Restoration Conversations magazine - Spring-Summer 23

Restoration 

Conversations 

ISSUE 3, SPRING/SUMMER 2023 

WOMEN’S STORIES: TODAY AND THROUGH THE CENTURIES 

Spring / Summer 2023 • Restoration Conversations 1

Publisher 

Calliope Arts Ltd 

London, UK 

Managing Editor 

Linda Falcone 

Contributing Editor 

Margie MacKinnon 

Design 

Fiona Richards 

FPE Media Ltd 

Video maker for RC broadcasts 

Francesco Cacchiani 

Bunker Film 

www.calliopearts.org 

@calliopearts_restoration 

Calliope Arts 

2 Restoration Conversations • Spring / Summer 2023

From the Editor 

‘ Friends and Strangers’, the title of Margie MacKinnon’s article on the London-based 

exhibitions of painters Alice Neel and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye could be used to describe 

the whole of Restoration Conversations. Indeed, our Spring 2023 issue comprises a 

series of ‘meetings’ with modern-day and historic women – who are, in some measure, both 

familiar and largely unknown. Many of their ‘facts’ may be known to us: we recall that Joan 

Mitchell painted in France, and that Catherine de’ Medici introduced the fork to that country. 

We may acknowledge our indebtedness to Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici who saved Florence’s 

art from being sold off bit by bit, once her family dynasty reached its end, or recognize many 

of the women included in Jann Haworth and Liberty Blake’s seven-panel monumental Work 

in Progress, at London’s soon-to-be reopened National Portrait Gallery. At the same time, 

each woman featured in these pages is like a world waiting to be discovered. Nicole-Reine 

Lepaute calculated a comet’s arrival more accurately than Halley himself. Lee Miller, best 

known by some as merely ‘a Surrealist muse’, had the guts to bathe in Hitler’s bathtub, the 

day his death was announced – while working as a ‘combat photographer’, reporting from 

his Munich flat. 

Then we have the modern-day women – custodians of culture and disseminators of knowledge 

– the writers, curators and scholars whose words populate this issue. A special mention is 

due to Dr Wendy Grossman, who shares with us her quest to rediscover Adrienne Fedelin. 

Her article ‘Hidden in plain sight’ is the magazine’s first-ever unsolicited submission – a 

small but significant sign of growth. As we conclude this issue, whose preparation ‘devoured 

the hours, as if the Sun were hungry’, I am reminded of Carl Jung and his discussion on how 

to identify one’s vocation in life: “What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like 

minutes? Herein, lies the key to your earthly pursuits,” the Swiss psychoanalyst wrote. As my 

adult-self looking back on the girl who ‘made magazines’ during playtime with cutouts and 

glue, I can only say how grateful I feel to see our minutes pass so quickly. Enjoy the issue! 

Fondly, 

Linda Falcone 

Managing Editor, Restoration Conversations 


GRAZIE MILLE 

As it says on the cover, conversations are at the heart of what we do to fulfil our 

mission of creating a greater awareness and appreciation of the achievements 

of women in the arts and sciences. Thank you to the curators, authors, art historians 

and art conservators who took the time to sit down and explain their work to 

us for this issue: Lorenzo Conti, Natacha Fabbri, Flavia Frigeri, Wendy Grossman, 

Jennifer Higgie, Paola Lucchesi, Angela Oberer, Barbara Salvadori, Claudia Tobin 

and Elizabeth Wicks. 

We are also grateful to the institutions that have shared with us images from their 

exhibitions and collections: in London, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Modern, 

Tate Britain and the Barbican Art Gallery; in Paris, the Fondation Louis Vuitton; 

in Dresden, the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister; and in Florence, Casa Buonarroti 

Museum and Palazzo Strozzi. 

Grazie mille for the ongoing support of our partner Christian Levett and our 

friends and collaborators at Bloomberg Philanthropies, the British Institute of 

Florence, the Casa Buonarroti Museum and Foundation, Il Palmerino Cultural 

Association, The Florentine and the Museo Galileo. 

To the many visitors of the on-site restoration of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Allegory 

of Inclination at Casa Buonarroti, thank you for your enthusiastic (and sometimes 

deeply emotional) response to this project. 

Finally, we extend a very personal and fond acknowledgment to Monica Martin 

who describes Restoration Conversations as “the most beautiful magazine I have 

ever seen” and who continues to support our work as she begins her 100th year. 


CONTENTS: SPRING/SUMMER 2023 

PORTRAITS AND DIALOGUES 

Self-representation and ‘conversations’ on canvas 

6 London’s National Portrait Gallery Re-opens 

14 Work in Progress: A Monumental Women’s Mural 

20 Friends and Strangers: Alice Neel and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye 

28 The Paradox of Rosalba Carriera 

36 Before the selfie: Women’s self portraits 

42 Reflections on the Monet — Mitchell Exhibition 

PAGES OF HISTORY 

Legacies, letters, archives and books 

48 Murders and Marriages: Catherine de‘ Medici 

54 A Letter to Madame Christine, from Galileo 

60 Hidden in Plain Sight: Adrienne Fidelin 

68 A Moveable Feast: Abstractionists, the Women 

74 Three Women: Many Moons 

80 The Other Side 

IN FOCUS TODAY, IN FLORENCE 

Follow Calliope Arts at every step 

84 ‘Inclination’ Update: Structure Changes 

89 Artemisia’s Palette 

94 Palace Women: Oltrano and Beyond 

98 Calliope Arts News in Brief 


Above: Installation shot of Vanessa Bell’s Portrait by Duncan Grant going back into the National Portrait Gallery. Photo: David Parry, National Portrait Gallery 


From Courtesans to 

Conceptual Artists 

Women in the frame at London’s re-vamped 

National Portrait Gallery 

AAfter a three-year renovation, London’s National Portrait 

Gallery will re-open on June 22nd, 2023. NPG’s Chanel Curator 

for the Collection, Dr Flavia Frigeri, spoke to Margie MacKinnon 

about the Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture project 

(supported by the CHANEL Culture Fund), which aims to 

highlight the often overlooked stories of individual women who 

have shaped British history and culture. 


Above: Dr. Flavia Frigeri, Chanel Curator for the Collection 

Photo: Isabelle Young 

At the start of this project, what was 

the balance between male and female 

representation at the NPG? 

“There were approximately 50,000 men in the 

collection and about 16,000 women,” Frigeri 

points out, “so there was a big disparity. The NPG 

is a history museum which means that the sitter 

always comes first: who is depicted in the portrait 

is always more important than who painted the 

portrait. Portraiture is something that is its own 

micro-environment within the macro sphere of 

art. Historically, the people who would have their 

portrait painted were people of means, the upper 

class. Even the women who were depicted by 

male artists were often from a very specific class 

– so it is already creating a tiered system. 

The goal of enhancing the visibility of women 

as part of the re-organisation of the NPG,” says 

Frigeri, “is very much a collective endeavour. 

I have been working with a team of curators, 

organised by historical period, and they were 

already thinking about the place of women 

within the re-hang. The way visibility is going 

to manifest itself is that, obviously, you’re going 

to have some of the ‘greatest hits’ on the walls. 

You can expect to see Elizabeth I, you can expect 

to see Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. But, then, 

what we have tried to do as a team has been to 

weave in stories of women that are perhaps more 

unexpected. The difficulty is that sometimes we 

don’t necessarily have the best portraits for the 

best stories. 

“We are also thinking about how to educate 

people in terms of how to read portraits because, 

naturally – and this is something I also fall prey 

to – you walk into a room, you see a portrait in 

a gilded frame and immediately you think that is 


the most important person in the room. Whereas 

it is more of a struggle to see a small photograph, 

with no gilding, as being in the same league. So 

[when the image isn’t enough] we will be using 

other kinds of media that will help to tell the 

story in a more nuanced way.” 

Apart from royalty, who was the first woman 

in the collection? 

“The first woman in the collection,” Frigeri 

notes, “was Elizabeth Hamilton, a courtesan … I 

recently gave a talk in Berlin about this and I was 

explaining how the first man in the collection 

was Shakespeare. Then I had to admit to the fact 

that the first woman was, yes … which doesn’t take 

away from her as a woman. The founding fathers 

of the NPG were very specific when they wrote 

their constitution and I should stress fathers – 

no woman was involved. A portrait had to depict 

someone of worthiness, achievement, recognition 

and fame … and for decades women didn’t really 

fit any of those categories, unless they were royal 

or attached to the royals somehow.” 

When did the collection start opening up? 

“Until the 1960’s you could only show the portrait 

of someone who had been dead for at least ten 

years. The idea was that you needed ten years 

to be sure that the achievements of that person 

were lasting. But this rule was lifted in the 1960’s 

as the need to include more contemporary artists 

became apparent. So that is when the collection 

started becoming a bit more eclectic in range. In 

the 1970’s the trend was to collect mostly women 

in the arts, so we have dancers, we have writers, a 

lot of actors … there weren’t that many women in 

science – that’s a big gap.” 

Above: Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess de Gramont by John Giles Eccardt, 

after Sir Peter Lely (18th century, based on a work of c. 1663) 

© National Portrait Gallery, London 


Is it possible there were fewer women 

scientists because their male colleagues 

were taking credit for their work? 

“Yes,” Frigeri agrees, “there was some of that and it’s 

something we have been looking into. We recently 

acquired a portrait of Anne McLaren, one of the 

women who was instrumental in developing the 

science necessary for IVF. She was working with 

her husband at University College London for a 

long time and was less known than him. McLaren 

is an example of someone that we have recently 

been able to bring into the collection. For me, this 

is important because it is a way to push against 

the grain of the founding fathers and say, look, 

these are women worthy of that recognition.” 

Did the advent of photography have an 

impact on the collection? 

“It made a huge difference,” says Frigeri, “because, 

in a way, photography is the most emancipatory 

medium of them all. Photography allowed 

women to establish their own portrait studios. 

So, even if they had the ambition to go on and 

do more avant-garde photography, they were 

able to support themselves financially through 

their studio. The affordability of photography 

drove up the demand for portraits, so it became a 

sustainable business. 

We have great examples of women like Rita 

Martin and Lallie Charles establishing a portrait 

studio called The Look which was around the 

corner from Regent’s Park and was incredibly 

successful. Alice Hughes had a studio on Gower 

Street up in Bloomsbury and, at one point, she 

employed 50 women assistants. We have many 

of these women photographers in the collection, 

so it is a very strong area, dating from the 1900’s. 

It all began with Julia Margaret Cameron doing 

in photography what the Pre-Raphaelites were 

doing in painting.” 

Another aspect of the project focusses on the 

acquisition of new works by women. What 

were your guiding principles in choosing 

these works? 

“I thought about how I could make acquisitions 

that were relevant enough and substantial enough 

in the long term without ‘breaking the bank’. What 

Above: Dame Anne McLaren, photographer unknown, gelatin silver print, 1958, National Portrait Gallery, London 


Above: Ace (retrieved) from ‘The Photomat Portrait Series’ by Susan Hiller, 1972-3 

© The Estate of Susan Hiller. Purchased with kind support from the CHANEL Culture Fund for ‘Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture’, 2022 

were the things that the portrait gallery wouldn’t 

usually collect because they wouldn’t necessarily 

be seen as priorities? There was a focus on selfportraiture, 

created by artists who were working 

with a very feminist conceptual slant. These are 

self-portraits, but they are doing lots of other 

things on the side. 

“In Susan Hiller’s work she was taking her selfportrait 

using different photobooth machines 

around London and then collecting them. The idea 

is – she was taking agency away from herself and 

lending it to the machine, and each photobooth 

produces a very different kind of image. There is 

this piecing together of mechanically produced 

images, but also the suggestion that no person 

is a single image. We are all made up of lots of 

different layers. So, there is a conceptual element 

to this work. If you were to see it at the Tate 

you would probably read it with very conceptual 

language, but here you’re just looking at a portrait 

that is not a traditional portrait. 

“Rose Finn-Kelcey’s self-portrait is similar. You 

cannot see it from this image but there is a cut 

in the middle of the image because this was the 

pre-Adobe days and she had to glue and stitch 

together two images. This is her seated at Marble 

Arch at Speaker’s Corner. In this case, she is very 

much thinking about the fact that women have 

traditionally been left out of all the places where 

public speaking happens. She is reclaiming this 

space for women in terms of public speaking, 

but she is also thinking that the absence of that 

space has meant that women had a lot more 

existential, private speaking happening within 

themselves – so it’s a conversation, or internal 

dialogue, between the two selves. 


Above: Självporträtt, Åkersberga by Everlyn Nicodemus, 1982 

© the artist, courtesy of Richard Saltoun Gallery 

Purchased with kind support from the CHANEL Culture Fund 

for ‘Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture’, 2022 

“I was able to acquire this beautiful small 

portrait of Celia Paul,” Frigeri continues, “and then 

this wonderful portrait by Everlyn Nicodemus 

called Självporträtt, Åkersberga. This is a selfportrait 

she made in 1982 when she was living in 

Sweden and had recently given birth to a young 

daughter and was struggling with her marriage. 

She paints all of these different faces to suggest 

the many faces she needs to wear at once – 

mother, artist, lover and so forth. This is actually 

the first self-portrait by a black artist to enter the 

collection. 

“And then there is Maeve Gilmore, an exceptional 

artist. I love the intensity of her expression and I 

love that she is holding with such assertiveness 

this piece of charcoal, and just looks at you. And 

looking at you really says, this is my place as an 

artist. These are some of the works that I have 

been bringing into the collection with a focus 

on self-portraiture. They are small in number in 

terms of acquisitions but they are quite radical in 

starting the discourse and taking it in different 

directions.” 

When the National Portrait Gallery reopens, 

more than 200 portraits of women made after 

1900 and over 100 portraits created during that 

time by women will be exhibited. Adding to that 

number will be the newly commissioned Work in 

Progress, a group portrait of 133 notable women 

created by Jann Haworth and Liberty Blake. (See 

feature on p. 14). RC 


Above: Preparatory study for Divided Self by Rose Finn-Kelcey, 1974 

© The Estate of Rose Finn-Kelcey. Courtesy of Kate MacGarry Gallery 



Left: Portrait, Eyes Lowered by Celia Paul, 2019 

© Celia Paul. Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro 




Work in Progress 

The origins of the NPG’s monumental new mural 


In 1967, Jann Haworth and her then husband Peter Blake designed the cover for 

the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album, which features the band surrounded by a cast of 

characters, from Bob Dylan and Marilyn Monroe to Albert Einstein and Shirley 

Temple. Revisiting the cover some years later, Haworth realised it included only 

twelve women and, of those, half were fictional. She decided to create a new 

women-centred mural featuring women from all different fields who had been 

catalysts for change. By the time she found sponsorship for this project it was 

2016. In the run-up to the American election, when it seemed, in Haworth’s view, 

all but inevitable that Hillary Clinton would win, it was, in the artist’s words, “a 

Ipotent moment” to celebrate all that women had achieved. 


Liberty Blake. Photograph courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery 

Jann Haworth. Photograph courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery 

Of course, the election did not play out as she 

anticipated, but Haworth and her daughter, 

Liberty Blake, started work on the mural, which 

has now grown from its initial 28 feet to 60 feet 

in width. Made up of over 300 portraits, created 

by 250 participants, the mural was designed so 

that it can be transported from place to place 

and continually expanded – in other words, it is a 

Work in Progress. 

Meanwhile in London, in a break between Covid 

lockdowns, the National Portrait Gallery’s Flavia 

Frigeri “snuck out” of her Bayswater flat to visit a 

gallery in Mayfair where Jann Haworth was having 

a show. “It triggered my memory because I had 

seen the original Work in Progress a few years 

before and I thought, this could be a great thing 

to do in communities around the country. We 

commissioned Jann and Liberty to do a new Work 

in Progress for the NPG, celebrating 133 women. It 

would be a pantheon of women from Elizabeth I all 

the way to Vivienne Westwood and Malala. 

“We worked with partner institutions across the 

country and each institution hosted a workshop. 

The idea was that every person who participated 

in the workshops would choose an image and 

then make a stencilled portrait. Artists would tune 

in via Zoom and they would guide the participants 

in cutting out their images and stencilling them 

with colours. The stencilled portraits were sent to 

Jann and Liberty in Utah where they spent three 

months mounting them all on seven giant panels. 

“When you come into the National Portrait 

Gallery, there will be a gallery about historymakers 

and one whole wall will be our mural. 

This will set the tone for the way we want you 

to think about women, the way we want you to 

see women and the way we want to put women 

at the forefront. And, if you look at the top of the 

seventh panel, you will see an empty silhouette. 

Because this is a ‘work in progress’, we don’t want 

to suggest that this is the complete pantheon. It 

is a pantheon that you can keep adding to, and 

you can imagine whoever you want in that blank 

space. We are also working closely with the artists 

on a series of resources that we’re going to make 

available to schools and families so that people 

can go home and make their own mural. “These 

trailblazing women of the past,” says Frigeri, “are 

role models for the future.” RC 

Work in Progress by Jann Haworth and Liberty 

Blake, 2021-2. Acrylic on paper collaged on panels. 

Commissioned by Trustees with kind support 

from the CHANEL Culture Fund, 2021. 


