Elisabetta Sirani,
Madonna of the Rose,
1661
Elisabetta Sirani (1638 – 1665) was an Italian painter whose father was the painter Giovanni Andrea Sirani of the School of Bologna, and the principal assistant of Guido Reni. She died at the age of 27.
She painted an Assumption at the Parish Church of Borgo Panigale. Also a Saint Eustache, and Judith with the Head of Holofernes (Burghley House, Stamford, England); Baptism of Christ (1658); and Madonna with child and Infant Saint John (Museo Civico, Pesaro); Saint Jerome (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna), and Portrait of Anna Maria Ranuzzi.
tomb of
Guido Reni and Elisabetta Sirani; Rosary chapel, Basilica of Saint Dominic, Bologna
One of her Paintings is featured as the Album Cover of Cryptopsy's None So Vile.
Born 8 January 1638. Died 25 August 1665. Had two sisters, mother, and father. Painted Virgin and Child, self portraits, and many more. • Guido Reni took young Elisabetta under his wing to instruct her in painting. • By the age 17 she was a full-fledged engraver and painter and had completed over ninety works. By the time she died at the young age of 27, she had added at least eighty more to her repertoire. It is estimated that in all she produced some 200 paintings, drawings, and etchings. • Elisabetta Sirani used dramatic light and great movement in her work, which classified it in truly Baroque style. She painted many of her larger scale and heavy-themed works publicly and in front of large (and adoring) crowds of on-lookers. • Besides being an independent painter by age 19, Elisabetta Sirani also ran her family's workshop. When her father became incapacitated by gout, she was burdened with having to support her parents, three siblings and herself, entirely through her art. The stress created by such heavy responsibilities may have been the cause of her early death. • Sirani's portraits, mythological subjects, and especially her images of the Holy Family and the Virgin and Child, gained international fame.
[edit] References
- Bohn, Babette, Female self-portraiture in early modern Bologna, Renaissance Studies Vol.18 No.2 pp.239-286
