Lavinia Fontana,
Italian 1552-1614-
 
Self-portrait of the artist as St....

Lavinia Fontana,

Italian 1552-1614-

Self-portrait of the artist as St. Catherine of Alexandria, 1595;

oil on canvas stretched over panel, signed, inscribed and dated Lavi Font de Zappis Facie MDXCIIIII, 63x52.8cm

Provenance: Van Ham Kunstauktionen, Koln, 18th November 2005, lot 1559, where purchased by the present owners

Note: St. Catherine is portrayed with her traditional attributes gazing up to the heavens in Fontanas typically Mannerist style. The face and hands are softly illuminated, jewellery and clothes lavished with detail and colour is employed vibrantly, reminiscent of the work of Sofonisba Anguissola, another female northern Italian Renaissance painter.

Many of St. Catherines features resemble another of Fontanas depictions of the saint in a work entitled, The Holy Family and St Catherine of Alexandria of 1581, held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the spiked wheel and palm branch - signifying her martyrdom - are consistent with the present portrait.

Fontana may have taken direction from Bolognese Cardinal Paleottis Counter-Reformation treatise Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane of 1592, a manual designed to promote a bolder, more simplistic and unmediated articulation of religious imagery, as promulgated by the Council of Trent. Mannerist traditions are reformed in favour of a more expressive composition that highlights hand gestures and intensifies emotion in the hope of moving the spirit.

Trained by her father, Prospero Fontana (1512-1597), a former apprentice of Giorgio Vasari, Lavinia was already celebrated as one of the most significant portraitists in Bologna by the late 1570s, before becoming one of the first women to produce large-scale, publicly commissioned figure paintings. In 1577, Fontana married the minor painter Gian Paolo Zappi. Fontana often signed her work with her married name, as indicated here. Later, she was patronised by Pope Gregory XIIIs family.