Her nude paintings were unprecedented in the 1500s – and, as a new exhibition makes clear, this Renaissance artist could be every bit as outrageous and licentious as the boys
proves that a Renaissance woman took on the boys in this very genre – and did it just as outrageously.
Another painting, Mars and Venus, depicts the love affair between the goddess of desire and the god of war in a cheekily intimate way. As they sit on the edge of a bed curtained with dark-wine silk hangings, Mars puts a hand on Venus’ naked bum. She turns to look at us in a challenging way, complicit in the lewd promise of what is to come. Fontana painted this in about 1595. No other naked Renaissance paintings by women are known to have existed before her.
“It’s hard to say that Bologna was a paradise for women but it is very striking how different the opportunities were between it and, say, Florence”, says Caroline Campbell, recently appointed as the director of the National Gallery of Ireland – the first woman to have the job. Born in Belfast, she was in charge of Renaissance Italian art at London’s National Gallery before this move. “It was the perfect Petri dish for Lavinia’s career,” adds Brady.
The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon was the seed of Campbell’s and Brady’s exhibition. Walking through the National Gallery of Ireland’s galleries before the pandemic, I was captivated by this painting as well as a fine portrait of Prince Alessandro Farnese by the Cremonese painter Sofonisba Anguissola. While other museums are rushing to improve their representation of female artists, the Renaissance rooms in Dublin have always been ahead.
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