PANEL 1 

Organic farmer Eve Balfour, businesswoman Anita Roddick, writer Vera Brittain, pianist Shulamith Shafir, artist and 

writer Mary Delany, Hospice Movement founder Cicely Saunders, peace activist Mairead Corrigan Maguire, poet 

and writer Sylvia Plath, sculptor Alison Wilding, writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter, surgeon Louisa Aldrich Blake, 

photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, classicist Mary Beard, novelists Jane Austin, Virginia Woolf and more… 

PANEL 2 

Actor and comedian Dawn French, writer and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, nurse and army medical service reformer 

Florence Nightingale, Queen Elizabeth I, political activist Sylvia Pankhurst, activist for women’s rights Ishbel Hamilton- 

Gordon, actress Vivien Leigh, chemist and astronaut Helen Sharman, fossil collector Mary Anning, fashion model 

Twiggy, educator for race equality Jocelyn Barrow and more… 


PANEL 3 

Mental illness physician Helen Boyle, printer and writer Eleanor James, aeronautical engineer and aviator Lilian Bland, traveller 

and botanical artist Marianne North, pianist Harriet Cohen, aviator Amy Johnson, comedian Gina Yashere, athlete Rachel Atherton, 

photographer Yevonde, novelist Olivia Manning, painter Bridget Riley, social reformer Octavia Hill, archaeologist Gertrude Bell and 

fashion designer Mary Quant and more… 

PANEL 4 

Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, cartoonist Kate Charlesworth, artist Sonia Boyce, playwright Caryl Churchill, children’s writer Eva 

Ibbotson, actress Emma Thompson, Alice Liddell, inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, nurse Elizabeth Anionwu, space 

scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, chemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, film director Gurinder Chadha, writer Agatha 

Christie, poet Christina Rossetti and more… 

PANEL 5 

Sprinter Ethel Scott, historian Joan Thirsk, abolitionist Ellen Craft, Minnie Lansbury, writer Zadie Smith, Paralympic athlete and 

broadcaster Tanni Grey-Thompson, designer and painter E.Q. Nicholson, portrait painter Mary Beale, co-founder of Girl Guides 

Agnes Baden-Powell, writer J.K Rowling, Boxer and Olympian Nicola Adams, human rights lawyer Shami Chakrabarti, activist and 

writer Mala Sen, tennis player Charlotte Cooper and more… 


PANEL 6 

Sculptor Barbara Hepworth, suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, artist and curator Lubaina Himid, singer-songwriter Amy 

Winehouse, painter Vanessa Bell, suffragette Sophia Duleep Singh, physicist and radio astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell, comedian 

and disability rights activist Barbara Lisicki, ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn, actor Olivia Colman, children’s poet and writer Grace 

Nichols, model for Pre-Raphaelite artists Fanny Eaton and more… 

PANEL 7 

Actress Julie Andrews, illustrator Jessie M. King, journalist and historian Jan Morris, painter Joan Eardley, nurse and business woman 

Mary Seacole, artistic director and champion of disability arts Jenny Sealey, singer-songwriter Kate Bush, artist Eileen Agar, social 

reformer and theatre manager Emma Cons, artist Gillian Wearing, journalist Kate Adie, artist Paula Rego, electrical engineer and 

inventor Hertha Ayrton, cellist Jacqueline du Prè and more… 


Friends and Strangers 

Portraits by Alice Neel 

and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye 

Two London exhibitions, one just ended, the 

other ongoing, illustrate the continuing 

allure of portrait painting in Western art 

and its possibilities for radical re-invention. 

Tate Britain recently hosted Fly in League with 

the Night, a show of some 80 paintings and 

works on paper created by London-born artist 

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. At the Barbican, works 

from the American painter Alice Neel’s 60-year 

career are currently on display under the title 

Hot off the Griddle. 

In their own way, each of these artists brought, 

or brings, a revolutionary approach to portrait 

painting. Neel explained that one of her reasons 

for painting “was to catch life as it goes by, right 

hot off the griddle”. She welcomed sitters into 

her home, chatted away to them, and invited 

them to share their own stories. She painted 

figuratively when the prevailing trend favoured 

Abstract Expressionism. While the AbEx artists 

created works that reflected their reactions to a 

period of tumultuous change, Neel hid her own 

struggles behind a smile and brought out the 

feelings of her subjects. “I paint to try to reveal 

the tragedy and joy of life,” she said. 

Despite appearances to the contrary, Yiadom- 

Boakye’s paintings are not portraiture in the 

traditional sense. The subjects are not real 

people, but creations of the artist’s imagination, 

based on a combination of memory, family 

snapshots, images from magazines collected in 

scrapbooks and details of paintings. A writer, as 

well as an artist, Yiadom-Boakye says, “I write 

about the things I can’t paint and paint the things 

I can’t write about …”. These fictional, nameless 

strangers seem every bit as full of humanity as 

Neel’s living, breathing sitters. 

ALICE NEEL 

Born at the turn of the last century, Alice Neel 

grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. Her 

parents were not artists and she had little 

exposure to culture, but, somehow, she knew 

from a young age that she would become an 

artist. In 1921, she began her art studies at the 

Philadelphia School of Design for Women (also 

known, because of its conservative reputation, as 

the ‘Philadelphia School for Designing Women’). 

She met Cuban artist Carlos Enriquez Gomez at 

a summer art course in 1924, and they married 

the following year. Their first child, a daughter 

named Santillana, tragically died just before her 

first birthday. By then the couple had moved 

to New York where Neel soon had a second 

daughter, Isabetta. Husband and wife continued 

to paint but struggled to support themselves, 

moving to ever cheaper accommodation. In 

May of 1930, Gomez took Isabetta with him to 

Havana, telling Neel he would send money back 

to enable her to join them. The money never 

materialised, and Neel only saw her daughter a 

handful of times after that. 


Above, left: Alice Neel. 1977. Mary D. Garrard. 

© The Estate of Alice Neel 

Courtesy of The Estate of Alice Neel 

Above, right: Alice Neel, 1960. Frank O’Hara. 




This trauma seems to have informed much 

of Neel’s work and underscores the difficulty 

experienced by so many female painters of 

combining life as an artist with motherhood. 

Following the stock market crash and during 

the period of the Great Depression in the 1930’s, 

life was punishingly hard. Countless artists, 

including Neel, were saved from starvation by 

the government-sponsored Federal Art Project 

which paid unemployed artists a small salary in 

exchange for producing works of art to decorate 

public buildings. The deprivation of these times 

produced in Neel a “desire to bear witness to 

the hardships of life as experienced by most 

Americans” in that decade. Neel’s salary from the 

Art Project allowed her to secure an apartment 

which she also used as studio space. At the same 

time, she joined the Communist Party, an event 

that would later lead the FBI to open a file on her 

and even show up at her door to investigate her, 

having identified Neel as a ‘romantic, Bohemian 

type Communist’. Characteristically, she was 

sanguine about the encounter and asked if 

the agents would be interested in sitting for a 

painting. (They declined.) 

In the 1940’s, when up-and-coming artists such 

as Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning and Grace 

Hartigan were moving downtown to convert 

lofts into studios and creating pioneering works 

of Abstract Expressionism, Neel moved north to 

Spanish Harlem and persisted with figurative 

painting, largely dismissed as an artist out of step 

with the times. But it was there that she met the 

subjects for her works, however unfashionable 

they may have been. She was, she said, “not 

against abstraction, but against saying that Man 

himself has no importance.” 

Neel’s T.B. Harlem (1940) is a comment on 

the epidemic of TB that had broken out in 

overcrowded areas of New York. It depicts an 

unnamed young man who is recovering in a 

tuberculosis hospital. Before effective antibiotics 

were widely available, TB treatment was brutal. 

Left, top: Alice Neel, 1940. T.B. Harlem. © The Estate of Alice Neel 


Left: Alice Neel, 1943. The Spanish Family. © The Estate of Alice 

Neel. Courtesy of The Estate of Alice Neel 


The bandage on the left of the man’s chest is 

from a thoracoplasty, a surgical procedure which 

involved removing several ribs and collapsing 

the affected lung. The painting is simple, with a 

muted colour palette, making the blood seeping 

out from under the bandage more evident. The 

plain background draws the viewer towards the 

man’s face, which registers a resigned stoicism. 

He is just one man among many suffering a 

similar fate. 

The loss of her mother, in 1954 at the age of 

86, sent Neel into a deep depression that lasted 

over the next few years and, in 1958, she began 

to see a therapist for the first time. Neel credits 

her therapist with encouraging her to be more 

ambitious with her work and “getting it into the 

world”. She summoned the courage to approach 

the poet Frank O’Hara, then a curator at the 

Museum of Modern Art, to sit for her. The picture 

appeared in ARTnews alongside an enthusiastic 

review describing how “her paintings cast a spell’. 

This marked a turning point in Neel’s career, 

and she began to paint more recognisable figures, 

including Andy Warhol. His portrait reveals Neel’s 

remarkable ability to get her sitters to trust 

her, allowing her to paint them with all their 

vulnerabilities. In Warhol’s case, this included 

showing the scars that had resulted from a vicious 

assault by Valerie Solanas, a former member of 

Warhol’s Factory entourage. 

Other well-known faces amongst Neel’s sitters 

included feminists Kate Millet (whose portrait 

Neel was commissioned to paint for the cover 

of Time magazine), Mary D. Garrard (known 

for her ground-breaking studies of Artemisia 

Gentileschi) and Linda Nochlin (author of ‘Why 

are there no great women artists?’) Neel’s ability 

to disarm seems not to have worked on Garrard, 

who looks particularly ill-at-ease in the familiar 

blue and white striped chair. Still wearing her 

hat, coat and scarf, she looks directly at the artist, 

as if daring her to reveal anything beyond her 

inscrutable surface. Nochlin is painted with her 

young daughter, Daisy. Apparently, Neel was keen 

to portray Nochlin as both an intellectual and a 

mother. She told the eminent art historian, “you 

don’t look anxious, but you are anxious”. Perhaps 

she was projecting her own maternal anxiety 

onto her sitter. 

Neel would have to wait until 1974, when she 

was 74 years old, to have the first retrospective 

exhibition of her work, which was held at the 

Whitney Museum of Art in New York. The 

Barbican art director, Will Gompertz, describes 

Neel’s portraits as “the very opposite of an 

Instagram image … You can’t photograph what 

Alice Neel painted. Her ability to simultaneously 

show a sitter’s conscious and unconscious state, 

and imperceptibly morph the two, was a magic 

trick of sorts … She didn’t simply paint faces, she 

revealed souls.” 

Right: Alice Neel, 1929. Alice Neel at the age of 29. 



Spring / Summer 2023 • Restoration Conversations 23

Above: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, 2011. Condor and the Mole, Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. © Courtesy of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye 

Right: Installation shot at the Tate, Madeline Buddo 


LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE 

British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, born in 

London in 1977 to Ghanaian parents, is one 

of a number of artists who have transformed 

portraiture over the last decade. Her recent 

exhibition at London’s venerable Tate Britain 

follows earlier shows in Munich, Basel and New 

York, among others. Some of her works are also 

featured in the Reaching for the Stars exhibition 

at Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi. 

Yiadom-Boakye’s works, while recognisably 

part of the continuum of European portraiture, 

are innovative in their subject-matter, style and 

atmosphere. Most notably, rather than working 

with live models, Yiadom-Boakye draws from her 

experience as a writer to create her own fictional 

subjects. In doing so, she turns the aphorism that 

‘portraits are the one genre of art in which the 

subject is more important than the artist’ on its 

head. “Over time,” she says, “I realised I needed 

to think less about the subject and more about 

the painting. So I began to think seriously about 

colour, light and composition.” 

The artist also subtly subverts traditional 

portraiture in rejecting the genre’s conventional 

function of not only creating a likeness, but 

conveying the sitter’s class and status, usually by 

including symbolic objects denoting education, 

wealth and power – or their opposites. Yiadom- 

Boakye’s subjects are difficult to place within a 

social group or culture or a specific place or time 

period. This timeless quality is deliberate, as it 

requires the viewer to engage with the subject 

and to use their curiosity to project their own 

interpretations and imagine the story behind the 

painting. 

The canvases depict young men and women, 

by themselves or in small groups, many larger 

than life-sized. The scale adds to the quality of 

the work. Very broadly and confidently painted, 

the compositions are intriguing, drawing the 

viewer in. “Her painting of dark skin in shadow, 

circumambient gloaming or night is superb,” says 

critic Laura Cumming. “She makes a strong virtue 

of contrapposto, chiaroscuro and the sumptuous 

sinking of oil into linen.” 


Above, left: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, 2018 

To Improvise a Mountain. Private Collection 

© Courtesy of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye 

Photo: Marcus Leith 

Above, right: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, 2014 

Citrine by the Ounce. Private Collection 


A young male dancer stretches at the barre while 

his friends engage in conversation nearby, two girls 

play in the rockpools along a beach, absorbed in their 

activity and each other, a woman with an elaborate 

frilly collar stares out unblinkingly from the canvas 

– is she willing you to come closer or daring you to 

stay away? In Penny for Them (2014), another woman 

resting her chin in her hand is lost in thought. In 

each case, the audience may be reminded of a 

painting they have seen or a memory from their own 

life. It is up to us to give these characters their story. 

Tate Britain is home to a collection of British 

artworks dating back to 1545. Seeing a whole 

gallery there filled with her work is a powerful 

experience. “That Yiadom-Boakye’s subjects happen 

to be Black, reflecting her own identity, reminds us 

of the overwhelming whiteness of the tradition of 

[European portraiture],” notes the museum’s Director, 

Alex Farquharson. Yiadom-Boakye points out that, 

“Blackness has never been other to me. Therefore, 

I’ve never felt the need to explain its presence in the 


work anymore than I’ve felt the need to explain my 

presence in the world, however often I’m asked.” 

Despite their many differences – in background, 

style and subject matter – Neel and Yiadom-Boakye 

have both succeeded in ‘bringing out whatever their 

subjects have in common with the rest of humanity’, 

the goal that art historian Erwin Panofsky identified as 

the central desire of Renaissance artists. Neel talked 

to her subjects as if they were old friends, allowing 

them to relax and drop their guard so that she could 

catch something of their inner nature. Yiadom- 

Boakye’s fictional sitters are enigmatic ‘strangers’ on 

whom we can project our own thoughts and desires. 

By thinking about what we see in them, we learn 

something about ourselves. RC 

Above, left: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, 2020 

Razorbill, Tate 


Above, right: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, 2017 

In Lieu of Keen Virtue 

© Courtesy of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Corvi-Mora, London 

and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York 

Alice Neel: Hot off the Griddle is at London’s Barbican 

Art Gallery until 21 May 2023 

Reaching for the Stars is at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 

until 18 June 2023 


Above: Rosalba Carriera, A Black-haired Lady with a Thin Gold Necklace. © Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo: Elke Estel/ Hans-Peter Klut 


Artemisia’s 

‘A Rare Talent’ 

The paradox of Rosalba Carriera 

I 

have not come across another artist that 

has been so completely neglected after so 

much success.” Angela Oberer is talking 

about Venetian painter Rosalba Carriera (1673- 

1757), a celebrated artist in her day and one 

of the most successful women artists of any 

era. Known as the ‘first painter of Europe’, her 

pastels were highly admired by 18th-century 

European collectors, and prominent foreign 

visitors to Venice and Grand Tourists were 

eager to sit for portraits by her. An astute 

entrepreneur, she set new trends in style and 

technique, and was admitted to membership 

of three art academies. 

For one hundred years after her death, 

Carriera continued to enjoy recognition and 

influence as an accomplished artist. And 

then, as dramatically as it had risen, her star 

plummeted, and she lapsed into relative 

obscurity. Carriera’s story presents us with a 

paradox: how did she achieve her remarkable 

professional and financial success at a time 

when so few women were able to make a living 

at their art, and how did she subsequently 

come to be all but forgotten? 

On the 350th anniversary of Carriera’s birth 

and the eve of a major exhibition of her work 

in Dresden, Angela Oberer, a professor and 

art historian who has authored two books on 

“ 

Carriera, gave a talk at the British Institute of 

Florence about her interest in a painter who 

was highly sought-after as a miniaturist and 

portrait painter, but who subsequently fell out 

of fashion. 

Oberer has been researching Carriera 

for over ten years. “I had a special interest 

in sisters,” she explains. “I have an older 

sister, and I just wanted to understand this 

funny relationship … so I was looking for a 

painter with one or more sisters. And then I 

stumbled across that self-portrait of Carriera 

with her sister Giovanna.” (See feature on 

p .36). A fortuitous match between researcher 

and subject seemed all but inevitable when 

Oberer tracked down two volumes at the 

Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence containing 

transcriptions of Carriera’s correspondence 

and diaries – a cache of documents comprising 

over 800 pages. In other words, a scholar’s 

dream come true. Combing through this 

archive over several years has enabled Oberer 

to understand how Carriera achieved her 

renown, despite all the usual impediments to 

be overcome as a female artist. 

Carriera’s early life and training remain 

something of a mystery. Unusually for female 

artists of her era, she did not come from an 

artistic family. Although various scholars have 


Left: Rosalba Carriera, 1730/31 

Self-portrait as Winter 

Photo: Katrin Jacob 

& Wolfgang Kreische 

Right, clockwise from top left: 

Rosalba Carriera, A Young 

Gentleman in a Puffy Blue 

Coat 

Photo: Elke Estel 

& Hans-Peter Klut 

Rosalba Carriera, c. 1725/30 

A Lady with a Parrot on her 

Right Hand (Allegory of 

Eloquence) 

Photo: Marina Langner 


Rosalba Carriera, c. 1735/40 

A Venetian from the House of 

Barbarigo (Caterina Sagredo 

Barbarigo) 

Photo: Marina Langner 


Rosalba Carriera, 1730 

Archduchess Maria Theresia 

of Habsburg 

Photo: Elke Estel 

& Hans-Peter Klut 

All images © Gemäldegalerie 

Alte Meister, Staatliche 

Kunstsammlungen Dresden 

tried to identify who her first teachers might 

have been, Oberer notes that, “So far, we don’t 

have any documents to state definitively who 

she studied with, if anyone. Maybe she was 

mainly self-taught?” 

Carriera began her career helping her 

mother with her embroidery and lace-making 

business. When snuff-taking became popular 

during the second half of the 17th century, 

Carriera took advantage of the opportunity 

to begin painting miniatures for the lids of 

snuffboxes. She not only had a particular talent 

for working at this scale, but she benefitted 

from a dearth of miniaturists in her home city 

of Venice, where her male contemporaries were 

busy competing for lucrative commissions for 

altarpieces, city views and fresco painting. 

Showing further initiative, Carriera became 

one of the first painters to use ivory instead 

of vellum as a support for miniatures. “She 

got a name for her miniatures very quickly 

and, one curious and fun fact is that some of 



Rosalba Carriera, Female Study Head in Grey-purple Coat 

© Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden 

Photo: Elke Estel & Hans-Peter Klut 

the letters mention that forgeries of her work 

were already being offered for sale in Venice,” 

Oberer observes. 

Carriera was also quick to spot an 

opportunity in Venice’s growing tourist trade. 

The city was an obligatory stop on the Grand 

Tour undertaken by young sons and daughters 

of the nobility, as well a favourite destination 

for other prominent visitors and diplomats. 

