this show, ‘The Rose that Grew from Concrete’,

it is ‘now or never’, in the sense that they have

embraced the opportunity to interact with the

space as a construction site, and in a way that

will never be possible again, even after it is

renovated.”

Certainly, the exhibition’s title is a hopeful

one, but the hope does not end once this show

is over. The complex’s renovation is bringing

renewal to the whole of the city, because

that rose – Morgane’s rose of contemporary

creativity – must grow in both concrete

and cobblestone, throughout all of Florence,

and further afield, as we await and create a

renaissance for the twenty-first century.

LINDA FALCONE


The truths you

can(’t) tell

In conversation with

author Vanessa Nicolson

FFreelance writer and curator Carla Danella speaks with long-time friend

Vanessa Nicolson, an art historian and author of the memoirs Have you Been

Good? and The Truth Game. More recently, Nicolson published Angels of

Mud, a novel set against the backdrop of the 1966 flood in Florence, where

she spent a portion of her childhood, and still lives part of the year – while

not in London or at her home in the former gamekeeper’s lodge on the

Sissinghurst Estate. Nicolson is the daughter of two eminent art historians,

Ben Nicolson and the Florentine Luisa Vertova. She is granddaughter of

aristocratic best-selling author Vita Sackville-West and diplomat Harold

Nicolson, creators of Sissinghurst Castle gardens. Vanessa is a writer with

the courage to begin with a paper trail of archival evidence and end in

the boundless forest of human experience. Thanks to Danella’s interview,

we meet Nicolson as a teen-age daughter who grapples with her father’s

homosexuality. We see her as a mother who suffers the loss of her 19-yearold

daughter Rosa. As a writer and a woman, Nicolson continues to explore

the after-effects of a childhood of wealth but not security, brandishing her

sword – and pen – at the dragons of envy and loss.


Left: Vanessa Nicolson

Above: Vanessa Nicolson and her husband Andrew Davidson

with their daughters Ellie and Rosa (in the hat) prior to Rosa’s

death in 2008

CD: I wanted to talk to you as a memoir writer,

coming from a family of successful authors and

art historians. As a starting point, you use primary

sources – personal letters, journals and saved

paraphernalia that document generations. As

much as you have found your family history to

be problematic, it was one of the first to really

document ‘privilege’ – female privilege, female

lives and relationships. The first biography of

Vita Sackville-West by Victoria Glendinning

[published in 1983] was unusual for its candour. In

that instance, your uncle gave its author Victoria

Glendinning masses of archival material that

she put in the back of her Mini and drove off

with. Your family saved everything, which made

it possible for their lives to be written about for

the next generation. If your family hadn’t saved

its correspondence, its journals, its memoirs, we

wouldn’t know about them.

VN: You’re absolutely right. I work with archives and

primary sources, which stems from my background

in art history and academia, but research like this

is problematic – with correspondence especially,

not so much with personal diaries. Whatever is

written on a page seems like ‘evidence’. But letters

don’t necessarily reflect reality. I received a lot of

very affectionate letters from my uncle Nigel – but

in real life, he could be icy cold and not a warm,

loving uncle at all. So, when looking at what

people have recorded throughout their lives, we

need to consider things with slight cynicism, or

a measure of awareness. For me, I try to access

something real, not imagined, and in order to

remember an experience, I always go back into a

‘what did it feel like’ sort of feeling.


Above: Author unknown, 1913, from left to right: Harold Nickolson, Vita Sackville-West, Rosamund Grosvenor and Lionel Sackville-West

Source: Wikipedia Commons


You crave what you are missing,

and it works in every direction.

As a privileged person I look at a

lovely family of contadini having

a spaghettata at a big table – at a

fictional version of them in my mind’s

eye – and I’m so envious.

Vanessa Nicolson

CD: You use the word ‘awareness’… your

grandmother Vita Sackville-West, who wrote 13

novels and more than a dozen collections of

poetry, is now idolised. She’s on a pedestal… when

she was actually a very flawed human being.

Approaches to her life-story – and to the lives

of other Bloomsbury characters – tend to have

become very hagiographic. People have created

a cult to these personalities, when really, these

were individuals with independent incomes, who

weren’t always nice to people, unless they were

similarly intellectual or extremely upper class. So

a lot of those who adore them now would have

been the very people the group despised.

VN: Yes. My grandmother, as you know, was elitist,

snobbish, quite antisemitic, homophobic – that’s

the irony [despite the bisexuality of both Vita and

her husband, and her well-documented affairs

with Virginia Woolf and Violet Trefusis]. Of course,

you do have to see everything in the context of

the time. In my view, it’s not about things being

black and white; it’s about understanding human

beings. Yes, we’re all flawed, and we can be

contradictory, and I apply that to myself as well.

Even our memories can be very flawed. Memory

is influenced by our convictions, and that’s

something for me to be aware of as a writer.

CD: Other people writing about the Bloomsbury

group and their entourage – whether they are

family or not, only write the positive. Angelica

Garnett, Vanessa Bell’s daughter is an exception.

She also wrote a very searing book – Deceived with

Kindness – about this terribly sad, complicated

situation, and then there are your memoirs – but

hardly ever do we see the truth of it, in other

cases. So, I think people are conditioned to think,

“Oh but Vita gave trunkfuls of silk pyjamas and

gold rings to her girlfriends. This is so wonderful!”

They buy into that fantasy, rather than thinking,

“She abandoned her two sons when they were

babies, and went away for three years – and how

is that not going to impact them – and their

children?” That’s just one example of a trauma

that’s generational, and just because it also comes

with wealth doesn’t mean that it’s any less painful

and damaging for the people involved. Looking

back on it now, was writing your first book, Have

You Been Good?, healing for you?

VN: The process was painful, but healing. As I

started writing about my own childhood, I was

very interested in exploring a phrase the publisher

used in what we call an ‘elevator pitch’, where you

summarise what the book is about for marketing

reasons. ‘The darker side of privilege’ is how they

described it. I first started writing in grief over

my daughter Rosa’s death, but most people have

suffered terrible bereavements, that wasn’t so

much the issue that needed exploring. It became

about having this privileged background, when all

I wanted was to create something ‘ordinary’. As a

child, all I ever wanted was the loving mum, the

dad, the dog, the cat – it was something I craved,

and created as an adult: the two children, the nice

husband – a very ordinary life – and then seeing

it sabotaged by the various things that happened

in my daughter’s life… she had epilepsy, then

anorexia, then tragically, she dies… I wrote to the

fact that life sabotages one’s hopes and dreams.


CD: I know you feel ‘guilty’ for living such a

privileged life and having suffered through it. It

was an arid desert – which made it so important

for you to create your own warm world, in your

adult life, with your husband and daughters, so to

see that crash is understandably devastating.

VN: There are such terrible things happening

in the world, beyond terrible, and I’m wary of

sounding like poor-little-rich-girl-me. But there’s

this strange idea, that if you don’t have to worry

about your financial security, then you are fine.

Let’s say someone has had a very loving and

secure childhood, and then they see me and are

envious of the literary legacy… the fact that my

parents knew all these incredible people, growing

up in a house full of culture and books… they

think of what I have as an ‘add-on’ to their secure,

loving family. You crave what you are missing, and

it works in every direction. As a privileged person

I look at a lovely family of contadini having a

spaghettata at a big table – at a fictional version

of them in my mind’s eye – and I’m so envious.

I don’t want them not to have it, I just crave the

security that was missing in my own childhood,

and couldn’t care less about the literary legacy

or the famous people. That farmer’s daughter

who is desperate to make her way in the world

of publishing, writing and art, might look at me

and say, “Well, it was alright for her. She had the

path paved ahead of her.” But we both do it. I don’t

know what the answer is, apart from what I try and

do, which is highlight these things in my writing,

but I get very hurt when it’s misunderstood.

Above: Luisa Vertova and Ben Nicolson on their wedding day at Palazzo Vecchio, 1955, author unknown


Above, left: Cover of Have You Been Good? with Vanessa as a little girl, posing for potential passport photos

Above right: Vanessa’s first novel is set against the backdrop of the Florence flood

CD: Tell us more about The Truth Game, where

does its title come from?

VN: The game was based on one I used to play

with my father, a divorced dad. I would see him

once a year, if that, for a few weeks. As a little child,

literally ‘the truth game’ involved questions like

‘What’s your favourite colour?” and the only rule

was you had to tell the truth. And as I got older,

the questions got much more interesting. My

father loved this… and I loved it too. When I was

ten, he would ask things like, ‘If your best friend

were wearing something horrible and asked you

whether you thought the dress was pretty, what

would you say?’ It was about honesty. He was a

very honest man, my father. He had his issues and

he wasn’t really a brilliant father a lot of the time,

but he was a real, honest man. He would just tell

you, quite hurtfully sometimes, what he thought.

But the point is, I describe us on a journey when

I was sixteen, and my question to him that I

remember so vividly was: “Apart from Mummy, have

you ever been so in love with somebody that you

wanted to marry them?” He looked very shocked

and upset, and he said, “There was someone I was

deeply in love with, but I couldn’t marry them.” I

thought that was exciting, and began firing other

questions. Was she divorced? Did you love her

from afar? “Well, I answered your question,” he

kept saying and wouldn’t go any further. Then

I discovered a bit later that he had been madly

in love with a young man, and it couldn’t go

anywhere. To me, our game represented exactly

what The Truth Game is about. It’s about truth and

how it is interpreted. There are truths you can tell,

and truths you can’t, or feel you can’t.

LINDA FALCONE


How does your

garden grow?

Women sculptors in a space of their own


Superhero Cog Woman, LR Vandy, MARY MARY at theCOLAB/

The Artist’s Garden, Temple, London, ph. Nick Turpin


Above: Detail of Auguries Through the Mist, C Powell Williams, MARY MARY at theCOLAB/The Artist’s Garden, Temple, London, ph. Nick Turpin

As you exit the Temple tube station, take a

few quick turns to the left, then go up a

short flight of stairs. You will find yourself

in a public space which occupies a prime location

in the City of London, overlooking the River

Thames. It affords sweeping views, from the

Houses of Parliament, past the Hayward Gallery

and the South Bank, all the way down to the Shard.

Its name, The Artist’s Garden, conjures up images

of leafy trees and fragrant herbaceous borders

in the best tradition of English horticulture. But

this is a garden without flowers, and it owes its

existence to a phenomenon called the Great

Stink. In the summer of 1858, the stench of

untreated human waste from an outdated sewer

system that emptied directly into the Thames had

reached a crisis point, following several outbreaks

of cholera. Civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette

proposed a new sewage system which would be

enclosed in a series of embankments along the

river, including the Victoria Embankment, the site

upon which The Artist’s Garden sits. Restoration

Conversations spoke with its Director, Claire

Mander, to discover the background to this unique

open-air exhibition space for public sculpture by

women.

Restoration Conversations: How did The

Artist’s Garden come about? Was the space

derelict before you took over?

Claire Mander: After Bazalgette’s embankment

came to fruition, it hadn’t really had a purpose. I

think it was always open as a viewing point, and

we have photographs of the benches, which


we’ve just restored, being lined up along the river

frontage for spectators to watch a procession

going past on the embankment. But when I was

asking to use this space, it was full of rough

sleepers; it was quite frightening and dirty. The

Artist’s Garden came into being in 2021, after four

years of negotiating with Westminster Council and

the landowners around the site to see whether

we could set up a sculpture garden for women

artists, which did not exist anywhere in the world

– apart from, for example, Niki de Saint Phalle’s

Tarot Garden, which is a permanent exhibition of

a solo artist.

RC: Your current exhibition is called MARY

MARY. What is the thinking behind that title

and the exhibition?

CM: MARY MARY is an exhibition of nine

women artists which positively reframes the

characterisation of women as ‘contrary’, as

exemplified by the nursery rhyme which inspired

its title, Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does

your garden grow …? It is a reclamation of public

space by women who subvert and reimagine the

traditional elements of garden design.

Above: MARY MARY at theCOLAB/The Artist’s Garden, Temple, London, ph. Nick Turpin



RC: Your previous exhibitions focused on

large scale commissions of a single artist.

Why the switch to a group show?

CM: We wanted to give women more visibility,

more quickly. And we wanted to test the appetite for

borrowing work from galleries, borrowing existing

work from artists, and making new commissions or

reconfiguring work. The curatorial challenge was

that women’s work is not ‘group’ work. They are

all making work in extraordinarily different ways.

I think the works here definitely communicate

with each other, but they are creating a wonderful

cacophony, which shows the huge energy that

exists in the work of contemporary sculptors. One

of the works we commissioned is an enormous

fountain made by Candida Powell-Williams called

Auguries Through the Mist (2024). It is our first

fountain and was no easy task, given that we have

no power and no running water at this site. But

those were obstacles we managed to overcome.

