In Rome, women painters of the modern era emerge from the shadows

The exhibition entitled “Roma pittrice, artiste al lavoro tra XVI e XIX secolo” (Rome Painter, Women Artists at Work from the 16^th to the 19^th Century) was held at the Palazzo Braschi from October 2024 to May 2025. It featured 130 works by 56 Italian and foreign women painters, sculptors, and architects who lived and worked in the Eternal City between the 16^th and 19^th centuries.

Completely absent from official documents and kept away from the great Roman workshops, which at the time were reserved for men, these talented and determined women produced works of great value. Works that had remained in the shadows until now.

A long history of gender discrimination

“Being an artist in 16^th-century Rome wasn’t easy: you had to at the very least be the sister, mother, wife, or sister-in-law of a male painter, because men’s studios weren’t generally open to women, and, above all, because female artists weren’t allowed to study the nude,” explains exhibition curator Raffaella Morselli. Aside from a few happy exceptions, such as Bologna-born painter Lavinia Fontana and the celebrated Artemisia Gentileschi, considered a feminist before her time for her paintings denouncing male violence—which she herself had suffered—the exhibition spotlights women artists who are, for the most part, unknown to the general public.

Armed with brushes, palettes, colors, and easels, Amalia de Angelis, Ida Botti, Giustiniana Guidotti, and Emma Gaggiotti—to name but a few—reveal themselves for the first time in powerful portraits and self-portraits, painted in their Roman studios or in convents. There, away from the world, they could devote themselves to art. From archival sources, personal notes transcribed in their diaries, and private correspondence, it has emerged that many of these artists knew and collaborated with each other: Artemisia Gentileschi, for example, traveled with Giovanna Garzoni and was portrayed by Maddalena Corvini. Research has also uncovered important new information, such as the close family ties between painter Anna Stanchi and the family of the same name: the famous still-life painters of Via Paolina. Although her brothers are frequently mentioned in inventories, her name never appears, even though she was the youngest member of the family and possessed extraordinary talent, as evidenced by her magnificent canvases adorned with garlands of flowers.

Another emblematic example of the discrimination suffered by female artists is that of Emma Gaggiotti, as recounted by Ilaria Miarelli Mariani, Director of the Civic Museums of the Capitoline Superintendence and curator of the exhibition alongside Morselli. “Let’s take a work from the Museo di Roma, which we chose as the image for the exhibition poster. It’s a typical example of how a painter like her, extremely important in her time, involved in the Risorgimento movements, active at the court of Queen Victoria, Emperor William I, and Napoleon III, and head of a particularly dynamic studio in Rome, is now completely forgotten.”

“Being an artist in 16th-century Rome wasn’t easy: you had to at the very least be the sister, mother, wife, or sister-in-law of a male painter.”

More portraits and still lifes

Over time, the most renowned artists were increasingly affiliated with the great Academies, like that of San Luca, which opened its doors to women as early as 1607, though certain restrictions remained in comparison with male students. Above all, these women painters were gradually given the opportunity to break away from pictorial genres traditionally considered feminine, such as portraiture, to address a wider and more diversified clientele.

As they could not access studies from nature, women artists tended to paint themselves, their loved ones, and still lifes, cultivating a strong scientific interest in the plant and animal world. In addition to Stanchi, examples include Giovanna Garzoni and Laura Bernasconi, known as “of the Flowers” because of her predilection for botany and her training with the famous painter Mario Nuzzi “of the Flowers.” Others tried their hand at architecture, such as the versatile Plautilla Bricci, and still others at engraving. In the 18^th century, with the growing number of travelers on the Grand Tour of Italy, designed to perfect the aristocratic education of Europe’s elite, commissions for miniatures of ancient and modern masterpieces, easier to transport for those on the move, multiplied: those by Maria Felice Tibaldi were among the most sought-after. Landscapes were also a popular genre: Laura Piranesi's etchings with bucolic subjects (a chemical etching technique), highly prized by English buyers, were however almost totally ignored by critics.

From the 19^th century onwards, women were officially admitted to the courses offered by the Fine Arts Academies set up by Napoleon’s government, and some of them even had access to the international exhibitions held at the Capitoline Hill in Rome. At the 1809 exhibition, six of the 64 exhibitors were women; at the 1810 exhibition, eight of the 59 were women. Finally, the first women’s studios were set up in some of the most emblematic streets of the Roman art scene, such as the picturesque Via Margutta, still famous today for its many studios and galleries.

Although the exhibition clearly pays tribute to female creativity, fully restoring the recognition it has been denied for too long, it is interesting to note that the paintings chosen to open and close the tour—Pietro Paolini's “Portrait of an Artist” (Ritratto di un'artista) and Raffaele Faccioli's “Last Autumn Smiles” (Ultimi sorsi d'autunno)—were painted by men.

An aesthetically irreproachable decision, considering the high quality of these works, but one that almost seems to suggest that, when it comes to women, it’s always men who have the first and last word.