Carriera used her networking skills to develop 

a market for portraits. Once again, her genius 

for innovation came to the fore as she began 

producing these portraits in pastel, a medium 

that had, until then, been used mainly for 

preparatory drawings. 

Carriera’s popularity helped to encourage 

the production of high-quality pastel sticks 

in varied textures and in a greater range of 

colours than had previously been available. 

Pastel portraits came to be seen as equivalent 

in quality to oil portraits; they offered other 

advantages as well: the materials were 

cheaper and easier to transport, portraits could 

be executed quickly as there was no drying 

time, and fewer sittings were required, a boon 

to both artist and subject. On the other hand, 

pastel is a notoriously fragile medium, subject 

to fading when exposed to light. Unlike oils, 

pastels’ vulnerability to fading is increased 

because they are not protected by a varnish, 

nor are the powdery components surrounded 

by a resin. The works had to be covered with 

glass, but this was not available in a large 

format. “Carriera’s portraits have a kind of 

standard size”, notes Oberer. “They didn’t get 

much higher than around 60 centimetres.” 

Great care was required when shipping them 

to their owners. “Carriera had a beautiful way 

of sending off her portraits with a little token, 

tucked between the painting’s wooden support 

and the canvas liner, placed there to protect it 

on its journey.” One such token was a tiny print 

of the three Magi, thought to be appropriate 

guardians because of their association with 

long, difficult journeys. 


Her visit to Paris in 1720-21, as the guest of the 

influential collector and connoisseur Pierre 

Crozat, sparked a widespread interest in 

portraits in pastel that continued throughout 

eighteenth-century Europe. While in Paris, 

Carriera painted the French artist Antoine 

Watteau, as well as numerous portraits of the 

French nobility including the young Louis 

XV. She was elected a member of the Paris 

Academy by acclamation, the first foreigner 

and only the fifth woman to receive that 

honour. While this event is recorded in her 

diary, Carriera seems not to have been overly 

excited by it. “This was objectively one of the 

most incredible events in her life,” remarks 

Oberer, “and she just basically writes ‘I was 

accepted in the Academy by a great majority’”. 

This tendency towards self-effacement was 

also evidenced by her inclination to downplay 

her impressive financial success. She seems to 

have taken the view that her prospects would 

benefit from remaining modest about her 

accomplishments (and wealth) and presenting 

herself to the art world as a quiet, unassuming 

spinster. 

While preferring, as much as possible, to live 

and work in Venice, which helped to reduce her 

expenses, Carriera made a long journey to the 

royal court in Vienna, Austria, in 1730. There, 

she enjoyed the patronage of Emperor Charles 

VI, who amassed a large collection of more 

than 150 of her pastels. These would later form 

the basis of the collection of the Alte Meister 

Gallery in Dresden, still the owner of the largest 

number of works by the artist. Pastel was 

prized for the lifelike quality it conferred on 

its subjects and for its ability to reflect, rather 

than absorb, light. Carriera’s pastels were 

noted in particular for their radiant palettes 

and velvety finish. She also brought her skills 

as a miniaturist to the finer details. Part of 

the appeal of owning a portrait by Carriera 

was the identifiable style of the paintings. As 

Carriera’s renown grew, her sitters clamoured 

to be painted with what Oberer has called the 

Rosalba Carriera, 1720/21. King Louis XV of France 

© Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden 

Photo: Marina Langner & Wolfgang Kreische 


Carriera ‘mask’. Oberer argues that the fashion 

to be painted ‘by Carriera’ developed into a 

desire to ‘be a Carriera’. The ‘sameness’ of her 

portraits, noted by some critics, was not due to 

a lack of skill or imagination on Carriera’s part, 

but simply a consequence of compliance with 

the desires of her clients. 

Key to Carriera’s success was her acumen as 

a businesswoman. “She knew very well how 

to organise her business, with the help of her 

sister and her mother,” says Oberer. “There 

were so many people involved, so many 

letters to write and answer, so many packages 

to prepare. And there were copies to be made, 

because her sister made a lot of copies of the 

portraits.” The nerve centre of this operation 

was Carriera’s palazzo on the Grand Canal. 

Recognised professionally by prestigious 

art academies, she was an innovator in her 

use of ivory, her popularising of pastels 

and her ‘branding’ of the Carriera style. 

She had numerous followers, and her 

impact continued to be felt for decades 

after her death. 

Among the documents that Oberer studied 

was a room-by-room inventory of the contents 

of this property which provided clues as 

to how Carriera carried on her business. 

The main room, facing out onto the canal, 

contained over 30 paintings (mainly pastels), 

five mirrors, 14 chairs (but no table), and an 

array of porcelain cups and Chinese trays for 

serving the then-exotic beverages tea, coffee 

and chocolate. This was not just a living room, 

Oberer concluded. “It was her studio, it was 

her museum and sales room. It was the room 

where she received guests and held concerts.” 

(In addition to her artistic talent, Carriera was 

an accomplished musician.) One can imagine 

aristocratic visitors sipping hot chocolate from 

delicate chinoiserie cups and inspecting the 

rosy-cheeked portraits displayed on the walls, 

all the while pondering how they might look 

as ‘a Carriera’. 

Rosalba Carriera achieved everything 

that is thought necessary to be considered 

a ‘great artist’. Recognised professionally 

by prestigious art academies, she was an 

innovator in her use of ivory, her popularising 

of pastels and her ‘branding’ of the Carriera 

style. She had numerous followers, and her 

impact continued to be felt for decades after 

her death. But when the Rococo style gave 

way to Neoclassicism, Carriera’s name and 

her influence were dismissed. What accounts 

for this? The light and playful style of the 

Rococo period became associated with the 

superficiality of France’s ancien regime and all 

the frivolity and excesses that encompassed. 

It was, perhaps, easy to overlook works that 

lacked a seriousness of purpose and ignored 

the economic and social realities of life. There 

is also the fact that the paintings themselves, 

because of their fragility, were difficult to 

transport without risk of damage and, as a 

result, were not exhibited widely. Until now, the 

only monographic exhibition of her work was 

held in 1975, in Karlsruhe. 

And then there is the question of gender. 

Carriera was treated as a rarity as a woman 

artist. She endured offensive descriptions 

of her appearance by critics who seemed 

to suggest that her artistic talent had a 

direct inverse relationship to her perceived 

unattractiveness. “Just as nature was miserly in 

her external gifts all the more did she endow 

her with very rare internal talents which 

she cultivated with every care,” Anton Maria 

Zanetti the Younger wrote of Carriera in 1771. 

Unmarried, childless, as sublimely talented 

as she was (apparently) lacking in beauty, it 

was easy to think of Carriera as something 

of an aberration and perhaps, for this reason, 

easier to forget. The upcoming exhibition in 

Dresden of Carriera’s works and the soon-tobe-published 

book by Angela Oberer on the 

artist will go some way to redress the balance. 

By coincidence, in 1948, another trendsetting 

woman art entrepreneur, Peggy Guggenheim 

(who also had to put up with disparaging 

comments on her appearance), would 

purchase the palazzo next door to what had 

been Carriera’s residence on the Grand Canal. 

That palazzo became the home of the Peggy 

Guggenheim Collection, one of the most 

visited museums in Venice. Two remarkable 

women who became next-door neighbours 

across the centuries, successful despite the 

odds against them. RC 


Rosalba Carriera, Mary with her Left Hand on her Breast. © Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche 

Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo: Wolfgang Kreische 

You can watch the video recording of Angela Oberer’s lecture Rosalba Carriera: 

The First Painter of Europe on the Calliope Arts YouTube channel This is one of a 

series of lectures on women artists at the British Institute of Florence sponsored 

by Calliope Arts. 

Rosalba Carriera by Angela Oberer, part of the Lund, Humphries series ‘Illuminating 

Women Artists’ will be published on June 15, 2023. 

Celebrating the 350th anniversary of her birth, the exhibition Rosalba Carriera – 

Perfection in Pastel is on at the Alte Meister Gallery in Dresden from 9 June to 24 

September 2023. 


Above: Anna Waser, 1691, Self-portrait at the Age of 12. Kunsthaus, Zürich, Wikimedia Commons 


Before the Selfie 

A few words on women’s self-portraits 

I“I have been paying a lot of attention to how women artists 

chose to depict themselves. Every decision is very deliberate in 

self-portraits. In the age of the ‘selfie’, where any one of us can 

just pick up a phone and take a ‘self-portrait’, I think it becomes 

even more pivotal to understand the meaning of those portraits 

and those choices,” says Flavia Frigeri, who has spent the past 

two and a half years thinking about how women are represented 

at Britain’s National Portrait Gallery. 

A self-portrait is never just a likeness of the artist, but a female 

self-portrait is particularly loaded. The artist often displays the 

tools of her trade – a palette, a paintbrush and easel – or includes 

objects, such as flowers or elaborate fabrics, to show off her 

particular skills as a painter. She may even include her children, 

identifying as a mother. She might present an ‘air-brushed’ 

version of herself, either out of vanity or for marketing purposes. 

But, most importantly, she creates a calling card that says, ‘I am a 

woman and I am an artist’. 

The self-portraits of women artists sometimes depict their family 

members – usually fathers or uncles, also in the painting trade, 

as a symbol of standing. More rarely, they paint their children or 

mothers beside them. Rolinda Sharples’ 1820 self-portrait with 

mother Ellen, at the Bristol City Art Museum and Gallery, is one 

delightful example. Painting one’s master was equally common 

in early self-portraiture, as a way of claiming one’s spot as ‘true 

heir’ to the craft. Such is the case of Anna Waser’s 1691 painting 

at the Kunsthaus in Zürich once known by its original title: Selfportrait 

in the artist’s twelfth year, painting the portrait of her 

teacher Johannes Sulzer. At Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum, Mimmi 

Zetterström’s self-portrait from 1876 is equally worthy of note. 

She paints herself working alone, yet, in this colourful scene, her 

atelier or workroom, is a character-of-sorts – and the walls speak 

volumes about her prolific nature as a painter. 


Left: Alice Neel, 1980. Self-Portrait 



Above: Rolinda Sharples, 1820 

Self-portrait with the Artist’s Mother Ellen Sharples 

Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Wikimedia Commons 

Many of the artists featured in this issue of 

Restoration Conversations have created one or 

more self-portraits that provide us clues to their 

personalities. Alice Neel completed her first selfportrait 

at the age of 80. “All my life I’ve wanted to 

paint a self-portrait,” Neel declared. “But I waited 

until now, when people would accuse me of 

insanity rather than vanity.” She painted herself 

nude, and presents herself as both artist, holding 

a paintbrush, and subject, seated in the striped 

blue and white chair that featured in many of 

her portraits. Not unlike her subjects, she looks 

slightly awkward, with her feet splayed and her 

torso leaning forward rather than relaxing into 

the chair. But the tilt of her chin seems to say, ‘this 

is who I am – an artist who tells it like it is.’ 

Rosalba Carriera was another artist who did 

not shy away from painting herself in old(er) 

age. Indeed, as Jennifer Higgie points out in The 

Mirror and the Palette, in Carriera’s 1730-31 pastel 

Self-Portrait as ‘Winter’, she “depicted herself 

not only as someone who has aged, but as the 

embodiment of the passing of the seasons, as if 

she were not only a woman but a landscape as 

well.” She is not troubled with vanity. Her grey 

hair matches the fur draped around her neck; no 

rouge brightens up her cheeks or enhances her 

slightly pursed lips [Editor’s note: this painting is 

featured at Carriera’s Dresden: show, p. 30]. We 

acquire more insight into her inner life with her 

1715 Self-portrait Holding a Portrait of her Sister. 

Here, again, she presents an unvarnished ‘warts 


Above: Rosalba Carriera, 1709 

Self-portrait Holding a Portrait of her Sister 

Uffizi Galleries, Florence 

Right: Mimmi Zetterström, 1876, Self-portrait 

Nationalmuseum, Stockholm 

Wikimedia Commons 

and all’ version of herself, but the fact that she 

includes her sister in the picture demonstrates 

the importance of this relationship and the depth 

of feeling between them. And this is all the more 

so when we consider that this was the painting 

Carriera contributed to the Medici collection of 

self-portraits at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. 

Initiated by Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici in 

the seventeenth century, this extensive collection 

comprises some 1,800 paintings. Until it was 

closed for renovations in 2016, 600 self-portraits 

were exhibited in the Vasari Corridor, which 

connects the Palazzo Vecchio, via the Uffizi and 

the Ponte Vecchio, to the Palazzo Pitti on the other 

side of the Arno River. Because the Medici Grand 

Dukes were particularly keen to collect female 

self-portraits, this prestigious series boasts the 

highest concentration of works by women artists 

available for public viewing in the world. For 

anyone fortunate enough to have taken it, the 

‘Vasari Corridor tour’ was revelatory – who knew 

there were so many recognised female painters 

going back to the 1500’s? 

When the Vasari Corridor reopens, at a date yet to 

be disclosed, it will no longer house the self-portrait 

collection. Perhaps the women’s self-portraits will 

be dispersed throughout the collection across 

different periods. Or perhaps they will be part of 

a rotating group of self-portraits in a designated 

gallery. But it seems certain that the impact of 

concentrating so many works of and by women in 

a unique part of the museum will be lost. 



One self-portrait that is missing from 

the Medici collection is that of Artemisia 

Gentileschi. This is surprising given that she 

lived and worked in Florence for seven years 

and was patronised by Cosimo II de’ Medici. 

It sometimes appears as if every female 

protagonist in her paintings, whether saint, 

Biblical heroine or allegorical figure, is mooted 

as a possible ‘self-portrait’. This applies to her 

‘Allegory of Inclination’ currently the subject of 

a restoration at Casa Buonarroti. Commissioned 

by Michelangelo the Younger, and planned 

by him in every detail, the commission was 

“particularly audacious,” in the words of art 

historian Sheila Barker, “because it called for 

female nudity in a canvas meant for semipublic 

display … Had it been painted by a man, 

the female nudity would have been perceived 

as an allegorical attribute; however, because it 

was painted by an attractive young woman, the 

nude body could be taken as a literal reference 

to the artist’s own body.” 

Barker goes on to explain that “rather than 

trying to forestall that inevitable association, 

Artemisia embraced it by giving her own 

idealised facial features to the nude figure. 

In reality, that nude figure, which is seen 

from below and, therefore, required difficult 

foreshortening, was necessarily made with the 

assistance of a female model …” 

Artemisia would have been pleased to be 

identified with the allegorical figure in the 

Inclination because she aspired to be seen 

as possessing the same attributes that were 

associated with Michelangelo. But it seems to 

beg the question, when is a self-portrait not a 

self-portrait …? RC 

Above: 15th-century depiction of Roman painter Iaia at work, from 

Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris 

Bibliothèque nationale de France. Wikimedia Commons 

Left: Artemisia Gentileschi, 1615. Allegory of Inclination 

Casa Buonarroti Museum, Florence, 

under restoration by Calliope Arts and Christian Levett 

FURTHER READING: 

Barker, Sheila, Artemisia Gentileschi, 

Lund Humphries, London, 2022 

Higgie, Jennifer, The Mirror and the Palette, 

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2021 


All About Joan 

Reflections on the Monet-Mitchell exhibition 

at Fondation Louis Vuitton 

By Margie MacKinnon 

When I told an artist friend about my (then) 

upcoming weekend in Paris, the highlight 

of which was to be a visit to the Monet– 

Mitchell exhibition, she briefly deflated my spirits 

by saying she had found the show disappointing. 

The juxtaposition of the American’s works next 

to those of the great French master, she opined, 

did not enhance Mitchell’s paintings, but made 

them seem ‘derivative’. I am happy to report 

that my own impression was quite the opposite. 

The exhibition was a wonderful showcase of 

Mitchell’s works, and she had no trouble holding 

her own when viewed ‘in dialogue’ with one of 

Impressionism’s greatest exponents. 

FLV’s artistic director, Suzanne Page, a visitor 

to Joan Mitchell’s home in Vétheuil in 1982, 

claimed that the artist “hated” being compared 

to Claude Monet, but such comparisons were all 

but inevitable given that, for many years, Mitchell 

lived in a house whose terrace overlooked the 

residence where Monet spent the final years of 

his life. Her view was the landscape that he often 

painted. Many Abstract Expressionist painters, 

including Mitchell, were inspired by Monet’s 

large-scale works, such as his celebrated water 

lilies series. Perhaps Mitchell, who was intensely 

competitive, thought she could not come out on 

top in such a comparison, given Monet’s exalted 

stature in the art world. 

Born in 1925, Mitchell grew up in a well-to-do 

family in Chicago. According to Mary Gabriel in 

her authoritative chronicle Ninth Street Women, 

Joan’s mother was distant, and her father was so 

disappointed she was not a boy that he wrote the 

name ‘John’ on her birth certificate. Perhaps in a 

bid to win her father’s approval, Mitchell took up 

a variety of sports – figure skating, diving and 

tennis – at which she excelled. She attacked her 

art studies at the School of the Art Institute of 

Chicago with equal determination. 

Upon graduation she won a travelling fellowship 

and a print prize that led to her first mention in 

ArtNews. By 1950, Mitchell was in New York where 

she soon wangled an introduction to Willem de 

Kooning, who would have a major influence on 

her early work. She joined the group of artists, 

Right: Installation 

views of Joan Mitchell 

Retrospective. Courtesy of 

Fondation Louis Vuitton 



Below: Joan Mitchell, 1971. Plowed Field, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris © The Estate of Joan Mitchell 

including Grace Hartigan and Elaine de Kooning, 

that congregated at the Cedar Bar. In 1951, the 

three of them, together with Lee Krasner and 

Helen Frankenthaler would be the only women 

to be included in what would become known as 

the ‘Ninth Street Show’, a seminal moment in the 

American Abstract Expressionist movement in art. 

I arrived at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, on 

the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, some thirty 

minutes before the time designated on my 

ticket. The clear skies promised by the weather 

forecast gave way to a grey drizzle, but even 

this didn’t dampen my spirits. The Fondation’s 

Frank Gehry-designed building is a mesmerising 

confection of geometric curves and lines. The 

architect took his inspiration from the lightness 

of late nineteenth-century glass and garden 

architecture, and the building’s twelve glass sails 

play with the light and reflections of water from 

the basin in which it stands, creating an ideal 

setting for this exhibition. 