RC: There are so many elements to this

work, but what is particularly striking is the

precariousness of the structure, which is

contrary to classical fountain architecture.

CM: Yes, it teeters around expectations of what a

fountain should be. It does not triumphantly spurt;

it drips, recalling the description [in the biblical

Song of Songs] of the Virgin Mary as ‘a garden

enclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed’.

RC: What is the connection between the two

parts of Alice Wilson’s work, Savoy (2024)?

CM: Part of the work involves her covering the

entire Artist’s Hut [an existing structure used by

resident artists] in a black and white photographic

image of the Scottish pine forest where, for two

weeks each year, she walks and sleeps outside to

gain inspiration for the work she will make the

following year. The second part, standing next

to the hut, is a dense vertical forest of brightly

coloured construction timbers with schematic

outlines of dwellings at their tips. She’s interested

in displacing the hierarchies of wood, and places

as much importance on the romantic image of

the pine forest as on the two-by-four builders’

timber. The work is called Savoy, because she was

passing by the Savoy Hotel every day on her way

to the Artist’s Hut and because, subconsciously,

she knew that Savoy means pine forest.

RC: Virginia Overton’s piece, Untitled (Chime

for Caro) (2022), references the English

abstract sculptor Sir Anthony Caro. What’s

the story there?

CM: This is an interactive sculpture constructed

from offcuts of steel belonging to Caro that he

deposited at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for use

by future generations of sculptors. Virginia chose

the pieces of steel that she wanted and used them

to make a massive wind chime. She cut pieces of

aluminium tubing which are the same weight as

each of the steel pieces, allowing them to balance

on the structure. The heaviness of the structure

contrasts with the lightness of the sound created

when the wind blows through the chimes or

visitors activate them. It is a dematerialisation of

sculpture into sound.

RC: Superhero Cog Woman (2019-24) by LR

Vandy sounds like a contradiction in terms.

Is she saying that women’s powers are both

superhuman and mundane?

CM: Vandy believes that women are the most

essential ‘cogs’ in society, who may be invisible,

but they keep the societal machine running.

She is celebrating all women and the work of

all women. The sculpture is placed in a corner,

within sight of Waterloo Bridge. It became known

as the ‘Ladies Bridge’ when its construction had

to be undertaken by women welders due to

labour shortages caused by World War II. Despite

initial scepticism, the women just got to it and

made the bridge.

Opposite, clockwise from top left: Director Claire Mander at The Artist’s Garden with Holly Hendry’s Slackwater; SAVOY by A. Wilson

Another Mother by H. Stevenson; Auguries Through the Mist by C. Powell Williams

All phs. Nick Turpin. MARY MARY at theCOLAB/The Artist’s Garden, Temple, London


RC: Visitors to the garden could easily miss

Holly Stevenson’s Another Mother (2022)

which is hiding in plain sight as part of the

balustrade surrounding the space. Who is the

mother of the title?

CM: She is a nod to all Marys of whom Maria, the

wife of Joseph Bazalgette, is one. While the great

engineer is one of the 1,500 men who have a

commemorative statue in London, she is not one

of the only 50 named women to be so honoured.

Each of Maria’s eleven children is represented

by a flower on the sculpture, which is a quiet

shrine to the untold but essential support roles of

women across the world and throughout history.

RC: What can you tell us about theCOLAB, the

women-led organisation behind The Artist’s

Garden?

CM: theCOLAB is a charity committed to

advancing the practice and appreciation of the

work of female artists innovating in the field of

sculpture. It started in 2011 with a project called

Sculpture Shock, which was a series of sitespecific

interventions in very unusual sites in

London, accompanied by a 3-month studio, and

a modest production fee, so, not a huge amount,

but a place to make the work and a site to make

it for. That developed into a very successful series

of commissions.

Below: It’s All Kicking Off, Lucy Gregory, ph. Nick Turpin. MARY MARY at theCOLAB/The Artist’s Garden, Temple, London


Above: Untitled, (A Chime For Caro), V. Overton, ph. Nick Turpin. MARY MARY at theCOLAB/The Artist’s Garden, Temple, London

RC: What were the sites you and the artists

chose?

CM: We had a boat on the canals. We had the

tunnels under Waterloo Station. We had historic

buildings; for example, there’s an amphitheatre

in Chiswick House that had never been opened

to the public before. Hanna Haaslahti created an

installation there in the pond that sits in front of the

Ionic Temple. The idea is to bring together people,

land and art by facilitating artists’ responses to

places beyond the white cube and always for the

public.

RC: You also have an educational outreach

programme for young people. What does that

involve?

CM: We have a partnership with City Lions,

which includes children aged 13-16 years old

(often perceived as a difficult age) from all over

Westminster including its pupil referral units i.e.,

those excluded from the school system. They

come to The Artist’s Garden during the holidays,

meet and talk to me or Alice Walters, our Deputy

Director, about careers in the creative industries

and then participate in an artist-led workshop

which relates to the work that the artist is showing.

They get to spend up to three hours with a woman

artist – a very rewarding experience both for the

participants and for the artists. As well as giving

them a glimpse into a career trajectory they

perhaps had not considered, it gives everyone a

reason to believe in the power of women artists

and women in general to make things happen.

MARGIE MACKINNON

MARY MARY also features the work of artists

Rong Bao, Olivia Bax, Lucy Gregory and

Frances Richardson. The exhibition continues

until Spring 2026.


you you

Ketty La Rocca at London’s

Estorick Collection

Some thirty years ago, Michael Estorick sought a permanent home for the

collection of Italian Futurist art that his parents, Eric and Salome Estorick,

had amassed over five decades and entrusted to a Foundation, rather

than donating it to one of the major art institutions that had expressed

an interest in it. The Foundation acquired Northampton Lodge, a grand

Georgian villa in Islington’s Canonbury Square--once home to writers

George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh--just north of the City of London.

In 1998, after extensive renovations, the Estorick Collection opened to

the public. Its specific focus on Italian modernism makes it the only

institution of its kind in the U.K., with a collection that encompasses 122

paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures.

Eric Estorick attributed his interest in Italian Futurist art to an instinctive

affinity for Futurist imagery. Its fascination with ‘dynamism’ and

mechanisation reminded him of his early life in the emerging metropolis

of New York. The collection includes works of well-known artists such

as Modigliani, di Chirico, Marino Marini and Giorgio Morandi. The

only female artist represented in the collection is Giuditta Scalini, best

known for her Etruscan-inspired sculpture. In addition to its permanent

collection, the Estorick has hosted dozens of temporary exhibitions of

other Italian and international artists, and has made a point, especially

in recent years, of exploring the work of women, such as photographer

Lisetta Carmi and ‘muse turned painter’ Pasquarosa (see p.51) as well


Above: Ketty La Rocca, 1964-1965, Qualcosa di vecchio, (Something old. Freedom has come. This far.)

Courtesy of Archivio Ketty La Rocca, Michelangelo Vasta


Above: Permanent exhibition, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London, ph. Estorick Collection

as pioneering abstractionist Bice Lazzari. The

gallery’s current exhibition is ‘Ketty La Rocca: you

you’. La Rocca was a Florentine conceptual artist

active during the 1960s and 70s, her career cut

short by her premature death at the age of 38. She

was born in 1938, in what was then the Kingdom of

Italy. Like the Futurists before her, she lived through

a period of rapid and tumultuous change. Futurism

had viewed Italy’s venerated artistic heritage as

an obstacle to the development of an innovative

modern culture. In the post-World War II period

in which La Rocca grew up, there was, similarly,

enormous tension between the forces seeking to

restore Florence’s damaged institutions to their

previous state and those who saw the potential to

engage in new, modern forms of expression in art

and architecture.

La Rocca had no formal art training. She had

qualified as a teacher, and communication – and

the limits of language – were fundamental themes

of her art practice. As a member of the Gruppo 70,

an experimental art collective, she explored visual

poetry and created collages, combining images and

words taken from newspapers and magazines. In

Qualcosa di Vecchio (Something Old), 1964-65, she

drew attention to male-dominated language with

the phrase ‘la libertà é arrivata’ captioning an image

of a woman in a mini-skirt. The collages “really

nail her colours to the mast and show her social

engagement and desire to change the world,” says

assistant curator, Christopher Adams. “They’re quite

powerful and funny at times, as well.”

Her drive to disrupt traditional patriarchal

language led her to propose an alternative

language of hand gestures which would embody

a more expressive form of communication.

Her Dichiarazione d’artista (Artist’s Statement),

1971, a black and white photograph of a pair of

outstretched hands, makes the visual statement

that hands speak more eloquently than words.


Photography also played an important role in

La Rocca’s Riduzioni (Reductions). Starting with

a black and white image, La Rocca recreates it,

eliminating certain details with each iteration

until all that is left are the outlines of the subject,

delineated in handwritten words. “I see these

as an expression of her desire to recreate the

world on her own terms, not to just take things at

face value but to reduce it to what she thinks is

important,” says Adams.

Having worked for several years as a

radiographer, La Rocca was familiar with X-rays and

she made use of them in her ‘Craniology’ series,

created towards the end of her life. Describing

these works, La Rocca wrote, “I superimpose the

gesture of the hand in all its expressiveness and

communicative simplicity inside the skull, where

the brain gave birth to the entirety of human

thought and human language.”

Restoration Conversations asked curator Valeria

Bruni to provide some further insights into the

context of La Rocca’s work and artistic practice.

RC: How would you describe Ketty La

Rocca’s work to someone unfamiliar with

it? What themes did she explore in her work

and how did they evolve over time?

VB: La Rocca’s work is very complex from both a

theoretical and practical point of view. Her works

are a representation of her contemporaneity,

understood in both the private and public

spheres, at a time when the public and the

private often merged, based on the desire to

create a new world which would distance itself

from bourgeois, imperialist and capitalist society.

RC: What forms did her work take?

VB: She used a wide variety of techniques and

Above: Ketty La Rocca, 1971, Dichiarazione d’Artista (Artist’s Statement), Courtesy of Archivio Ketty La Rocca, Michelangelo Vasta


Above: Ketty La Rocca, 1969, Torno subito, (I’ll be right back) , Courtesy of Archivio Ketty La Rocca, Michelangelo Vasta

Right: Ketty La Rocca, 1973, Cranologia n. 12, (Craniology no. 12) , Courtesy of Archivio Ketty La Rocca, Michelangelo Vasta

materials – collage, sculpture, photography,

X-rays and more. She always maintained a

rigorous focus on social issues and the changes

that were taking shape in those utopian years.

Therefore, she never failed to express her

absolute opposition to the Vietnam War, but

even more she drew attention to the condition

of women, how they were considered both

within the family and outside of it. We must not

forget that this was Italy; only after the Circeo

massacre of 1975 (a gang rape of two girls, one

of whom lost her life) was the law on sexual

violence changed from a crime against public

morality to a crime against one’s person. Then,

our law respecting ‘honour killings’ was finally

repealed in 1981.

RC: How is La Rocca’s work relevant to

contemporary audiences and artists?

VB: It is relevant for one simple reason: the

seriousness with which she worked. No games,

no gimmicks, no public outbursts. Hers is a very

intimate oeuvre, where there is no shouting.

Rather, you find a rigorous observation of the

world, which is then challenged and judged.

This makes her voice even stronger, capable

of transcending the decades, as only great art

and great artists can. It is a universal message

that goes beyond generations. Today, the law of

the strongest seems to prevail more and more

often, and that is why her message should

be particularly researched, made known, and

explained in all its complexity. She was not

interested in just one social issue, but in the

whole magma of proposals that her generation

left us as a legacy.

RC: Is there a particular series of work that

resonates with you personally?

VB: I find this question difficult to answer.

Instinctively, I would say the ‘Craniologies’

cycle, which is fascinating, and then the hand

series, which is pure poetry. But, on reflection,

my favourite works are those featured in the

series of image reductions which start from

a photograph and end up defining only its

contours. Here, La Rocca challenges the very

essence of representation, reducing it to its

bare minimum, questioning art forms and the

expressive possibilities they have, and once

again, she does it so persistently and quietly.

Ketty La Rocca’s estate and archive are managed

by her son, Michelangelo Vasta. The artist’s early

death meant that she was active for only 12 years

or so but, as Vasta explains, “the archive contains

many artworks because, particularly in the last

years of her life, she was very productive. She

had in mind that life would be brief, so it became

a sort of obsession to produce works every day.

We also have some letters from artists, critics

or collectors and other brief notes [that she

wrote for herself].” These are all made available

to scholars who want to study La Rocca’s work.

