Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni

c. 1590

Lavinia Fontana

Artist, Italian, 1552 - 1614

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This painting celebrates the talents and intertwined stories of two creative women: its painter Lavinia Fontana and her subject, lute player and singer Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni. Fontana and Garzoni lived in Bologna, Italy, during the second half of the 1500s and were successful artists of their time. They overcame the constraints of a male-dominated society to gain wide acclaim.

Fontana depicts Garzoni in an elegantly detailed gown and delicate jewelry that suggest her high status in Italian society. An upturned lute rests on the table behind her along with a sheet of musical notations for playing the instrument. Fontana’s intimately detailed painting suggests that she held Garzoni in high esteem, as did many others.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 33

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Shown from the knees up, a woman stands facing and looking at us with her head tilted a little to our left in this vertical portrait painting. She has pale skin, a heart-shaped face with rosy cheeks, and a rose-pink bow mouth. Thin, arched, sable-brown eyebrows frame her gray eyes. A wreath of pale pink flowers and curling white ostrich feathers crowns her long gray hair, which is piled high on her head. Loose curly tendrils brush both shoulders. Her glowing, silver satin gown is trimmed with delicate sheer lace around the wide, plunging neckline and sleeves, and has a pink sash around her narrow waist. Pearl bracelets adorn her wrists. She leans to her left, our right, to rest her left elbow against a waist-high, cinnamon-brown stone pedestal, which is decorated with a bronze-colored garland and bow on the side facing us. A ring of blue, yellow, red, and pink flowers, woven with strands of ivy, dangles in the hand resting on the pedestal. Her right hand hangs loosely by her side. Along the left edge of the dimly lit background, a tree with a thick trunk angles into the upper left corner. A smaller sapling grows just in front of it. On the right, bushes with olive and fern-green leaves dotted with lilac-purple flecks rise above the pedestal. Dark clouds fill most of the top third of the canvas but they part around her head to reveal the soft blue sky. The artist signed and dated the work in white in the lower right corner, “L. Vigée Le Brun 1782.”

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Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(sale, C. Galardelli, Florence, 11-15 May 1914, third day, 13 May 1914, no. 49). private collection, Madrid; (sale, Subastas Segre, Madrid, 18 May 2021, no. 98); Lullo Pampoulides, London; purchased 24 May 2022 by NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2023

  • Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker, Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, 2023, no. 19, repro.

Bibliography

2021

  • Tanzi, Marco. "La 'gentildonna' e liutista bolognese Lucia Garzoni in un ritratto di Lavinia Fontana." Recercare 33 (2021): 165-180.

2022

  • Straussman-Pflanzer, Eve. "Gifts & Acquisitions." Art for the Nation no. 66 (Fall 2022): 18-19, repro.

2023

  • Puglisi, Catherine. "Lavinia Fonatana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker." Exhibition review. _Woman's Art Journal_44, no. 2 (Fall / Winter 2023): 72.

  • Ramos, Carmen E. "Collecting for the Nation." _Art for the Nation_no. 67 (Fall 2023): 10, fig. 11.

Inscriptions

upper right: LUCIA BONAS: AD [A in superscript],GARZONIB / ANNO AETATS [S in superscript] SUE / XXCIII[II]

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