I hadn’t realised that, as well as the Monet– 

Mitchell dialogue on the upper floors, the 

museum was hosting a retrospective of Mitchell’s 

work, beginning with an untitled abstract painting 

from 1950 that was quite similar to the one she 

exhibited at the ‘Ninth Street Show’. Nearby 

was The Bridge, 1956, Mitchell’s first polyptych, 

which became her signature form from the early 

1960’s onward. A note beside the work explains 

that the title “invokes a mix of references, to the 

bridges her grandfather built in Chicago, her first 

New York apartment under Brooklyn Bridge, and 

the bridges of Paris … as well as her frequent 

transatlantic crossings.” 

While some of the early paintings are almost 

monochromatic, many of the later works are 

brimming with colour. Ode to Joy, 1970-71, 

combines vibrant yellows and blues in what 

could be an abstract bouquet of flowers. The 

title invokes the final movement of Beethoven’s 

Ninth Symphony, as well as a poem of the same 


Above: Joan Mitchell, 1983. Detail, La Grande Vallee XIV (For a Little While), Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne/Centre de création industrielle 

© The Estate of Joan Mitchell. Below: Claude Monet, 1916-1919. Les Agapanthes, Courtesy of Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris 

name by Frank O’Hara. Mitchell would say that, 

“music, poems, landscape and dogs make me 

want to paint. And painting is what allows me 

to survive.” Plowed Field, 1971, is an imposing 

triptych combining blocks of earthy greens and 

deep yellows. Highlights of pinks, maroon and 

teal unite the three panels in what Mitchell said 

was a “homage to Vincent perhaps …” 

When Mitchell moved permanently to Vétheuil, 

late in 1968, the landscape surrounding her large 

property had a dramatic effect on her work. 

Describing the huge sunflowers, almost three 

meters high, that surrounded the house, she 

said, “they look so wonderful when young and 

they are so moving when they are dying. I don’t 

like fields of sunflowers. I like them alone, or, of 

course, painted by Van Gogh.” Her admiration for 

him is evidenced in Two Sunflowers, 1980, a large 

diptych of brilliant golden yellows. 

The dialogue between the artists began on 

the upper levels. Monumental works by each 

of them, placed side by side, allowed visitors to 


Left: Claude Monet, 1916-1919. Nymphéas, Huile sur 

toile, Courtesy of Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris 

Left, bottom: Installation views of Joan Mitchell 

Retrospective. Courtesy of Fondation Louis Vuitton 

Yellow diptych on the right is Two Sunflowers, 1980 


Above: Joan Mitchell, 1976. Quatuor II for Betsy Jolas, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, en dépôt au musée de Peinture et de Sculpture, Grenoble 

Courtesy of Joan Mitchell Foundation © The Estate of Joan Mitchell 

draw comparisons between them, noting obvious 

similarities as well as areas of divergence. There 

was a familiar magnificence to Monet’s watery 

landscapes of blues, greens and violets – for who 

has not seen at least a reproduction of some of 

the many paintings of his gardens at Giverny? 

Monet worked for ten years on the huge canvases 

of his Agapanthus triptych, brought together here 

for the first time since 1956. He had been “wild 

with the need to put down what I experience. To 

render what I feel,” he said, “I totally forget the 

most basic rules of painting – if they even exist.” 

Monet’s last works, painted when his eyesight 

was failing, became ever more abstract. Though 

he could barely see, he continued to paint from 

memory and imagination. The influence on 

Mitchell’s works, in form and colour, is evident 

but, in her hands, the landscape dissolves into 

pure abstraction. 

The final room contained the dreamlike 

experience of Mitchell’s La Grande Vallee. Painted 

between 1983 and 1984, the cycle is made up of 

21 paintings. As curatorial notes explain, “they 

are characterised by the density of the pictorial 

surfaces. The sparseness of the whites and 

the lack of perspective are unique. The artist’s 

distinctive chromatic range is evident: cobalt 

blue and rapeseed yellow prevail alongside a 

multitude of greens, pinks and purples.” This 

series of works was exhibited in two stages by 

Mitchell’s gallerist, Jean Fournier, in 1984. It has 

never been shown in its entirety. At FLV, ten of 

the paintings had been assembled, making it the 

largest display since the cycle’s first presentation. 

The inspiration for these paintings was a 

memory twice removed from the artist. Mitchell 

had never seen ‘la grande vallee’ herself. It had 

been described to her by a friend as a special 

place she had visited in childhood with a cousin, 

who, shortly before his death, had longed to 

return there. “Painting is the opposite of death,” 

said Mitchell. “It permits one to survive. It also 

permits one to live.” 

For me, La Grande Vallee was the highest of the 

exhibition’s many highlights. To stand immersed 

in the colours bursting from Joan Mitchell’s 

canvasses was a life affirming experience. 

Nothing derivative about it. RC 

FURTHER READING: 

Gabriel, Mary, Ninth Street Women 

Little, Brown and Co., New York, 2018 


Murders and 

marriages 

Catherine de’ Medici goes ‘full circle’ 

By Linda Falcone 

Catherine de’ Medici, one of history’s 

most famous queen consorts, brought 

the fork to France, along with porcelain 

tableware, and imported new-world 

specialties the court had never seen, 

including chocolate, coffee, even 

potatoes. She introduced the wearing of 

underwear, donned the country’s first pair 

of high-heeled shoes on her wedding day, 

and brought in fads like perfumed gloves 

– which she was rumored to use against 

her enemies, when politics warranted a 

touch of poison. 

It took Catherine and Henry II nearly a 

decade to get pregnant, after the couple 

wed in 1533 – both at fourteen – while 

the boy was still the Prince of Orléans. 

When Catherine finally conceived, it was 

not thanks to the diviners, magicians and 

medics who worked for years to boost 

her fertility, borrowing from their gilded 

books of rules and remedies. The potion 

recorded as helping the queen was her 

chef’s bird-giblet broth, whose benefits 

were apparently enduring. Catherine 

ultimately produced ten children, seven 

of whom survived to ‘marriageable age’. 

When Henry II was accidently killed 

during a jousting match, in 1559, she 

served as regent for two of her kingly 

sons – Francis II and Charles XI – who 

ascended to the throne while underage, 

and would continue to exercise 

considerable influence over the French 

court, even after her third son Henry III 

was crowned, in adulthood. 


Above: Francesco Bianchi Bonavita, 

1627. Detail, The Wedding of 

Catherine de’ Medici to Duke Henri 

of Orleans, Private Collection 

Right: Il Volterrano, 1636-1646. 

Catherine de’ Medici and her Son 

Medici Villa, La Petraia, Tuscany 


Left: Workshop of François Clouet, 1561 

Catherine de’ Medici and her Children, 

Strawberry Hill House 

Below: : Édouard Debat-Ponsan, 1880 

One Morning at the Gates of the 

Louvre, Musée d’Art Roger-Quilliot, 

Clermont-Ferrand, France 

Right: Yvan Lastes, 2012 

Château de Chenonceau, view from 

the northeast, showing the chapel and 

library, Wikimedia Commons 


In novels and films, including Alexandre 

Dumas’ La Reine Margot, Catherine is portrayed 

as supreme antagonist, who pushes her unwilling 

daughter Marguerite into a loveless marriage to 

Henri of Navarre, a prominent member of the 

Huguenots, a French Protestant group. Strangely, 

just days after the couple’s wedding, in 1572, 

Catherine is blamed as being the mastermind 

behind the Saint Bartholomew Day’s massacre 

– during which thousands of Protestants were 

brutally murdered in Paris, at the hands of 

Catholic nobles. Doubts remain regarding the 

extent of Catherine’s alleged involvement in this 

bloody incident, which is, in any case, indicative 

of the religious strife that plagued the country 

throughout her reign and regency. 

Partly heightened for fictional purposes, 

the scheming side of Catherine’s personality 

is downplayed or even disregarded, in her 

hometown today. Indeed, she is highly regarded, 

more for her cultural contributions, than for 

her political maneuvering. Catherine was a 

true Medici daughter, in her belief that the 

production of art, performances, architecture 

and fine artisanship would divert the French 

monarchy from its otherwise inevitable decline, 

already underway, prior to her arrival. One of 

her most notable achievements was her support 

of the development of ballet, brought to France 

through her patronage, following its debut in 

Italy. The Ballet Comique de la Reine, which 

she commissioned in 1581, is celebrated as the 

first-ever ballet de cour. Catherine’s passion 

for architecture, which she discovered after the 

age of 40, is also well noted, albeit much of her 

architectural legacy has since been destroyed. 

She designed the Tuileries herself, inspired by 

Florence’s Pitti Palace, and Chenonceaux, which 

she expanded, after booting her late husband’s 

mistress Diane De Poitiers from the chateau, is 

known as her ‘unfinished masterpiece’. 

Plots and patronage aside, another of Catherine’s 

legacies lies in her skillful marriage negotiations. 

Although the Medici never made good on the 


Above: Salimbeni Ventura, XVI century. Wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinand I de’ Medici to Christine of Lorraine, National Archives of Siena 

Right: Orazio Scarabelli, c. 1589. Naumachia in the Court of Palazzo Pitti, documenting the wedding of Ferdinand I de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine, the MET, New York 


dowry the French royals were promised when 

she tied the knot, Catherine knew that weddings 

were a highest-bidder business, and the oldest 

form of political strategy. In her world, wives 

were the way to guarantee generations of 

power. Though Catherine was unsuccessful in 

convincing England’s Queen Elizabeth I to marry 

one of her frail sons, she did manage to place 

two of her own daughters in strategic marriages 

meant to ensure the continuance of the House 

of Valois. Catherine’s daughter Elizabeth was wed 

to the ultra-powerful Philip II of Spain; Claude, 

her second-born – known as Claudia, in Italy – 

was given in marriage to Charles III of Lorraine. 

Their spirited daughter Christine was Catherine’s 

favourite. 

Like Catherine herself, little Christine lost her 

mother in infancy. To her grandmother’s delight, 

she was highly intelligent, and historians have 

made it a point to emphasize that she was 

not a beauty, at least by the standards of her 

contemporaries. Catherine, whom the French 

people had snubbed as a ‘shopkeeper’s daughter’ 

before cluing into the resourcefulness of her 

character, knew that being a ‘beauty’ was not 

everything. She had gained the court’s respect 

eventually, and it had not been because of the 

gowns she’d brought, which were so-bejeweled 

no fabric was needed as lining. Pretty or not, 

her darling Christine was bred for Florentine 

marriage. Gaining a foothold in Catherine’s native 

city would allow the older woman to return ‘full 

circle’ to the land of her youth – at least in spirit. 

The opportunity they were waiting for presented 

itself following the death of Florence’s Grand Duke 

Francesco and his second wife Bianca Cappello. 

Catherine proposed Christine as ‘candidate’, when 

the late ruler’s brother, Cardinal Ferdinando, cast 

off ‘the cloth’, and began seeking a woman with 

whom to secure the dynasty’s continuance. 

Catherine was convinced the pair would get along 

well, ultimately. They did, in fact. Never mind that 

Ferdinando may have been the one to put the 

‘strange’ in the strange circumstances surrounding 

Francesco and Bianca’s death, possibly through 

arsenic poisoning. 

Christine de Lorraine married Ferdinando 

through proxy, and the conditions of that 

agreement were negotiated by Queen Catherine 

herself, but the bride did not arrive in Florence, 

until nearly two years after their union was 

made official, first due to her father’s death, and 

later, because she refused to leave the ailing 

Catherine’s bedside. 

Christine finally made the trip to Florence, 

in 1589, after her grandmother’s funeral. She 

entered Medici wonderland, fittingly prepared 

for a month-long nuptial celebration full of 

public festivals, of a scale and grandeur that 

only the Medici could muster. Pitti’s courtyard 

was purposely flooded for the reenactment of a 

naval battle in which Christian ships stormed a 

Turkish fort. The verses of Dante, Ovid, Plato and 

Plutarch were woven together in six ‘intermezzi’ 

performances, whose overall message was 

meant to ward off evil and open the gates of a 

Golden Age made possible through a new Medici 

marriage. Their wedding can only be compared to 

the modern reader’s idea of a world fair. Christina 

was a French princess and a Medici – she had 

all the background she’d ever need to drive the 

Duchy forward. Poetry, pageantry, performance 

and craftsmanship – any media was worthy, when 

it came to welcoming a marriage whose destiny, 

was ‘written in the stars’, a good omen, many 

believed, for subjects and sovereigns alike. RC 


Above: Stefano Della Bella, 1656. Galileo and Personifications of Astronomy, Perspective and Mathematics 

Frontispiece for the Works of Galileo Galilei, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin 

Inset: One of two extant telescopes used by Galileo, 1609. Galileo Museum, Florence 


The telescope, 

a thorny issue 

S 

A 

letter to Madame Christine 

SEEKING SOLUTIONS 

In a 1656 etching by Florentine artist Stefano 

della Bella, the personifications of Astronomy, 

Perspective, and Mathematics give their undivided 

attention to Galileo’s instruments, without so 

much as a glance towards the stars he strives 

to explain. This whimsical work, created for 

the frontispiece of The Works of Galileo Galilei, 

published some 14 years after the scientist’s 

death, shows Professor Galileo on bended knee. 

He may be seeking grace or recognition from the 

ladies before him, and his supplication would 

be no surprise. For a good four hundred years, 

from the Renaissance to the French Revolution, 

allegorical figures populated the higher spheres 

of scholarship, no matter the discipline. Virtues 

and Learning could transport humans to great 

heights and, to do so, they adopted the female 

form, like Liberty with her flag unfurled, or 

Justice, the blind but all-seeing lady who would, 

eventually, set things right. 

By nature, the lady allegories are inspirers, 

and they served the Pisan scientist well. Yet, in 

1615, Galileo, as a supporter of the sun-centred 

theories of Copernicus, needed more than 

inspiration – he needed protection. His studies, 

The Sidereal Message, authored five years earlier 

were ground-breaking for ‘the Earth revolves 

around the Sun’ idea, which displeased the 

Clergy who advocated the geocentric cosmos 

described in Biblical verses. With the rest of the 

world still believing in a geocentric Universe, 

Galileo needed friends in high places. Christine 

de Lorraine was one, Galileo thought, for science 

was among the Grand Duchess’s many interests. 

A PATRON, A PROFESSOR 

Galileo and Christine of Lorraine held each 

other in high esteem, perhaps they would have 

been friends – had their ranks, genders and 

era permitted it. It was she who had called him 

in from Padua – then part of another country 

– to tutor the Medici 

heirs. Overseeing 

the education of 

her children – 

and Christine 

produced ten 

of them with 

Ferdinando I – 

was a ‘duchess 

duty’ which 

she transformed 


into an achievement. Her children were to have 

a classic education, yet it would also include 

modern languages and cutting-edge scientific 

theory. In some ways you could say that having 

Galileo as her staffer, starting in the summer of 

1605, was mutually beneficial. 

For Christine, as a seventeenth-century dynasty 

wife, astronomy was key. The boundless skies 

above her head was like landscape unclaimed, 

and what better way to live in perpetuity than 

to link her boys’ names to the stars? Galileo, 

on his end, wanted political protection (and 

economic security!) in a world fast approaching 

the Inquisition, and the discovery of Jupiter’s four 

moons helped to secure it, for he christened his 

moons the ‘Medicean stars’ and dedicated The 

Sidereal Message to Christine’s oldest son, the 

Grand Duke Cosimo II. As a boy of 14, Cosimo 

II had what Galileo considered a mathematical 

mind. The scientist gifted him his military compass 

and telescope, as a personal token. Incidentally, 

Cosimo II became Grand Duke at 19, but he would 

die young and without great popularity. One of 

the lasting legacies of his rule (1609 to 1621) was 

the protection he provided his former tutor, who 

despite the Inquisition, was allowed to continue 

to study in Tuscany relatively undisturbed. 

Cosimo II appointed Galileo “Philosopher and 

Mathematician” of the Medici court in Florence 

and supported his research in astronomy and 

physics. 

A letter for Madame Christine 

In addition to her love for the stars, Christine’s 

Catholicism made her a well-suited Medici wife 

– for issues of papal power, not faith – but as 

Dowager, she was criticised for her acquiescence 

to Roman power. Still, piety seems to have been 

a genuine personal concern, in addition to her 

real desire to understand how viable science 

could stand in contrast with Scripture. She 

asked Galileo’s pupils to elucidate this issue 

on several occasions, and ultimately, Galileo’s 

response came in letter form. “The Letter to the 

Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine” associates 


the Grand Duchess’ name with the thorny issue 

of the dialogue between science and religion, 

explains Natacha Fabbri, professor of History of 

Science and a project coordinator at Florence’s 

Galileo Museum, and an author of several books 

on Copernican theory. “One of the so-called 

‘Copernican letters’, it is a small treatise, in which 

Galileo claimed the autonomy of scientific study 

from religion, defending himself and the other 

Copernican astronomers from the charge of 

heresy. Galileo argued the need to distinguish 

two different fields: Biblical interpretation and 

scientific research. When discussing astronomical 

matters, research should be led by ‘sensory 

experience’ and ‘mathematical demonstration’, 

not by the traditional interpretation of the Bible 

provided by Church forefathers. In one famous 

line to Christine, he writes, ‘The Bible teaches how 

to go to heaven, not how the heavens go’.” 

CHRISTINE AND THE COSMOS 

The Grand Duchess Dowager never answered 

the letter,” Natacha says, “and perhaps her silence 

was wise.” Not long after the letter was penned, 

Copernicus’ book On the Revolutions of the Celestial 

Orbs (1543) was listed on the Index of Prohibited 

Books, with the clause “forbidden until corrected”, 

and Heliocentrism was declared heretical. Galileo’s 

trial was 16 years away, but his letter – which 

circulated in manuscript form for some 20 months 

before being published in Latin – would ultimately 

be a piece of ‘evidence’ used against him. 