Conservation of the works is challenging. “As you

can imagine,” he says, “the artists of the 70s did




Left, top: Ketty La Rocca, 1971, Le mie parole e tu (My words and you), Courtesy of Archivio Ketty La Rocca, Michelangelo Vasta

Left, bottom: Ketty La Rocca, 1972-73, Autorittratto (Self-portrait), Courtesy Archivio of Ketty La Rocca, Michelangelo Vasta Ketty La Rocca, 1971

Above: Con inquietudine (With anxiety) , Courtesy of Archivio Ketty La Rocca, Michelangelo Vasta

not particularly pay attention to the preservation

of the artwork. They produced work that they

would leave lying on the kitchen table … and,

of course, most of the work by my mother is

handwriting, and writing is difficult to maintain.

It needs to be carefully framed to protect against

[the damaging effects of] sunlight.”

“My mother found being a woman in the world

of art very difficult,” notes Vasta, particularly

in Florence where a preoccupation with the

past overshadowed the efforts of young

artists, “a point she underlined often in private

conversation.” The galleries of Rome and Milan

seemed more welcoming than those of her

hometown. “But, in the end, she had a good

relationship with the arts of the past because she

used a lot of photographs by the Fratelli Alinari

of sculpture here in Florence.” The Estorick’s

exhibition will introduce La Rocca’s work to new

audiences who will find their own meaning in

her words and gestures, and consider how the

language of art expands to accommodate each

generation’s preoccupations.

MARGIE MACKINNON

Calliope Arts Foundation is pleased to be a

sponsor of ‘Ketty La Rocca: you, you’ at the

Estorick Collection until 21 December.


The Female Gaze

Women Trailblazers and

Documentary Cinema

The 66th edition of Florence’s

Festival dei Popoli, the longeststanding

documentary cinema

festival in Europe, begins on 1

November with the screening of Sarah

Maldoror’s Sambizanga, and runs until

9 November 2025. Sixty percent of the

films on show are directed by women,

including documentaries forming part

of ‘Women Trailblazers in Documentary

Cinema’, a 3-year project supported by

Calliope Arts Foundation, which began

in 2024 by spotlighting revolutionary

filmmakers like the 40-year career of

Hungarian director Judit Elek and French

filmmaker Mati Diop whose awardwinning

Dahomey recounted the recent

return of artwork stolen from Benin by

French colonial troops in 1892.

The diamond point of this year’s

edition is the long-awaited 12-film

tribute to ‘pan-African’ French filmmaker

Sarah Maldoror (1929-2020), described

by curator Ludovica Fales as follows:

“Maldoror told the story of Africa in

its struggles, forgotten women, the black

diaspora, silenced voices. But she did so

with fierce grace, with a lucid gaze, always

on the side of the underdog, without

ever falling into didacticism. We live in

a time when words such as colonialism,

‘racism’, ‘resistance’ and ‘identity’ seem

to fill debates, social media posts and

cultural programmes... but they often

remain abstract words. Maldoror – with

her cinema – brought these words to

life. She filmed them. She gave them

a body, gaze and voice. Organising a

retrospective on Sarah Maldoror today

means going back to watch and listen to

the world from another perspective. It

means rediscovering a brand of cinema

that never separated politics from

poetry, militancy from art.”

Right: Woman with a pipe, from Maldoror’s Sambizanga, ph. Suzanne Lipinska, 1972

Courtesy of the Friends of Sarah Maldoror and Mario de Andrade Association


Left: Shubha Taparia at work, ph. Michiko Isobe


Above: Festival dei Popoli 2025, 66th edition, poster

Right: Still from The Long Road to the Directors’ Chair by Vibeke Løkkeber, created with footage shot in 1973

The filmmaker’s daughter Annouchka de

Andrade, co-creator of the Friends of Sarah

Maldoror and Mario de Andrade Association, will

be introducing Maldoror’s films. Annouchka has

been working for several years for the recovery

and restoration of lost or damaged films

forming part of her mother’s oeuvre, including

Sambizanga, her celebrated feature film and

masterwork. “Restoring Sarah Maldoror’s films is

a way of reviving her thoughts,” Annouchka says

about one of the most fundamental aspects of

her own work to preserve Maldoror’s legacy.

The ‘Trailblazers’ project also foresees the

continued participation of the international

collective ‘Feminist Frames’, with films such as

The Long Road to the Directors’ Chair by Vibeke

Løkkeber, created with footage the Norwegian

filmmaker shot in 1973, at the ‘First International

Women’s Film Seminar’ in Berlin, one of the

first-ever feminist film festivals. Løkkeberg, who

thought the footage lost for over half a century,

re-encounters her 28-year-old self behind the

camera, along with the still partially unfulfilled

hopes of the women in attendance, in their quest

for changes in the world of cinema and television.

The end goal of their shared aspirations was

for women’s voices and viewpoints to get the

screentime and mind-space they deserve in a

rapidly changing society.

Lokkeberg’s film is set to be screened in

conversation with No Mercy, the Female Gaze,

Isa Willinger’s modern-day quest to meet several

women directors recognised as icons and

pioneers of world cinema. The film was born

from a conversation she had with Kira Muratova

in Odessa, while she was writing a book on

the Ukrainian filmmaker. “Women are slaves, so

they make vengeful films. They tell it like it is,”

Muratova told her, and Willinger, still haunted

by that statement a decade later, finds herself

exploring gender-based power struggles and the

quest for the ‘female gaze’.


Other films like Novias del Sur (Southern Brides)

explores expectations, rather than aspirations.

Spanish director Elena López Riera documents

the moving testimonies of older women as

they remember their young selves’ mores

regarding marriage and sexuality – the facts

and the fallacies. As brides in Spain during

Franco’s regime, these women discovered love

and intimacy late in their lives. Through her

exploration of recounted relationships and ageold

rituals, López Riera explores her own identity

as a childless, unmarried woman.

Many of the festival’s features and shorts

explore the overcoming – if not resolution –

of obstacles such as those in Mariam Bakacho

Khatchvani’s The Men’s Land. She takes viewers

to the Caucasus region, to Georgia’s Ushguli

mountains, in the present-day, where customs

continue to dictate that all property must be

transferred to the deceased’s closest male

relative, as women and girls are not allowed

to inherit land. Actress Anna Ushkhvani plays

twenty-two-year-old Ana, an aspiring singer who

uses music to brave the backlash she encounters

while fighting to overturn the status quo.

These films are merely a handful of the more

than 200 on show, and with women filmmakers so

widely represented, Restoration Conversations

approached artistic director Alessandro Stellino,

for his take on sector trends as far as the

visibility of female artists are concerned.

Below: Shubha Taparia, The Averard Hotel, Slate Projects, London 2016



Above: Mariam Bakacho Khatchvani’s The Men’s Land (2025), featuring actress Anna Ushkhvani

Left: Sarah Maldoror and Ma tété while filming Sambizanga, Congo, ph. Suzanne Lipinska, 1972, courtesy of the Friends of Sarah Maldoror and

Mario de Andrade Association

Restoration Conversations: What can you

tell us about gender equality in the world of

cinema?

Alessandro Stellino: Well, statistics show that

fifty percent of students at cinema schools

worldwide are women, but employment in

Hollywood is ninety percent male-dominated

in high-ranking creative roles, so we are still on

that ‘long road’. Consider that having women

directors is not enough, if the market’s structure

continues to be predominately male. Today,

mostly men decide which films get distributed.

Women have been winning lots of prizes in the

most important festivals over the last five or six

years – like never before – in Cannes, Berlin

and Venice. This is clearly a sign of the times. A

lot more attention is being paid to who makes

up the panel of judges, and you know what…

our two main panels are almost exclusively

women, for the sections ‘International Features’

and ‘Discoveries’, for shorts and medium-length

films. People ask why that is, but for years no one

ever asked why there were only men on certain

panels.

RC: Why are there so many women

filmmakers in documentary cinema?

AS: The documentary genre is one in which

women find a means of expression with greater

ease than with fictional films, where audience

expectations are higher and more demanding

funding is required. For fiction, the cinema

machine is far more powerful and, apparently,

the economic powers-that-be still shirk at the

idea of entrusting women filmmakers with that

kind of economic commitment. Issues like these


Above: Sarah Maldoror at work, ph. B.J. Nicolaisen, c. 1980s

Courtesy of the Friends of Sarah Maldoror and Mario de Andrade Association


still need to be explored and discussed, in

order to correct continuing imbalances. I

think that male film directors are currently

feeling that ‘too much space is being given

to women’ these days. When there’s a call for

filmmakers, some men make comments like,

‘Wait and see, the women are going to get all

the attention’. But I say to myself, ‘Well, we

have one hundred years of cinema behind us,

in which women were never given any real

consideration. The exclusion of women was

never even posed as a problem. So, it’s good

for them to be receiving attention now.

RC: Which of this edition’s themes do you

find most exciting or interesting?

AS: What strikes me as most beautiful is the

fact that documentaries are revelatory, they

reveal reality – much more than fictional

cinema does. I think the Festival’s task is to take

a real look at the planet as a whole. For years,

environmental issues were at the forefront,

but, today, themes of war are very present.

Our goal is to understand these issues, and

to avoid instrumentalising them. That is a big

concern for me: to avoid exploiting human

dramas and tragedies for one’s promotional

purposes. As you know, several of our films

are focused on overcoming the male gaze and

its objectification of women. If we look back,

all we can do is recognise and acknowledge

that cinema bears this mark. Today, women

directors are asking whether there is such a

thing as a female gaze. Is there really a gaze

representative of all women? No consensus

has been reached, and that’s what makes the

discussion – on and off camera – so exciting.

LINDA FALCONE

Editors’ Note: The October 2025 edition of

The Curators’ Quaderno entitled Revolution

on Film spotlights Sarah Maldoror’s

continuing legacy. This notebook-style

publication (www.theflorentine.net) is

conceived by the Calliope Arts Foundation,

in collaboration with The Florentine Press.

It brings women’s contributions to the fore

in the fields of art, science and culture… in

the words of the ‘curators’ who conserve,

protect and share their achievements.

For more on the Festival dei Popoli, visit:

www.festivaldeipopoli.org.


‘Artist and Friend

of the Poor’

Anne Chisholm’s personal reflections

on Sarah Cecilia Harrison

IIn the tall house in Hampstead where I grew up hung a number of large, dark portraits

in gold frames. The only one that caught my eye was that of a beautiful dark-haired

woman, her lips parted, wearing a slightly decollete black dress. My mother told me

that it was a portrait of my Irish grandmother, Eliza Beatrice Harrison, painted for her

engagement to my English grandfather, Hugh Chisholm, by her younger sister, my

great-aunt Sarah Cecilia Harrison. This information was of minor interest to me at

the time.

Sixty years later, I decided to find out more about this great aunt who, I had since

realised was a woman of considerable if under-recognised achievement, not just as

an artist but as a social reformer. I went to Dublin in pursuit of her and found her

grave in the Protestant cemetery. On the tall grey cross was inscribed ‘Artist and

Friend of the Poor’, an inscription which indicated a relative to admire. From my

father, a man of naturally conservative attitudes, I had grown up with the impression

that, within the family, Aunt Celia (as she was known) was thought to be a bit odd: she

was unmarried and had chosen to live alone in Dublin on very little money, working

as an artist and campaigning against social injustice. He did express some pride

that she had been the first woman to be elected to Dublin City Council, in 1912. This

achievement interested me less than his assertion that she had once been engaged

to someone important in the art world who had drowned when the Lusitania was

sunk by the Germans off the coast of Cork, during the First World War. According

to my father, this man had owned several valuable paintings which should have

passed to Aunt Celia. On a visit to the National Gallery in London I was told that a

painting I admired, Renoir’s Les Parapluies (1881), was one of them. This made a lasting

Right: Sarah Cecilia Harrison, 1888, E. Beatrix Harrison, private collection



Left: Sarah Cecilia Harrison, c. 1920

Portrait of Sir Hugh Lane with a

Beard, collection and image

© Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

impression. For a long time, this was all I knew

about my Great Aunt Celia, and I suspected it was

not entirely accurate. My father, after all, loved a

good story.

I went in search of the facts. Celia was born

in 1863, at Holywood House, County Down, just

outside Belfast, third of the five children of Henry

Harrison, a prosperous merchant of Scottish

descent and his wife, Letitia, nee Tennent, from

one of Belfast’s leading political families with a

proud Liberal and Nationalist history. Although

the Harrisons, like most of the Protestant Anglo-

Irish, were staunch Unionists, believing Ireland

should be ruled from London, Celia was always

strongly in favour of Home Rule.

When Henry died in 1873, Letitia and the children

moved to London; three years later, when Celia

was 15, she began six years of study at the Slade,

the recently founded art school where, for the

first time, women studied and painted alongside

men. She thrived there, winning a scholarship

and several prizes for drawing and etching. Under

her mentor, Alphonse Legros, she developed into

a fine, perceptive painter in the traditional style,

heavily influenced by the Old Masters. She soon

began her career as a portraitist, using her family

and friends as models; she also painted a series of

striking self-portraits (Self Portrait, 1889). Her work

was shown frequently from 1889 onwards at the

Royal Academy in London (Miss Beatrix Harrison,

1888), the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin

and the Belfast Art Society. By 1900, she was a

highly regarded artist, producing a steady stream

of portraits of prominent people in London and

Dublin. (Portrait of George Moore, 1907).


