By the mid 1500s in Italy, although it was still unusual for a woman to become an artist, two women gained fame for their skill in portrait painting: Sofonsiba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana. Anguissola’s talent led her to work at the Spanish court of King Philip II in Madrid, while Fontana’s skill earned her multiple commissions from Bolognese noblewomen. Portraits were considered acceptable for women to paint, and Anguissola and Fontana reinforced that tradition while creating new opportunities for themselves as independent artists. In this talk, we’ll explore how Anguissola built an international reputation as a portrait painter over her long life (she died at 93) and examine Fontana’s fame as a portraitist and history painter.

Dr Meghan Callahan has lived and worked in London since 2006. Like Rocky, she earned her Master’s degree in Art History from Syracuse University as a Florence Fellow. She has a Ph.D in Art History from Rutgers University. Meghan is the Assistant Director for Teaching and Learning at Syracuse University London, where she has taught art history and history classes on Italian Art in London and the UK; Women and Art: London and UK; and Underground London.
She worked on the reinstallation of the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and then then with the sculpture dealer Patricia Wengraf. Meghan has published various articles and essays on the architectural patronage of the sixteenth century mystic nun Sister Domenica da Paradiso, miraculous paintings in Renaissance Florence, and Italian Renaissance and Baroque sculpture.