Browse Items (12 total)

This calligraphic drawing was created as part of Giovanna Garzoni's "Libro de’ caratteri cancellereschi corsivi," or “Book of Chancery Cursive Letterforms.” Garzoni, an itinerant artist, was born in Ascoli Piceno to a Venetian family and is believed…

Giorgione’s Judith is a beautiful young widow who has already slain the Assyrian general Holofernes. In fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy, Judith often served as an allegorical figure of Virtue triumphant, or as the victor in a number of binary…

The ebony, semi-nude body of a woman emerges from a gold ground, positioned in a decorative niche as an allegorical figure. She is in motion, with one foot lifted as she stands in contrapposto, one arm raised to grasp a loop of billowing drapery near…

Cameria, the daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent, faces the viewer in a three-quarter pose, her expression still and confident as she makes direct eye-contact. Her left hand rests lightly on the wheel of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a choice that…

In this painting, we see a young woman fleeing a satyr seated upon the ground. Gentileschi highlights Corisca's movement through the figure's spatial dominance of the picture plane and her billowing garments with highly articulated drapery. Her…

Unlike the supposed portrait of fellow poet-courtesan Tullia d’Aragona, Franco’s eyes are averted from the viewer, so she poses no direct challenge to her audience. Her face recedes into shadow, partially hidden from the viewer, leaving her…

A centrally-positioned woman gazes directly at the viewer, her head cocked to the side as she reclines on a stone wall bearing an inscription. This inscription identifies one level of the figure’s identity as the biblical femme fatale Salome: "QVAE…

In a pastoral setting of a symbolic laurel and a changeable blue sky, the poet is placed in the imaginary domain of her works. With a half-smile, she turns toward the viewer from her three-quarter pose, apparently seated on the grass or perhaps a log…

“I await fame and glory in life, and then in death” [1]. Like Tullia d’Aragona’s dialogue, Moderata Fonte’s Il merito delle donne (1600) is a commentary on the dialogues of philosophers and humanists, which were almost exclusively composed of male…

Standing tall and regal in a three-quarter pose, Caterina gazes sideways at the viewer with composure, her lips pursed and hands clasped together in front of her. Her lavishly-robed figure fills the frame, positioned against a sober black background…