Although by no means drawn to Impressionism,

let alone Modernism, Celia appreciated these

movements; and after she met the leading art

dealer and collector Hugh Lane, a well-connected

Anglo Irishman, she committed herself to helping

him in his efforts to establish a gallery of modern

art in Dublin.

She had moved back to Dublin by 1904 and was

to live and work there for the rest of her life. The

move was for personal as well as professional

reasons. She was the only one of the Harrison

sisters not to have married, while in 1896 her

mother, then in her fifties, had remarried a man

of 27, giving Celia a stepfather four years younger

than she was. She must have felt it was time to

set up life independently, although she continued

to visit the family in London.

In Dublin Aunt Celia found herself so appalled

by the poverty and squalor of the city’s infamous

slums that she embarked on the series of

campaigns – for better housing, help for the

unemployed and the establishment of allotments,

Right: Pierre-Auguste Renoir,

c. 1881-86, Les Parapluies

(The Umbrellas). The National

Gallery, London.

Source: Wikipedia



Left: Sarah Cecilia Harrison, 1889, Self-portrait,

collection and image © Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

in particular – that led to her standing for office

on the Dublin Council in 1912. She also became

a leading suffragist, marching and addressing

public meetings in London and Dublin.

At the same time, she began to work increasingly

closely with Hugh Lane towards realising his grand

ambition of an Irish Gallery of Modern Art based

on works from his own collection, which included

Corots, a Manet and Renoir’s Les Parapluies. They

became friends as well as colleagues, and when

the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art opened

in temporary premises in 1908, she wrote the

catalogue for the first exhibition, which included

three of her own works, including a self-portrait.

As a member of the Council, she was in a

perfect position to lobby for Lane’s proposal.

Aunt Celia fought hard on her friend’s behalf,

supporting, among others, a scheme for the

construction of a Lutyens building on a bridge

over the Liffey. But those who felt the Council

had more urgent demands on funds won the day,

aided by the outbreak of war in 1914. In January

1915, she lost her seat on the Council. Meanwhile

Lane, losing patience, had also been negotiating

with the National Gallery in London.

In May 1915, on his way back from a business trip

to the United States, Hugh Lane, along with some

1,200 others, was drowned when the Lusitania

was torpedoed by the Germans off the Irish coast.

In the wake of this disaster, and the discovery

that Lane had left conflicting wills – so that both

London and Dublin had a claim on his collection

– Aunt Celia came forward with a claim of her

own. She maintained that she and Hugh Lane

had agreed to marry, and that, though she knew

he intended the paintings to go to Dublin, both

wills should be declared invalid. This was partly

because she herself was left only a token gift. The

story of the legal tangle that ensued, the eventual

settlement in favour of London, with the proviso

that certain paintings would be shared with what

eventually, in 1928, became the Hugh Lane Gallery

of Modern Art, is long and complex. But for Aunt

Celia, it was a disaster. The engagement was

strongly denied by Lane’s family and friends and

universally disbelieved; he was, after all, younger,

being barely 40 to her 52, and had never seemed

the marrying kind. Aunt Celia was perceived,

from then on, as deluded, obsessive and, as she

repeated her story over the years, something of

a nuisance.

Here, I realised, was the sad, true story behind

my father’s claim that Les Parapluies should have

been hers. It seems clear to me now that, whatever

their relationship had been, Lane’s death pushed

Aunt Celia into an emotional crisis, even a

breakdown, from which she was slow to recover.

By the 1920s, though, she was painting again, and

as I discovered in Dublin, her later portraits of

distinguished citizens can still be found in public

buildings, including the Prime Minister’s office

(Portrait of Michael Collins, 1924). Her posthumous

portrait of Lane hangs in the Hugh Lane Gallery.

To the end of her life, she continued to support

the poor and the unemployed.

Through a great stroke of luck, I have been

able to help restore the memory of Sarah

Cecilia Harrison to what I believe she was: a

strong woman, a truly gifted artist and a force

for good. Eight years ago, I was contacted by a

Dublin bank, who wished to hand over to me

some four hundred letters, dated 1905-15, from Sir

Hugh Lane to Miss S.C. Harrison. They showed

no evidence of a romance, but were proof of a

productive, affectionate friendship and a working

relationship of great interest to Irish art historians.

These letters, purchased by the National Gallery

of Ireland, are now held in their archives and are

available to scholars. The proceeds from their sale

are used to fund the Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay

Prize, awarded annually for a piece of research

into any aspect of women’s art in Ireland.

I hope my Great Aunt Celia would approve.

Anne Chisholm is a biographer, editor and

critic and a former Chair of the Royal Society

of Literature. She lives in London.



Beginning with paint

Exploring Pasquarosa’s home and history

We passed Tivoli, with its lovely view of the

whole plain from the Aniene to the Tiber valleys,

dotted with their renowned Roman hills. Then we

continued on to Arsoli, amidst nature still groggy

from its sleep, which offered unexpected hues

nonetheless. Perhaps, these are the sights and

impressions that inspired the numerous painters

from Italy and abroad who flocked here to the

town of Anticoli Corrado, from the eighteenth

century onwards, until the tradition became

consolidated and twentieth-century artists

settled in the town for good, refurbishing homes

that morphed into real artist colonies.

When a Roman friend learned that Anticoli

Corrado was the destination of our mini-break

in Lazio, she had nodded knowingly: of course,

the village that is famous for being home to

wet nurses who came to Rome, in the service of

bourgeois families, or for its models who went

to the capital to pose in artist ateliers. Some

of those models became these artists’ brides,

and a number of them would later help guide

their husbands’ stylistic and economic choices,

supporting them with determination, as true

entrepreneurs.

Other women who went to pose became

painters in their own right. Pasquarosa Marcelli

Bertoletti was one of these, and her grandson

Paolo Bertoletti, and his wife Carmela, were

who we were travelling to meet. The migration

of young women from many parts of Lazio to

Rome, but also Paris and London, is still a story

largely untold beyond Italian borders, but it is

one that excites us and moved us to embark on

our journey.

Once in the village’s main square, Stefano, my

partner and traveling companion, tries to figure

out by looking at every young woman he meets

(very few, in fact) whether this place so famous

for its beautiful ladies, continues to live up to

its name. Discouraged by the lack of clues, we

set off down the main street, where we find the

Bertoletti house.

It is a graceful two-storey building, rounded on

one side like the apse of a church, and its streetlevel

walls are built in typical village stone. The

second floor, in pinkish brick, has many arched

windows, no doubt designed with the idea of

having natural light at all times of day: the largest

ones look north-east and open onto an expansive

view of the Simbruini mountains.

Opposite: Pasquarosa, c. 1954-56, Neapolitan Still Life, ‘From Muse to Painter’, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art

Courtesy of Archivio Nino e Pasquarosa Bertoletti, Rome


Paolo and Carmela – with their dog – welcome

us cordially. Excited by visiting strangers, the

dog tries to draw attention to himself, until

Carmela concedes to playing in-door catch,

and the rhythm of that ball, repeatedly caught

and returned, punctuates Paolo’s words and

memories, as he takes us to explore the house

and its art treasures.

“Pasquarosa was a very caring grandmother;

I remember her well, because I also lived with

her as a child. We have a lot of Nino Bertoletti’s

paintings here, but Pasquarosa’s were almost all

sold. It was Nino who wanted her to be seen and

admired. He encouraged his wife to exhibit and

sell, and acted as her manager.”

Paolo’s eyes are shining as he speaks. He is still

moved by the vivid memory of his grandparents;

it is almost as if he can see Pasquarosa wandering

through these rooms, cleaning her brushes and

those of her husband – still thick with colour.

Under one window, their two palettes are lying

on top of each other, motionless. They seem

Above: Pasquarosa, 1914, Teapot on a Rug, ‘From Muse to Painter’, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art



Above: Pasquarosa, 1913, Still life with flowers and a fan, Civico Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea

frozen with the very different hues that animate

their paintings. Pasquarosa’s are primary and

pure, in their essential state. Nino’s are much

more nuanced, treated and blended, in an effort

to achieve softer, more mediated shades.

“She never drew,” said Paolo, following our

gaze. “Pasquarosa always began with paint.

Colour was her starting point. Sometimes, it was

Nino who drew a few marks on her canvas, to

give a starting point, for reference.”

“Her painting is fresh and true, and her ‘artistic

illiteracy’ an asset,” he continues. “In an era that

saw the rupturing of art’s status quo, Pasquarosa

could freely venture past unexplored boundaries

without reverence, without fear of breaking the

rules – like a child painting what she sees. Hers

was the absolute freedom of an explorer,” her

grandson says. “Critics of her time were very

divided about considering freedom an artistic

value, and some of them attacked her, telling

her she best go back to the other side of the

easel. They were ruthless with women who

approached the art of painting. Yet, Pasquarosa’s

husband convinced her to press forward, not

to give up. She was always with brush in hand,

but she managed to reconcile her family, her

children – and then her grandchildren, her wellloved

husband and her art. Until the end of her

days, she painted a lot.”


Above: Pasquarosa, c. 1916, Vase of Flowers, ‘From Muse to Painter’, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art



“This is Pasquarosa at Villa Strohl-Fern, where my

grandparents met,” Paolo explains. “Pasquarosa

left Anticoli Corrado very young, at sixteen.

Her family was very poor, and peasants at that

time were all but strangled by the constant

taxes the new Italian state and its landowners

burdened them with. The harvest, impoverished

by weather that could nullify a year’s work with a

single frost, did not produce enough to feed each

family’s many children. Their story is always the

same: they leave the village as soon as they are

able to work, in this case, as adolescents.”

Pasquarosa is joined by her friend Candida

Toppi. Both are beautiful, and their physical

features and characteristics are an exact match

with traits in vogue at the time. Therefore, they

can follow the path well-trodden by so many

of their already famous counterparts from the

region. It is easy to find young artists in the

capital. Even Pasquarosa’s Aunt Marietta (Maria

Lucantoni) is already a sought-after model

in Rome, and is willing to teach her niece the

trade. If Pasquarosa is lucky, she may even

find a husband among one of these painters

and stay in that environment. Yes, it will be

bohemian at times, but undoubtedly better and

more stimulating than what they left behind.

Pasquarosa proves even more daring: as early

as 1913, she poses for painter Nino Bertoletti

and soon begins to paint in his studio, where

he teaches her the rudiments of his craft. Within

the year, the couple marry, in a civil ceremony.

Above, left: Pasquarosa in Rome, 1914, courtesy of Archivio Nino e Pasquarosa Bertoletti, Rome

Above, right: Pasquarosa in Anticoli Corrado with her grandson Paolo, 1947, courtesy of Paolo Bartoletti



Left: Pasquarosa, c. 1914 Calendulas,

courtesy of Archivio Nino e Pasquarosa

Bertoletti, Rome

Pasquarosa immediately begins exhibiting

her works with the enthusiasm of a young

woman with nothing to lose, debuting at the

Third Roman Secession, a very important

exhibition known for presenting a plethora

of new painters.

Critics were divided, but one thing is certain:

her art did not go unnoticed. Fame was not

long in coming: Pasquarosa was present

at all the major Roman exhibition events

in the decades that followed. Her London

solo show, in 1929, sealed her international

recognition. Despite her success, the myth of

the Anticoli Corrado model-turned-painter

would stay with her for the whole of her life.

English reviews featured titles like ‘Model as

Artist’ (Morning Post), ‘A Roman model who

has become a famous artist’ (Italian Mail)

and ‘Artist’s model turns painter’ (Yorkshire

Evening Post), writes Daniele Di Cola in his

essay ‘The Reasons for Style’ in Muse di

Anticoli Corrado, the 2017 catalogue of the

exhibition organised in her home town’s

Civic Museum of Modern and Contemporary

Art. More recently, almost 50 years after

her death, London dedicated another major

exhibition to her in 2024 at the Estorick

Collection of Italian Art entitled ‘Pasquarosa:

From Muse to Painter’, reaffirming this dual

role, which likely will never abandon her.

The afternoon flew by with the fluidity of

memory. Finally, we realise we have taken too

much of our kind hosts’ time – dog included

– so we take our leave, hoping to see them

again soon to talk more about Pasquarosa,

perhaps in Florence. In the meantime,

Stefano and I will continue our journey, in

search of other painter-models and those

who remember them. We have only just

begun to rediscover their incredible world,

linked to an era that is no more. Still – their

stories are sure to guide us towards many

new friendships and destinations… until we

meet again.