As for Christine, the jury is still out on 

whether she is the bigot she was painted as, 

posthumously. Modern-day art historians like 

Adelina Modesti and Christina Strunck remind 

today’s ‘audiences’ that historical women who 

are not forgotten, are often remembered as weak 

or wily, or at best power-hungry and bigoted. As 

Left: Cristofano Allori 

c. 1609. Cosimo II, Grand Duke 

of Tuscany 

Museo del Prado 

Wikipedia Commons 

Above: Jacques Callot, c. 1614 

The Marriage of Ferdinand I 

de’ Medici and Christine of 

Lorraine 

National Museum of Western 

Art, Tokyo 


Above: First intermezzo of the 

play La Pellegrina: Harmony 

of the Spheres, from 1589 

Medici wedding, stage design 

by Bernardo Buontalenti 

Grand Duchess and Dowager, Christine does not 

fit into the first categories and she may have 

been the latter, but, in this forum the question 

better posed is this: Did she actually have power 

enough to intercede in Galileo’s favour? Would a 

response letter from her have helped or further 

harmed her Pisan friend? 

We do know that a number of Galileo’s peers 

thought it inappropriate for him to address a 

scientific treatise-of-sorts to a lay person (and 

a woman) – whatever her political rank might 

be. They doubted the Grand Duchess’s ability 

to understand the content of his letter or fully 

grasp the repercussions of his science. Certainly, 

Christine was no mathematician, but it bears 

remembering that her introduction to the cosmos 

– or at least her day’s conception of it – did 

not begin with her employment of Galileo. The 

subject had intrigued her since that first lavish 

performance of ‘The Harmony of the Spheres’, 

staged at the Uffizi theatre on one of her many 

wedding days (celebrated over a month and a half 

in the spring of 1589). The show was one of her 

first lessons in cosmology. “Traditionally, Medici 

family weddings were celebrated with parades 

and performances representing planets, stars and, 

more generally, the heavens,” Natacha explains. 

“The Medici’s interest in the cosmos was rooted 

in the name of the dynasty’s founder Cosimo I, 

and reminiscent of the well-established tradition 

whereby the universe was seen as the perfect 

model for rulers and politicians to follow.” These 

set designs were crafted by none other than 

painter and draughtsman Bernardo Buontalenti, 

whose universe was largely allegorical. Natacha 

describes as it as an “apotheosis of deities and 

beautiful nature, surrounded by celestial sirens 

that moved circularly around the personification 

of Harmony, singing to recall the perfection and 

beauty of the heavens.” 

Sirens aside, Christine’s nuptials brought her 

close to the cosmos in another way as well. 


In addition to the never-ending wedding 

pageant he planned, Ferdinando I commissioned 

a ‘cosmological model’ that celebrates their 

union. The revered Antonio Santucci, Galileo’s 

predecessor as Chair of the Mathematics at 

the University of Pisa, designed the 3-meter 

high gilded beech wood model, which took five 

years to complete, from 1588 to 1593. Its outer 

celestial sphere contains seven inner spheres 

designed to rotate around the central planet 

Earth. The system moves through the sidereal 

belt – the 12 signs of the zodiac – decorated 

with mythological and astronomical symbols, a 

reminder that astronomers were also astrologers 

in Christine’s day. 

“Santucci’s cosmological model is a 

representation of the geocentric universe. It 

is also a ‘mechanical’ universe, as its planetary 

spheres could be set in motion with the crank 

on one side [now lost], and God the Father, 

depicted inside the sphere, supervises their 

perfect movements.” Santucci, Galileo writes 

in his 1615 letter to Christine, would become a 

convert to the Copernican theory late in life, and 

his model has become a feat of craftsmanship 

and engineering, not cosmology. Such are the 

Tuscan winds of change. 

In conclusion, the Letter to Madame Christine 

brings shifting viewpoints to the fore. Christine, 

a ‘pious woman’, in her time, was dismissed as 

a bigot, in the centuries that followed. Galileo, 

shunned in his day by most of the Catholics 

who counted, is now a ‘secular saint’. His relic on 

display in a glass case – his middle finger – is the 

most frequently visited ‘conversation piece’ at the 

Galileo Museum. RC 

Watch the Museo Galileo’s video: 

Representing the Harmony of the Sphere 

at the Medici Court: https://www.youtube. 

com/watch?v=uA7mTMMhLcU 

Above: Detail of Cosmological 

model by Antonio Santucci, 

Medici court cosmographer 

and the predecessor of Galileo 

Galileo Museum, Florence 



‘Hidden in plain sight’ 

Adrienne Fidelin, a quest for rediscovery 

By Wendy A. Grossman 

As cultural institutions grapple with their 

role in perpetuating racial inequality, 

reckoning with the many ways Black figures 

have been marginalized throughout art history 

has become an increasingly critical and timely 

undertaking. Such is the case of Guadeloupean 

dancer and model Adrienne “Ady” Fidelin, whose 

ubiquitous visual presence animating various 

accounts of Surrealism contrasts starkly with her 

glaring absence in accompanying written texts. 

Her erasure in modernist narratives lays bare art 

history’s implication in the societal devaluation 

of the lives and contributions of people of color. 

Celebrated in French avant-garde circles in 

the interwar period and heralded today as the 

first Black model to grace the pages of a major 

American fashion magazine, Fidelin nonetheless 

virtually disappeared from the public record for 

three-quarters of a century. She was also the 

previously unidentified subject of a striking 1937 

painting by Pablo Picasso, Femme assise sur fond 

rose et jaune, II. 

FINDING ADY 

The project of recovering Adrienne Fidelin’s 

story was sparked by my decades-long research 

on Man Ray, the white American artist who 

introduced his partner Ady to an international 

vanguard community. While her significance in 

the artist’s life was evident in his work during his 

last five years in Paris before fleeing the German 

occupation in 1940, her story was nowhere to be 

found when I began my quest. No trace of her 

birth or death dates or record of her arrival in 

France. No evidence documenting her dancing 

and modeling aspirations or how and when 

the two lovers met. No information about what 

became of her once she disappeared from the 

avant-garde spotlight. All that existed were a 

smattering of archived correspondence and a 

plethora of mesmerizing images compelling me 

to learn more about her. 

Clues about Fidelin’s story emerged slowly 

over the course of years of investigation. My 

launching point was a photograph by Man Ray 

Left: Man Ray, 1937. 

Adrienne Fidelin 

Collection Marion Meyer, Paris 

© Man Ray 2021 Trust / ADAGP, 

Paris 


Left: Pablo Picasso, 1937 

Femme assise sur fond jaune et rose II (Portrait de femme) 

© 2021 Estate of Pablo Picasso / ADAGP, Paris 

Above: Pablo Picasso, 1937. Portrait de Lee Miller en 

Arlésienne, © 2021 Estate of Pablo Picasso / ADAGP, Paris 

Right, top: “The Bushongo of Africa sends his hats to Paris” 

Text: Paul Eluard; Photographs: Man Ray, Harper’s Bazaar, 

September 15, 1937. Collection of the author 

© Man Ray 2021 Trust / ADAGP, Paris 

Right, bottom: Roland Penrose, 1937. Four Women Sleeping 

(Lee Miller, Adrienne Fidelin, Nusch Eluard and Leonora 

Carrington). Print from colour reversal film 

© Roland Penrose Estate, England 2021 

in which the model is posed in an exoticized 

manner sporting a Congolese headdress. 

Reproduced in a 1937 spread in Harper’s Bazaar, 

this image unceremoniously positioned her as 

a transgressor of the intransigent racial barriers 

in the fashion industry. The image, an exemplar 

of Man Ray’s Mode au Congo series of similarly 

adorned European models, opened a window into 

the avant-garde’s fascination with African art and 

diasporic culture that inflected the way in which 

they envisioned and represented this figure. 

In piecing together the puzzle of Fidelin’s 

life, I examined hundreds of photographs in 

private and public collections, combed through 

biographies and memoires of prominent 

individuals with whom she interacted, and 

mined various archives. I subsequently joined 

forces with Sala E. Patterson, a writer and 

equally indefatigable researcher who shared my 

preoccupation with this lost figure. Together we 

unearthed records in Guadeloupe enabling us 

to confirm her birth date of March 4, 1915. This 

led to other facets of her life falling into place: 

her lineage in the family tree of one of the oldest 

Creole families on the island, her transit to France 

in the wake of the 1928 cyclone that devastated 

the Caribbean and killed her mother, her passion 

for traditional Antillean dance as a devotee of the 

vibrant diasporic entertainment scene in Paris, 

and her dedication during the occupation of Paris 

in protecting property and artwork Man Ray was 

forced to leave behind. Uncovered records traced 

the arc of her estrangement from the avantgarde 

and her relocation to Albi in the South of 

France, where she spent the last decades of her 

life in obscurity. The timing of our discoveries 


was serendipitous, aligning as they did with 

the groundbreaking exhibition at the Musée 

d’Orsay in 2019, Le modèle noir. Ady’s inclusion 

in this endeavor dedicated to illuminating the 

significance of the Black figure in Western art 

brought renewed attention to her story. 

CAPTURED ON CANVAS 

Roland Penrose’s Four Women Sleeping, which 

places Ady nestled between three prominent 

figures in the history of Surrealism, was one 

of the first images I selected to feature in the 

d’Orsay exhibition. The British Surrealist created 

this theatrically staged photograph during a 

summer retreat of a group of select friends in 

Cornwall, England in July 1937. In this tightly 

framed composition, the four women are 

captured in a somnambulant state of suspended 


animation, illustrating the centrality of the 

female muse and dreams in Surrealist thought 

and practice. It should be noted, however, that 

all these women were more than just ‘muses’. 

Nusch Eluard was a French performer, model, 

and artist who later became active in the French 

Resistance during the war. The American Lee 

Miller had a multifaceted photographic career, 

highly-regarded for her avant-garde, fashion, 

and war correspondent work. The British born 

artist Leonora Carrington had a long and prolific 

career as a painter and novelist and is credited 

with bringing a female perspective to the maledominated 

Surrealist movement. 

Selecting images of Fidelin to showcase in the 

d’Orsay exhibition provided a catalyst for my 

pursuit of a long-held suspicion that somewhere 

in the trove of Picasso’s work an unidentified 

image of this striking woman awaited discovery. 

I came to this notion based on a rich cache 

of photographs chronicling the gathering of 

an avant-garde group of friends in the small 

hamlet of Mougins near Cannes in Southern 

France during August and September, 1937. Ady 

is a vivacious presence in a significant number 

of these images by Man Ray and other fellow 

vacationers Penrose, Miller, and the photographer, 

artist, and Picasso’s partner, Dora Maar. Copious 

images illustrate the warm reception this 

newcomer received by members of this elite 

circle. Ady also appears in playful photographs 

alongside Picasso, suggesting the intimacy long 

associated with this hedonistic community of 

creatives. It was thus unfathomable to me that 

she would not have inspired the Spanish artist 

to portray her, as he did with the other women 

present during this sojourn. 

My efforts to confirm this hunch were aided 

by Picasso’s propensity to date his canvases 

not just by year, but also by specific month and 


Left: Man Ray, 1937, Roland Penrose, Adrienne Fidelin, Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar 

Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI AM 1994-394 (4424). © Man Ray 2021 Trust / ADAGP, Paris 

Below: Man Ray, 1937. Adrienne Fidelin with washboard (with his framing marks) 

Collection Musée Picasso. © Man Ray 2021 Trust / ADAGP, Paris 

day. This meant that I could narrow the search 

to works created in Mougins between August 

and September 1937, the intersecting time frame 

of Man Ray and Ady’s visit. Colleagues in the 

archives at the Musée Picasso in Paris helped 

limit possible candidates to a handful of portraits 

of unattributed sitters. I immediately recognized 

Ady in Femme assise sur fond jaune et rose, II, 

due to several elements. Picasso’s distinctive 

rendering of the figure’s hair texture, her 

complexion, and the tonality of the torso beneath 

the colourful overlay are all markers of racial 

difference indicating that a woman of colour 

was the inspiration for this painting. Moreover, 

the manner in which the subject is depicted 

clearly contrasts with the way in which the artist 

represented the white women in other portraits 

he created during the 1937 Mougins gathering. 

I thus determined that Ady, as the only person 

of colour present at this assembly—or, for that 

matter, evidently elsewhere in Picasso’s personal 

orbit during this period—was indisputably the 

prime candidate to be this painting’s model. 

MAN RAY’S PHOTOGRAPH 

As enticing as these clues were in attributing 

Fidelin as the subject of Femme assise, the 

most compelling evidence substantiating 

this identification came from Man Ray’s 

contemporaneous photograph. In this image, 

Ady holds a washboard as she stands against the 

backdrop of the stark white wall of the Hôtel Vaste 

Horizon where they all resided. I subsequently 

discovered a small print of the image on 

cardstock in the correspondence archives at 

the Musée Picasso, accompanied by a note 

from Man Ray to Picasso on the verso. Although 

this correspondence postdated the painting, it 

established an acknowledged link between the 

two artists’ interests in the subject and their 


Man Ray, 1937. Adrienne Fidelin, Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI AM 1994-394 (4428) © Man Ray 2021 Trust / ADAGP, Paris 

respective representations. This association was 

further reinforced with the confirmation that 

Picasso owned an enlarged, vintage print of this 

work, one of many Man Ray photographs in his 

personal collection now housed in Paris at the 

Musée Picasso. 

My continued perusal of auction records would 

result in the discovery of the most compelling 

evidence supporting my case: on a narrowly 

cropped version of this composition sold at 

auction in 2015 Man Ray had inscribed “Arr. 

Picasso” on the bottom of the photographic frame 

alongside his signature. Presumably shorthand 

for “Arrangement Picasso,” this annotation draws 

a definitive line between the subject of Man 

Ray’s photograph and Picasso’s portrait. Whether 

implying that Picasso himself posed Ady for the 

photoshoot or that the artist employed a copy of 

the photograph as an aide-mémoire in composing 

his painting, the annotation corroborated my 

proposition that she is the subject of the canvas 

in question, translated into paint with the aid Man 

Ray’s photographic efforts. 

CONNECTING THE DOTS 

How did Adrienne Fidelin’s identity as the 

subject of a portrait by Pablo Picasso—one of 

the most prodigious, prestigious, and thoroughly 

scrutinized artists of the twentieth century— go 

unnoted for so long? Several considerations factor 

into this dynamic. First is the relative obscurity of 

a painting that remained in the artist’s personal 

collection until his death in 1973. Rarely exhibited 

and infrequently reproduced, it has been out of 

the public’s eye since last seen in a travelling 

exhibition of the collection of Maya Ruiz-Picasso 


in Japan in 1985. Moreover, the erasure of Fidelin 

in major writings about Man Ray, Picasso, and 

other artists whose lives she touched has played 

a significant role in her disappearance. 

As Denise Murrell pointedly observed in the 

catalog for Posing Modernity, the provocative 

exhibition that helped generate a resurgence 

of interest in the history of the Black model in 

Western art: “In the absence of narratives that 

animate viewer curiosity and interest, [Black 

figures] become invisible even while in plain 

view.” Ady’s story is a quintessential case in point. 

Recovering her neglected story has taken on 

added significance in the context of magnifying 

struggles today for racial equality and efforts to 

give voice to those whose stories have gone 

untold. Bringing attention to Picasso’s painting— 

and establishing its current location—will amplify 

efforts to ensure that Adrienne Fidelin is no 

longer hidden in plain sight. RC 

Independent scholar Wendy A. Grossman, 

Ph.D. is an art historian, writer, educator, 

and curator affiliated with The Phillips 

Collection in Washington D.C. She has 

taught at The University of Maryland, 

George Washington University, NYU 

Washington DC Campus, and Middlebury 

College. 

She has lectured internationally and 

published widely on topics in the history 

of photography, twentieth-century. 

European and American Modernisms, the 

intersections between non-Western and 

Western art, Dada, Surrealism, contemporary 

art, the artist Man Ray and his partner, the 

Guadeloupean dancer and model Adrienne 

Fidelin. 

From 2021-2022, Dr. Grossman was 

an Andrew Mellon Senior Fellow at the 

Metropolitan Museum of Art advancing her 

research on Fidelin. An article and video 

she completed during her fellowship titled 

“Mode au Congo: Travails of the Traveling 

Hats” is featured on the Museum’s website. 

READ THE FULL STORY 

“Unmasking Adrienne Fidelin: Picasso, Man 

Ray, and the (In)Visibility of Racial Difference” 

in Modernism/modernity 5, April 24, 2020: 

https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0142 and follow 

the campaign to find Picasso’s painting. 

@findingady on Instagram. 


A Moveable Feast 

Abstraction Expressionists: The Women 

Above: Amaranth Ehrenhalt, 1962. Jump in and Move Around, the Levett Collection, Florence 


“Painting is inconvenient. It is slow and may 

require a whole life,” Pat Passlof once wrote. 

There is no doubt the New York-based 

painter was referring to the life of an artist, but 

her axiom could also apply to the collector, the 

art historian, and the art connoisseur – whose 

lives become intertwined with that of an artist, 

through the artworks they acquire, study and 

enjoy. The 2,000-piece Levett Collection, a 

labour of love, comprises some 120 sculptures 

and paintings by American Women Abstract 

Expressionists. This Florentine collection, 

which we had the honour of featuring during 

a Restoration Conversations broadcast with 

collector Christian Levett, last September, is now 

the subject of a notable new book, Abstraction 

Expressionists: The Women, by Ellen G. Landau 

and Joan M. Marter (2023, Merrell Publishers, 

New York-London). 

If you manage to start this book at the 

beginning, then kudos for the self-control. Those 

without it, will start in the middle, opening to the 

section called ‘The Women’, just like the tome’s 

subtitle. That’s where the celebration is already 

underway. Even those late to the party will have 

time to savour it, as the section’s ‘moveable feast’ 

lasts 125 pages. Therein, all curtains are pulled 

aside, and the artists’ flying colours are fully 

revealed. The term ‘flying’ is used literally here, 

and the idiom can be paired with a quote by East 

Coast artist Amaranth Ehrenhalt, “I try to create 

that which does not sleep, but rather looks like 

it is constantly in motion: Dancing, vibrating, 

gyrating, shimmering, stretching, jumping.” 

Ehrenhalt ‘tries’ and succeeds, as with Jump In 

and Move Around, which poet laureate and art 

critic John Ashbery reviewed at the American 

Centre in Paris’ New Forces exhibition, in 1962, 

describing the artist’s “fluent brushwork, fluid 

colours and bustling composition” – only to 

tell her later, at a chance meeting, that her 

cryptic name had fooled him. He would not 

have “singled her out, had he known she was 

a woman”. 

