Description
Book SynopsisExamines sixty-eight women artists in early modern Bologna, revealing how they obtained public commissions and expanded beyond the portrait subjects to which women were traditionally confined. Uses new methodological models for considering gender and art in early modern Italy.
Trade Review“This book is a monumental contribution to a rapidly growing body of studies on pioneering women artists. It will galvanize this field with fresh topics of discussion and a rich harvest of new archival findings.”
—Sheila Barker,Founding Director, Jane Fortune Research Program on Women Artists
“This important study by Babette Bohn, a seasoned art historian and expert on early modern Bologna, presents a comprehensive, in-depth picture of ‘the Bolognese phenomenon,’ i.e., the unusual surge of successful women artists in that Renaissance city. Bohn’s book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of art history and gender studies, and it is likely to become a methodological model for the study of women artists in other Renaissance cities.”
—Mary Garrard,author of Brunelleschi’s Egg: Nature, Art, and Gender in Renaissance Italy
“There is no doubt that Babette Bohn’s much-anticipated book analyzing the place of creative women in early modern Bologna will change the way we understand and teach early modern art. Building on several decades of scholarship on Bolognese women artists, and women artists more broadly, as well as her own earlier publications on this and related topics, Bohn assembles the strongest evidence to date explaining why the city of Bologna was such a centre for these women.”
—Jaqueline Marie Musacchio Renaissance and Reformation
“Based on many years of archival research, Bohn’s book summarizes and completes her previous studies on the subject, while also providing new information and fresh interpretations.”
—Patrizia Cavazzini Burlington Magazine
“By not limiting herself to the famous and successful in making her basic census . . . and including many names to which no works are yet attached, [Bohn] aligns her approach with significant recent developments in the broader social history of Seicento Italian art. Effecting a quiet revolution, these approaches were unfamiliar even to feminist scholars searching for unknown women artists fifty years ago.”
—Elizabeth Cropper Oxford Art Journal