FEDERICA PARRETTI


Make way for

Berthe Weill!

A gallery and a life dedicated to ‘the young’

Parisian art gallerist Berthe Weill was the first to exhibit the paintings of

Henri Matisse. She held the only solo exhibition of artworks by Amedeo

Modigliani in his lifetime. She was the first dealer to sell works by Pablo

Picasso. These are just a few of the young artists she championed in the

early years of the twentieth century who would become the foremost

names in the Modern Art movement. And yet, Weill herself remains

virtually unknown, even within the art world, whose history was written

with barely a mention of her.

An exhibition entitled ‘Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-

Garde’, co-organised by the Grey Art Museum at New York University, the

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and the Musée de l’Orangerie in

Paris, sets out to restore Weill to her place in the ‘origin story’ of modern

French painting. The idea for the exhibition, says Anne Grace, Curator

of Modern Art at the MMFA, “originally came from Julie Saul, an art

dealer in New York who came across Weill’s name in the course of her

research. Working with Lynn Gumpert, Director of the Grey Art Museum,

and scholars Robert Parker and Marianne Le Morvan, who wrote the first

monograph on Weill, they created an initial checklist based on the most

significant of the more than 300 artists whose works had been shown

in her gallery. We all thought, ‘Wow, this is a great story with fabulous

artworks.’ And the possibility of discovering lesser-known artists is

always something wonderful.”

Right: Émilie Charmy, 1910-1914, Portrait of Berthe Weill, MMFA

Horsley and Annie Townsend Bequest, CARCC Ottawa, 2025, ph. MBAM, Julie Ciot



Right: Émilie Charmy, 1904,

Nature morte aux grenades, MBAM,

gifted by Indivision Bouche, ADAGP,

Paris / CARCC Ottawa, 2025,

ph. MBAM, Jean-François Brière

Weill (pronounced ‘Vay’) was an unlikely candidate

to become a promoter of the emerging modern

artists who congregated in the bohemian quarter

of Montmartre. Born in 1865 into a Jewish family of

very modest means, she gained an entrée to the

art world through an apprenticeship to a distant

cousin, Salvator Mayer, who owned a shop dealing

in prints, antiques and books. On Mayer’s death,

she took over the shop and, in 1901, converted it

into an art gallery, androgynously named ‘Galerie

B. Weill’. In what would become a familiar pattern

in her business life, Weill struggled to stay afloat.

A much-needed injection of funds came from the

dowry money that her mother had set aside for

her. She had the good fortune to meet Catalan

agent, Pedro Manach, who Grace affirms “was a

key person in Weill’s story, supporting her as an

early collaborator. It was through him that she

was able to sell the first Picasso works in Paris. He

encouraged her interest in showing the works of

young artists.”

The gallery’s original premises were on rue

Lafitte in the 9th arrondissement, a single room,

with only six metres of wall space for hanging

paintings. At the MMFA, Grace explains that the

first room of the exhibition was purposely created

as a small space, to situate the visitor in the

cramped quarters of the Galerie. “It was to make

people think about being in this little place and

then going from that to [the large open spaces of

the museum, showing] works that were borrowed

from major museums and private collections all

over Europe and North America.”

If Weill’s name is missing from books on this

period of art history, it is not all down to misogyny

(although that played a part). As Grace points out,

“One of the reasons she was overlooked was that

she wasn’t interested in making a big name for

herself or making a lot of money. Nor did she

amass a prestigious inventory of works. She was

driven by a desire to support artists and give



them a place to show their works. In her memoirs,

she talks about selling a Matisse painting for 130

francs of which the artist got 110. She wanted to

put money back in the pockets of the artists so

that they could continue to create.” She did not

charge artists rent for exhibition space and did

not seek to tie them to exclusive contracts.

Published in 1933, Weill’s memoirs, called (in

English) Pow! Right in the Eye!, were another

milestone – the first autobiography of a modern

dealer. As the title suggests, it is a no-holdsbarred

account of life in the Parisian art world.

It reveals her self-deprecating sense of humour,

her ‘difficult personality’ (which in a man might

be termed ‘strength of character’), as well as her

somewhat reckless approach to business. When

she was awarded a substantial settlement to

cover injuries she suffered in a train accident,

Weill recorded that “I made a few purchases [of

artworks], trying to invest my money. I should

have put the rest aside for a rainy day. Except that

whenever I have a little something, a terrific urge

to buy stuff causes me to spend it all. Can that

be cured?”

The paintings in the exhibition are testament

to her discerning eye for up-and-coming talent,

including Marc Chagall, André Derain, Raoul Dufy,

Diego Rivera and Robert Delaunay, as well as many

Above: Amedeo Modigliani, 1917, Nude with a Coral Necklace, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, gift from Joseph and Enid Bissett

ph. Allen Memorial Art Museum / Bridgeman Images


Above: View of the exhibition ‘Berthe Weill, Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-garde’ © Picasso Estate / CARCC Ottawa, 2025, ph. MMFA, Denis Farley

women, whose works were shown in over thirty

percent of the Galerie B. Weill’s exhibitions. One

of these was Suzanne Valadon (see p. 66); another

was Emilié Charmy, whose Portrait of Berthe Weill

(1914) speaks to their close friendship. Although

Weill was barely five feet tall, in Charmy’s work

she fills the length of the canvas. Her sombre

black suit and businesslike watch, visible below

her sleeve, give her authority. This is the portrait of

an independent, professional woman. Jacqueline

Marval, Hermine David and Alice Halicka are

among the other female artists represented by

Weill on display in the exhibition.

Typical of Weill’s concern for her artists was her

refusal to exploit their economic precariousness

and other weaknesses. Unlike the Montmartre

denizens who bragged of scoring good deals

by accepting paintings or buying them when

Maurice Utrillo (the artist son of Suzanne Valadon)

“was,” she wrote, “shall we say, more than usually

tipsy,” she would not use his alcoholism to her

advantage. Although she was moved to add,

“What a terrible businesswoman I am! Doomed

to stagnate my whole life.” When Modigliani

introduced himself to her in a drunken state, she

declined his invitation to visit his studio but later

agreed to put on an exhibition of his paintings

and drawings. By then, the gallery had moved

to a larger space on rue Taitbout, unfortunately

located directly across from a police station. The

show consisted of, in Weill’s words, “sumptuous

nudes, angular figures, ravishing portraits,” such

as Nude with a Coral Necklace (1917). Visible from

the window, the paintings drew a crowd and the


attention of the police who warned Weill that she

was committing an affront to public decency and

forced her to take them down. What was wrong

with the paintings? “Those nudes,” came the reply,

“they … h-h-h-have hairs!”

The exhibition also boasts three works from

Picasso’s first show at Galerie B. Weill: Still Life

(1901) from the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, The

Blue Room (1901) from the Phillips Collection

in Washington and The Hetaera (1901) from the

Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin. “Those paintings

were among the most documented,” says Grace.

The documentation is significant because

invitations to exhibitions at Weill’s gallery often

did not specify which works were on display, and

the works themselves did not have the gallery

stamps that would facilitate identification. (Hardly

surprising when Weill was known to hang still-wet

canvases on a rope stretched across her gallery.)

“The research carried out by Le Morvan allowed

us to update the provenance [of the works in the

show], so that Weill’s name would be added to

their history.”

Weill often went out of her way for her artists,

sometimes purchasing their works when none

sold at an exhibition, both to raise their spirits and

to keep them in funds. During the First World War,

when the mood was dark, commissions scarce and

bellies empty, she served inexpensive lunches to

needy artists. When the Nazi occupation of Paris

Above: View of the Georges Kars’ exhibition at the Galerie B. Weill, 1928, Nadine Nieszawer Collection


Above: Unknown photographer, Berthe Weill playing pétanque [probably in Sanary-sur-Mer] 1924

Collection of Marianne Le Morvan, gift of Hervé Bourdon

forced Weill to close her gallery in 1941, she, in

turn, relied on friends to keep her safe. For once,

her lack of material success was a benefit, as it

made it easier for her to stay under the radar. Still,

at the war’s end, she was struggling to survive. In

1946, a group of prestigious artists and gallerists

joined forces to organise a benefit auction to

provide financial support in her retirement. They

raised enough for Weill to live comfortably until

her death in 1951.

Weill’s business model as an art dealer was

anything but conventional. Her operating

principle was set out on her business card:

Place aux Jeunes! (Make way for the young!) By

immersing herself in the modernist art scene,

she seized an opportunity to encourage aspiring

artists and ensure that they had a place to show

their work at a time when they had no other

representation. She helped to launch many

careers and retained friendships with most of

those whose works passed through her gallery,

even after the most successful among them had

moved on to more established dealers. That she

was able to keep her gallery open for forty years

is proof of her tenacity and resourcefulness.

On her own terms, she was a success: “I’ve had

disappointments, but also many joys, and despite

the obstacles, have created an occupation for

myself that I thoroughly enjoy. On balance, I

should consider myself lucky … and I do.”

MARGIE MACKINNON


Marie-Clémentine,

Maria and Susanna

Becoming Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon’s life reads like a paperback novel,

with a plot that takes the heroine from obscurity to

notoriety and, belatedly, much-deserved acclaim.

Its setting is Montmartre, the bohemian centre of

turn-of-the-century Paris, and the cast of characters

is a roll call of famous Impressionist and early

modern artists. There is no need to embellish the

facts because the improbable details are all true.

She was an artist’s model for some of Auguste

Renoir’s best-known works; her mentor was none

other than Edgar Degas; her lovers included

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Erik Satie; her

son, Maurice Utrillo, was also a painter, whose

early success would eclipse her own. Along with

Picasso and Modigliani, she was one of the young

artists championed by Berthe Weill and exhibited

at her eponymous gallery in the early years of the

twentieth century (see p. 58).

Marie-Clémentine Valadon, as she was first

known, was born out of wedlock and into poverty

in 1865 in Bessines, a farming community in the

Limousin region of France. Seeking to improve her

prospects, Valadon’s mother, Madeleine, moved

the family to Paris in 1870, a time of turbulence

with the end of Napoleon III’s reign and the

short-lived Commune of Paris. Montmartre was at

the heart of the action and the artists who had

gravitated there began increasingly to distance

themselves from the bourgeois art establishment.

By 1874, their displeasure with the official Salon

led a group of them, including Cezanne, Degas,

Renoir, Monet and Morisot to plan their own

exhibition, which opened two weeks before that

year’s Salon. This spirit of rebellion pervaded the

environment in which Valadon grew up. And,

although she was too young to have visited

the exhibition, she was already taking every

opportunity she could to express herself in

pictures, drawing on walls or bits of scrap paper

in chalk or charcoal. Too restless to stay in school,

she had the run of the neighbourhood which, at

that time, still had the feel of a country village,

and she spent hours observing the comings and

goings of its denizens. It was said that at the age

of eight she stopped to watch Renoir at his easel

working en plein air and encouraged him to keep


Above: Suzanne Valadon, 1922, Nude with a Striped Blanket, or Gilberte in the Nude Seated on a Bed, Paris Musées / Musée d’art moderne de Paris


Left: Suzanne Valadon,

1898, Self-portrait,

Museum of Fine Arts

Houston.

Source: Wikipedia

Right: Suzanne Valadon,

1923, The Violin Case,

Musée d’Art Moderne

de la Ville de Paris.

Source: Wikipedia

on with his painting as she was sure he had a

bright future.

At the age of 11, Marie-Clémentine left the

convent school that Madeleine had enrolled

her in, becoming an apprentice seamstress in

a local milliner’s workshop. Unable, or certainly

unwilling, to stick to regular employment, she

left to work in a variety of casual jobs including,

briefly, a stint in the circus as an acrobat, which

was cut short by a bad accident. She continued to

draw and even started to paint, making her own

colours. Her proper introduction to the art world

came through a young Italian friend who took

her around the studios where she was working

as an artists’ model. Valadon caught the eye of

a well-known landscape painter, Pierre Puvis de

Chavannes, for whom she would model off and on

for seven years from the age of fifteen. During her

long hours of sitting for him in his airy studio in

Neuilly, on the northern edge of the city, Valadon

absorbed every detail of his working methods –

from mixing paints and arranging a composition

to preparing for exhibitions and haggling with

dealers. She also re-invented herself as ‘Maria’, a

more exotic name chosen to help her fit in with

the young girls from the outskirts of Naples who

had settled in Paris and excelled at finding work

as models.

With Puvis’ name on her resume, Maria was able

to establish a career modelling for other artists,


many of whom are now completely forgotten.