Most of the works pictured are full-page; many 

are spread over two. Such utter generosity is a 

banquet for the senses, but it’s also an editorial 

choice that stems from sound historical 

reasoning. The Levett Collection’s Abstract 

Expressionist paintings were ‘American-born’, 

often by artists of European background or 

birth, who had lived through the devastation of 

the war years, whether first-hand or indirectly. 

From the 1950s onwards, after decades of lacking 

supplies, and centuries of mostly small easelwork 

and delicate miniatures, women conquered 

canvases that were bigger than themselves, in 

every way. Abstract Expressionism is dynamic, 

innovative, and large-scale, and although a 

book is not built to provide a sense of scale, 

somehow, this one manages it, enabling us to 

access the period’s landscape from a woman’s 

perspective. We can wander in freely, with no 

need to hoist ourselves ‘over the fence’, like 

these artists did. 

‘The Women’ section is generous in both word 

and deed. Artist quotes accompany each image, 

as these women speak of their quest, successes, 

challenges and vocation. French-born painter 

Yvonne Thomas’ description of the creative 

process provides a memorable example: “I 

found it easier to paint large pictures than 

small ones. It was the case with most of the 

painters, their gestural expression took a heroic 


Above, left: Grace Hartigan, 1951 

Cedar Bar (originally Aries) 

The Levett Collection, Florence 

Above, right: Betty Parsons, 1957 

Looking Out 


Left: Michael Corinne West, 1949 

Nihilism 


Right, top: Michael (Corinne) West, 1962 

Dancing Figure 


Right, below: Louise Bourgouis, 1978 

Nest of Five 



stand. Strong feeling — always wanting to be 

expressed through color, form, tension, impulse, 

spontaneity, and recognition of the accident — 

was very much a part of it. Meaning comes from 

many combined elements… the painting itself, 

at a certain point seems to acquire an identity 

of its own. When it happens, I know it is time 

to stop.” 

In a world so short of words, as far as 

pioneering women are concerned, these artists’ 

musings make the heart sing, almost as loud as 

their paintings do. After ‘The Women’ section, 

the book’s authors make a well-pondered stop 

into the black-and-white world of ‘Chronology’, 

where Landau and Marter explore 30 years of 

historical context, in a nutshell. 

A few notes from that section to whet the 

appetite: In 1936, Corrine Michelle West is 

urged by Armenian-American painter Arshile 

Gorky to change her name to Michael, to avoid 

sounding “too much like a debutant’s daughter”. 

She took his advice, but ultimately refused his 

many marriage proposals. In 1937, Lee Krasner 

and Mercedes Carles (later Matter) would meet 

in jail after being arrested for protesting Work 

Projects Administration policies, devised under 

the New Deal. In 1946, Betty Parsons opened 

her gallery – thankfully. Just three years earlier, 

James Stern from Time magazine had refused 

to cover the ‘Exhibition by 31 women’ – held at 

Peggy Guggenheim’s new Manhattan venue ‘Art 

of This Century’ AoTC – because “there would 

never be a first-rate woman artist and women 

should stick to having babies.” Parsons was a 

respected artist in her own right, and her gallery 

(which stayed open until 1982) was a trendsetter 

on the New York scene, with ample room for 

the likes of Perle Fine, I. Rice Pereira and Janet 

Sobel, to name a few of the many trailblazing 


women she featured. Her insight into art 

trading, is another of the book’s many gems: “I 

was born with a gift of falling in love with the 

familiar… I have never made money because I 

saw things too far in advance. Actually, being 

an artist gave me the jump on other dealers 

– I saw things before they did. I have always 

been lucky enough to be in the right place at 

the right time… Most dealers love the money. I 

love the paintings… I have a gift for friendship, 

my friends don’t forget me… Painting is a 

compulsive thing with me; it’s a way of keeping 

alive… I have lived many lives and have enjoyed 

all of them.” 

Next, the authors share Artist Biographies, 

not too short, not too long, and rigorously 

accompanied by pictures of the period’s 

foremost female painters and sculptors, who 

by now are friends – not just with each other, 

but with the reader as well, for this volume is 

a bridge – or at least a solid stepping stone 

– between their world and our own. Yet, once 

all their stories are told, do take a moment 

to appreciate the final section, an index list 

at the back of the book labelled “Exhibitions, 

History and Publications”. Therein, you’ll find 

everywhere the Levett Collection’s works have 

been shown, and even if back matter doesn’t 


Far left: Helen Frankenthaler, 1951 

Circus Landscape 


Left: Perle Fine, 1958-59 

Summer I 


usually excite you, it should start to, for we need all 

the records we can get: artworks, and the women 

who author them, are best valued and remembered 

when their art is seen. The book’s copious index 

is also a testimony to the life of each painting… 

for art is not a static asset. The more it moves, the 

more fertile ground it has for growing. 

After you’ve explored the book’s belly to your 

heart’s content, make sure to back track and 

appreciate the two essays at the front: Ellen G. 

Landau’s “Working in a Different Way: Women 

and Abstract Expressionism” and “Abstract 

Expressionist Women in the Third Dimension” by 

Joan M. Marter. Both provide insight into these 

artists’ lives and times, including an overview on 

contemporary exhibitions and scholarship and 

a brief discussion of the movement’s New York 

and Bay Area contingents. Marter’s essay tackles 

the largely undiscovered world of mixed media 

women’s sculpture from the period, with familiar 

names and others to be discovered: Louise 

Bourgeois, Jeanne Reynal, Claire Falkenstien and 

Dorothy Dehner, among others. 

“The artists [in the Collection] were wild characters, 

their talent was enormous, their lives often a roller 

coaster, and their positivity against the social odds, 

something to behold. The Abstract Expressionist 

period began as one of immeasurable poverty, 

inhuman misery, and global devastation – but 

was then immediately followed by hope, change, 

optimism, joie de vivre, huge economic recovery 

and the birth of the modern-day art scene,” says 

Levett, in the book’s preface. “While US law at the 

time tried, socially and financially, to cajole women 

to stay at home and to push men out to work, these 

women really did not care about that and thought 

of themselves purely as artists. They wanted to 

excel, solely in that regard, and they did – at least 

at that time. All of these seemed to culminate in 

women creating some of the greatest artworks of 

the modern period, and for me now to be able to 

collect, research and live among these works can 

only be described as exhilarating.” 

The final word of Levett’s preface brings us to 

the book’s true beginning – perhaps its whole 

raison d’etre. The word itself seems a sigh of 

relief. Women were painting with their whole 

bodies. They were finding that creative space 

that made Helen Frankenthaler exclaim, fresh 

out of a Jackson Pollack show, ‘I wanted to live in 

this land’. Exhilarating – five syllables long and a 

key to understanding the period. The word is an 

invitation to reread the book once more – this 

time, from the beginning. RC 


Three women, many moons 

A new book by Natacha Fabbri 

WWe met Natacha Fabbri – author, scholar and 

historian – at Florence’s Museo Galileo, in the 

autumn of 2022, just weeks before she sent her 

most recent publication to press. The volume’s 

title, Profiles of Women on the Moon, evokes space 

travel and lunar dreamscape, but its subtitle brings 

us back to Earth again: ‘Reflections of Science, 

Philosophy and Literature’. We couldn’t wait to 

hear more about the ‘moon book’ Dr Fabbri would 

dedicate to her 11-year-old daughter Clotilde, “in 

whose face, I reflect my own, every day”. 

At Calliope Arts, our mission is to advance 

interdisciplinary knowledge on women’s 

achievements, and this quest, in Florence and 

London, has opened a pathway in which many 

disciplines converge. The organisation is not 

yet two years old, and the world of women 

astronomers is wholly uncharted territory, despite 

operating in a region that birthed both Antonio 

Santucci and Galileo. Natacha Fabbri, as an author, 

is the third woman referenced in this article’s 

title. In this piece, she is referred to by both her 

first and last names, just like the historical women 

she studies – in their case, to differentiate them 

from their fathers. However, it is both a privilege 

and ‘artistic licence’, to refer to all three women 

as friends. 

In Dr. Fabbri’s words, the first part of her 

book explores cosmic allegories and “female 

personifications of the Moon, as they appear in 

Renaissance codices and in places of worship 

or public gathering, or as they are portrayed 

on scientific instruments, in lunar and celestial 

cartography, […] or in artistic and literary works.” 

We find Urania – both goddess and muse – 

with her cloak of stars and cosmic globe. She 

is the source of all souls, the Queen of Heaven. 

Depictions of the Moon include the goddess 

Diana, born minutes before her Sun-god twin 

Apollo, and the ivy-crowned, boot-wearing lunar 

muse Thalia, whose smiling attribute is the mask 

of comedy. 

In addition to exploring the allegories, Natacha 

also aims to highlight historic flesh-and-blood 

“women who, following discoveries via the 

telescope and the establishment of the idea of 

the Moon as ‘another Earth’, contributed to the 

dissemination of a new image of the universe 

and strengthened the association between the 

Moon and women.” Maria Clara Eimmart and 

Nicole-Reine Lapaute are just two of sixteen 

scientists and astronomers the author references, 

as operating in Europe in the seventeenth and 

eighteenth centuries. 

Right: Maria Clara Eimmart, late seventeenth 

century. Depictions of celestial phenomena (Full 

Moon, the Appearance of Comments, Phases of 

Venus), Museo della Specola, Bologna 



Above: Maria Clara 

Eimmart, late seventeenth 

century. Depictions of 

celestial phenomena (Full 

Moon, the Appearance 

of Comments, Phases 

of Venus), Museo della 

Specola, Bologna 

Right: Nicole-Reine 

Lepaute, 1764 

Map of solar eclipse, 

Bibliothèque Nationale de 

France, Paris 

Maria Clara Eimmart (1676-1707) is best known 

for her 350-plus watercolours and drawings of 

the Moon’s phases, and well as for depictions of 

comets and the planets, especially Venus. Active 

in her teens and throughout her twenties, the 

young astronomer and artist made good use of 

the observatory her ‘eccentric’ father had built 

on the walls of Nuremberg, their native city. As 

the story goes, Georg Christoph Eimmart the 

younger – who served as director of the Maler- 

Akademie (Academy of Art) – spent most of his 

sizable earnings on scientific equipment. Even 

more importantly, he was not stingy with it. The 

young Maria Clara, a talented artist and engraver 

had the equipment at her disposal. Her artistic 

talents, at least, may not have surprised him, for 

his father and namesake, had been a painter and 

engraver as well. 

While nearly all of Maria Clara’s documented 

nature drawings have been lost to history, her 

moon-phase series, which she called Micrographia 

stellarum phases lunae, is often appreciated for 

its artistic merit. Dr Fabbri, however, discusses 

the collection from the viewpoint of its scientific 

accuracy and poses the questions it continues 

to conjure: “Maria Clara Eimmart’s panels depict 

various degrees of terrestrial brightness reflected 

on the Moon’s surface: the brightest being her 

depiction of the small crescent. However, it 

remains difficult to assert that Eimmart was 

familiar with Galileo’s research. More likely, the 

many accurate observations she made with a 

telescope at her father’s observatory, coupled 

with her great artistic talent, enabled her to 

reproduce an accurate depiction of the Moon’s 

varying degrees of brightness.” 

For Natacha, Eimmart’s ‘change in perspective’, 

is extremely relevant: “The precision with 

which Eimmart reproduced the celestial bodies 

under observation, benefiting, on the one hand, 

from a far more powerful telescope than those 

adopted by Galileo and, on the other, aided by her 

uncommon skill as a painter, led her to develop, 

what would have been – in the hands of Galileo – 

an argument supporting the Copernican System. 

Indeed, the changes in light Eimmart observed 


on the Moon show the movement of the Earth 

around the Sun. While the telescope could reveal 

the phases of Venus and Mercury (and later, those 

of Mars as well) visual evidence of what was 

happening on Earth was not possible, except by 

using the Moon as its mirror. Maria Clara Eimmart, 

more or less consciously, accomplishes this task.” 

As Profiles of Women on the Moon suggests, 

Eimmart is not the only woman astronomer whose 

farsightedness and skill led future generations 

to approach astronomical study from varying 

perspectives. The same could be said of French 

astronomer Nicole-Reine Lepaute (1723-1788), the 

daughter of a valet under the service of Marie 

Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, Duchess of Berry. Born 

in the Palais du petit Luxembourg, Nicole-Reine 

continued to live there, even after she married 

court clockmaker Jean-André Lepaute, in 1748, 

whose pendulum models were a fixture in French 

observatories. He had been tasked to build an 

‘astronomical clock’ capable of calculating one’s 

latitude at sea, by pinpointing the departure point 

and determining how much of the Earth’s rotation 

a ship had travelled. Nicole-Reine’s calculations 

in support of her husband’s clockwork, brought 

her talents to the attention of up-and-coming 

astronomer Jérôme Lalande, commissioned to 

create a palace-top observatory. 

The problem Lalande presented to Nicole-Reine 

was to calculate the gravitational pull Saturn and 

Jupiter had on Halley’s comet. Together with 

Lalande, and another colleague, mathematician 

Alexis Clairault, she was able to determine the 

date of the comet’s approach, more accurately 

than Halley himself. “For six months we made 

calculations from dawn to dusk, sometimes even 

during the meals … The help given by Mme. 

Lepaute was such that, without her, I would not 

have been able to complete such a colossal 

enterprise,” Lalande would later write, in his 1803 

treatise Bibliographie Astronomique. 

The comet was not Madame Lapaute’s sole 

preoccupation over the course of her 25-year 

career. In the journal Connaissance des temps, 

she published calculations plotting the 1764 

solar eclipse and its journey through Europe, at 


Above: Georg Christoph 

Eimmart, c. 1720 

Planisphaerium Coeleste, 

celestial map 

Private collection 

Wikimedia Commons 

15-minute intervals, and calculated the transit of 

Venus across the solar disk three years earlier 

(now lost). A century after her death, Madame 

Lapaute’s work on the Moon would earn her 

a lunar crater as namesake, and Dr. Fabbri’s 

book emphasises the revolutionary nature of 

her research. Lapaute did not only look, she 

foresaw. “Galileo and all seventeenth- and 

eighteenth-century scholars who dealt with 

the phenomenon of cinereous light – the light 

with which the Earth illuminates the Moon by 

reflecting the rays of the Sun – had, in one way 

or another, observed the Earth on the face of the 

Moon Nicole-Reine Lepaute, on the other hand, 

is concerned with shadows,” Natacha writes. 

“She observes not only the Moon, but its 

connection to the Earth’s surface, and therefore, 

the Moon’s effect on the Earth’s face. The chart 

and the eclipses documented in her work do not 

represent a reproduction of what she observed,” 

the author continues. “Indeed, they are not a 

report of something that had already happened. 

Hence, her research is not a history-of-sorts 

intent on describing celestial events. Rather, 

Lepaute’s studies are a prediction, established 

based on calculations she made, which turned 

out to be correct.” 

Profiles of Women on the Moon – for now, in 

Italian only – is not a book for the beachside 

or the bedside table. The copious research it 


contains was developed as part of the Wallace 

Fellowship at I Tatti, the Harvard University Study 

Center of the Italian Renaissance, and it was 

designed for desktop reading with pen in hand 

and highlighter ready. Indeed, the sheer amount 

of study involved could pave the way to the Moon 

and back again. That said, Natacha, who may well 

be the smartest woman still on the planet, will be 

interested to know that the book left me feeling 

‘hopeless’ and hopeful at the same time. How 

little the average Josephine knows about science! 

Plato’s mermaids move us, yet we know virtually 

nothing of their antics. Algorithms have moved 

the stars, long before they dictated social media. 

The universe moves to the rhythm of math; alas, 

I am deaf to its music. 

There is hope too, however, and here is the 

source of it: there are women in this world who 

hear and speak the language of the stars – and 

their cosmic literacy is not a new phenomenon. 

Eimmart and Lepaute are just two of the many 

historic women Natacha brings to the fore, in 

myths and stories, and as pivotal members of lofty 

literary salons, and stringent scientific academies 

throughout the whole of Europe. They climbed 

city walls and they conjured dizzying sums on 

royal terraces. These women could interpret the 

light and shadow of celestial bodies the way you 

and I interpret a cloud crossing a friend’s face 

in a moment of misery. These women knew how 

to calculate columns of numbers that stretched 

for miles. They were human computers to whom 

‘technology’ meant sleepless nights and a mindsupported 

struggle. Therefore, it seems fitting for 

this ‘book review’ conclude with a telling quote 

by Jérôme Lalande, who describes his savant 

colleague as follows: “Madame Lepaute […] was 

too smart not to have the curiosity”. A point 

proven, Natacha, and so may it be for all of us. RC 

Dr. Natacha Fabbri is an historian of 

science and philosophy. She received 

her PhD from the Scuola Normale 

Superiore of Pisa and the National Scientific 

Habilitation for Associate Professor in 

History of Science. She also graduated in 

piano from the Conservatory of music in 

Florence. 

Postdoctoral fellow at several national 

and international research institutions, 

she is currently scientific coordinator 

of the section ‘Science’ for the Digital 

Ecosystem of Culture of Regione Toscana. 

She collaborates with Stanford University 

in Florence and is coordinator of several 

projects at the Museo Galileo. 

She has published books on the 

relationships between Science and 

Music and on the condemnation of 

Copernicanism. Her recently published 

book is titled Profili di donne sulla Luna 

(Pisa, Edizioni della Normale 2022). 


The Other Side: 

A journey into women, 

art and the spirit world 

A conversation with author Jennifer Higgie 

By Margie MacKinnon 

T 

“The word ‘spiritual’ is such a broad church, excuse 

the pun. It can encompass so many things,” says 

Jennifer Higgie. In the same vein, Higgie’s justpublished 

book, The Other Side encompasses an 

array of topics: art from pre-historic times to the 

present, a range of religious beliefs and spiritual 

practices; it also combines a variety of literary 

genres, from personal memoir to art history and 

philosophy. It is to her credit that she covers all 

this territory in a thoroughly engaging style that 

sweeps the reader along with her from Australia 

to London to Greece. She introduces a cast of 

fascinating characters and covers topics from the 

creative process to the meaning of abstraction 

and the relationship between spiritualism and 

women’s suffrage. 

