Lavinia Fontana’s Mythological Paintings

Download or read book Lavinia Fontana’s Mythological Paintings written by Liana De Girolami Cheney and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume investigates emblematic and art-historical issues in Lavinia Fontana’s mythological paintings. Fontana is the first female painter of the sixteenth century in Italy to depict female nudes, as well as mythological and emblematic paintings associated with concepts of beauty and wisdom. Her paintings reveal an appropriation of the antique, a fusion between patronage and culture, and a humanistic pursuit of Mannerist conceits. Fontana’s secular imagery provides a challenging paragone with the male tradition of history painting during the sixteenth century and paves the way for new subjects to be depicted and interpreted by female painters of the seventeenth century.