But one stands out. In 1883, she began to model

for Auguste Renoir who was then moving away

from Impressionism and back to a more formal

style. Renoir immortalised Valadon in Dance at

Bougival (1883), which captures his sitter’s beauty

as well as her youthful joie de vivre. Valadon

also features in Renoir’s Les Parapluies (1881), a

painting of particular interest to author Anne

Chisholm (see p.44). Renoir would eventually

discover that his model had artistic aspirations

of her own. Calling on her at home when she

had failed to show up for a sitting, he discovered

her engrossed in her drawing and acknowledged

the quality of her work.

As a respite from the arduous task of holding

long poses in drafty (in winter) or sweltering (in

summer) ateliers, Maria spent her leisure time

in the cafes and cabarets of Montmartre where

painters, writers and art critics gathered. In this

raucous and slightly seedy milieu, she met a

handsome and talented young Spaniard, Miguel

Utrillo, whose praise for her drawings encouraged

and strengthened her resolve to continue. It is

not certain (although it was widely assumed) that

the two were lovers, but Utrillo left Paris in 1883

to pursue his career as an engineer. In December

that year, Valadon gave birth to a son, Maurice.

The father was unknown; given the carefree,

bohemian lifestyle that prevailed in Montmartre,

such an outcome was almost inevitable. Miguel

would later ‘acknowledge’ Maurice as his son,

primarily as a favour to Valadon who hoped that

legitimising her child would help her to land a

wealthy husband.


Above: Suzanne Valadon, 1923, The Blue Room, National Museum of Modern Art, Limoges. Source: Wikipedia


While Madeleine looked after her grandson,

Maria continued to model, draw and paint. The

family was now in a large house in the heart of

Montmartre, which was home to struggling art

students and artists, including Henri de Toulouse-

Lautrec. The two became close friends, then

lovers, with the aristocratic Lautrec introducing

Valadon to literature and philosophy. By way of a

mutual friend, he secured a letter of introduction

to Edgar Degas, a respected painter known

to champion younger artists. When Valadon

nervously presented herself at his house, Degas

studied her drawings and questioned her about

her training, expressing surprise that a girl from

her class could produce such work. By the end

of the afternoon, he had bought his first Valadon,

La Toilette, a drawing in red chalk of a girl getting

out of the bath. Her career as an artist had begun.

Eventually, Lautrec and Valadon had a falling

out over an apparent plan to trick him into

marriage. It was Lautrec who suggested Valadon’s

name as an artist, telling her that, as she posed

for old men, she should call herself ‘Susanna’

– an allusion to the Biblical story of the chaste

Susanna who repels the advances of two old men

who threaten her with false claims of adultery. It is

not clear if Valadon adopted the name, modified

to the French ‘Suzanne’, because of, or despite, its

ironic intent.

Her early drawings were clearly influenced by

Degas, but Suzanne developed her own style. With

no formal training, no studio and few resources

for models or painting materials, she painted the

people around her, without artifice, compromise

or any desire to please. She drew and painted

self-portraits and family members in natural,

intimate poses. No stranger to the naked body,

she later painted nudes, both male and female, in

an unsentimental way that shocked some critics.


Above: Suzanne Valadon, 1922, Portrait of Mme Zamaron. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift from Mr. and Mrs. Maxime L. Hermanos

© The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY


Some observers found her private life equally

shocking. In 1893, she had a brief but intense

affair with Erik Satie, during which Suzanne was

said to have sexually manipulated the young,

inexperienced composer. Satie was devastated

when it ended after just six months and claimed

afterwards never to have loved anyone else.

Suzanne moved on to a new lover, the wealthy

stockbroker, Paul Mousis, whom she married in

1896. But the financial stability she had longed

for seemed to impede her creativity. Moreover,

she had to devote more time to her son Maurice,

who began to show early signs of the alcoholism

that would blight his life. As therapy, Suzanne

taught Maurice to paint. Like her, he drew and

painted what he saw in Montmartre. Soon he

was attracting more favourable attention than

his mother.

Through Maurice, Valadon met an aspiring

painter, André Utter, who would become a model

for her nude male portraits and, eventually,

her second husband. Twenty years her junior

(another scandal!), Utter was friends with the

younger international artists who congregated

in Montmartre, painters such as Picasso, Matisse

and Modigliani who were experimenting with

new trends in Cubism and Fauvism. After her

sabbatical of bourgeois domesticity, Valadon

was re-energised and embarked on a period of

productivity, painting landscapes for the first

time. Her nude portraits reflected her new-found

happiness, with models displaying a freedom and

nonchalance, but without any attempt at flattery

or ‘prettiness’. She retained her strong use of line,

so admired by Degas, and resisted classification

in one movement or another.

Valadon’s Portrait of Mme Zamaron (1922) dates

from this time and shows how her personal

and professional lives intersected. Maurice’s

alcoholism led to frequent encounters with local

law enforcement, to the extent that Valadon had

become friendly with the Secretary General of the

Paris Police, Monsieur Zamaron, an art aficionado

who collected works by Utrillo and Modigliani.

His wife is portrayed with her head resting on her

hand, and a thoughtful expression on her face.

Valadon dedicated the painting to Mme Zamaron

‘en toute sympathie’.

Berthe Weill exhibited Valadon’s work in her

gallery from 1913 onwards, including an acclaimed

retrospective exhibition in 1927. Though the

works attracted interest and, from some critics,

exuberant praise, for the most part, they did

not sell well. Weill noted that Valadon had many

detractors but, “… in spite of everything, she makes

no concessions. She is a great artist.” Valadon did

achieve recognition during her lifetime, especially

towards the end of her career. She died at the

age of 72, after suffering a stroke while painting

at her easel. Today, visitors to Montmartre who

wish to ride the funicular up the steep slope to

the Basilica of Sacre Coeur start their journey in

the Place Suzanne Valadon.

Bien joué, Marie-Clémentine.

MARGIE MACKINNON


Above: Conservator Ulrich Birkmaier uses a Q-Tip and solvent to clean the surface of Artemisia’s Hercules and Omphale

© 2022, J. Paul Getty Trust


Back from the brink

The restoration of Artemisia’s

Hercules and Omphale


Above: Destruction at the Sursock Palace Collection after the explosion, with Artemisia’s Hercules and Omphale, 2020, courtesy of Mary Cochrane

Right: Conservator Ulrich Birkmaier sorts through glass, debris and paint chips found in the back of the painting’s canvas embedded by the Beirut

explosion © 2022, J. Paul Getty Trust

Artemisia Gentileschi’s Hercules and

Omphale, the star of the Getty Museum

in Los Angeles’s recent exhibition,

Artemisia’s Strong Women: Rescuing a

Masterpiece, was the subject of a three-year

restoration by the Getty’s in-house conservation

team. Like the artist, whose personal history

has been examined in numerous scholarly

and popular works, the painting has a dramatic

backstory. It came to the attention of the art

world following the devastating 2020 blast in

the port of Beirut that left thousands of people

injured or dead and over 300,000 homeless.

The painting is part of the collection of Sursock

Palace, originally built in 1860 and still home to

the descendants of one of the ‘Seven Families’ in

Beirut’s aristocratic nobility. The current stewards

of the family home are Roderick Cochrane, son

of Sir Desmond Cochrane and Lady Yvonne

Sursock, and Roderick’s wife Mary Cochrane.

Perched on a hill above the port, the palace

suffered extensive damage in the blast, both

structurally and internally – to the priceless

artworks and furnishings collected by

generations of the Sursock family. The windows

on the north elevation facing the sea were all

blown out, including one directly opposite the

painting, resulting in significant tears that went

right through the canvas. “We thought we had

removed all the glass before it was wrapped up

for shipment to the Getty for restoration,” says

Mary Cochrane, but a photo of glass shards,

plaster fragments and bits of rubble that were

surgically extracted during the restoration


process provides a hint to the force of the blast

and just how deeply this debris was embedded

in the painting.

In the early 1990s, Gregory Buchakjian, a

Lebanese art historian studying at the Sorbonne,

had been given access to the Sursock collection.

With little documentary evidence to go on, he had

tentatively attributed Hercules and Omphale to

Artemisia, then not widely known outside of art

historical circles. Following the blast, Buchakjian

revisited the palace and his earlier unpublished

study, which he described in a piece for Apollo

magazine. The article immediately drew the

attention of Artemisia scholars such as Jesse

Locker and Sheila Barker, who were inclined

to agree with Buchakjian’s visual analysis and

conclusions, even before they had seen the

painting in person.

Following up on a receipt found in the Sursock

archives, Getty curator Davide Gasparotto was

able to find an almost continuous provenance

for the painting. The work was likely painted in

Naples in the mid-1630s. It was first recorded

in 1699 as Ercole che fila [Hercules spinning]

‘by the hand of Artemisia Gentileschi’, in the

inventory of Carlo de Cardenas, a member of a

Neapolitan family known to have given Artemisia

commissions. Alfred Sursock (Roderick’s

grandfather) purchased the work from an art

dealer in Naples around the time of his marriage

in 1920 to Neapolitan aristocrat, Maria Teresa

Serra di Cassano.

The painting recalls the story of the mythological

hero Hercules who, having killed his friend

Iphitus in a fit of rage, is enslaved by the Lydian

Queen Omphale. As penance, he is required to

practice humility by performing traditionally

female tasks. Hercules is shown spinning thread

while Omphale, in the skin of the Nemean

lion and holding an olivewood club (attributes

associated with Hercules), looks down on him.

The theme of gender reversal is reflected in the

Above: Katia’s grandmother Iris Origo at work , Courtesy of La Foce


Getty’s exhibition title. In Artemisia’s works, the

women are strong while even the mightiest of

men, like Hercules (or Holofernes), are at their

mercy.

To learn more about the details of the

restoration, Restoration Conversations spoke

with conservator Ulrich Birkmaier who led the

Getty’s restoration team.

Restoration Conversations: Was Hercules

and Omphale the first work by Artemisia

Gentileschi that you have worked on?

Ulrich Birkmaier: I worked on an Artemisia

painting from a private collection in Hartford,

Connecticut when I was at the Wadsworth

Atheneum. I love her work, and it is exciting for

me to see her getting the respect she deserves.

She was a celebrated artist in her own lifetime

with commissions from the Medicis, the kings of

Spain and England, important patrons in Rome

and Sicily … but she was always in the shadow

of her father Orazio. For so long, she has been

considered one of the greatest female artists of

the seventeenth century. No, she is simply one

of the greatest artists. Period.

RC: When did you first see the painting and

what was your reaction to its condition?

UB: I saw it before it left Beirut. A colleague of

mine who is a private conservator in Beirut had

applied a facing of Japanese tissue paper to the

front of the canvas to secure the paint and avoid

any more paint loss. We knew theoretically what

the extent of the damage was going to be, and I

saw the painting from the back, so I could see all

the holes and tears. But it was still a shock. [Back


Above: Conservator Ulrich Birkmaier cleans the surface of Hercules and Omphale from Sursock Palace Collections © 2022, J. Paul Getty Trust

Left: ‘Artemisia’s Strong Women: Rescuing a Masterpiece’ at the Getty Center © 2025, J. Paul Getty Trust

in the conservation studio, Davide Gasparotto

and I] began to peel off pieces of the facing paper,

exposing Hercules’ knee first. We both gasped

because we could see the quality of the paint and

already, at that moment, it was clear to us that this

was a great painting.

RC: Was there a lot of paint loss on the surface

of the canvas?

UB: There was extensive paint loss, though luckily

not in the most crucial areas. So, no major losses

in limbs or faces or figures but, because of the

size of the painting, it was a challenge.

RC: How did you develop the conservation

plan for the project?

UB: The privilege that we have at the Getty is

that we are able to approach every conservation

treatment holistically, with conservation scientists,

conservators, art historians and educators all

working together. The starting point was the

technical study, conducted here at the Getty

Conservation Institute, which revealed the

extent of the damage, how much old restoration

there was and what materials were used. The

structural treatment was carried out with the

assistance of a guest conservator from Rome,

Matteo Rossi Doria. We first secured the paint

surface with a new layer of facing tissue and

then, with the canvas face down, we removed

the old lining canvas which was about 150 years

old and had become very brittle. Then every

hole, every tear, had to be secured separately, a

process that took about three months.

RC: How many previous restorations had

been done?

UB: There was definitely one intervention at the

time of this old lining which, because of the type

of fabric and the age of the glue, can be dated to


100 or 150 years ago. There was also evidence of

a more recent conservation campaign at Sursock

Palace. They didn’t have a record of it, but it

was done with water-based paints, probably in

the mid-1900s. We had to remove these older

restorations which had been generously applied

and were covering much of the original paint.

RC: When Gregory Buchakjian first studied

the painting, he thought that the bare foot

of the figure on the lower left side was “very

badly painted” and couldn’t possibly be by

Artemisia. Did you agree with him on that?