Not so much a Covid book as a book that 

coincided with Covid, The Other Side was written 

after Higgie stepped down from 20 years as editor 

of frieze magazine in 2019, just before Covid hit. 

“I had been working at an incredible pace and 

was totally exhausted. I wanted to focus on 

writing and was really looking for a kind of reenchantment. 

Covid forced me not to travel and 

to get back to nature. I think I walked every inch 

of Hampstead Heath … It was a time of reflection 

in my life and [writing the book] was how I made 

sense of the last few years.” 

Having studied art in Australia in the 1980s 

and ’90s, Higgie recalls that talking about the 

relationship between spiritualism and art would 

then have been frowned upon. “Artists who used 

mediums or contacted the spirit world were 

dismissed for so long. But, in a way, that’s always 

been the artistic process. For some reason, some 

people grow up and want to make images, and 

there’s no rational explanation for it. The act of 

making art is alchemical, in that it is transforming 

one thing into another, be that an idea into an 

image or a globule of paint into something 

different. It is a magical process.” 

While one form of spiritualism or other has 


inspired art for centuries, from cave paintings 

to Renaissance frescoes, the book focusses 

principally on the ways in which arcane beliefs 

have influenced the art made by women over 

the past 150 years. The Victorian era in particular 

was an environment in which unexplained 

phenomena set imaginations racing, with rapid 

advancements in science – X-rays, electricity, the 

discovery of the atom - making almost everything 

seem possible. What other unseen forces might 

be at work? 

In 1871, Georgiana Houghton, a devout Christian 

who had taught herself to be a medium (possibly 

driven by the desire to contact the many family 

members who had pre-deceased her), rented The 

New British Gallery on Bond Street in London to 

display 155 of her ‘Spirit Drawings’, created on the 

advice of her spirit guides. “What an extraordinary 

woman,” says Higgie. “These pictures are like 

a cosmic Jackson Pollock. They must have 

seemed like a spaceship landing in the middle 

of London.” Contemporary critics described them 

as “tangled threads of coloured wool” and “like 

a canvas of Turner’s over which troops of fairies 

have been meandering, dropping jewels as they 

went.” Another claimed that the exhibition would 

“disgust all sober people with the follies which 

it is intended to promote”. If the artist of these 

radical pictures had been excluded from the arthistorical 

canon, Higgie wondered, who else was 

left out? 

As she journeyed into the nineteenth-century 

spiritual realm, Higgie soon encountered the 

concept of ‘Theosophy’. A fusion of the Greek 

‘theos’ (god) and ‘sophia’ (wisdom), it is best 

described as a movement that defies definition. 

Originating in 1875 in America, its overriding 

emphasis was on the study of the laws that govern 

the universe. “One of the many good things about 

Theosophy was it didn’t discriminate in terms of 

gender, race or creed,” Higgie points out. “It was 

the first Western belief system that took a great 

Above: Georgiana Houghton, 

1862. The Eye of God 

Victorian Spiritualists’ Union 

Melbourne, Australia 


Above, left: Hilma af Klint, 1907. The Ten Largest, Group IV, No. 7, Adulthood. Courtesy of The Hilma af Klint Foundation, on show at the Tate’s exhibition: Hilma af Klint 

and Piet Mondrian (20 April –3 September 2023). Above, right: Piet Mondrian, 1909–1910. Red Amaryllis with Blue Background. Private Collection, on show at the 

Tate’s exhibition: ‘Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian’ (20 April –3 September 2023) 

interest in Eastern religions. It was the 

beginning of a New Age movement. And 

that’s why artists were so interested in 

it. It was saying, ‘the world as we’ve been 

taught to make sense of it is perhaps 

more complex than that. Maybe there 

are other belief systems that can help us 

understand that there are different ways 

of representing this world.’” 

One of the founding members of 

the Theosophical Society was Madame 

Blavatsky, a Russian emigree to the United 

States. Not an artist herself, she is by far 

the most colourful character in the book. 

A woman who re-invented herself many 

times over, she was the subject of several 

biographies, all of which tell a different 

story of her life. “In one of her own pieces 

of writing,” notes Higgie, “she claimed that 

she was a virgin, despite having had two 

husbands, many lovers and at least one 

child.” All of which seems contradictory 

to Theosophy’s motto that “there is no 

religion higher than the truth”, yet it is 

important to consider that Blavatsky’s 

words and works are often symbolic. 

Although lacking credibility with 

respect to her own life, Madame 

Blavatsky’s writings on Theosophy 

and the search for the ‘eternal truth’ 

that underpinned the material and 

spiritual worlds were widely read by 

the intelligentsia on both sides of the 

Atlantic, including Thomas Edison, 

evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel 

Wallace, Marie Curie, Mohandas Gandhi, 

Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats. 

In the art world, her acolytes included 

Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and 

Hilma af Klint. Science and spirituality – 

and art – were not seen as distinct from 

each other, but as disciplines that were 

overlapping and intertwined. Mondrian 

and Kandinsky would go on to be 

championed as pioneers of European 

abstraction. Kandinsky himself would 

claim that a painting he produced in 

1911 (since lost) was the world’s first 

ever abstract picture. Meanwhile, 

Hilda af Klint, who Higgie describes 

as “my gateway drug into this spiritual 

world” had been making what might 

objectively be considered ‘abstract’ art 

as early as 1906. Her large egg-tempera 

work, Adulthood from the series the 

‘Ten Largest’ is filled with unidentifiable 

shapes – a large yellow balloon-like 

figure occupies the centre of the picture, 

surrounded by geometric shapes and 

delicately curving forms that bring to 

mind botanical specimens. Af Klint “had 

no idea what the painting was supposed 

to depict,” she said, but the process of 


Above, left: Hilma af Klint, c. 1890. Botanical Drawing. Courtesy of The Hilma af Klint Foundation, on show at the Tate’s exhibition: Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian 

(20 April –3 September 2023). Above, top right: Vasily Kandinsky, 1923. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 

© 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Above, right: The author, Jennifer Higgie and her the cover of her book 

making it was an exchange between her 

and her spirit guide. 

While Kandinsky and Mondrian were 

seen as having revolutionised the 

history of art, af Klint was overlooked 

during her lifetime and only received 

wider recognition in the 1980s. The split 

between the male ‘abstract ‘painters 

and the female ‘spiritual’ painters was 

reinforced by men such as Alfred 

Barr who became the first director 

of New York’s Museum of Modern 

Art. Barr and the art critic Clement 

Greenberg were extremely influential in 

framing the discourse around modern 

art. According to Higgie, “they saw 

modernity as something that should 

be shaped by rationalism. Discussions 

around abstraction tended to focus on 

a painting’s formal qualities: its texture, 

colour, light, line and so on. If esoteric 

or religious beliefs were acknowledged, 

they were framed as youthful 

aberrations.” In the 1970s, the eminent 

and influential critic Rosalind Krauss 

(a follower of Greenberg) confessed to 

finding it “indescribably embarrassing 

to mention art and spirit in the same 

sentence.” 

Happily, as Jennifer Higgie says, “with 

this new generation of artists, as well as 

the recognition of a lot of historic women 

artists, there is a much greater openness 

to different ways of being in the world 

and different ways of representing it 

through art. Each of the artists that I 

talk about in the book has a unique 

relationship to spiritualism. Some of 

them privilege dreams, some are very 

religious, then others are interested in 

the idea of different realms with different 

energies. It is a really positive thing.” 

A new show at the Tate Modern, 

entitled ‘Forms of Life’ brings together 

the works of Hilma af Klint and Piet 

Mondrian. The curators do not shy 

away from acknowledging that both 

artists shared an interest in new ideas 

of scientific discovery, spirituality and 

philosophy, and that both invented their 

own languages of abstract art rooted in 

nature. These artists found a new way of 

seeing the world – and now the world 

is finding a new way to see their art. RC 

Jennifer Higgie, The Other Side: A Journey 

into Women, Art and the Spirit World, 

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2023 

Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian, Forms of 

Life is at Tate Modern from 20 April to 

3 September 2023 



‘Inclination’ update 

Artemisia, algae and structural support 

Our ‘Artemisia UpClose’ restoration team 

continues its conservation of Artemisia 

Gentileschi’s Allegory of Inclination at 

Casa Buonarroti, a 360-degree project supported by 

Calliope Arts and Christian Levett, in collaboration 

with Casa Buonarroti Museum and Foundation. As 

its final act begins, we’d like to shine a spotlight 

on a fundamental but lesser-known element of 

conservation: structural restoration. 

An art aficionado’s untrained eye is usually 

drawn to a painting’s ‘right-side up’, naturally 

focusing on restoration of the artist’s image 

and the painstaking techniques used to clean 

the paint layers and improve picture readability. 

Yet image aside, conservators pose a number of 

questions that may not occur to those not in the 

know: how does a painting’s strainer influence its 

overall health? Does improving canvas tension 

play a role in protecting a painting for posterity? 

Artemisia’s Inclination has spent hundreds of 

years ‘belly-down’, inside the ceiling framework 

of the museum’s gallery – has the sheer force of 

gravity affected the painting’s condition? 

With these questions in mind, the team’s head 

conservator Elizabeth Wicks provides insight on 

protecting Artemisia’s work from a structural 

perspective. 

“All of the Gallery ceiling paintings present 

similar problems – the canvases are sagging in the 

middle and the paint and preparation layers show 

extreme cracking and cupping of the surface. We 

know from documents in the Casa Buonarroti 

Archives that Michelangelo the Younger asked 

his carpenter to prepare supports for the artists 

commissioned, from old pieces of recycled wood. 

In the case of the Inclination, the wood support 

for the canvas is a strainer, made of five pieces 

of unfinished soft wood nailed together, rather 

than a stretcher, which has joins and corner keys 

allowing the stretched canvas to be placed into 

tension. This is important, especially for paintings 

placed on the ceiling which have ‘lived’ for over 

four hundred years with their canvas fibers 

continuously moving, due to their exposure to 

the constant flux of temperature and humidity. 

Since preparation and paint layers are rigid and 

cannot move at the same rate as the canvas, 

they end up cracking and cleaving away from 

the canvas support. Eventually, if the structural 

problems aren’t addressed, the paint will flake 

away from the canvas. 

Different factors are taken into account when 

deciding whether to substitute an original part 

of the painting – in this case the strainer. In 

Left: Protecting the painting’s brushwork before its 

placement inside the vacuum envelope 

All photographs: Olga Makarova, Calliope Arts Archive 


Clockwise from top left: Conservators Elizabeth Wicks and Lorenzo Conti attach strips of artificial 

silk to the edges of Artemisia’s original canvas 

Creating protective layers around the painting before placing it inside the vacuum envelope 

Lorenzo and Elizabeth’s ‘high five’ with Artemisia 

Conservator Lorenzo Conti attaches the canvas to the new custom-made stretcher 


Left: Using the precision conservation mat with the vacuum envelope 

Above: Coordinator Linda Falcone, Foundation president Cristina Acidini, 

Sponsors Margie MacKinnon, Wayne McArdle and Christian Levett 

with conservators Elizabeth Wicks and Lorenzo Conti 

Artemisia’s case the original wood support was 

weak and out of plane and would have required 

major revamping to enable it to function properly. 

In the end, the decision reached has to reflect 

what is best for the health of the painting, so 

we decided to replace the old strainer with a 

new expandable stretcher, custom-built from a 

template of the original strainer, which will be 

kept in the Casa Buonarroti Archives.” 

Elizabeth worked with Lorenzo Conti, structural 

conservator of paintings on canvas, to develop 

Artemisia’s structural ‘make-over’. Here, while still 

in the midst of the process, Lorenzo describes the 

many steps involved: 

“The structural problems affecting the 

canvas had also caused very visible cracking 

and cupping of the paint layers, which was 

extremely pronounced, thereby hindering the 

correct reading of the image. As one of our 

first steps aimed at addressing this problem, 

we attached strips of polyester canvas to the 

edges of the original, in order to attach it to a 

working stretcher. At this point, with the painting 

in gentle tension, we applied a solution of Jun- 

Funori to the canvas reverse and let it evaporate 

[Editor’s note: In Japanese, Jun means ‘pure’ and 

funori is a glue-like substance made with red 

algae.] Already at this stage of the process, we 

saw a definite improvement in the canvas which 

relaxed, causing the distortions of the paint layers 

to improve. After this preliminary phase, we 

addressed the problem of loss of cohesion in the 

paint layers and their adhesion to the support. 

For this process, we used an acrylic resin brushed 

onto the reverse of the canvas and reactivated 

it with moderate heat. Next, we created a semirigid 

vacuum envelope around the painting and 

the gentle heat was applied with a precision 

conservation mat pad, which transfers controlled 

heat to the artwork. 

The precision mat placed on the canvas reverse 

was heated to 55 degrees Celsius, reactivating the 

resin so that it would re-adhere the preparation 

and paint layers to the support. Then, to retain the 

tension of the canvas obtained with the working 

stretcher on the final stretcher, we applied a 

second edge lining, using strips of artificial silk. 

The next stage involves placing the painting 

face-down on a cushioned and protected surface. 

The final stretcher is positioned along the 

perimeter of the silk edge strips. Once they are 

and attached to the stretcher, we’ll be ready to cut 

the canvas strips from the working stretcher and 

to attach the painting to the final stretcher.” RC 


Left, above,: Allegory of Inclination, detail in 

raking light before conservation 

Photo: Ottaviano Caruso 

Left: Allegory of Inclination, detail in raking 

light after structural conservation treatment 

Photo: Elizabeth Wicks 


What pigments 

made up 

Artemisia’s palette? 

An interview with chemist Dr. Barbara Salvadori 

Chemist Dr. Barbara Salvadori, a member of the ‘Artemisia UpClose’ team, is a researcher at Italy’s 

National Research Council (CNR), the country’s largest public research institution. In this interview, 

she shares ‘colourful’ discoveries. 

You are working at the millimetre level, in 

your detective work on Artemisia’s Allegory 

of Inclination. Can you tell us about your 

team’s initial discoveries? 

Our work comprises a multi-technique approach, 

which combines non-invasive and micro-invasive 

analyses, including Fibre Optics Reflectance 

Spectroscopy, Fourier-Transform infrared 

spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence and Scanning 

Electron Microscopy. The combination of these 

techniques provides important information about 

Artemisia’s painting, including how the canvas 

was prepared, how she executed the paint layer, 

and most specifically, the pigments she used. 

Because of our analysis of Artemisia’s blue, we 

now know that, for her blue skies, she used 

ultramarine, a pigment made with lapis lazuli. 

In this case, the pigment has to be ground from 

hard stone, into granules that were more or less 

fine, depending on the shade being sought. Our 

Above: Detail of Artemisia’s sky. The background is painted using ultramarine blue, a pigment derived 

from lapis lazuli. Note its small blue grains mixed with lead white. The yellow-coloured streaks are 

attributable to old varnish 


Left, top: Dr Barbara Salvadori performing the chemical 

analysis of samples with a FTIR microscope 

Photo: Olga Makarova 

Left, bottom: Cooling of the FTIR array detector with 

liquid nitrogen, necessary for chemical imaging 

Photo: Olga Makarova 

Note: All CNR pigment pictures represent highmagnification 

(50x) images of certain fields in 

Artemisia’s Allegory of Inclination at Casa Buonarroti, 

obtained using a digital microscope 

analysis of her blue also revealed that it contains 

white lead, a lead carbonate. She used it with the 

blue to achieve the exact hue she was looking for. 

Next, we have the earths. They were sold as 

pigments, which Artemisia used, harmonising 

her browns and reds. Painters would mix the 

earths, like ochre pigments, to achieve shading 

effects, as in the case of skin tones. We’ve also 

conducted analyses to help us better understand 

the painting’s yellows, a study which captured the 

attention of Barbara Berrie, Head of the Scientific 

Research Department at National Gallery of Art 

in Washington, who visited the restoration site at 

Casa Buonarroti this spring, with curators, restorers 

and tech managers from the US museum. We’ve 

found that Artemisia’s yellows not only contain 

lead and tin, but antimony. The presence of this 

element is surprising and was unexpected, and 

what it means is still under discussion. Our team 

– comprised of Donata Magrini and Sofia Brizzi, 

in addition to myself – generates data that is not 

solely for conservators, but it is most relevant 

to them, as they need information about the 

artist’s palette of colours, as well as ‘intel’ about 

the kind of varnish found on a canvas. Having 

this feedback helps conservators determine what 

agents to use during the cleaning process, or 

how to best proceed when old, yellowing varnish 

needs to be lessened or removed entirely. 


Right, top: The varnish, yellowed by time, is made of a 

natural terpene resin 

Right, middle: Detail of the figure’s mouth, made with red 

ochre (an iron oxide) mixed with lead white. Some grains 

of red pigment are clearly visible 

Right, bottom: Detail of the drapery covering the figure’s 

flesh. The pictorial layer is made using yellow ochre 

How did you become a researcher in the field 

of art conservation science? 

I am a chemist, and since my university days and 

research doctorate, I was interested in a variety 

of materials, from metals to paint. Since the 

beginning of my career, I have looked for ways 

to put my knowledge at the service of cultural 

heritage. I was able to do so, first at the Opificio 

delle Pietre Dure’s scientific laboratory, and now, 

with the National Research Council, where I 

have worked as a researcher since 2009. For me, 

curiosity is a guiding force because, in this type 

of work, we are ‘detectives’. One of our team’s 

commitments is to find out how to treat artworks 

in need, by developing methodologies for 

conservation and using investigative techniques 

that allow experts to use the process best suited 

for an artwork’s conservation. That is our research 

in brief. That’s the soul of it! 

The information that emerges through our 

work invites interaction with conservators, and 

this ‘conversation’ is aimed at finding solutions 

to specific problems. With Artemisia, my curiosity 

was more than technical! While working on the 

painting, I have been reading about her life, 

which has made it even more exiting to work 

‘with’ her. I had never met her before, so to speak 

– the Buonarroti painting is the first opportunity 

I’ve had to study her work close-up. 


