In 1649, the painter Artemisia Gentileschi told her Sicilian patron Don Antonio Ruffo: “I will show your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do.” Renaissance women’s work as artists and patrons has been overshadowed by more famous men such as Michelangelo and the Medici. In this talk we’ll examine Artemisia’s work and life, and her predecessors Sister Plautilla Nelli; a nun who painted despite being confined to a convent, and Properzia de’ Rossi; a sculptor who was the only woman artist Giorgio Vasari gave a full biography to in his The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. We’ll learn about how they and other female artists broke the rules of what society expected from them and showed men what women could do.

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.