UB: When we took the facing off the painting

and saw the foot, both Davide and I were like,

‘Oh, that is terrible.’ But it turns out that the

entire bottom five inches or so of the painting

had been damaged. It was nothing to do with

the explosion but was much older. It looked as

though there had been contact with water at

some point. The foot had been reconstructed

in an earlier restoration campaign, with a lot

of bad overpainting covering the original, yet

very abraded, foot. Quite a few fragments by

Artemisia were still there which guided me in

the restoration. I actually had help from a good

friend of mine, Federico Castelluccio, a great

painter and collector of Baroque paintings,

although he is better known as an actor. He

played Furio, the hitman from Naples, in The

Sopranos.

RC: That seems fitting – and another great

story for this painting with its long, tangled

history. What else did the x-rays reveal?

UB: The X-rays of most of Artemisia’s paintings

show dramatic changes, which is very telling

to us. It means that she didn’t adhere tightly to

an underdrawing but made changes during the

painting process, which is what she did in this

work. For example, she painted a completely

different head of Hercules. Originally, she had

him looking outward, in a three-quarter profile.

But then she must have changed her mind and

painted on top of that the current head, which

has Hercules in almost compete profile, looking

up at Omphale.

Above: Close-up of Hercules and Omphale badly damaged from Beirut explosion during two phases of the restoration process, in 2022 and 2025

© J. Paul Getty Trust


Above: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Hercules and Omphale nearly fully restored. From the Sursock Palace Collections, Beirut, Lebanon

© 2025, J. Paul Getty Trust

RC: When you did your analysis of all the

pigments and the mediums that Artemisia

used, was there anything that came as a

surprise?

UB: What was interesting to us was the relative

economy of the pigments that she employed.

She used a very reduced palette which was in

keeping with Roman and Neapolitan painting

at the time. So, no big surprises, except for one

pigment: lapis. She used ultramarine blue for the

large drapery of the figure in the foreground with

the tambourine. That was a surprise because,

of course, lapis was very expensive, so it must

have been an important commission. But she

was very smart in how she applied the pigment

because she used a very thick ground, and then

for the lighter blue areas, she underpainted it

with a layer of lead white first and then just the

tiniest, thinnest layer of lapis. And the same for

the dark blue. She used a dark ground with a

very thin layer of lapis on top of that, which

would be almost like enamel.

RC: Artemisia is known to have collaborated

with other artists in Naples on some of her

large paintings. Is there any evidence to

suggest Hercules and Omphale is the work

of more than one painter?

UB: We do know that she collaborated very

frequently, especially on the ambitious large

compositions that she embarked on during the

Naples years. But it looks as if this one is all her.

And the Artemisia scholars who came to see the

painting while I was working on it seemed to share

the view that it is completely in her own hand.

MARGIE MACKINNON


Mary Cochrane, 2025, finished flower in porcelain


Restaurare:

to repair,

rebuild,

renew

In June of this year, art collectors Roderick and

Mary Cochrane visited the Getty Centre for

the opening of the Artemisia exhibition to see

their newly restored Hercules and Omphale

on display (see p.76). “One of the highlights

of the trip,” says Mary, “was going behind the

scenes to see the restoration facilities which

were incredibly impressive.” And their reaction

to seeing the completed restoration? “Roderick

and I are quite reserved, so we were not going

to scream or jump up and down. But we were

absolutely thrilled that this painting was brought

back to life. From the bottom of our hearts, we

are grateful to the Getty for their support and

interest, and for giving the restoration all the

time it needed.”

“It was emotional for all of us, I think,” says

conservator Ulrich Birkmaier. “It was such an

intense time, not only because it took three

years to work on the painting, but, you know, I

always had Artemisia in my mind when I was

working, and felt as if maybe she was looking

over my shoulder, guiding me. I was hoping she

would approve of the work. In some respects, I

was doing this for her, trying to get it as close

to Artemisia as possible so that when the public

finally had the chance to see it, it would look as

she had intended.”

Above: Mary Cochrane, 2025, A flower in the making

Following the civil war in Lebanon from 1975–90,

Sursock Palace, the Cochranes’ home in Beirut,

underwent a 20-year restoration. That work was

undone by the explosion at the port in 2020.

Mary Cochrane, who was at home at the time of

the blast, suffered serious injuries. Her motherin-law,

Lady Yvonne Sursock, survived the

immediate effects of the impact, but died shortly

afterwards. While the Getty team worked on the

restoration of Artemisia’s Hercules and Omphale,

Mary and her husband Roderick continued with

the reconstruction of the house. “We’ve just

completed the roof, which was a big job. Now

we’re starting on the east and west elevations

and some internal paintings on the ceiling of the

ground floor. It’s a massive project,” she says.

More recently, a period of relative calm in the

city was disrupted with the bombing of Lebanon

by Israel. How does Mary Cochrane cope with

the precarity of life in Beirut? “I have been doing

ceramics,” she explains. “It has been my kind

of therapy, my escape. I make mainly porcelain

flowers that range from 12 to 32 centimetres. My

first show was in Beirut, and I was at ‘Collect 2025’

at Somerset House, a show of contemporary

craft and design in London. My inspiration

comes from our garden, whatever is blooming,

gardenias or other flowers. My process takes a

long time: first I cut up the clay and lay it out on

boards in the garden. When it is dry, I add a stain,

rehydrate and then strengthen the clay, adding

fibre and paper. It has to be wedged well so that

the colour is fully integrated. Then there is a

bisque firing, followed by a glaze firing. On my

way back to Beirut, I will be attending a weeklong

ceramics workshop outside of Rome.”

In the midst of so many man-made disasters,

it is not surprising that Mary has turned to the

beauty of her garden and to the therapeutic

power of art for her own restoration.

MARGIE MACKINNON


Mary Cochrane’s Hortensia in progress, unglazed


The Medici

Are Dead

Violante Siriès’ success in a changing art market

MMaria Theresa of Austria’s husband Francis

Stephan decided to stay in Vienna with his

wife in 1737, despite being proclaimed head of

the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Europe’s more

powerful states had refused to recognise Anna

Maria Luisa, the last of the Medici line, as the

territory’s legitimate ruler, because she was a

woman – despite Austria itself being headed

by an empress. Florence was left in the hands

of the Lorraine, whose governance marked a

time of profound change for the art market and

artists themselves, including painter Violante

Siriès (1710–1783). Restoration Conversations

recently sat down with Giulia Coco, curator at

the Accademia Gallery in Florence, following

the AWA Legacy Fund’s ‘Accademia Women’

project to restore artworks attributed to

Siriès, during which Coco collaborated with

the conservation team, as art historian and

research scholar. Coco’s insight sheds light on a

little-known but highly successful eighteenthcentury

artist braving ‘turbulent’ times.

Restoration Conversations: Violante Siriès

lived in an era that represented an epochal

shift for Florence. First, can you give us a

little background on the age in which she

worked?

Giulia Coco: With Giangastone de’ Medici’s

death, the Grand Duchy became little more

than a tiny state that could be used as a

bartering chip, or a pawn on the chessboard

of greater European powers. Giangastone died

in 1737, when Siriès was 27, so she was young,

but not ‘too young’ for her time, and was

already actively pursuing her career. But it has

to be said that the city no longer found itself

within the context of a Grand Ducal court.

The Lorraine Dynasty was not particularly

generous in terms of art commissions and

sponsorship in Florence, unlike the Medicis,

who had created a situation that remained

stable from the 1500s onwards and, ultimately,

would shape and define the city as we know

it today. The 1700s and 1800s are not quite


Above: Martin van Meytens, c. 1754, Empress Maria Theresa with Francis I and their children, The Uffizi Galleries Collection

the Dark Ages, but they have never been

considered thriving from an artistic point of

view. Even scholars and art historians have

always approached it with the attitude, ‘Ah, the

Medici are dead, it was a moment of decline.’

In reality, that’s true to a certain point.

Obviously, Florence no longer had a proper

court, or the Medici’s great building enterprises,

like the decoration of a Palazzo Pitti, but it’s

also true that the city’s Regency Council (1737

to 1765), sent to represent Francis Stephan,

did want to manifest their wealth and power.

It organised events, dances, parties filled with

pomp and circumstance, and a whole group

of Florentine families came to the fore. Theirs

were ancient branches with age-old traditions,

who wanted to take advantage of this situation

by flaunting their wealth and continuing

a tradition of sponsorship and artistic

promotion, via venues like the Accademia del

Disegno, including the exhibitions it organised

at Santissima Annunziata, in which Siriès

participated. Her family’s standing gave her

the foundations she needed to pursue her

career. She was born and raised in an artistic

environment, through her father, director at the

Opificio delle Pietre Dure, the Grand Duchy’s

precious stone workshop, and her brother, who

eventually held the same position. Violante’s

milieu was la crème de la crème of the city.

RC: Following AWA Legacy Fund’s recent

restoration of works attributed to Siriès at

the Certosa di Firenze, what can you tell

us about Violante’s work as a devotional

artist?

GC: Violante’s Reading Madonna is

extraordinary in all of its simplicity. The

figure had to be rendered as genuinely and

essentially as possible, because religious

orders used paintings as instruments of prayer,

almost as a form of channelling, whereby

paintings became a medium to reach the

Divine. That is why art for private worship was


Above: Giuseppe Zocchi, mid-1700s, Painting, Opificio delle Pietre Dure

the basis of a plethora of commissions. Saint

Catherine, attributed to Violante because of its

stylistic similarity to the artist’s signed works,

depicts a woman of culture and a queen, so

she is bejewelled and wearing shimmering

silks and fine embroidery. With the Saints, an

artist could have more fun with the details.

Catherine has the look of a child, with her

upturned gaze, her rosy cheeks and her halfopen

mouth. There’s no ostentation despite

her fancy garb. In fact, she seems unaware of

her finery… her wealth is on the inside. Prior

to Pietro Leopoldo’s arrival in 1765, the clergy

was very important for artists who produced

devotional works. His pragmatic and anticlerical

stance against religious orders, the

Jesuits in particular, radically changed the art

market in terms of commissions garnered,

largely due to his suppression of convents

and monasteries and the dispersion of their

artworks. Pietro Leopoldo was interested in

agricultural and economic reform. In a way, he

incarnated what Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici

said about the Lorraine Dynasty in a letter to

her secretary Pompeo Neri: ‘The Lorraine are

so thirsty for everything, they would empty

the sea, if they could’, which is why she created

the farsighted Family Pact to bind the Medici’s

possessions to the city, independent of the

ruling family following her own.

RC: If Siriès had to reinvent herself and

create another clientele, what would that

have looked like?

GC: She was an artist who managed to navigate

in all kinds of water, and to carve her place in

this era of passage, despite strong competition

from foreign artists. The Grand Tour was in


full swing, and there were numerous English

and French artists who came to Italy to train

and gain knowledge, to copy the Old Masters,

but many of them ended up settling in Italy

and became competitors to artists like Siriès.

They wanted to work, they came looking for

commissioners, but she had to make this

international influx work to her benefit. It’s

worth mentioning that another genre became

very popular in her time, causing an additional

market shift Violante and other women had to

grapple with – that of cityscape artists – with

the likes of Giuseppe Zocchi and Thomas Patch

– due to the presence of many foreigners who

wanted a souvenir to take home. But Violante’s

success hinged upon her decision to focus

on portraits and miniatures, genres common

among women artists. As I mentioned before,

she had a deft hand when it came to portraying

fabrics, jewels and embroideries, and this skill

served to create a realistic portrait that was

true to life, but also a statement of wealth and

prestige, just as her paintings were.

RC: How did Siriès go about securing

commissions and what kinds of works

characterise her later period?

GC: After studying with Giovanna Fratellini,

she followed her jeweller father to Paris for a

period and trained with Rigaud and Boucher.

In a matter of speaking, she went on a mini

grand tour of her own! This international

training was a ‘pedigree’ she could use to

impress Florentine commissioners. Remember

that the splendour of the 1500s and 1600s had

passed and Florence was a provincial city –

just as it is today. Her international experience

made her a sought-after artist, enabling her to

create a virtuous circle, with families like the

Sandedoni and the Gondi, who in turn, were

friends and relatives of other noble families

and top military figures, officials, admirals and

the like. Also consider that foreigners came

to Italy for social and political reasons, but

sometimes they came for their health, for its

good weather and thermal baths. What better

occasion than a healthy holiday to say, ‘You

know what, I’d like to have my portrait painted’

and for the response to be, ‘I know someone

good, and the price is right.’ Violante’s painting

of French official Claude Alexandre, Count of

Bonneval, who served the Ottoman Empire

and ultimately converted to Islam, is now in

France. Another noteworthy portrait is that of

Edward Hughes – a British vice admiral who

was stationed in Livorno in 1761 and would

end up being commander of the British fleet

in the Indian Ocean during the American

Revolution. It is now in England at the National

Trust’s National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

RC: Were other women, like Violante,

pursuing successful careers in Florence

during her time?