Left, top: Detail of the figure’s hair, made with a 

mixture of yellow ochre (hydrated iron oxide) and 

earth 

Left, middle: Detail of the compass, yellow pigment. 

The pictorial layer contains lead, tin and antimony; 

Left, bottom: Detail of the clouds, made with lead 

white 

From an interview by filmmaker Olga 

Makarova, Artemisia UpClose 

“Based on our non-invasive analysis, we decided 

to proceed by executing the stratigraphic analysis 

of two micro-samples, taken selectively from 

fields of particular interest. The micro-samples 

were truly minimal – less than a millimetre each 

– and they were embedded in resin, polished 

and observed under an optic microscope and 

analysed using the FTIR technique. The instrument 

we have in the lab is fitted with a microscope, 

enabling us to execute chemical imaging using 

an array detector. Chemical imaging involves 

constructing a map showing the distribution of 

compounds found in each sample. It has high 

spatial definition and is extremely sensitive. 

Using this method, we were able to reconstruct 

the stratigraphy of the samples taken, which shed 

light on the artist’s execution techniques, through 

the characterisation of her preparatory layer, paint 

layers and how she distributed binding agents.” 

Italy’s National Research Council (CNR) is a 

multidisciplinary organisation that operates 

under the Ministry of Research performing studies 

in its own Institutes throughout the country. It 

employs more than 8,000 people, of whom half 

are researchers and technicians, in addition 

to training thousands of young researchers 

annually, during their post-graduate studies. 

Sesto Fiorentino, on the outskirts of Florence, 

hosts the branch of CNR’s Institute of Heritage 

Science (ISPC), in which Dr Salvadori works. RC 

92 Restoration Conversations • Autumn / Winter 2022

CRASH COURSE ON COLOUR: THE HISTORY BEHIND PIGMENTS 

WHITE LEAD, 

THE ‘DEADLY PIGMENT’ 

The first-ever synthetic white 

pigment was made with white lead. 

Used since the Fourth Century BC, by 

the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, 

it was made by exposing lead to an 

acidic fluid, which transformed it into 

alkaline lead carbonate. This white 

deposit was scraped off and made 

into a powder. Its opacity, density and 

‘warm glow’, when mixed with oil, was 

beyond compare. 

Its highly toxic dust particles 

caused the common ailment 

‘Painter’s Colic’, known today as 

lead poisoning. Despite disrupting 

the nervous system and being a 

trigger for mental illness, it was the 

only white pigment used in Europe 

until the 1800s. Also an ingredient 

of cosmetics and ointments, it was 

banned in art supplies surprisingly 

late – in the 1970s. 

BLUE SKIES AHEAD, 

LAPIS LAZULI 

In his fifteenth-century art treatise, 

Book of the Arts, Tuscan painter 

Cennino Cennini describes 

ultramarine as “a noble colour, 

beautiful, the most perfect of all 

colours”. This pigment, from the semiprecious 

stone lapis lazuli, made the 

most lavish paint on the palette, 

which was usually saved for ‘special’ 

segments of religious paintings, like 

the blue of the Madonna’s robes. 

Transported to Europe through 

Venetian ports – from ‘beyond the sea’ 

as its name suggests – ultramarine 

was more precious than gold, and its 

main ingredient was extracted from 

the mountains of Badakhshan, in 

Afghanistan, amongst other hard-toreach 

locations. ‘Wordies’ will know 

that lapis is ‘stone’ in Latin, while 

lazuli is a Latin derivation of the 

Persian term lājevard, meaning ‘sky’ 

or ‘heaven’. 

EARTHS AND OCHRES, 

THE OLDEST OF ALL 

First used some 250,000 years ago, 

earth pigments continue to be 

common today. The Greek term 

‘ochros’ means ‘yellowish’ but shades 

can range from yellow to red and 

brown, depending on the amount of 

iron oxide in this natural pigment – 

brown being at the top of the scale. 

‘Spanish red’ and ‘Naples yellow’ are 

familiar earth pigments, although the 

latter is no longer in use, because 

poisonous. 

Prior to 1990, every child with 

a serious crayon box was familiar 

with the colours ‘burnt sienna’ and 

‘raw umber’ (from Umbria), which are 

reminiscent of Italy’s art traditions 

and landscape. The colour ‘raw 

umber’ was retired from the Crayola 

crayon box in 1990, whereas in 

2023, consumers voted to ‘Save the 

Shade’, rescuing ‘burnt sienna’ from 

being replaced with more modernsounding 

shades, like ‘mango tango’ 

and ‘jazzberry jam’ – now also in the 

crayon box. 

Above, left to right: Greek wall painting with white and red lead, Tomb of the Diver, 470 BC, Area Tempa del Prete in Paestum, Italy 

Lapis lazuli to flaunt papal wealth. Matteo Giovanetti, 1340s. Ceiling of the Saint-Martial Chapel, Saint John Tower, Palais des Papes, Avignon, Vaucluse, France. Photo: Jean-Marc 

Rosier; Detail of one of the Rock Paintings in the Serra da Capivara National Park, Piauí, Brazil, with early pigments. Photo: Artur Warchavchik. All images: Wikipedia Commons 

Autumn / Winter 2022 • Restoration Conversations 93

Palace Women: 

Oltrarno and Beyond 

Project grants for artists and artisans 

As Florence continues to enjoy the Uffizi Galleries’ 

impressive show at Palazzo Pitti, Eleonora di 

Toledo and the Invention of the Medici Court 

in Florence, we at Calliope Arts are gearing up 

for the third annual edition of ‘Oltrarno Gaze’, 

with our co-organisers Cultural Association Il 

Palmerino and the British Institute of Florence. 

The project, whose past editions were conceived 

and funded in conjunction with Advancing 

Women Artists and its Legacy fund, will expand 

its scope in 2023 to shed light, not only on female 

artists, but on notable women from various 

disciplines working in government, the arts, 

patronage, literature and philanthropy who lived 

or sojourned in the Oltrarno district and beyond, 

over the course of centuries. This year’s theme 

‘Palace Women’ places historic women in their 

physical context, and focuses on the ‘room of 

their own’ idea by associating female forerunners 

with the monumental venues in which they lived, 

worked and built their legacy. 

Eleonora de Toledo’s (1522-1562) purchase of 

the Pitti Palace triggered the emergence of the 

Oltrarno artisan district, as she needed expert 

craftsman to make a fitting and ‘healthy’ home for 

her growing family. The neighbourhood’s prestige 

grew and handcrafted industries flourished from 

the palace outwards, as other noble families 

sought over-the-river real estate, on which to 

build their own palazzi. The Grand Duchess’ 

initial support would give rise to a bustling 

neighbourhood known for its dynamic creativity 

and revolutionary ideas. Several women settled 

in the district and became influencers – long 

before the word was invented. 

Before becoming Grand Duke Francesco I’s 

second wife, Venetian aristocrat Bianca Cappello 

(1548-87) had a home built for her on Via Maggio 

26, to be closer to her lover at the Pitti. Its façade’s 

motifs, exquisitely created by master Bernardino 

Poccetti, using the sgraffito technique, were 

an idealist’s version of Venetian marine life, in 

honour of Cappello’s lagoon city (a tribute that 

makes the Florentines feel snubbed, even today). 

On Via degli Serragli, artist Félicie de Fauveau 

(1801-1886) sought self-imposed exile from France 

and founded an atelier that became a magnet for 

travellers on the Grand Tour, where she marketed 

herself as a ‘vestal of sculpture’ combining fine 

art and craftsmanship, on a model developed by 

Benvenuto Cellini. Just a few block away, at much 

the same time, English poet Elisabeth Barrett 

Browning (1806-1861) settled at Casa Guidi, a 

home she decorated in red, white and green, to 

support a cause she held dear: Italian unification. 

The ‘Palace Women’ trail continues past Porta 

Romana, and leads to Villa del Poggio Imperiale 

another interesting case study, since the estate 

passed into the hands of several Medici women, 

through the generations, after being gifted to 

Isabella de’ Medici Orsini (1542-1576), Eleonora’s 

di Toledo’s and Cosimo I’s daughter. Maria 

Maddalena of Austria (1589-1631) and famed art 

patron Vittoria della Rovere (1622-1694) are two 


Above: View of ‘Eleonora di Toledo and the Invention of the Medici 

Court in Florence’, the Uffizi Galleries’ show, open at Palazzo Pitti, 

until May 14, Bronzino’s portraits of Eleonora di Toledo and Cosimo I 

in the foreground. Photo: Uffizi Galleries, installation 

Left: Ary Scheffer, 1829. Portrait of Fèlicie de Fauveau, Musée du 

Louvre. Photo: Wikimedia Commons 

of its most famous owners. On the slopes of 

Bellosguardo – also on the ‘other side of the river’ 

– is the Hildebrand villa in San Francesco di Paola, 

which British musicians, artists and suffragettes, 

like Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) and Constance 

Smedley (1876-1941), considered their creative 

haunt in Florence, at the turn of the last century. 

Expect a unique calendar of events – including 

tours, lectures and a final exhibition, during this 

September-to-December programme which 

includes several grants in support of local culture 

and education. Co-funded by Margie MacKinnon, 

Wayne McArdle, Alice Vogler and Donna Malin, 

the project is also sponsored by the Municipality 

of Florence, as part of the programme ‘Enjoy, 

Respect and Feel Florence’, financed by the 

Ministry of Tourism, the Fund for Development 

and Cohesion of the Municipality of Florence and 

‘Feel Florence’. For our complete calendar visit: 

www.calliopearts.org. 


Below: Villa di Poggio 

Imperiale, frescos from Maria 

Maddalena of Austria’s 

reception room, with scenes 

of historic ruling women, 

apartments frescoed 

by Matteo Rosselli 

MUSIC RESEARCH GRANT AND 

PERFORMANCE 

A ‘Palace Women’ research grant has been 

awarded to writer and curator Claudia Tobin, with 

violinist Ruth Palmer and her pianist Alessio Enea. 

Together, they will set out to uncover and reveal 

“how music underscored the swell of women’s 

increasing liberties at the turn of the twentieth 

century”. According to Dr Tobin, they will focus 

on “the musical sisterhood between a network of 

European women artists, writers and music critics 

who took inspiration from Florence, including 

suffragette composer Dame Ethel Smyth (still 

best known for her ‘March of Women’ anthem); 

her friend, the writer and activist Vernon Lee 

(1856-1935); and suffragette, critic and playwright 

Constance Smedley. 

These pioneers demonstrated the transformative 

power of music on the mind and body, and paved 

the way for the freedom of expression women 

enjoy today.” Awardees will bring together material 

which connects archives in the UK and Florence, 

including at the Villa I Tatti Harvard Centre for 

Renaissance Studies, the Lyceum Club archive, 

the British Institute of Florence; and at Somerville 

College Oxford and the British Library in the 

UK. The first iteration of this combined lecture 

and recital, scheduled for September 29, 2023 

will be presented at the Lyceum in Florence, of 

which these women were members; with further 

iterations planned for the Cambridge Festival 

of Ideas in the UK and inclusion at academic 

conferences on Vernon Lee. 

PHOTOGRAPHY GRANT 

Thanks to a photography grant and a good measure 

of buona volontà, award-winning Florentine 

photography association ‘Gruppo Fotografico 

Il Cupolone APS’ is already poised to capture 

each phase of our 2023 programme. Ten women 

photographers, both professional and amateur, 

will continue the quest they began with last year’s 

edition of ‘Oltrarno Gaze’, whose photographs 

on women artists and artisans at work are 

immortalised in the book Florence in the Making 

(The Florentine Press, 2022). Via photo reportage 

an artistic images, the team is committed to the 

creation of a photographic archive spotlighting 

creativity linked to the ‘Palace Women’ theme, 

as artisans and art students find inspiration in 


Left: Façade of Bianca 

Cappello’s palace in the 

Oltrarno 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons 

the Florence palazzi (and gardens!) that female 

pioneers designed, developed and ‘populated’, 

according to their unique perspectives. From 

riverside to countryside, they will start with 

Oltrano sites and female-run workshops, before 

moving on to explore villas in other areas, once 

summer homes to Medici women, like Villa La 

Quiete – a favourite site of Anna Maria Luisa de’ 

Medici (1667-1743), the last Medici heir – which 

also provided education opportunities for secular 

and religious women for centuries, including the 

Montalve congregation and their order’s founder 

Eleonora Ramirez de Montalvo (1602-1659). The 

team’s photographs will be exhibited, together 

with works of craftsmanship produced during the 

project, at ‘Palace Women’ a photography show at 

Cultural Association Il Palmerino, from October 15 

to November 23, 2023. 

TRAINING AND PRODUCTION GRANTS FOR 

STUDENTS AND PROFESSIONAL ARTISANS 

One of the Oltrarno’s most renowned public 

secondary schools dedicated to the arts is 

recipient of our Palace Women Students’ Grant. 

One fourth-year class of 18 students, and one 

post-high school programme of seven students 

at the Liceo Artistico Statale di Porta Romana 

e Sesto Fiorentino will benefit from a special 

programme focused on papermaking, art 

production, serigraphs and printing on textiles. 

This grant offers students the opportunity to 

attend workshops and visit the atelier of a sector 

professional. “Both hands-on, and theoretical, 

it focuses on conservation and project making 

– from conception to conclusion, in addition 

to providing students a unique exhibition 

opportunity,” says Paola Lucchesi, professional 

artisan who developed grant content, together 

with the Liceo Artistico’s professors Silvia 

Coppetti and Aude Vanriette. 

‘Palace Women’ also foresees a ‘production grant’ 

for three local professional artisans inspired by 

the theme. Artisans who would like to apply to 

participate are invited to visit www.calliopearts. 

org to apply via our application form on-line. 

The three finalists will receive 500 euro each, 

for materials expenses, to produce an original 

work of craftsmanship, in their preferred media 

– stone, leather, metals, ceramics, glass, paper, 

fabrics and more. Finalists will be featured at Il 

Palmerino’s exhibition, in the book Palace Women 

(The Florentine Press, ed. L. Falcone, for release 

in October 2023) and a documentary short of the 

same name by Florence-based Russian videomaker 

Olga Makarova. RC 


Calliope Arts news in brief 

CALLIOPE DEBUTS ON BLOOMBERG CONNECTS 

Calliope Arts is happy to announce its debut on ‘Bloomberg Connects’, an app 

expanding access to art and culture by providing free digital guides to cultural 

organisations around the world. Calliope Arts is in good company; the Bloomberg 

Connects portfolio includes over 150 museums, historic sites, parks, gardens, 

galleries, public art, in cities and towns across four continents. 

Here’s a sampling of partners: Anne Frank House (Netherlands), The Courtauld 

(UK), Georgia O’Keefe Museum (US), Guggenheim Museum (US), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), The 

Little Museum of Dublin (Ireland), MoMA | The Museum of Modern Art (US), Museum of Art & 

Photography (MAP) (India), The New York Public Library, Rembrandt House Museum (Netherlands) 

and many more. Download the app for free! 

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN… 

In 2023, Calliope Arts kicked off its first lecture series at the 

British Institute of Florence, which aims to share insight 

and research into female achievement in the fields of art, 

literature, science and more. 

In March, BIF Art History Director Jeremy Boudreau 

discussed women artists and the Grand Tour, in the lecture ‘A League of their own’. From the Uffizi 

Gallery’s opening in 1770, to the mid-1800s, their starting point was a petition to copy the Old 

Masters, and roughly 10% of painters copying in Florence during this period were female. Élisabeth 

Vigée Le Brun, Irene Duclos and Violante Siries Cerroti are just a sampling of the artists featured. 

Scholar Angela Oberer continued the series with a lecture on Rosalba Carriera, sharing the ‘secrets’ 

of the painter’s success: “Carriera knew how to profit from foreigners’ presence in Venice, cultivating 

special relationships with intellectuals, artists, aristocrats, jewelers and their agents.” 

In May, art historian Lisa Kaborycha will introduce us to Brigida Balldinotti, “the most celebrated 

unknown writer of the Quattrocento”, whose epistles circulated widely in Florentine manuscript 

collections during the fifteenth century. This June, we look forward to a talk by ‘Artemisia UpClose’ 

head conservator Elizabeth Wicks who will discuss the ‘rescue’ of Gentileschi’s Inclination (partially 

described on pp. 88-93). To view past lectures, please visit Calliope Arts’ YouTube channel. 

ARTEMISIA IN THE MUSEUM OF MICHELANGELO 

From September 27 to January 8, Casa Buonarroti will 

play host to the much-awaited show ‘Artemisia in the 

Museum of Michelangelo’, centred on the artist’s soonto-be 

restored Allegory of Inclination. The exhibition, 

sponsored by Calliope Arts and Christian Levett, will focus 

on Artemisia’s debut as a professional painter in the Florentine context, exploring the development 

of her social networks and the painting’s commission. 

Curated by museum director Alessandro Cecchi, it is also designed to provide an in-depth look at 

the painting’s restoration, shedding light on the extensive range of diagnostic techniques used to 

map the artist’s original life-sized nude figure and composition, as well as identifying later additions 

to the work. The exhibition catalogue will reveal the painting’s symbolism and its relevance to 

Artemisia, in forging her own identity as a painter, in addition to uncovering connections between 

Artemisia and ‘Michelangelo the Divine’. Catalogue authors include: Cristina Acidini, Sheila Barker, 

Alessandro Cecchi, Elizabeth Cropper, Mary Garrard, Margie MacKinnon and Elizabeth Wicks. 

(Ed. Linda Falcone. The Florentine Press, for release September 2023). 


A day in the life... 

The hands of Artemisia UpClose head conservator Elizabeth Wicks, as she 

protects the thickest brushwork of Artemisia’s Allegory of Inclination (mostly 

spots on Il Volterrano’s added veil), by brushing thin gesso fills over the 

brushstrokes to protect them during the ‘vacuum process’, which is critical to 

consolidating the painting’s layers, thereby protecting it from future damage. 

(Image: Olga Makarova) 

Front cover: Salimbeni Ventura, XVI century. 

Wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinand I de’ Medici to Christine of Lorraine, 

National Archives of Siena 

Back cover: Detail of Cosmological model by Antonio Santucci, Medici court cosmographer 

and the predecessor of Galileo. Galileo Museum, Florence

Restoration Conversations magazine - Spring-Summer 23

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