GC: In terms of art commissions, another

important nucleus in Florence during

Violante’s era was the ‘English colony’ which

is best expressed with the arrival of the British

ambassador and diplomat Horace Mann, who

settled in Palazzo Manetti on via Santo Spirito

from the late 1730s to the mid-1780s. In fact,

Santo Spirito and the Carmine district, became

the English Quarter – the Oltrarno – which is

still very well loved by forestieri (foreigners).

That’s where the hotels were, managed by

Italians or by the English, as in the case of

Charles Hadfield, the father of Maria Hadfield

Cosway, who was also a painter, a little younger

than Siriès. Mann writes about her in his

correspondence with Horace Walpole, along

with other women artists, like sculptor Anne

Seymour Damer, his protégé, who has a bust in

the Uffizi’s self-portrait collection. Many of the

other women he cites are merely names that

have been lost to history, but his mention of

them gives us a sense of the cultural ferment

that characterised the time. It was a context in

which Violante Siriès thrived.

LINDA FALCONE

Spring 2025 • Restoration Conversations 89

The day she was born

Building Violante Ferroni’s biography

Conservators Marina Vincenti and Elizabeth Wicks at work on Ferroni’s oval, 2020, ph. Francesco Cacchiani

Restoring works by historical women painters

is an opportunity to rediscover not only the art

itself, but also the lives of talented artists who

have been forgotten, to flesh out the persona

who put paint to canvas. Painter Violante

Ferroni (1720-1773) is a case in point. Who was

the 29-year-old woman who, seemingly out of

nowhere, in mid-eighteenth-century Florence,

painted two huge (8 ft. by 11 ft.) ovals on canvas

for the monumental atrium of the Hospital of

Saint John of God in Borgo Ognissanti?

When my colleague Marina Vincenti and I

began working as conservators on the ‘Art of

Healing’ project in 2019, that question piqued our

interest. Why the dearth of even the most basic

biographical details? The project was named in

honor of the former Hospital, referencing the

paintings’ subject matter, but we knew almost

nothing of Violante besides her authorship of

the ovals: no date of birth, no family history –

nothing but the paint once applied from her

brush. The torn canvases, flaking paint and

darkened paint surfaces showed both paintings’

neglect and dire need of care. The ovals’

prestigious commission attests to the solid

reputation that Violante Ferroni had during her

lifetime – yet she had been almost completely

erased from the annals of history.

The two-year conservation project coincided

with the covid pandemic, with its closures of

businesses, libraries, museums and archives.

Caring for these two paintings, which depict

scenes of healing and charity during the

pandemic was in itself an act of healing, both

of the art and of ourselves. However, once the

actual restoration was completed our search for

Violante took several more years of investigation

and involved the detective work of many people

behind the scenes. This journey of a thousand

steps, began with ink, not paint – in the Opera

del Duomo Archives – with the finding of the

artist’s baptismal certificate. Here is what we

learned:

Violante Ferroni was born 29 August 1720.

Her baptismal certificate states her father was

Cosimo di Lorenzo Ferroni, and her mother,

Rosa Laitenberg. The Ferroni family were

established merchants and originally hailed

from Prato. The Laitenbergs were an important

Jewish family based in Siena. Violante’s mother

Rosa is described in the baptismal records

as ‘formerly Jewish’, i.e., newly converted. We

believe she probably converted to Christianity

shortly before her marriage to Lorenzo Ferroni.

Cosimo de’ Medici III, Granduke of Tuscany

until 1723, strongly encouraged the conversion

of Tuscan Jews, giving large doweries to young

Jewish women who converted and married

Christians.

Violante’s baptismal certificate mentions

her godmother, Violante Beatrice, Princess of

Bavaria and wife of Ferdinand de’ Medici. After

Ferdinand’s death in 1713, Violante Beatrice

became Governor of Siena. Very involved in the

community of converted Jews, Violante Beatrice

may well have come into contact with the

Laitenberg family in Siena – although choosing

noblewomen as godmothers was conventional


AN EXCERPT FROM THE OPENING OF DAYS OF LIGHT

BY MEGAN HUNTER

Above: Violante Ferroni’s Self-portrait from 1749, dated and signed on the reverse


– a sign of future prosperity and protection,

whether or not there were real ties to the family.

The name Violante also links Ferroni to Violante

Siriès, an artist ten years Ferroni’s senior (See

p. 86). She shared the same godmother – and

the same name – and the older woman would

become Ferroni’s first painting teacher. Princess

Violante Beatrice was also a patron of the painter

Gian Domenico Ferretti, who was to have a very

important role in Violante Ferroni’s future.

The Ferroni family, we found, lived between

the Duomo and Santa Maria Novella in Piazza

del Centauro, so called because it held the huge

statue by Gian Bologna of Hercules and the

Centaur, now in Piazza della Signoria’s Loggia

dei Lanzi. The family’s parish church was Santa

Maria Maggiore, where Violante’s father’s tomb is

located. In a contemporary eighteenth-century

print by Giuseppe Zocchi, we see the area where

the Ferroni family lived and worked. Santa Maria

Maggiore archival records show that in 1761

Ferroni was operating two coffee shops on Via

Cerretani. Coffee shops (the original cafés) were

a trend-setting occupation in the mid-1700s, and

Florentine society undoubtedly spent time in

both of these establishments, creating important

contacts for the Ferroni family. Violante, who

never married, remained in her parent’s house

in the quarter of Santa Maria Novella until her

death in 1773.

This daughter of mixed parents of the

merchant class became an exceptional artist at

an early age. In 1736, at the precocious age of

16, Violante was admitted to the Academy of Arts

and Drawing. A year later, she took part in the

Saint Luke’s Academy exhibit with two copies

of works by Guido Reni and Luca Giordano. The

director of the Academy of Arts and Drawing,

Niccolò Gabburri, praised her artistic skills in his

short biography of the young Ferroni:

Below: Elizabeth Wicks restoring Saint John of God Gives Bread to the Poor, 2020, ph. Francesco Cacchiani


Above: Violante Ferroni’s ovals from the Hospital of San Giovanni di Dio, post restoration, 2020, ph. Ottaviano Caruso

“This witty and respectable young lady, after an

in-depth and careful study of drawing, is now,

in 1740, at the age of about 20, learning to paint

portraits and historical scenes using oil paint

and pastels. Her talent is most evident when

she paints scenes of her own composition with

oil paints, a medium in which she is also adept

at color mixing. So, Florence has reason to hope

that she, in time, will get better and better at

painting, especially because she is so enamored

of art that she never gets tired of improving her

technique.”

At this time Ferroni was following Violante

Siriès’s path, painting copies and portraits of

Italian nobility. But her career soon took an

important turn, for she became first pupil, then

lifelong collaborator of, Gian Domenico Ferretti,

1692-1768, perhaps the most successful Florentine

painter of the eighteenth century. Ferretti is

best known for his epic fresco cycles and large

altarpieces for the most important palaces and

churches in Tuscany, as well as for his delightful

series of harlequin paintings. Violante was almost

30 years his junior; he was her mentor and she

worked by his side. Italian women artists in the

eighteenth century did not apprentice with male

painters they weren’t related to by blood or by

marriage. Violante Ferroni was an exception. It is

remarkable in the history of women artists that

Violante worked for decades with a male painter

unrelated to her.

During this period Violante completed her

most important paintings, the ovals for the

monumental atrium of the Hospital of Saint

John of God. Did she receive this prominent

assignment through her contacts at court, or

through her connection to Ferretti? Perhaps

through both?

The ovals depict two disciples of Saint John

of God, Pietro Egiziaco and Saint John. During

their complex conservation, after stabilizing the

worst of the flaking paint, the paintings were



Left: In Ferroni’s work, the semi-nude figure seen back-to is a direct quote from Ferretti’s paintings

removed from their wall niches and brought to

the restoration lab for treatment. Diagnostic

photography and analysis of micro-sections

of paint layers aided our understanding of the

ovals’ original technique and helped to assess

the damages in paint and canvas. After removing

layers of dirt and discolored non-original varnish

coatings, extensive tears in the canvases were

rewoven and patched, and the layers stabilized

with consolidant resins. The canvases were

reinforced with canvas strips along the edges of

the original and a protective layer of polyester

canvas was attached to the reverse of the new

stretchers. Paint losses were filled and inpainting

was carried out with gouache and varnish colors.

Lastly, the gilded wood frames and the elaborate

plaster frames of the niches were restored prior

to remounting the ovals in the atrium.

The paintings are very different in style and

composition. Brother Peter Egiziaco Heals the

Future King of Spain takes place in an intimate

night setting in the royal bedroom. The two

friars present are surrounded by female figures

clothed in pastel colors. A female figure cloaked

in red turns her back and leads the onlookers

into the scene, gesturing towards the sickly child

as we witness a quiet miracle.

In contrast, the oval Saint John Gives Bread to

the Poor is set outdoors in broad daylight, the

mostly male figures crowded against a backdrop

of blue sky. Maestro Ferretti clearly influences

Ferroni’s composition. For example, the seminude

figure seen back-to is a direct quote from

Ferretti’s paintings. He in turn is referencing

the famous marble statue known as ‘the Gaddi

torso’, which left private hands and entered the

Uffizi collections in 1792. Painting male anatomy

was a prerogative of male artists, so Violante is

definitely breaking ground here.

Violante’s self-portrait from 1749, dated and

signed on the reverse, was recently discovered

and restored by Daniela Corella Murphy. It is

published here for the first time, and reveals a

proud and confident woman in the prime of her

artistic career.

Archival research by Dr. Marta Benvenuti

located the date of completion of the oval Brother

Peter Egiziaco Heals the Future King of Spain as

1749. In correspondence between Violante and

the Prior of the Hospital of Saint John of God,

Violante writes, asking to be paid for her work.

Three days later she signs a receipt for payment,

charitably forgiving the final payment owed her.

While cleaning Saint John Gives Bread to the

Poor, we discovered Violante’s signature and the

date 1749, painted in black in the shadowy stones

on the lower left side of the oval. Her signature,

never meant to be seen by the public, is a ‘secret’

testimony to Violante’s achievement. Through

this project we’ve been able to restore these rare


Above: Cleaning test during the restoration of Ferroni’s Brother Peter Egiziaco Heals the Future King of Spain, 1749

monumental works by an eighteenth-century

female artist, and also to shine a light on Violante

Ferroni herself. The artist’s newly recovered

biographical details – pieced together with

precious archival evidence and published here for

the first time – was presented in lecture form, in the

summer of 2025 at the international conference

‘Accademia Women: Violante’. Sponsored by the

AWA Legacy Project, with organizers Syracuse

University and the Accademia delle Arti del

Disegno, the drawing academy with which she

was affiliated. The event put the restoration of

Ferroni’s works in conversation with those of her

teacher Violante Siriès, and more than that, 305

years after her birth, the artist birthday became

known to the world.

ELIZABETH WICKS

Author’s Note: I thank my colleague, conservator

Marina Vincenti, project coordinator Linda

Falcone, the Board of Directors of Advancing

Women Artists and its partner donors, the Santa

Maria Nuova Hospital and the Association San

Giovanni di Dio, the Superintendency of Fine

Arts in Florence, the Accademia delle Arti del

Disegno, Calliope Arts, Syracuse University,

scholars Ann Golob and Cristina Pieragnoli for

AWA, Prof Mara Visonà, Conservator Daniela

Murphy Corella, and lastly, Dr. Marta Benvenuti,

archivist of Santa Lucia sul Prato, and a veritable

bloodhound of archival research.


Front cover:

Installation at the exhibition ‘The Rose that Grew from Concrete’ at Museo Sant’Orsola, featuring

artwork by Cécile Davidovici and David Ctiborsky, 2025, ph. Giulia Padoan

Opposite contents page:

Detail of Suzanne Valadon’s signature, 1922, from Portrait of Mme Zamaron, ph. Margie MacKinnon

Contents page:

Robert Delaunay, 1906. Landscape with Cows, Musée d’art moderne de Paris, Henry-Thomas donation

in 1984. CC0 Paris Musées / Musée d’art moderne de Paris

Still from The Long Road to the Directors’ Chair by Vibeke Løkkeber

Pasquarosa, c. 1963, Oysters, Mussels and Lemons,

courtesy of Archivio Nino e Pasquarosa Bertoletti, Rome

SAVOY by A. Wilson, ph. Nick Turpin. MARY MARY at theCOLAB/The Artist’s Garden, Temple, London

Back cover:

Installation at the exhibition ‘The Rose that Grew from Concrete’ at Museo Sant’Orsola, featuring

artwork by Flora Moscovici, 2025, ph. Marco Badiani


Restoration Conversations magazine - Autumn 2025

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Restoration Conversations magazine - Autumn 2025

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